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Trump Escalates Trade War, Threatens 35 Percent Tariff On Canada; White House Accuses Powell Of Mismanaging Budget For Fed Renovations; NYT Reports FBI Using Polygraphs To Test Officials' Loyalty; Denver Museum Finds Dinosaur Fossil Under Its Parking Lot. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired July 11, 2025 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: But, this official did caution that the president has not made a final decision here. Now, the stakes are significant because Canada is the number three source of imports into the United States. Leading imports from Canada include aluminum, cars and car parts, lumber and crude oil. Canada is the biggest source of foreign oil into the United States and Canadian oil currently tariffed at 10 percent.

Now, the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, he has said that his government will defend Canadian businesses and workers as they work towards this August 1st deadline. And Canada does have some leverage because it is the biggest buyer of U.S. goods. The U.S. exported last year alone, almost $350 billion of goods that were sold to Canada. Now, outside of Canada, the president did make another threat here when it comes to universal tariffs. He said that his tariffs could go to 15 to 20 percent on nations that either have not reached a trade framework with the U.S., or ones that have not received a letter yet. That would be up from 10 percent right now.

Now, I know it's a little hard to keep track of all these tariffs, but it is worth noting that the president's tariffs are very high, historically high. According to the Budget Lab at Yale, the estimated average effective tariff rate imposed by the United States is currently 18 percent. That is the highest since 1934, back when the president of the United States was FDR. Now, president Trump today did take some questions from reporters about tariffs, and he's stressed that in the end, all of this is going to work out. Take a listen to what Trump said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We've been taken advantage of for many, many years by countries both friends and foe. And frankly, the friends have been worse than the foes in many cases. So, I would say just keep working. It's all going to work out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EGAN: So he says, it's all going to work out. And I have to say, I think investors seem to believe that as well because you look at what markets are doing, yeah, the Dow is down by a half a percent. The S&P is down by a quarter of a percent. The NASDAQ is basically unchanged on the day, and this is after the S&P and the Nasdaq closed at all- time highs just yesterday. So, I do think that investors, they don't really believe that all these tariffs are going to kick in or Jessica, if they do kick in, investors think they won't be in place for very long. Stay tuned.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah, Stay tuned, indeed. Matt Egan, thank you so much. Fredricka?

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL: All right, Jess. President Trump, today, escalating his verbal attacks on Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I think he's doing a terrible job. I think we should be -- no, I think we should be three points lower interest rate. He's costing our country a lot of money. We should be number one and we're not, and that's because of Jerome Powell, in terms of interest. (END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Trump's remarks come after White House Budget Director Russ Vought sent a letter to Powell accusing him of mishandling the Fed. Vought cites the cost of renovations on the Federal Reserve's headquarters in D.C. CNN Business and Politics Correspondent, Vanessa Yurkevich is following all of this for us. So Vanessa, the White House attacks on Powell have increased over the past 24 hours. Why now? And why like this?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Well, this is essentially a full court press of pressure on Jerome Powell, coming from every single angle. And it really just is another layer to the pressure that's been mounting for months now. You heard from President Trump there singing a familiar refrain, asking Jerome Powell to lower interest rates because he believes that it is hurting the American economy.

But as you mentioned, we also heard from the Budget Director, Russell Vought, who yesterday sent this letter to Jerome Powell, calling into question the legality over the management of this renovation that is happening at the Federal Reserve Headquarters in Washington, D.C. And in this letter, he says that they are $700 million over budget and there are key renovations that weren't in the initial approved plans like rooftop terraces, private dining rooms, water features, as well as premium marble.

And essentially, he goes on to say that the testimony that he gave to Congress just a couple of weeks ago denying those key renovations are not in compliance with what was in the approved plan. We heard from Russell Vought a little bit earlier this morning, who said this has nothing to do with firing Jerome Powell or anything other than this particular issue. Here's more of what he said this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RUSSELL VOUGHT, DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: I know you guys want to make it more about a metaphysical question about the independence of the Fed. This is about the extent to which this building, this renovation project is horrifying from a cost perspective and our administration, both OMB, the National Capital Planning Commission, which now has three new commissioners, and as of yesterday, it is going to be asking -- it is asking very, very, tough questions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:35:14]

YURKEVICH: Now, we reached out to the Federal Reserve for response, but have not heard back yet. Those three new commissioners are considered to be Trump loyalists. They were just put in their positions. But Fred, all of this is really coming at a time when the Federal Reserve is under some pressure to take a look at interest rates as inflation has been falling, not quite at the 2 percent target level, but we have heard from Jerome Powell for months now, that they are very much in wait and see mode to try to figure out whether or not this trade war is actually going to put the type of price pressures on the economy and on prices as many economists had forecast, Fred, but ultimately, Jerome Powell has almost a year left on his term. He says he is not planning to go anywhere, but certainly, the pressure coming from all angles on Jerome Powell right now, Fred.

WHITFIELD: Right. This continues to be curious timing. Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you so much. All right. Still ahead. A new report, the FBI is treating some employees in ways usually reserved for suspected spies or traitors. Up next, what's behind the new loyalty test?

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[13:40:27]

DEAN: For months now, the Trump administration has leaned on lie detectors to root out possible leakers, but we're learning new details about how they're now being used at the FBI. The New York Times reporting the Bureau is using them to test how loyal senior staffers are to Director Kash Patel. Several senior members of the FBI have reportedly been given a lie detector test and have asked if they've ever said anything negative about Patel. The Times also reports the FBI has asked dozens of other staffers to take a polygraph, but it's not clear how many were specifically asked about the director.

The FBI declined to comment to The New York Times. CNN has also reached out to the FBI about this story, and we should note that polygraphs are often used in criminal investigations, not really admissible in court because experts say they are not reliable enough to actually detect lies. Let's talk about this more with former FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe. Great to have you here with us to talk about this. I first just want to get your reaction to this reporting.

ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR: Yeah, it's stunning and incredibly disappointing, and I would add concerning to that pile as well because, having spent 21 years in the FBI and served in every level an agent can serve, including acting director and deputy director, I can understand the kind of chaos and mistrust that these sort of decisions are probably sowing across the good people who work there.

DEAN: Yeah. So, what kind of impact can this have on the agency? I am thinking about morale, but it might even extend beyond that. I don't know. What do you think?

MCCABE: Yeah, I think it extends way beyond that. So, first of all, the FBI has a kind of troubling history, right? When you look back to the Hoover era, J. Edgar Hoover, part of what made him such an effective oppressor of other people's rights and an offender violating the laws and the things that we hold sacred to this day like people's human rights and due process, is that he so effectively suppressed any sort of pushback in the organization. He established a regime in which agents knew that if they did anything to displease Hoover personally, that that was the end of their careers and the end of their income and devastating thing for their families.

Decisions like this, to start enforcing loyalty tests and having people take polygraph examinations to find out if they've ever said anything negative about the director, those are the same sort of steps that you would've expected from someone like Hoover. So, it's deeply concerning to me the chilling effect that this will have, particularly on FBI people in senior leadership positions, who now instead of worried about the FBI mission, protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution, they're worried more about offending Kash Patel and Dan Bongino.

DEAN: How are polygraph tests typically used inside the FBI? Are they used?

MCCABE: Well, as you noted in your introduction, they're not used in the course of criminal prosecutions. They're not admissible in courts of law because they're not considered to be reliable in that way. They are used occasionally to do things like vet the information being provided by informants. If you have an informant whose motives maybe are not clear to you and you're not -- you can't prove the things that the things they're telling you are true. Sometimes you might ask an informant to take a polygraph examination to try to peel through some layers of potential fabrication or evasion, things like that.

So, they are used in that context. They're also used in the context of security clearances. So, every FBI agent has a top secret clearance. Those clearances have to be renewed every five years and agents have to undergo a polygraph exam in the course of that renewal. But that is a normal part of the job. You're not asked like whether you like the director or ever said anything bad about the deputy. That's entirely about whether or not you've had unauthorized contact with foreign governments, whether you've violated the law or internal FBI policies.

DEAN: And so, you mentioned something there which is, as we noted in the intro, this is -- they're testing to see what people have said about Kash Patel, who's now the Director of the FBI or potentially his deputy. I think I know your answer here.

[13:45:00]

But, is that an appropriate way to deal with dissent? No one is ever going to be liked universally by thousands of people that are at their company. There's always going to be employees that talk about their bosses. What do you think is the appropriate way to handle with this -- handle this?

MCCABE: Jessica, I've worked closely with every FBI Director from Louis Freeh to Christopher Wray, and all acting directors. And as I mentioned, I served in both of those positions, deputy director and acting director. And I can tell you, every FBI director knows that a good percentage of the workforce says something negative about them every single day. That's just the way it goes in a big organization. You have to make hard decisions. Sometimes people don't like those decisions and they should feel free to air those things out among their colleagues without suffering some sort of job penalty.

And if you can't accept that reality of the job, I mean, to me, Kash Patel, this indicates a level of lack of confidence in his own leadership. And the fact that he's so focused on this and forcing people to take lie detector tests about it, I think is a really troubling sign of his discomfort in the role. If you can't handle the fact that people are occasionally saying things that you wouldn't like about you, you're probably not ready for a role making this sort of decisions that you have to make every single day as FBI director. And so, that also causes me great concern.

DEAN: All right. Andrew McCabe, thank you so much. We appreciate it.

MCCABE: Thanks, Jessica.

Still ahead, bingo, dino DNA found underneath the parking lot of a science museum in Denver. Much more on this once in a lifetime discovery, that's next.

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[13:51:11]

DEAN: A museum in Denver just digging up a dinosaur fossil from right under its own parking lot. It was found back in January during tests to see if the museum could use an underground heat system.

WHITFIELD: If it's going to happen, of course it's going to happen there.

(LAUGH)

DEAN: Yeah.

WHITFIELD: So while drilling, they discovered the nearly 70 million- year-old dinosaur fossil 763 feet below ground. The museum says it's the oldest and deepest fossil ever found in Denver city limits. Experts think it came from a plant eater about 10-feet tall. And joining us right now is Dr. James Hagadorn. He is of the Tim & Kathryn Ryan Curator of Geology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Well, congratulations on an amazing find. I know you all are ecstatic, so tell us about this discovery. Boom.

(LAUGH)

DR. JAMES HAGADORN, CURATOR OF GEOLOGY, DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE: Wow. Well, this is a once in a lifetime and a once in a lifetime -- I mean, makes your head explode. Who would've thought?

(LAUGH)

HAGADORN: We're super excited. So in process of drilling a core in the parking lot of the museum, we sure expected to find lots of rocks and minerals and pieces of coal and sand, but boy, never expected to run right smack into the back of a -- backbone of a dinosaur. How cool is that?

DEAN: The irony, right?

WHITFIELD: So, you know it's the backbone.

DEAN: It's incredible. So explain to people, give them some context over how rare this is, why it was unexpected.

HAGADORN: This is probably the rarest thing that certainly ever happened to me in my life, or probably most of the geologists I know. I mean, the probability of hitting a dinosaur is astronomically small. You probably have a better shot at winning a lottery, which -- that says something, right?

WHITFIELD: You kind of just did it.

DEAN: You kind of did, right.

(CROSSTALK)

DEAN: You won the fossil jackpot.

(LAUGH)

WHITFIELD: Your lottery. So Dr. Hagadorn, so you --

(CROSSTALK)

HAGADORN: Yeah. So, we're drilling a hole below the museum.

WHITFIELD: I'm sorry about that. Go ahead.

HAGADORN: No, we've got a lag. So you go first.

WHITFIELD: Yeah, no, you.

HAGADORN: OK, I'll go. Anyways, so, we were drilling a hole below the museum to try to figure out if it's possible to use the heat of the earth to heat the museum and understand how the geology underneath us connects to the area. And in the process of doing that, we encountered a dinosaur bone and it was broken up into little pieces. You can see some of our colleagues analyzing in the lab under the microscope. We put it back together. We have -- fortunately, here at the museum, we've got a diverse team of vertebrate paleontologists who all looked at it and basically said, Eureka, it's a dinosaur bone.

And they were able to look at the internal structure of the bone and the outside features and determine it came from the back of a plant eating dinosaur. Basically, it's like a syringe core right through the back of the vertebrae, and dinosaurs like that probably roamed Colorado, in fact, city park here 67 million years ago, pretty exciting to think about.

WHITFIELD: Wow. And so, I'm wondering, can you tell from that portion of what you now have discerned was the backbone of this plant eater? How large this animal might be, based on the fragment of this back that you've discovered?

HAGADORN: Boy, that's a tricky question. I think we could get a minimum size estimate and the answer is it would be a heck of a lot bigger than I am and probably bigger than my minivan. But it terms of its maximum size, we don't know because we only have a small piece of it. So --

HAGADORN: Incredible.

DEAN: Does it surprise you?

HAGADORN: Maybe we'll have to drill another one and find the rest of the dinosaur.

(LAUGH)

WHITFIELD: You might find it.

DEAN: Yeah. Does it surprise you we're still making discoveries like this, that this is still there, there are things just out there waiting to be discovered still?

HAGADORN: You know, for Colorado, it isn't surprising at all. I mean, we've got incredible geology below our feet and in the mountains.

[13:55:00]

And it's seems like every couple of years, someone is excavating the basement of a new building or grading a road to make a new highway. And in the process, they stumble onto something and sometimes it's an archeological discovery and sometimes it's a paleontological discovery and sometimes it's something else incredibly. And to me, that's one of the things that makes it so exciting to be a scientist here in Colorado, is because a tremendous amount of science comes from serendipity, from those accidental discoveries. And a lot of them are made here by the general public and often they call us and, boy, thank you, fantastic.

WHITFIELD: Oh, really fantastic. Well, you hit the jackpot. Something tells me there may be some additional digging because you got to find the rest of it if it's there.

(LAUGH)

DEAN: Yeah.

WHITFIELD: You definitely want that discovered. So we're going to have to follow up with you, Dr. James Hagadorn.

HAGADORN: That'd be great. I'm looking forward to it.

(LAUGH)

WHITFIELD: All right. Thank you so much. That's a very cool find.

DEAN: It sure is.

WHITFIELD: All right. Happening right now, you see President Trump has now landed via Marine One there in Kerrville, Texas to see the damage firsthand, meet with families affected by the floods. We're following the latest on "CNN News Central."

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