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Trump Disappointed with Putin; Trump Expected to Make Statement on Russia; Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) is Interviewed about Russia; Officials Meet on Deadly Texas Flooding; Fire at Massachusetts Assisted Living Facility. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired July 14, 2025 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Jonathan, it's great to see you, as always. Thank you so much.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are standing by for what President Trump says will be a major statement about Russia. What has sparked his public turnabout on Vladimir Putin?

Very shortly, city and county officials will meet about the deadly floods in Texas. What they will say about criticism of flood preparations before the tragedy.

And breaking overnight, nine people killed at a fire at a senior living facility. What we're learning about how it all started.

Sara is out. I'm John Berman, with Kate Bolduan. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BOLDUAN: This morning, a major statement was promised and expected today to come from President Trump on Russia as he meets this morning with the NATO secretary general at the White House. This comes just days after the president announced a deal with NATO, saying it was -- that NATO would buy U.S. weapons to then send to Ukraine. But there's a lot of details to be worked out and announced within that.

Despite the president being openly frustrated with Vladimir Putin and saying so over and over again, he has yet to publicly back the Senate -- the bipartisan Senate bill of secondary Russian sanctions, saying only when asked about it now, we will see.

All of this, though, comes as the -- as the -- as the war rages on. Russia hit Ukraine with a fresh barrage of drone and missile attacks this weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am very disappointed with President Putin. And I thought he was somebody that meant what he said. And he'll talk so beautifully, and then he'll bomb people at night. We don't like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: That coming from the president just yesterday.

Alayna Treene is at the White House.

This is all going to get underway very shortly. What is expected? What's going to -- what are we about to see?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. I mean, well, I think, first of all, what we're going to see is a major posture shift from President Donald Trump. He's already been saying, you've been hearing him say now for a few weeks, how disappointed he is in Russian President Vladimir Putin to -- to argue that, you know, he says a lot of nice things, but then he never follows through what he says in his personal and private phone calls with Donald Trump is not exactly what he's seeing reflected in reality.

And really, you've now seen the president, Donald Trump, kind of changed his posture toward the war overall. And that's why this big announcement that is coming is going to be such a big deal.

Now, we are going to see the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, come to the White House this morning. And it comes amid this major announcement that the president is teasing.

But this is what we do know. We do know that he has struck a deal, the Trump administration, with NATO to begin giving weapons and really arming Ukraine through European allies. And that's really what the president has been holding firm on, this idea that we're going to start to arm Ukraine. We're going to give them the patriot defense system, something that we know Ukraine has been really asking for as a top priority. The president said yesterday that it's something that they desperately need.

A key thing here, though, is that he keeps insisting that it's going to be these NATO allied countries that foot the bill. He essentially said, we will not be paying for them. The European countries will be paying for them 100 percent.

But I think to take a step back, Kate, again, I think it's so important to note how different this is from what we had been hearing the president say up until this point, particularly when you look at what he said on the campaign trail, that he believed he could come into office and would swiftly end the war. And that thought was really predicated on this idea that Donald Trump believed that he could have a personal conversation, that if him and Putin got together and they talked directly about this, they could come to some sort of conclusion to find really an off ramp to this war.

Clearly, that hasn't been happening. You've been hearing -- you know, we've been reporting that behind the scenes the president is essentially saying Putin isn't listening to him. And so, that's why you're seeing this big change. And really what we're now seeing is kind of the president adopting more of the posture that we've seen, at least surface level, his predecessor adopt, which is, again, trying to arm Ukrainians to try and fight off this invasion from Russia.

Now, what I do think is also important is your point about the sanctions bill. We've heard Senator Lindsey Graham, but also Senator Richard Blumenthal say that they believe they are getting much more support for this. And then recently you heard Graham say that he believes there is a turning point coming with regard to that bill.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): A turning point regarding Russia invasion of Ukraine is coming.

Dick and I have got 85 co-sponsors in the United States Senate for congressional sanctions with a sledgehammer available to President Trump to go after Putin's economy and all those countries who prop up the Putin war machine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:05:05]

TREENE: Now, there you heard Graham saying he is providing a sledgehammer to Donald Trump to go after Russia.

Look, so far we've heard President Donald Trump say that he is very strongly considering backing these sanctions but not committing anywhere further to that. So, of course, staying tuned to see whether or not he gives more clarity on that today when he meets with the NATO secretary general, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Alayna, so glad you're there. Thank you so much. Much more to come very soon from the president at the White House.

John.

BERMAN: All right, this morning, a senior Russian official says that dialogue between Moscow and Washington will persist despite what he called "efforts to disrupt it."

Let's get right to CNN's Nick Paton Walsh for much more on this.

And this really -- if President Trump really has done an about face on Vladimir Putin, it upends, I think, a lot of what the world has been looking at in terms of this conflict.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, look, I mean it's clear at this point, I think, that the Kremlin perceived the possibility -- or holding out the possibility of continued talks with the White House to be in their interests. And ultimately they've managed to pump up the idea of diplomacy over the past six months or so with (ph) very little, real, actual outcomes to their benefit too. It's essentially bought them time, many analysts say, as they prepare what looks like some kind of Russian summer offensive across the Ukrainian front lines that may get underway at some point in the next weeks ahead. That's key, because it's enabled them to slow down the Trump administration from coming to this conclusion that Russia doesn't want peace.

But in terms of what we're going to see today, John, we are beginning to get a bit of a clearer picture as to what the talk about new patriot systems for Ukraine might mean. President Zelenskyy has said that Germany has agreed to pay for two new systems. Norway, another one. That significantly bolsters -- we don't know how many patriots Ukraine really has, but that potentially gives them about a third more than they've previously existed upon. Do they get extra interceptor missiles? Unclear. Does the Trump administration go into some of the funding that's still available to it from the Biden administration and use some of that to provide perhaps old capabilities in new amounts or potentially new capabilities? When you hear the phrase "very aggressive" from Lindsey Graham there, you wonder quite exactly what they're referring to.

And then, of course, as you were hearing about the talk about sanctions. Look, that's going to have enormous impact potentially to the global economy because it's China and India that are buying Russia's oil and keeping it economically afloat. China is 100 percent dependent almost on that. It utterly, vitally needs that energy connection. And the Indians, frankly, are very needy upon it as well. And to disrupt that market would have a huge impact on global oil prices as well. So, whatever move the Trump administration makes in that regard could have a potential knock on to the whole global economy and Americas as well.

And that perhaps gives you a picture as to exactly how strident the Trump rhetoric is here. They've clearly felt they could achieve a goal that is out of their reach right now. And obviously in Kyiv, significant signs of their pleasure about what's been happening over the past days. We saw the presidential envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, arriving on a train. I remember his first visit. It was a much frostier atmosphere, colder weather, frankly. He got off the train this time wearing what looked like a Ukrainian part of military uniform with Keith Kellogg as a badge upon it. Unclear who gave him that or what it's necessarily from. But he hugged Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. Such a different feeling. He's clearly there to talk about potentially, it seems, weapons supplies or what Ukraine urgently needs.

The question really now, in the weeks ahead is, has this hiatus of American support done damage to Ukraine's capability on the front line? Has it given Russia the breathing space it needs to get a proper offensive ready? And what precisely are we going to hear today? We've heard a lot of rhetoric from Trump about this war. Is the day the day in which we see palpable, detailed steps going forward that change Ukraine's ability to hold Russia back, or are we going to be trying to work out exactly what's new and what's old?

John.

BERMAN: All right, Nick Paton Walsh for us. Nick, thank you very much.

With us now is Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

To this point right there, President Trump has said he is going to make a major announcement on Russia today. What could he say that will convince you that he really has changed his position in his opinion of Vladimir Putin?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): Well, John, that's a very fair question. He's going to have to make it clear that he understands that he totally misplayed his hand when he came in. After all, Donald Trump said on during the campaign he was going to end the war on day one. He tried the appeasement strategy. He thought he could sweet talk Vladimir Putin into stopping his attacks on the Ukrainian people and Vladimir Putin played him for time.

As we heard, you know, the Russians have taken advantage of this pause in U.S. support for Ukraine.

[09:10:03]

So, it's going to be very important that President Trump indicates that he understands that Putin played him essentially and he is now going to finally support the people of Ukraine with these additional weapons so they can defend themselves and their liberty.

BERMAN: We do have concrete reporting on the defensive weapons, the Patriots that will be headed to Ukraine through NATO countries. How would you feel about offensive weapons being supplied to Ukraine, new offensive weapons from the United States, whether it go through Europe or someone else that could strike maybe inside Russia itself?

HOLLEN: Well, John, I support the position the Biden administration had, which is that we send them defensive weapons, we send them offensive weapons. Donald Trump decided to put a hold on all those shipments. As you say, whether it goes through NATO or directly is less important right now than that the Ukrainian people get those weapons.

BERMAN: How much unity is there in Congress right now? And I do understand your disappointment about how President Trump may have come to this place, but how encouraged are you right now by what could be some political unity on aid for Ukraine?

HOLLEN: Well, I am encouraged. And I have to say it's not the disappointment is not only that it took him all this time, it's that Vladimir Putin used this time, he used this pause to essentially regroup, as what's being reported.

So, look, as you reported, we have about 85 of us on the bill to give the president ample authority to impose new sanctions. One of the hang-ups right now is that we would like to make sure through this legislation that President Trump implements some of these sanctions and he doesn't want to make that commitment, which is one of the reasons he's not signed off on this bill. He wants changes that allow him to slap huge sanctions on Russia.

But at the end of the day, it would be all up to him. And as I've said, so far, President Trump's track record has been pretty bad. So, I think that we're going to want to make sure that some of these sanctions will be imposed.

BERMAN: Layoffs at the State Department, some 1,300 people lost their jobs just last week. You were, in a way, were born into the foreign service. What's your view of these layoffs and the impact it will have?

HOLLEN: These are terrible layoffs, 1,300 people. It's obviously a great disservice to these people who were dedicated to the United States of America and went into work every day as patriots. But it's also going to hurt our whole country, because these are men and women who have been advancing American interests and values around the world.

And Donald Trump talks about America first. But, John, this is America in retreat. And it's going to hurt all of us. I think the folks who are celebrating this decision are our adversaries. I mean, China's going to be celebrating. Vladimir Putin's going to be celebrating. And our allies are going to be the ones who think this is just another step back as part of Donald Trump's long retreat.

BERMAN: The New York Times spoke to former President Biden and published a story overnight on the use of autopens for some of the commutations and pardons at the end of his term. And one of the things that was reported was that President Biden, while he approved of the commutations on classes of people, he didn't necessarily sign off on every individual one directly. How important do you feel that is and where do you think this issue goes now,

HOLLEN: John, I was just reading those reports this morning as well. My understanding is that, you know, President Biden did look at these pardons. Whether or not they came in classes of pardons, like these are people being pardoned because they had mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenses and he didn't think that was appropriate, that they'd served their time well, as opposed to each individual one. I will have to take a look at that entire issue.

BERMAN: All right. Senator Chris Van Holland from Maryland, we do appreciate your time this morning. Thank you very much.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Next hour

Next hour Kerr County commissioners are going to meet for the first time since flash floods devastated the area on July 4th. The tragic numbers just keep rising. At least 132 deaths have been confirmed. At least 106 of those victims were in Kerr County alone.

And the search for what is now at least 150 people who are still missing continues this morning. Those search operations were briefly forced to be paused yesterday because of more rain and more flooding. Texas officials continue to face scrutiny over their response and the warnings ahead of time. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem continues to face big questions as well, taking to the Sunday shows yesterday to defend FEMA's response.

[09:15:06]

CNN's Brian Todd has much more on all of this for us this morning.

Brian, what are you learning?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, we have learned that five urban search and rescue teams from different parts of the country, which were the first such teams outside of Texas to be deployed by FEMA to respond to the flooding in Texas, well, those teams were not dispatched by FEMA until at least early Monday evening. That is days after the most recently found survivor was discovered. That's according to spokespeople for those teams who CNN contacted. Three of those teams were not dispatched until Tuesday, more than four days after the surge of the Guadalupe River. These are highly trained search and rescue teams called task forces, usually tasked with urgently finding survivors.

Colorado Task Force One left Colorado for Texas on Monday, July 7th at 6:00 p.m. local time after being notified by FEMA to leave that same day. Missouri Task Force One left Missouri for Texas that Monday night, the seventh, after being activated by FEMA that same day. That team arrived in Texas on Tuesday night, the eighth. Nevada Task Force One left Nevada for Texas on Tuesday the eighth after getting the go ahead from FEMA that same day. Now, that Nevada team drove about 20 hours and arrived in Texas on Wednesday evening, the ninth. Their spokesperson said they began their first day of field work this past Friday, July 11th, a week after the flood. Arizona Task Force One left Arizona for Texas on Tuesday evening, the eighth, about four and a half hours after being notified to leave by FEMA. And Indiana Task Force One, they left Indiana on Tuesday the eighth. An officials there did not say when they were given the go ahead by FEMA. All of these teams had to drive to Texas. Two officials from these teams deployed to Texas told CNN, it is not out of the ordinary for FEMA to deploy them a few days after a storm. And flash floods like this one, of course, in Texas, are notoriously unpredictable, making it very difficult to stage crews in advance of a disaster.

But earlier this year, after flooding in parts of Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, and in 2023 in Vermont, FEMA was able to mobilize search and rescue teams within hours, not days. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees FEMA, defended the response on NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISTI NOEM, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: You know, those claims have -- are absolutely false. Within just an hour or two after the flooding, we had resources from the Department of Homeland Security there, helping those individuals in Texas. It was a heartbreaking scene. And I think it's been well covered about what the Coast Guard did, how they were deployed immediately and helped rescue so many individuals from those flood waters. And we had Border Patrol down there with their tactical teams. And FEMA was there just within a few hours as well.

So, those claims are false. They're from people who won't put their name behind those claims. And those call centers were fully staffed and responsive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TODD: So, as Noem points out, there were federal teams from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Customs and Border Protection Agency on the ground in Texas very shortly after the floods, and they did rescue hundreds of people. The state of Texas also has a robust system of search and rescue teams, and they were on the scene immediately. But CNN has previously reported that Noem's decision to authorize those deployments of those other urban search and rescue teams from outside Texas, more than 72 hours after the disaster, frustrated some FEMA officials.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: And, Brian, and Congress is now weighing in on this, right?

TODD: That's right, Kate. Three Democrats in Congress have expressed their concern with FEMA's response. One of them, Congressman Jared Moskowitz from Florida, who had previously led that state's emergency management division, he is calling for Congress to investigate this. So, we may not have heard the last of any of this.

BOLDUAN: Your reporting an accounting of this is very important to get a really clear timeline of what happened when and then you can continue -- we'll continue to follow this.

Brian, thank you so much. It's great to see you.

Still ahead for us, more rain and thunderstorms are on the way for parts of central Texas. How it could impact exactly what Brian was just talking about, the ongoing recovery efforts there.

And we are also following breaking news out of Massachusetts. It's a real tragedy unfolding. Nine people are dead after a fire broke out at an assisted living facility.

And a migrant farm worker died during a raid on a California farm. Why some are saying ICE is to blame.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:24:07]

BERMAN: All right, breaking news. At least nine people are dead this morning after a fire at an assisted living facility in Fall River, Massachusetts. This is a town about an hour south of Boston. Dozens more are injured. Elderly residents were hanging out of windows, shouting to be rescued. One official called the fire, quote, "an unfathomable tragedy."

Let's get right to CNN's Gloria Pazmino for the latest on this. What are you learning, Gloria?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, this fire broke out shortly before 10:00 last night at this assisted living facility, The Gabriel House. As you said, not far from Boston in Fall River -- Falls River, Massachusetts.

And they arrived to find the residents hanging out of their windows asking for help. The fire chief saying that the smoke that spread throughout the facility, likely the main culprit behind the fatalities here last night.

[09:25:01]

Nine people, unfortunately, have lost their lives. Thirty people were injured, including some firefighters that were responding to the blaze.

We heard from the fire chief just a short while ago. He became really emotional at first, speaking to the fact that so many first responders had to respond to the site yesterday. Police officials also in this town trying to do everything possible to get people out of that facility as the fire spread.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF JEFFREY BACON, FALL RIVER FIRE DEPARTMENT: This isn't what we're designed to do here, right? We're -- we're here to save lives. And any time that any life is lost, a single life that is lost is a tragedy in our minds. It's a failure of our job. But we know that there are forces beyond our control and that things like this, unfortunately, happen. It still makes it difficult to -- to talk about and to think about and to fathom, really, for anybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAZMINO: The fire chief also saying that the building has been significantly damaged. They have set up a reunification center at a local hospital for family members trying to figure out what happened to their family and reunite with their family members.

Also, right now, investigation is still very much in the early stages. The fire officials saying that they are working with investigators to determine the cause of the fire. Gabriel House has been in operation since 1999 and has capacity for about 100 people, but it had about 70 residents at the time of the fire last night. This is a three-story building there in Massachusetts. So, we're still waiting to learn more about the investigation. But for now, sadly, nine people tragically lost their lives.

John.

BERMAN: All right, obviously, Gloria, you're going to stay on this. Keep us posted as to what you learn. What a terrible tragedy.

All right, a California farm worker is dead after a federal immigration raid, but Homeland Security officials say they are not responsible.

And new fallout over the Justice Department's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Trump loyalists spoke with CNN as the president is defending the attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that Donald Trump, he promised them. So, he needs to do it. No matter who's on them, we need to release the Epstein file.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)