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Jury Could be Seated in Combs Trial; Joseph Shamie is Interviewed about Trump's Tariffs; American's Feelings on Gulf of America; Viewer Questions about Lead. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired May 09, 2025 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:30:00]

S. TODD YEARY, FORMER AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: Been so obstructed to the advancement of the air traffic control system development that it doesn't matter whether you're red or blue, what your party affiliation is. You could be politically agnostic. But yet we still have these persistent issues.

Hopefully the reauthorization that was passed in 2024 and the secretary's renewed commitment that we heard yesterday will finally interrupt this pattern of giving lip service to the development of the (INAUDIBLE) system in the air traffic control career field.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Todd Yeary, great to see you today. Thank you so much.

Oh, your alarms going off. No, glad to see you made the shot though. Appreciate it.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: I heard the alarm sounding.

BERMAN: All right, Todd, thank you very, very much.

Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, jury selection resumes in the criminal trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs, the media mogul. A jury expected to be seated today. We are live outside of court.

And, House Republicans passed a bill in support of the president's wish to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. But are Americans happy that they're spending their time and efforts for that name change? A little polling for you with a lot of personality. Our Harry Enten is here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:35:49]

SIDNER: Happening this morning, live pictures outside a federal courthouse in New York, where a jury is expected to be seated today in the Sean Combs criminal trial. Jury selection gets underway in just a bit here. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges, including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.

CNN's Kara Scannell is outside the court in New York.

What are you learning this morning, Kara?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, we are expecting jury selection to take place this morning. And this is supposed to be the final moment when the final jurors are selected. They've qualified a pool of 45 jurors, those who have been rooted out for any apparent biases. And now the parties will be able to exercise what's known as their strikes, where they can excuse jurors for just about any reason. The prosecution has six strikes. Combs' lawyers have ten. They'll whittle it down to 12 jurors and six alternates to eventually hear this case, which is expected to begin Monday.

Now, Combs has been present throughout jury selection. And for someone who is known as a hip hop mogul, as someone who's thrown those white parties, he has such a different look in court. His hair is gray on his head, on his chin. He's also dressed, not as you would think of as a hip hop mogul. He's dressed in gray pants, a navy crew neck sweater with a white collar poking out of the top. So, certainly dressed for the seriousness of this moment.

Now, once the jury is selected today, we'll then have a sense of who will be the people that will hear this case. And opening statements are expected to begin on Monday, and then the prosecution will begin presenting its case, calling its witnesses.

Next week is expected to be a busy week. It's going to be one of the longer weeks in this trial where they're going later into the day than they will for the rest of the case. So, we're really going to get right into the mix of these allegations.

Of course, prosecutors have accused him of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, coercing women into having sex with him and male prostitutes. Combs' team has denied this. They said the prosecution is trying to criminalize a lifestyle, and that all the sex acts he was engaged in was consensual.

Sara.

SIDNER: Yes, this case is going to last quite a long time. I know you will be there for all of it. Thank you so much, Kara Scannell, hanging out in the rain for us this morning with the crew.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Also new this morning, President Trump speaking out ahead of the weekend talks that his treasury secretary will be leading (ph) in Geneva with Chinese trade officials, leading into what will be the first actual talks between the U.S. and China since Trump launched his global trade war. The president just posted on social media, floating a 80 percent tariff on China, as he says, seems right, which would be a dramatic drop from the 145 percent tariff he currently has slapped on the country, though it would still be historically high. TBD what that means. We do not know. What we do know is the impact of the tariffs on Chinese goods coming

in are hitting one industry particularly hard, the baby industry. That's because, according to some estimates, more than 70 percent of baby gear purchased in the U.S. is manufactured in China. Everything from car seats, to changing tables, to strollers. Said another way, essentials for new parents.

Joining me right now is someone who knows this too well, Joe Shamie. He's the president of Delta Children, the country's largest crib and children's furniture brand.

Joe, thank you very much for coming in.

As we were talking leading into this, your company is so impressive. Family, family, family owned and run for multiple generations now.

What -- before I get to kind of the questions of where things are headed, what do these tariffs on imports, the 145 that we're talking -- that's currently on from China, what does it mean for your company right now?

JOSEPH SHAMIE, PRESIDENT, DELTA CHILDREN: It means that we have to figure out how to continue to make safe products that are affordable for parents. And 145 percent, it would -- it would be almost impossible to do so. So, we're trying to figure out other avenues, other ways of doing so. And we're waiting for direction from the president.

We acknowledge the president has valid concerns about our trade imbalances. I'm glad that he's addressing it. I'm also glad that he's very devoted to families, to family values, to the family -- to establishing a baby boom, all of the above.

[08:40:00]

With that said in mind, we need to keep baby products affordable.

BOLDUAN: What does it mean for your inventory right now? Our shipments coming in? Are you bringing products in still?

SHAMIE: So, luckily we are a very financially strong company and we have a large inventory in stock currently. And we are bringing in certain products even at the higher tariff rates. So, for the next few months we're good. We're going to keep prices stable. We're going to do our best to do so. And we're hoping for more direction to move forward.

BOLDUAN: But a few -- but just a few months of inventory is --

SHAMIE: Not enough.

BOLDUAN: I know you're not -- I know you're not -- yes, that's not enough, and I know that's not how anyone wants to run -- have to run their company.

SHAMIE: Yes. BOLDUAN: I was reading that -- on what we just are learning, 80

percent, if that would be what the tariff rate is. Like, what does the -- 145 percent tariff on your goods coming in, an 80 percent tariff on your goods coming in, does that make a difference, do you think?

SHAMIE: Of course it makes a difference.

BOLDUAN: Right.

SHAMIE: But it still makes it very expensive for a new parent to raise a child. And we are very concerned, that for argument's sake, in the crib field, that parents will make the wrong choice. They will co- sleep with their -- with their children. They will buy a used crib, a crib that they have sitting in the basement for years that do not meet the current safety standards.

In 2011, Delta and our other manufacturers worked together with the consumer product safety commission and developed the toughest standards for cribs in the world. We -- we put a zero tolerance. And we're so proud of that. And we reduced deaths by some 90 percent.

BOLDUAN: And that's the fear is that --

SHAMIE: And that's the fear. What happens next? And again, I praise President Trump for addressing the situation. I praise President Trump for, at this time, saying he's going to take a look at baby essentials.

BOLDUAN: But if parents can't afford it, the choices they would make because you have to --

SHAMIE: Yes.

BOLDUAN: You have a baby. You must have product for them.

SHAMIE: Correct.

BOLDUAN: What that means. That's something I hadn't even thought about. The president --

SHAMIE: Now it's something I always say, a cell phone is a necessity. But we have old cell phones. A new parent doesn't have an old crib that -- a crib sitting and waiting for them to put into their home.

BOLDUAN: That is a very good point.

The president has been, I would -- I would say, almost unusually focused on children's products and how he has been talking about tariffs of late. We know that he talked about how children don't need to have so many baby dolls, or can pay a couple extra dollars for a doll. He also talked about strollers in a -- in some of his recent interviews. I want to play this for you, what he said this weekend.

SHAMIE: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KRISTEN WELKER, NBC NEWS: Some prices are going up, tires, strollers, some clothing, in the wake of your tariffs.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Excuse me, that's peanuts compared to energy.

WELKER: Well --

TRUMP: Energy is 60 percent of the cost.

You should ask some positive things, like, sir, it's amazing what you've done with gasoline, because, you know what, gasoline's big business. A stroller is not big business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: I remember hearing that and thinking, what reaction someone like yourself would have to hearing that?

SHAMIE: No pun intended, but we are an infant industry. We are a small industry compared to energy and -- and all other kinds of industries. But we are one of the most important industries there is. We need to keep babies safe. We need to encourage parents to have more kids, and we need to do our best to help them.

BOLDUAN: An interesting thing that is particularly unique, as you're talking about safety of your products --

SHAMIE: Yes.

BOLDUAN: That's particularly unique to the baby industry is the testing that goes into these products before they make it to market. If -- one thing we hear over and over is, make it -- make it in the United States, bring it into the United States and you won't face a tariff. Can you move all of that testing to the United States that is so essential for the safety of your products?

SHAMIE: The testing facilities in China are extensive. We've developed nine test labs in Asia. We also developed two test labs in the United States. So, we can do some testing. But the infrastructure, wheels, steel, fabric for the seats, foam, I could go on and on, all the things that go into making a stroller are still right now in China.

BOLDUAN: It's -- you can't. I mean, it is impossible for you to move that over quickly.

SHAMIE: At this time -- quickly is the right term. Quickly, no. Maybe at some point in time, in the future, we can.

Let me point out something else to you. We have three manufacturing facilities in the United States. We manufacture in Wisconsin. We manufacture in Kansas. We produce hundreds of items there, just not strollers and cribs. Those were not economical for us to do here. We're going to expand our production in the United States. We're going to do as much as we can to do so. And we employ over 500 people in America. So, we are a U.S. manufacturer. At the same time, we are an importer from China and other parts of Asia.

BOLDUAN: What I hear from you, Joe, is, you just need some time and you need a break in order to --

SHAMIE: Yes.

BOLDUAN: In order to stay afloat and keep safe products on the shelves.

[08:45:02]

SHAMIE: Thank you, Kate. Appreciate it.

BOLDUAN: Thank you for coming in, Joe. I really appreciate it.

SHAMIE: A pleasure.

BOLDUAN: Nice to meet you. Thank you.

John.

BERMAN: So, House Republicans just passed a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, sending it now to the Senate. Of course, the president signed an executive order to this effect before.

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten is here.

And my question to you is, you know, how is this whole Gulf of America launch going. Since the president started it, how much has it seeped into the consciousness?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Let's just put it this way, it has bounced all -- it's like I'm wearing waterproof clothing. If the water -- if the water was coming down on me and it was Gulf of Mexico, it bounces right off of me. It has gone horribly. This bounce is terrible.

Take a look here. Has more Google searches since Trump's proclamation three months ago on February 9th. It's a 72 Dolphin's block (ph). Gulf of Mexico has been more searched in 50 states. That is all of them. Versus the Gulf of America, zero states. None of them.

Plus, I should point out, the District of Columbia has more searches for the Gulf of Mexico.

So, the bottom line is, despite whatever Trump wants to say at this particular point, when it comes to what Americans are actually using, they are sticking with the old name. They are sticking with the Gulf of Mexico. They are not, in any state, going with the Gulf of America. It is 50 to none. A blowout in favor of the Gulf of Mexico over the Gulf of America.

BERMAN: So, when you're going into Google to search for whatever that body of water is called underneath, you know, Alabama, Mississippi and by Florida there, people in every state are typing in this instead of this? ENTEN: That is exactly right. In every single state, more folks are typing in Gulf of Mexico in order to search for that body of water underneath our southern border, compared to the Gulf of America, zero states.

BERMAN: All right, that's Google searches. What about the polling?

ENTEN: So, what about the polling? Because sometimes people might be searching for the poll, you know, searching on Google, but that doesn't necessarily implicate what they actually feel about the issue.

On this particular one, it does. It does. It very much lines up. Rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Look at this, 67 percent of registered voters in the United States, according to a March Fox News poll, say that they oppose renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Just 31 percent of Americans favor, and I should note, even 36 percent of Republicans oppose it, despite the fact that there was near uniformity when, in fact, the House GOP lined up behind the change of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.

But when it comes to the American people, two-thirds oppose. And that is very rare, because in our politics you rarely get two-thirds of Americans to agree upon anything. But they do oppose the idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

BERMAN: So, this issue, it's motivating for whom?

ENTEN: Yes, exactly right. This is the whole thing.

OK, you see all those House Republicans line up, right, John? You say, OK, maybe this is a thing they really want to get behind Donald Trump. Uh-uh. When it comes to the American people, makes you very motivated to vote, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, making it the Gulf of America, 34 percent of Democrats say it makes them very motivated to vote, compared to just 18 percent of Republicans.

The bottom line is, Donald Trump has been trying over the last three months to sell this idea that we're going to make the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, but there is no indication that it's actually seeping in to the American consciousness. You see it here, it motivates Democrats more than Republicans. You see it here, 67 percent of Americans oppose the idea. And you see it in the Google searches as well. You see that people, simply put, are not going along with Donald Trump. In every single gosh darn state more folks are googling Gulf of Mexico than Gulf of America. There is no sign that this is working out and Trump is changing people's minds, John Berman.

BERMAN: A bit of a gulf between opinion and reality, I must say.

ENTEN: Yes, very, very good. It's a gap that is as wide as the Gulf of Mexico, apparently.

BERMAN: All right, Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Sara.

SIDNER: Thank goodness it's Friday with that dad joke.

OK, coming up, the lead crisis in Milwaukee schools. What city officials are doing to try to deal with the crisis that forced some of their schools to have to close.

And President Trump calls for a 30 day unconditional ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. So, what has been the response to that?

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[08:53:49]

SIDNER: This week our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, has been investigating how city officials in Milwaukee are scrambling to stop a lead crisis inside their aging school buildings. We asked you what questions you had for Dr. Gupta, and he's back today to answer them.

Sanjay.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we are on the ground here in Milwaukee getting a lot of questions about lead.

Something I want to clarify right off the top, because a lot of questions came in about this. There is no safe amount of lead. That is something that you hear all the time. It's important to know. But at the same time, when they test for lead, the sensitivity of the equipment is to really around 3.5 micrograms. So, that's the number that you often hear as an acceptable limit. But that really has to do more with the testing than the actual limit of the lead in the body.

Let's try and get to as many of these questions as we can.

Karen from California asks, "does lead ever leave your body?"

A really important question. The short answer is, yes, lead does leave the body. But important things to keep in mind. First of all, it can continue to accumulate at the same time that it's leaving your body. So, it can be going sort of back and forth. It is stored in the blood. It is stored in soft tissues.

[08:55:01]

It is stored in your organs. But in adults, about 95 percent of the lead is actually stored in your bones and your teeth. And it can mobilize throughout your life, which is why lead can also be considered sort of a long-term toxin. That is part of the problem. So, it can cause problems throughout your life. But the half-life is around a month, and it does sort of leave your body as long as you don't continue to accumulate it.

Let's get to this question from John in Roebuck, South Carolina. "What kind of issues might such an exposure cause for seniors?" You know, we do talk a lot about kids. And part of the reason we talk

a lot about kids is because kids are smaller. So, when they get lead exposure, it can have more of an impact on their bodies. Also, kids are closer to the ground. That's often where the lead dust is. Kids like to eat paint chips because paint chips are often sweet. So, for all those reasons, lead exposure can have a bigger impact on kids than adults.

But it can be a problem in adults as well. It does tend to leave your body, as we just answered in the previous question, but in adults it can cause problems if you get significant lead toxicity, including problems with your cardiovascular system and your cognitive system as well. Your central nervous system.

Let's get to one final question. We got this one from Barbara Hill in Vermont, who wants to know, how much of an issue lead is in some of our favorite foods, specifically in chocolate? "How can I continue to enjoy it occasionally while reducing my exposure?"

All right, a lot of comments about lead in chocolate. Some heavy metals do end up in chocolate. Lead, cadmium, even small amounts of arsenic. It has to do with the fact that that these foods are often grown in soil that might be contaminated with lead. So, if you go and you look at chocolate, for example, arsenic's not as big a problem. But if you look at lead, for example, in chocolate, if you look at the most strict standards, California standards, you'll find that about 43 percent of the chocolates out there do have levels of lead that would exceed those standards. So, 43 percent.

Now, that does sound concerning. But you've got to keep in mind, again, there are a lot of heavy metals in all sorts of different --

BERMAN: All right, our thanks to Sanjay for that.

This morning, President Trump is pushing for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire in Russia's war on Ukraine. It comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin leads Russia's victory day parade commemorating the allied and Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Putin invited China's Xi Jinping and others to attend.

CNN senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen is in Moscow this morning.

Fred, what's the latest from there?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, John.

Well, it was certainly a pretty large parade that took place on Red Square earlier today. I was indeed there. And the Russians were saying it was the most grand of these parades that they've ever put on. Obviously, a very important day for the Russians, because it's 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany.

But one of the things that also really stood out was Vladimir Putin sitting in the front row, side by side with Xi Jinping of China. The two men have, in the past two days, really shown unity on almost all fronts. They had some bilateral meetings yesterday, now sitting in the front row as that victory parade was going on, both of them wearing patriotic orange and black Russian ribbons. And, of course, the Russians showcasing some of their newest military hardware as well.

One of the things that I also did, John, by the way, when I was on the ground, I asked a senior Russian senator about the Trump administration's new demands, President Trump's new demands for that 30-day ceasefire. He didn't seem impressed by that at all. He said, look, President Trump can keep trying to broker a ceasefire, he can keep trying to do what he can do. But at the same time the Russians say they have their core interests at stake and they are not going to back down from those interests, even if, as he put it, some politicians in Washington think they need to comment on those interests.

So clearly the Russians saying they're not going to budge on that. They still have things that they want sorted out. But really definitely a very interesting military parade that we saw there.

One of the things that happened on the sidelines, by the way, is that if the Russians, of course, have North Korean troops also fighting on their side as well, Vladimir Putin was seen hugging one of the members of the North Korean general staff. Obviously, the Russians, saying that North Korean forces were very important to them in some of the battles that happened on Russian territory in the war that they're currently fighting in Ukraine.

John.

BERMAN: You know, such a obviously deliberate pictures with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Deliberately friendly pictures there. Interesting to see.

Frederik Pleitgen, in Moscow, thank you very much for that reporting.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

SIDNER: Today is the day a jury is expected to be seated in the Sean "Diddy" Combs trial. If that happens, opening statements are expected to begin Monday. We are live from the court.

[09:00:00]

And new this morning, Trump thinking out loud on social media, saying 80 percent tariffs on China seems right, after imposing 145 percent.