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Travis Reynolds is Interviewed about the Texas Deadly Floods; U.S. Economy Added 73,000 Jobs in July. Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) is Interviewed about the Economy, Epstein Files and Smithsonian, Joe Rogan Overtaken as Top YouTube Podcast. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired August 01, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:34:27]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are learning new details that are being revealed now about the deadly July 4th flooding in Texas. It's all really coming to light in what was at times a heated public hearing in Texas yesterday. State lawmakers grilling Kerr County officials about their preparation and response to the storm. During the hearing, they laid out that really all key leading officials in that hardest hit county were absent from emergency briefings held about preparations just before the tragedy. At least 136 people died in the floods. More than 100 of them were in Kerr County, those deaths.

[08:35:04]

Now, grieving families are demanding accountability and demanding change.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am here on behalf of my 11-year-old daughter, who passed away, and my parents. In our community there were 19 cabins, and we were the only one up on stilts. So, let's just say that we got cell service, which we didn't, but with wi-fi you could. Let's just say they got an alert. The alert says, seek higher ground. They're on stilts.

Thank you.

Where are they supposed to go?

When we know better, we do better. And so, we need to do better for the people in this community.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: That poor, poor mother. And so many families going through the same.

One man drove seven hours to attend that hearing because of his family. Travis Reynolds lost five family members in the floods. Only his niece managed to survive. She was swept away in the flooding. What you're seeing is video. She was swept for miles in the floods, but by a miracle was able to cling to a tree until she could be rescued.

And with us now is Travis Reynolds, her uncle, to talk about this.

Travis, thank you for being here.

What did you -- what do you take from -- from this -- from this public hearing?

TRAVIS REYNOLDS, NICE RESCUED FROM TEXAS FLOODWATERS: Hey, good morning. Thank you for your time.

I was really disheartened to hear a lot of things that could gave been done that weren't done. A lot of people that could have acted, that didn't act. You know, I think, while we couldn't have prevented the flood, there were. So many things that could have happened that could have taken place prior to this event that would have saved a lot of lives. And hearing the details emerge of how those things didn't happen and hearing the grieving families, I think really made an impact, not just for me and my family, but for the entire community.

BOLDUAN: I want to dig in, in a second, just into some of those details of -- of what didn't happen in just a second. But first, I mean, you lost so many members of your family, Travis. And your niece, who was swept away, but survived, I've been thinking about her and how is she doing with all of this now after what she went through?

REYNOLDS: Devin (ph) is, you know, obviously, there -- there's a long road to recovery. Physically, she's doing a little better every day. I haven't got to speak with her in -- in a little while. But she -- she's doing -- honestly, she's doing better than -- than I expected. But there's still such an emotional and mental scar that will last forever. I mean, you know, all of us are coping with this and definitely trying to rally around her and ensure that she has all the help she needs.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely.

So, some -- to some of the things that were learned that was revealed yesterday in the hearing was that the sheriff in Kerr County didn't wake up until 4:20 in the morning, which is well after the flood emergency had set in. The emergency management coordinator missed emergency briefings because he was home sick. The mayor missed a state emergency management call of Kerrville on storm preparations because he didn't see the email saying that this call was going to happen. And then the Kerr County judge, you know, the highest ranking official in the county, he faced sharp criticism from the lieutenant governor, who he said was nowhere to be found.

Let me play this, Travis, what the lieutenant governor said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. GOV. DAN PATRICK (R-TX): I just want to set the record straight. Everyone was here that day working their ass off, and you were nowhere to be found.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: What's your reaction to hearing that?

REYNOLDS: You know, I -- I -- I understand people are -- are people. Mistakes are going to happen. But this mistake just happened to cost me five members of my family that I'll never have back. You know, I -- I'm so frustrated with the fact that there were so many people that -- that should have acted. And I understand it's a holiday weekend. Nobody thinks that this is going to happen in their town. Nobody thinks that this is going to happen to their family. But it did. And they were not prepared. And there were things -- I think this shines such a light on every, you know, small, local government, every entity, every municipality that you need to have a preparedness plan in place. There needs to be steps taken that this stuff cannot -- it's not something we can afford to be lax in, that this is -- there needs to be reformed.

There should have been sirens on the river. There should have been some sort of advanced notice. Everybody wants to pass the blame and say that it was someone else's fault, and say that the Weather Service or -- or emergency managers. But at the end of the day, the -- the fact is, is we've lost a lot of people, not just in Kerrville, but people from all across the state that were there on the Fourth of July.

[08:40:06]

And this is something that we can never afford to have happen again. And there needs to be changed to ensure that that's the case.

BOLDUAN: And on that, Travis, I mean, do you trust that the local leaders that you think really dropped the ball, I mean, you lost five family members in this, dropped the ball on alerting the public, dropped the ball in responding to the disaster. Do you trust them now to be the ones to fix it?

REYNOLDS: I'm a firm believer in having grace. I believe that we should have grace for people, even when -- when we feel like it's -- that's a tough thing to do. As far as -- as them being entrusted, you know, they -- they're going to have to -- to live the rest of their life knowing that -- that they were -- they had a hand in -- in the issues that led to this catastrophic event. And I don't want -- I don't want my personal feelings and emotions to be directed at them, but rather at a system of, like I said, nobody ever thinks this is going to happen.

And so, I don't know. I don't -- I don't really have any stance on that just because I don't live in Kerr County. I live seven and a half hours away in Oklahoma. And whatever moves forward from this, if they are the people, I hope that they do it with a spirit of excellence and to the best of their ability. And if it's not them, then whoever these people decide to put in place, I hope that they take it very seriously.

BOLDUAN: Travis, thank you so much for your time and your eloquence on this. And our best to you, your family, and our best to your niece who, as you said, has a long road of recovery on so many fronts. We really appreciate your time.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we do have breaking news. Big economic news. New jobs numbers in just minutes ago.

Let's get right to CNN's Matt Egan for the details here.

And, 73,000, that's a miss, but it only tells part of the story.

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: That's right, John. Look, we learned that the job market is slowing down. It's losing steam a lot more than we realized. So, yes, 73,000, that's how many jobs that were added in July. That is significantly below the 115,000 that was expected.

The unemployment rate went up. That was expected. From 4.1 to 4.2. That's relatively low.

But, as you're alluding to, we saw very significant, downward revisions to the prior months. So June was revised sharply lower. Previously, the government had estimated that the economy added 147,000 in June. This new estimate is just 14,000. That is a very weak number, John. That's actually the weakest month of job growth since December of 2020, during Covid. May was also revised sharply lower to just 19,000. It had previously been at 144,000. So, we're talking about it, and you can really see it on this chart, a major -- a major stalling out of job growth during May and June. July, it did pick up. But again, look at how much lower it is than it had been in the past.

BERMAN: Yes, that's a three month average of about, what, like, low. I mean, it's --

EGAN: It's -- it's low. And -- and what I think is notable is, when you look at some of the industries here, OK, manufacturing lost 11,000 jobs during July. The previous months were also down. That's pretty striking when you think about it because why are you -- do we have historically high tariffs, right? They're trying to boost the U.S. manufacturing industry. But what we're seeing is, manufacturing is actually losing jobs. The federal government lost jobs as well.

Also a number of other goods producing sectors lost jobs. The good news is that private sector hiring, it did pick up in July, but it does remain at a relatively low level.

And I also think it's just kind of helpful to zoom out, right? We came into this week, and we said it was going to be a pivotal week for the economy. And I got to say, I think indicator after indicator has turned out worse than expected, right? I mean, we saw that core GDP really showed that the U.S. economy slowed down during the second quarter. Yesterday's inflation report, the Fed's go-to inflation number, that heated up, right? It was a four-month high.

We're seeing that the prices for goods have gone up, possibly because of tariffs. The Federal Reserve seems less inclined to cut interest rates. And the president continues to just spike tariffs. So, you put all this together, and I do think that all of these developments are just going to increase concerns about the U.S. economy.

BERMAN: So -- so, May and June, two of the lowest months of jobs growth we've seen in five years.

EGAN: Since Covid. Absolutely.

BERMAN: All right, Matt Egan, thank you very much for that.

EGAN: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: We'll let you go dig more here because there are a lot of fascinating numbers here. This is a report that I think will be making news over the course of the coming day.

With us now, Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, who is on the Small Business Committee.

[08:45:02]

Senator, we just got this news about the jobs report. Major downward revisions for May and June. What's your reaction?

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Well, John, this is the inevitable outcome of the economic chaos that President Trump is causing with his on again, off again, up, down, who knows where they'll land tariff policies. When he announced liberation day now months ago, and that odd chart of new double digit tariffs on dozens and dozens of countries, President Trump promised 90 deals in 90 days. And he concluded a handful of deals.

Today, this weekend, next week, there will be double digit tariffs again imposed, if we believe him, on our major trading partners. That's causing companies to put off hiring, to put off growth. It's raising costs for working families. It's the opposite of what he ran on, which was lowering costs.

BERMAN: The administration argument the last few months has been, look, we've done the tariffs in part since, you know, early April, and inflation hadn't gone up. The jobs numbers were strong. GDP was strong. That's what we've been hearing from them. Where do you think that argument stands now?

COONS: Well, if the stock market and the jobs report and the inflation numbers over the next couple of weeks all head in the wrong direction, I suspect you'll see Trump turn on a dime and change his tariff policy or position again. In the last couple of months, a number of companies have been stockpiling inventory as a hedge against inflation. They've been reordering their business, cutting back on some spending, bringing forward others so that they were positioned to protect against a brief bump in tariffs.

What he seems intent on doing is imposing big tariffs. For example, 35 percent on Canada, which is my home state of Delaware's largest trading partner. So, whether it's building supplies like plywood, that we import from Canada to build new, affordable homes, or it's groceries, things like fruit and vegetables, whether its blueberries from Canada or it's mangoes and bananas from Mexico and Central America, by putting double digit tariffs on these imports, things that are largely not grown at scale in the United States, or where we can't run our economy without importing some of it from overseas, that will raise costs.

Inevitably, John, costs that will be paid by American consumers, and that will harm our families, budgets and economies.

BERMAN: Last night, Kaitlan Collins spoke to the family of Virginia Giuffre, who took her own life, but was one of Jeffrey Epstein's most prominent accusers. Said she was, you know, moved from Mar-a-Lago, to Jeffrey Epstein's clutches, where she was sexually abused, she said, at the hands of him and others. The family, last night, spoke to Kaitlan. I want to -- I want you to listen to what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANDA ROBERTS, SISTER-IN-LAW OF VIRGINIA GIUFFRE: She was still fighting for those documents to be released. They are sitting in our court system right now. She wanted the world to know what they've done to her, and so many other survivors. And she had been fighting that to her very last day. And I think we have taken that mantle on, and we will continue to fight with her and for her and for all the other survivors so that their truth is known to the world and that they're vindicated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: What is standing in the way of the transparency that the victims and these families are asking for?

COONS: A decision by President Trump and his attorney general. The records of the Epstein investigation and the records of Epstein's horrific conduct, his sex trafficking business, have not been released. This is yet another promise made, promise broken by President Trump. It's an issue that he made a great deal of in the campaign. And it was Jeffrey Epstein who was arrested and who took his own life during Trump's first administration.

I am grateful to Virginia's family for speaking out like this, for reminding all of us, this is not a political football. These are heartbreaking stories of the victims of sex trafficking. And the Department of Justice, instead of sending one of its most senior representatives to negotiate with Maxwell, who's serving a 20-year term for her role in this sex trafficking ring, should be listening to these families and releasing the documents that Virginia was fighting to have made public, as her family put it, to her last day.

BERMAN: Senator, I want to ask you about a report that came out in "The Washington Post" overnight. They report that at an exhibit at the Smithsonian they removed President Trump from an exhibit that dealt with impeachment as part of a conduct review it undertook following White House pressure.

[08:50:03]

It basically removed the mentions of the president's two impeachments.

Now, let me read you the statement from the Smithsonian. It said it restored the display to its 2008 appearance because the rest of the section hadn't been updated since then, and that a future exhibit will include all impeachment. But what's your take on this, that that this was taken down?

COONS: Look, there are so many ways that President Trump and his administration are conducting culture wars against free speech, trying to rewrite history, trying to pressure law firms, universities and museums in terms of what they present to our country about our history and who we are. I can understand why the Smithsonian might have updated that exhibit to reflect the fact that President Trump was impeached twice. And I'm glad that their statement now says that when the whole exhibit is updated in the future, they will include the truth that President Trump was impeached twice.

But honestly, these efforts at whitewashing literally history are really disturbing. The actions that Secretary Hegseth took at the Department of Defense to go through the website that documents the incredible role in American military history played by black and Latino members of our armed forces, the ways in which senior leaders were fired, really solely because of their race or gender. This effort to change our history, our leadership, how we understand ourselves, how we engage with the world, I think is a distraction and in many ways harmful to Americans understanding of who they are and of our history.

BERMAN: Senator Chris Coons from Delaware, we appreciate you being with us this morning.

Again, the breaking news, we just got a jobs report. A miss for the last month. But the real news there, major downward revisions, which means we had two of the weakest jobs months since the pandemic. What this all means.

Stay with us.

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[08:56:34]

BOLDUAN: This morning, an interesting shift is taking place in the world of podcasting. The -- the -- "The MeidasTouch," a show that brands themselves as unapologetically pro-democracy has taken -- has overtaken "The Joe Rogan Experience" as the number one podcast on YouTube. A surprising shift towards left-leaning media in a space -- in the space. Podcast charts have long been dominated with conservative or more pro-Trump voices that played a big role in Trump's election victory, they say. But hosts like Joe Rogan have been souring on the president over his handling of, among other things, the Epstein files in recent weeks.

CNN's chief media analyst Brian Stelter has been tracking this one.

This this really quite interesting, Brian. I mean, Rogan's still argues -- Joe Rogan's still arguably the top podcaster in the world, I mean on Spotify and elsewhere. But what do you make of the rise of this now progressive, left-leaning podcast.?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Right. And there are times where kind of more apolitical figures, like Alex Cooper, who did interview Kamala Harris, but doesn't talk about politics all the time, there are times where those kinds of podcast figures also beat Joe Rogan. But when you look at the political charts, you really see more evidence, more proof that America remains a 50/50 country, with Rogan and "MeidasTouch" now kind of going back and forth, battling for this crown of first place.

What does "MeidasTouch" do effectively? Well, they publish a lot. One of the secrets of the success of "MeidasTouch" is putting up so many videos, so frequently, giving people new content to watch and listen to. And I also think the rise of "MeidasTouch" this year, which has been noticed by many Democratic politicians, figures like Gavin Newsom, who are very eager to appear on these left-leaning podcasts, it also speaks to the energy in the country.

We see this in polling as well. When you poll people about whether you strongly like or dislike Donald Trump, you find more people strongly dislike than -- than like in those approval numbers. What that shows is that there is energy on the left for podcasters like "MeidasTouch." People who don't just casually have, you know, some, you know, basic opinions about politics, but who have strong, passionate feelings. Those are the people that either seek out the Joe Rogans or the "MeidasTouch" podcasts of the world.

BOLDUAN: So interesting.

I want to ask you about Kamala Harris. She sat down with Stephen Colbert for her first interview since leaving office. And -- and she talked about -- a lot about her announcement that she is not going to be running for governor of California.

Let me play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Recently, I made the decision that I just, for now, I don't want to go back in the system. I think it's broken.

But it doesn't mean we give up. That's not my point.

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": OK, because that's what I'm -- I'm hearing. Like, you don't want to be part in the fight anymore?

HARRIS: That's -- no, no, no. No. No. Oh, absolutely not. I am always going to be part of the fight.

COLBERT: OK.

HARRIS: That is not going to change. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: What do you see in this, Brian?

STELTER: Well, number one, the rousing applause, a standing ovation from the crowd, it speaks to what Harris might be able to tap into in 2028 if she does want to run for president again. How much enthusiasm is there out there in the country for her among the people who I just mentioned, who strongly dislike President Trump? Well, a standing ovation from "The Late Show" crowd. And her book is now number one on Amazon, thanks in part to this Colbert appearance overnight. That does speak to how there is some energy for her if she does want to run for a national office again. But she said she doesn't want to run in California because she wants to be on the sidelines and be able to talk to people. Of course, another hint about possible 2028 plans. And she also acknowledged why she didn't break with President Biden last year.

[09:00:01]

his is going to be a big theme of her book tour. She said she didn't want to be a part of the pile on. How candid she gets about those decisions, that's going to be one of the most