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Trump Signals Potential U-Turn on His Trade War with China; Treasury Secretary Expects De-Escalation of Trade War With China; Sources: Hegseth Increasingly Paranoid About Potential Leaks. Judge Lets Weinstein Remain in Hospital During Trial; Witness Describes Moment She & Read Saw Victim's Body in Snow. Aired 9-9:30a ET
Aired April 23, 2025 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Also the case on Friday before, of course, final preparations are made for the funeral of Pope Francis, which will begin at 10 a.m. on Saturday. But certainly what we've seen, I mean, I was here for the death of John Paul II, for the resignation of Benedict XVI. But certainly this kind of crowd I saw back in 2005 when Pope John Paul II died.
[09:00:27]
But it's interesting the timing. Many of the people who are here we've spoken with were here to attend the Easter services, and many of them were supposed to leave, but they said they're postponing their departure so they can be here for the funeral, and perhaps, if they're lucky, stay for the conclave and see who the next pope is.
John?
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah, a very meaningful time to be here, to be sure. Ben Wedeman, great to have you there. Thank you very much.
Brand new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The Treasury Secretary about to speak to global economic leaders a day after he said a trade war with China, not sustainable, and President Trump blinked on tariffs offering to lower them. The jittery markets, of course, are reacting. We will see how they open today in just 30 minutes.
And just what role is Pete Hegseth's wife playing at the Pentagon? Questions swirling this morning as new CNN reporting finds the Defense Secretary is keeping his wife close and his inner circle tight as sources say his paranoia over possible leaks is growing.
And $3,000, her passport, and her Homeland Security access badge, new details on what was in D.H. Secretary Kristi Noem's stolen purse. Just how was it stolen from such a high-profile Trump official?
I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning we are standing by to hear what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will say today because he said a lot already yesterday. He'll soon be speaking to global economic leaders, and just yesterday he told investors in a closed-door speech that the U.S.'s trade war with China was, quote-unquote, "unsustainable and that he expects the battle there to de-escalate soon."
So we will see how the markets feel about that. We're 30 minutes away from opening bell. Futures have been pointing higher. I did it again, going the wrong way. Futures have been pointing higher all throughout the morning. Investors breathing a sigh of relief as it's not just Bessent. You're also hearing it from President Trump. Him hinting at a potential U-turn on his tariffs against China, saying essentially he's going to play nice with China now. That shift getting a lot of notice a lot of places, including on Chinese social media this morning with the hashtag Trump chickened out trending with millions of views.
CNN's Zain Asher here with me now. OK, so --
ZAIN ASHER, CNN ANCHOR & BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Whiplash.
BOLDUAN: Whiplash for sure, and I can't promise what tomorrow will look like, of course. But how significant is this shift, specifically on when it comes to China from Trump and Bessent?
ASHER: It is huge. What we got yesterday was a slew of positive comments from both Bessent and Donald Trump. Bessent effectively saying what we already knew, Kate, that this trade war with China was basically unsustainable.
BOLDUAN: Right. And that's state of reality.
ASHER: State of reality, exactly. And when you're dealing with 145% tariffs, those are not tariffs. That's effectively an embargo at that level. What I thought was really interesting is that after that, we did not see the White House immediately come out and walk it back.
The White House, not only do they let it sit, but Donald Trump obviously coming out several hours later and reiterating effectively what the Treasury Secretary said, essentially saying that those tariff levels are going to have to come down substantially. Let's play what the president had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), U.S. PRESIDENT: I'm not going to say, oh, I'm going to play hardball with China. I'm going to play hardball with you, President Xi. No, no, we're going to be very nice. They're going to be very nice, and we'll see what happens. But ultimately, they have to make a deal, because otherwise they're not going to be able to deal in the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ASHER: So Donald Trump also saying, we heard him there saying that he's going to play nice, it's not going to be hardball anymore.
BOLDUAN: Except he had been saying that for weeks now. ASHER: He had been saying that for weeks. And in terms of the tariffs, they're not going to be zero, right? But they are going to come down effectively. What we're learning is that when it comes to pressure from markets, Donald Trump doesn't usually cave to pressure from people. But when it comes to pressure from markets, that is a different story. Panic in equities, panic in the bond market, that is effectively Donald Trump's kryptonite.
Another thing that I thought was also interesting, if you've noticed, Kate, we haven't really heard much from Lutnick or Navarro in a while.
BOLDUAN: And that's a good point.
ASHER: And not from my perspective, but at least from the market's perspective, the less we hear from those two, the better. I think that what happens next, and what markets are really going to want to see, is when we go from sort of talking about a trade deal with China to actively negotiating and eventually getting a trade deal on the books with China.
[09:05:12]
BOLDUAN: Speaking of how he is speaking of things, he is now also completely trying to de-escalate his fight with, well, it wasn't with the Fed Chairman, his fight at the Fed Chairman.
ASHER: His fight at the Fed Chairman. So Donald Trump is essentially saying, listen, I have no intention of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell, despite what we saw last week. Again, one of the issues for Donald Trump here was, of course, we talked about the legal issues.
BOLDUAN: Right.
ASHER: But aside from that, again, if he even tried to go anywhere close to trying to fire --
BOLDUAN: Utterance.
ASHER: Utterance, the mere sort of thought of it, trying to fire Jerome Powell, we would have seen even more panic in equities, in treasuries, and of course the value of the U.S. dollar, as I talked about yesterday, would really plummet more than it already has.
BOLDUAN: So we have -- we have talk that is making people happy, but then it is, when does it become actual action and negotiation?
ASHER: Yeah. And we're going to hear from Bessent in about, I'm going to say 45 minutes or so from now. So Marc is going to be watching that really closely.
BOLDUAN: As will we. Thanks, Zain.
ASHER: Of course.
BOLDUAN: Sara? SIDNER: All right. We have some breaking news this morning. New insight into the chaos inside the Pentagon and growing scrutiny over just what role Jennifer Hegseth, the wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is playing at the department.
It comes amid reports that she was included in a second Signal chat where sources said Hegseth shared sensitive details about the military strike in Yemen again. One source says, it's unclear whether Ms. Hegseth has security clearance, though she did apply for it. We're also told by a source that Secretary Hegseth has become so worried about leaks to the media that he's in, quote, "full paranoia, back against the wall mode." Others say that some of his closest advisors are getting so frustrated, they are considered resigning.
CNN's Natasha Bertrand joins us now from the Pentagon. You broke these new details and this new information for us. What are you learning about all of what is happening inside of the Pentagon at this time?
NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, he really has become increasingly isolated and paranoid about media leaks over the last month or so, which is why you have seen him focus so much on this big leak investigation that apparently led to the firing of three senior officials here last week. But at the same time, his inner circle has really shrunk pretty dramatically. It's now basically his wife, his personal lawyer, his brother, and his former junior military aide who now has retired from the military in order to become a senior advisor to Secretary Hegseth.
So he's really keeping his circle very tight here. And at the same time, we are learning new details about this Signal chat, the second Signal chat that Secretary Hegseth apparently shared details about sensitive military operations in. We are told that it was originally set up as part of his confirmation process in order to discuss and coordinate media strategy, perhaps talking points for when the secretary did public events, for example.
But he shocked a lot of people in that group chat when he escalated it and began sharing very sensitive military details to the people in that chat, which, again, included his wife, his brother, and his lawyer.
So now we are seeing that Hegseth has essentially been trying to distract from this story, this damaging story about the fact that he shared sensitive details in the second Signal chat by really focusing in on this idea that these people that he fired last week have been leaking nonstop to try to undermine him. That is something that the White House held onto yesterday as well, saying that the entire Pentagon is working against Secretary Hegseth. And that has really rubbed a lot of people here at the Pentagon the wrong way.
Sara?
SIDNER: All right, Natasha Bertrand, thank you so much for all of your great reporting on this this morning.
John?
BERMAN: All right, with us now, CNN Political Commentators Maria Cardona, a Democratic Strategist, and Shermichael Singleton, a Republican Strategist.
Shermichael, as to that report, if Pete Hegseth is sharing sensitive information on a personal phone, on a Signal group chat that involves his wife and his brother, what does it matter who else is leaking at the Pentagon? How does that, you know, as my, you know, as my grandmother used to say, what does that have to do with the price of fish in Russia? That has nothing to do with the fact that he posted this information on the Signal group chat.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Look, I think Mike Waltz acknowledgement a couple of weeks ago or about a month ago that a mistake was made here, I think was important. I think the question that many would ask, if the acknowledgement is one step, how are you going to clean this up? How are you going to have efficiencies in terms of communications of classified information?
BERMAN: I'm talking about the Signal group chat with his wife and his brother. Has Secretary Hegseth ever acknowledged a mistake was made there?
SINGLETON: Come on, John, I think you know the answer to that question. My point is, though, that he should say, hey, look, in the past, I made some errors here. Moving forward, this is how I have communicated about highly classified information with my staff or my advisors. And I think that would, for the most part, settle this.
[09:10:03]
Politically speaking, I think the president is probably reluctant to make a decision at this point because he did spend so much political capital getting Pete Hegseth confirmed. If you recall, we reported on this exclusively. It was not an easy process for the secretary.
And so I think if you're Trump, you're looking at this trying to engage, well, if I do have to make a decision, Do I want to make it within the first 100 days, or do I want to give the secretary an opportunity to sort of clean this up and see what happens moving forward again? This occurred around the same time as the previous Signal chat. We'll see if the secretary has improved his communications moving forward. I would hope that he has.
BERMAN: Maria, has he improved his communications?
MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL STRATEGIST: Absolutely not, John. And look, it is so pathetic for Republicans to be coming out and, number one, trying to defend him. And I'm glad Shermichael is not doing that. But we all know that no one is going to do what Shermichael says they should. And they should.
But here's the issue, John. How much more possibly criminal, but certainly dangerous, chaotic incompetence is this White House going to expose the country to? I mean, the job that Hegseth has is one of the most important in national security terms. And so he is not only diminishing the U.S. brand. He is making us less safe on the global stage. He is completely turning the Defense Department into a chaotic snake pit. And we have heard how everything has been turned upside down.
And that's why everyone is now, you know, key people are resigning and talking to the media about it. They're not leaking because they're talking to them on the record about how incompetent and how crazy things are at the Defense Department. And so how much longer is this going to take for the president and the administration to understand that this is making us less safe at the national security level?
And it should also be very alarming to Americans that Trump is more concerned about, quote unquote, he Democrats who win by getting rid of Hegseth than actually doing the right thing and taking out Hegseth, who from the very beginning we knew did not have the experience, the competence, the understanding, the knowledge and the background to do one of the most difficult jobs in the administration. It's time for him to leave.
BERMAN: One of the things that's being reported, Shermichael, and we're all sort of hearing it from our own White House channels, they're nervous that there's more, that there's nervous that there could be more.
SINGLETON: Yeah, well, that's always a factor that you have to consider.
BERMAN: Are you -- are you hearing the same thing? And I do wonder, could Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, handle one more thing of this magnitude?
SINGLETON: I mean, look, the Pentagon is a complicated organization, a million plus people, almost a trillion-dollar budget operationally. I would argue it's one of the strong positions of the president being a strong supporter of our military, wanting to make sure that we beef up our technology and be supportive of our troops and also our veterans.
I'm not certain how much rope the president is going to give the secretary. I think all things considered, this is certainly not an issue that he would want on his table considering the litany of other things from Middle East policy, dealing with Russia, Ukraine, tariffs, China, et cetera. I think if you're the secretary, if there is more, you need to talk to the president and say, look, Mr. President, I have, you know, did this a couple of other times. I want to be forthright with you.
I want to let you know that if this comes out, I've put everything on the table and for you to make the ultimate decision. But again, politically, I think the president at some point is going to say, look, I just don't want to continue to deal with this. When will that time be? I'm not exactly sure.
BERMAN: Let's talk about tariffs a little bit, Maria, because the President has backed off substantially. I mean, the markets certainly think he has on the tariffs on China, also backed off the idea that he was voting of possibly firing the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell. Are these moves in the right direction in your mind?
CARDONA: Well, it tells me one thing, that the President has zero strategy, has zero understanding of how the economy actually works, and frankly, doesn't really care. He came in obsessed with wanting to put in tariffs because as has been reported, we know that this is something that he has believed in apparently his whole life.
As soon as he did what he said he was going to do with apparently all the conviction in the world that Trump can show, he now backs off because we know that he also cares about the stock market and cares about the bond market specifically, and those were all going to hell in a handbasket. So now he's reversing course.
The problem here, John, is that he has been injecting nothing but chaos into the market, into the economy. Why is that a problem for him politically? We are now seeing that he is completely underwater, frankly on every issue, but most specifically on the one issue, the economy, that he was elected to take care of by the majority of American voters.
[09:15:06]
He is more obsessed with buying Greenland than he is with helping Americans buy groceries. He is more -- has done more damage to the price of eggs and has done even more damage to people's nest eggs.
And so on that one issue, he has completely betrayed the American people. And politically, that is a very not a good place for him to be a very dangerous place for him to be. And Republicans as well, especially going into the midterm elections.
And so Democrats should pounce on this. This is a good opportunity politically to show just how incompetent this president is on the one issue that he said he was or that voters elected him on.
BERMAN: I will say that investors and many economists are saying this shows that the White House is responsive to some of the markets like the bond market and whatnot. And they see that potentially as a good thing. We'll see where this is headed.
Maria Cardona, Shermichael Singleton. Thank you so much to both of you.
SINGLETON: Thanks, John.
BERMAN: Sara?
SIDNER: All right. Any moment opening statements will begin in Harvey Weinstein's rape trial. Why a judge has ruled he does not have to be -- excuse me, in court. And the executive producer of "60 Minutes" stepping down, citing a, quote, "loss of independence" after a lawsuit from the Trump administration. Those stories and more ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:20:53] SIDNER: Just a few minutes from now, opening statements are set to begin in Harvey Weinstein's sex crimes retrial here in New York. The disgraced movie mogul is accused of assaulting three women. He was convicted in his first trial in 2020, but that conviction was overturned by an appeals court.
Joining me now, CNN Correspondent Jean Casarez, who is looking at two big trials, that of Karen Read as well. Let us start with Harvey Weinstein and what is going to happen today.
JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Opening statements, Harvey Weinstein is in that courtroom. Now he is going to sleep at Bellevue Hospital during this trial because he's fighting cancer so they're not going to take him back to Rikers. But you've got three accusers. You've got Mimi Haley from 2006, is the allegation. She was also an accuser in the first trial. There was a conviction that was overturned. Jessica Mann, third degree rape, was also convicted on that, overturned. Brand new accuser that we don't know who it is.
But this, the defense is going to try to show that that was then and this is now. You're not going to have all those other women in the courtroom as paramedic witnesses and the defense is going to try to say the "Me Too" movement has now taken its course and rape myths, as the prosecution is going to present, may not be the reality at this point. We'll see how. But it was hard to get a jury.
SIDNER: Yeah. Because a lot of people know this case and have opinions about it. Karen Read is also on trial again, another retrial. What are you seeing in that case? Because that case has already started and the first witness has taken the stand.
CASAREZ: And we're on the second witness right now. And the second witness will be retaking the stand. This is Kerry Roberts. It was a neighbor of John O'Keefe. She knew she knew Karen Read. She got a phone call at 5 o'clock in the morning from Karen Read saying, John, is dead. Why she said that, we don't know. But that ensued that the ladies got in a car and started to try to find him.
Let's listen to Kerry Roberts on the stand as she testifies what that was like.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KERRY ROBERTS, JOHN O'KEEFE'S FRIEND: As we approached the house, Karen from the backseat is now screaming, there he is, there he is. Let me the F out of this car. And she's kicking the back door to get out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you heard the defendant scream, there he is, there he is, and started kicking the car door. Did you see anything?
ROBERTS: I did not.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you see anybody?
ROBERTS: I did not. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you look?
ROBERTS: I looked.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was there anything that impeded your ability to see far?
ROBERTS: No. It was just snow. She just said, there he is.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happens next?
ROBERTS: And then I unlocked the car. I looked over. I didn't see anything. And I unlocked it so she could get out of the backseat. I looked at John and I said, she's crazy. And then I turned around and watched and she ran over to a bound of snow.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: So there's been a blizzard through the night. Snow was everywhere. And the prosecutor is trying to make a point that Karen Read knew exactly where he was, which was at the side of the house, near the flagpole, with all this snow over and around him.
SIDNER: And that the person in the car that drove her there couldn't see it, didn't see the body --
CASAREZ: Yes.
SIDNER: -- but Karen Read knew where it was.
CASAREZ: Exactly. Now, there's going to be cross-examination, so we've got to see what Alan Jackson does with that to turn it all around. Excellent lawyering in this case.
SIDNER: Yeah, they have a whole different idea about exactly what happened, blaming it on a whole bunch of other people, part of the police department as well. So this case has been watched by a lot of folks, and I know you're watching every detail in both cases. Thank you so much, Jean Casarez.
CASAREZ: Thank you.
Kate?
BOLDUAN: So the man who pleaded guilty to a July 4th parade shooting will now have to face the families of his victims. Today, the sentencing hearing begins for Robert Crimo III. He launched that attack on a parade in 2022 in a suburb of Chicago. Seven people were killed, dozens more were injured. He pleaded guilty last month to the shooting, and his plea change, just moments before opening statements at his trial were set to begin, came as a shock even after years of unpredictable legal proceedings around this. He's certain now to spend the rest of his life in prison, and today survivors and families of those killed will address him in court telling their stories, victim impact statements.
[09:25:09]
Several also have filed lawsuits against him and the gunmaker, Smith & Wesson.
John?
BERMAN: It was a horrible day. All right. We are standing by for the opening bell on Wall Street. Stock futures have been very happy this morning. And the phrase "Trump chickens out" is trending across Chinese social media as the president signals this possible U-turn on tariffs.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: We are just seconds away from the opening bell on Wall Street. You can see they're all smiling down there. Why? Futures have been up. Way up. After a pretty big day yesterday, too. Investors thrilled that President Trump signaled a bit of a retreat on his trade war with China. Also thrilled that he appeared to be backing off threats to try and fire the Fed Chair.
[09:30:00]
