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Trump to Call Putin Very Soon to Discuss Latest Peace Talks; Zelenskyy: Peace Plan Proposes U.S. Security Guarantees for 15 Years; Winter Storms Could Snarl Travel Again Today; Americans Question Economy as Confidence Falls Heading into 2026. Aired 8:00-8:30a ET

Aired December 29, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): ... died of a self- inflicted gunshot. Sadly, this was just one of more than 70 school shootings in the United States this year.

Number two, controversial plea deal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?

BRYAN KOHBERGER: Yes.

CASAREZ (voice-over): In a move that blindsided the families, Bryan Kohberger took a plea deal before heading to trial for the grisly murders of four University of Idaho students in 2022. In exchange for the guilty plea, the government removed the potential for the death penalty. At the emotional sentencing hearing, the families of Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, and Madison Mogen had their turn to speak directly to the killer.

STEVE GONCALVES, KAYLEE GONCALVES' FATHER: Police officers tell us within minutes they had your DNA, like a calling card. You were that careless, that foolish, that stupid.

RANDY DAVIS, XANA KERNODLE'S STEPFATHER: You're going to go to hell. I know people believe in other stuff. You're evil. There's no place for you in heaven.

CASAREZ (voice-over): Kohberger is now serving four consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole.

And number one.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Happening now is the breaking news coming in. Jurors in the trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs have reached a verdict on all counts.

CASAREZ (voice-over): Rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs found guilty. But Combs avoided the most serious charges stemming from his federal sex trafficking trial and was found guilty of lesser counts, including transportation to engage in prostitution. Each day, hundreds of people gathered outside the courthouse to follow the proceedings, despite no cameras being allowed in the courtroom. Combs got more than four years in prison and was fined $500,000. His attorneys are now appealing.

Jean Casarez, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, new word from Moscow this morning that President Trump will call Vladimir Putin very soon, just as Ukrainian President Zelenskyy exits Mar-a-Lago in the high-stakes negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, new details emerging from the peace proposal.

Plus, blizzards, freezing temperatures and twisters, the dangerous weather impacting millions across the country as Americans prepare to travel home.

And a huge development in the pipe bombing case in Washington, D.C., on the eve of January 6. Federal prosecutors say they now have the suspect's confession and a potential motive.

I'm Sara Sidner with Omar Jimenez. John and Kate are out this morning. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking overnight. We are standing by for President Trump to call his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin says that could happen very soon but didn't give an exact time.

Now, Trump is expected to update Moscow in his high-stakes meeting yesterday that we saw with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about ending the nearly four-year war. And this morning, we're learning new details about the latest peace plan. As Zelenskyy tells reporters, the plan now proposes that the U.S. guarantee Ukraine security for 15 years. Now, we're waiting to see how Moscow will react to that. Obviously, a major component of this. But another major hurdle in negotiations, the question of Ukraine ceding land to Russia.

Trump yesterday suggested it was better to make the land concessions now before Russia invades further.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think the land you're talking about, some of that land has been taken. Some of that land is maybe up for grabs, but it may be taken over the next period of a number of months. And you're better off making a deal now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: I want to bring in CNN's Alayna Treene in Washington for us. So, Alayna, look, we've seen President Zelenskyy and President Trump standing side by side, projecting potential optimism. Sometimes the meetings haven't gone so well, but at least in the latest few meetings, projecting optimism.

What is the latest on these talks? Where are we in these peace plans?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, look, Omar, the two men met for more than three hours at the president's Mar-a-Lago club yesterday, and they emerged. And you saw they gave that press conference afterwards, but they didn't really have any major breakthroughs to announce. But I will say it seems that this meeting went better than some of the meetings we know that they've had in the past.

We heard President Trump argue that he believes they are closer to an agreement than they have been ever in all of the talks that they had, which is a very optimistic thing to hear the president say after knowing how frustrated he has been in recent months over the slow pace of these talks.

[08:05:00]

And Zelenskyy, for his part, also seemed optimistic. He had said that there's a 90 -- he believes they're 90 percent of the way through with some of these talks and with this proposed, you know, 20-point or so peace plan. However, there are still major sticking points that remain.

I should note as well that even though, of course, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, wasn't there -- he did not get a meeting with the president in Palm Beach -- his presence was still very much felt. He spoke with the Russian president before that meeting with Zelenskyy. He said it was a very great call.

And then we are standing by, as you mentioned, to have those two leaders talk again today, which Trump said would really be his briefing of what happened during his meeting with Zelenskyy yesterday. But here, I just want to walk through some of the main points that kind of emerged from all of this. You mentioned one of the big ones.

But security guarantees, we know, is so crucial, particularly to Ukraine and to the United States, European allies, to ensuring that whatever peace proposal actually ends up coming together holds for the long term. And Zelenskyy said that he had broached this idea of a 15- year security guarantee with the president yesterday. He said that Trump sort of agrees to that.

He wants guarantees for 30 to 40 to 50 years. But two other major sticking points are, of course, land concessions. What will actually both sides be willing to give up?

And then this idea of a Ukrainian nuclear plant that really Russia has continued bombing in recent days. All of that still very much creating this conflict of where will this lead. But a lot of optimism still and a lot of talks that are still slated to happen in the coming days -- Omar.

JIMENEZ: Optimism still needs to turn to concrete policy. But that, of course, is where we are. Alayna Treene, appreciate the reporting, as always -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Thank you so much, Omar.

Joining me now, retired Army Brigadier General Steve Anderson and Aaron David Miller, former State Department Middle East negotiator, both join us.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. Aaron, I'm going to start with you. President Zelenskyy says he's, look, willing to give up territory for a demilitarized zone.

And he now says he wants the U.S. to guarantee Ukraine security for at least 15 years, maybe longer. Is this something that feels possible, feels like a realistic new step towards peace between Ukraine and Russia?

AARON DAVID MILLER, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT MIDDLE EAST NEGOTIATOR: Look, it may help bridge the gap, perhaps, between President Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But that's only part one, right? Part two is the sticking point.

That's the major challenge. Whether or not a joint proposal, Ukrainian-U.S. proposal, can persuade Vladimir Putin on the territorial security issues to budge from a position in which he basically believes that he's winning. And the reality is my expectations here are very low.

I think in a galaxy far, far away, it's possible to imagine in a rational world that these new proposals would move Putin. But the realities back here on planet Earth just don't, they're not persuasive, Sara. And I suspect the war is going to continue.

SIDNER: I will ask you, Brigadier General, Russia did perform one of the longest sustained attacks on Kyiv just, you know, a day before these meetings began. And since the meeting that Russia had with the United States in Alaska back in August, I think it was the 15th, so more than just over four months ago, they've really been pounding Kyiv all the while the Trump administration trying to get a deal done. Does this give you any sense that Russia feels pressure to compromise?

BRIG. GEN. STEVE ANDERSON, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Thank you, Sara. And I totally agree with Aaron. And no, I don't think they feel any kind of pressure at all.

I mean, you know, in the military, we use this term center of gravity. It's the recognition of what is essentially the war will continue as long as Vladimir Putin wants it to continue or he's overthrown, which is highly unlikely. And my problem is that the Trump administration seems to defer to Vladimir Putin on almost every issue.

And Vladimir Putin continues to win. So we need to negotiate with Putin from a position of strength, not weakness, and we need to put additional pressure on Putin. Now, I mean, I'm optimistic that maybe some progress was made, but doggone it, we still need to put pressure on Putin. And how do we do that? We need to give the Ukrainians Tomahawk missiles. We need to mobilize the U.S. industrial base to manufacture drones on a big scale. We need to have U.S. and NATO contractors on the ground in Ukraine that can maintain the equipment that we gave them. We need to continue the sanctions against Russian oil. And we need to get the Europeans to seize $300 billion in frozen Russian assets.

Those are kind of the things that we need to do to put pressure on Vladimir Putin.

SIDNER: Aaron, these guarantees would need congressional approval.

[08:10:00]

Given the climate that we are in right now, how hard do you think it will be to push forward a deal that includes a 15-year or even longer U.S. security commitment to Ukraine, if even Russia is willing to play ball with these new details?

MILLER: Yes, I mean, the politics even on this issue are exceedingly polarized. You have a mega base that is going to resist, it seems to me, any security commitments. And if they're talking about an Article 5 commitment, similar to Article 5 in NATO, Sara, the last time -- and I think Steve broke the code on this -- the last time the United States gave a Article 5 commitment was a revision in 1960 of the U.S.- Japan Treaty. It seems to me highly problematic that the U.S. Congress is going to guarantee, whether it's 15 years or five years or 20 years, basically declaring Ukraine a vital American national interest and willing to fight the Russians, deploy American forces or aircraft, if in fact Vladimir Putin violates this agreement. So no, I don't think we're anywhere near a Senate ratification of a treaty-like arrangement.

SIDNER: Well, Brigadier General Steve Anderson and Aaron David Miller, some really interesting, great points. As we look at what's going to happen, a phone call between Trump and Putin expected shortly, we will see what happens going forward. But this is a really difficult scenario that we see ourselves in.

Appreciate it, gentlemen -- Omar.

JIMENEZ: All right, just ahead, the dangerous winter weather and plunging temperatures impacting millions of Americans and their travel plans. Maybe you.

Plus, how much access will the media have to the trial of the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk? The critical ruling we expect in just hours.

And investigators are now trying to figure out why two helicopters collided midair. We'll bring you the details coming up.

[08:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SIDNER: Weather whiplash, blizzards and tornadoes, a powerful winter storm leaving its mark this morning and more bad weather is on the way, with 30 million people still under winter weather alerts from the Midwest to the Northeast. A mix of heavy snow and strong winds caused whiteout conditions like you're seeing there in both Iowa and Minnesota. Further east, the storm sparked tornadoes in parts of Illinois, where the winds ripped entire roofs off homes.

CNN's Derek Van Dam is tracking all of this for us. What a complete and utter mess that poor family having to deal with this during the holidays. What are you learning?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, terrible, terrible to see this, right, Sara, during the holiday season. But look at this. You could just, as you said, peer right into the homes from the destruction from three confirmed tornadoes yesterday.

This is all part of a razor thin cold front that is racing eastward across the country. It is triggering widespread powerful winds, the severe storms yesterday. That threat has ended, but it is dropping our temperatures significantly and in quite the fashion.

Anywhere you see the shading of purple, that's 30 to 50 degrees colder than it was 24 hours ago. So if you were heading out the door in St. Louis this morning, grab a jacket, a marked difference from yesterday. So this cold front racing eastward.

And again, it's quite powerful, especially on the northern tier where the low pressure is located. It's whipping up the winds and blowing the snow around. So the National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for the UP of Michigan and winter storm warnings downwind from the Great Lakes.

So of course, one to two inch snowfall rates per hour in and around Traverse City, Marquette, near Grand Rapids, South Bend. These areas are getting clobbered with heavy snowfall. Now we have ice starting to accumulate across portions of Vermont, upstate New York, into New Hampshire, Concord, getting about a quarter of an inch of ice already.

This cold front will race east, then the winds and the temperatures start to drop, right? So that's going to pick up the lake effect snow band and some of those favored areas downwind from Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, maybe a foot to a foot and a half of snowfall for those locations. This will impact travel conditions today, winds gusting anywhere from 30 to 45 miles per hour.

And with the fresh fallen ice and snow, the potential here for power outages down trees, tree limbs, the whole deal. Look at the temperature contrast. You can see where the cold front's located.

It feels like 52 in Atlanta, but we don't have to go far to the north where we see below zero feels like temperatures across the upper Midwest. Burr. Be prepared -- Sara.

SIDNER: Yes, that's wild. I mean, New York is downright balmy at 43 and you look over and you're like, whoa, 19 in Nashville. VAN DAM: And snow.

SIDNER: What's happening? All right, be prepared. Thank you so much, Derek Van Dam. Do appreciate you.

All right, just how strong is the economy? New data that shows how much Americans are spending heading into the new year.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JIMENEZ: As we head into 2026, a lot of people are asking the same question. How strong is the economy, really? Prices are still high. Uncertainty is everywhere and confidence is low.

And in fact, a new survey from the Conference Board shows consumer confidence has dropped to its lowest level since April. But even with those worries, the CEO of Bank of America -- one of the country's biggest banks -- says the numbers tell a more mixed story and that consumer spending remains reasonably solid despite concerns over President Trump's economic policy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN MOYNIHAN, BANK OF AMERICA, CEO: If you look by terciles, three buckets of income levels, it's clear that people in the bottom income level and lower income levels are spending at a little faster growth rate but still growing and in the middle and upper faster. So, you know, what they're telling you is what they feel, what they're actually seeing is spending is reasonably solid heading into the end of the year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: I want to bring in Rick Newman, founder of The Pinpoint Press. Thanks for being here. So, Rick, look, President Trump continues to tout the economy, which initial readings of third quarter GDP did show an economy expanding faster than the quarter before it.

But the most recent Gallup poll shows that 47 percent, nearly half of U.S. adults polled say economic conditions are poor. To what do you attribute that disparity? And is anything going to change going into 2026?

RICK NEWMAN, THE PINPOINT PRESS, FOUNDER: Right. We don't really have one economy. We have two or three economies let's say.

The CEO of Bank of America there, he used the word tercile. Let's just use the word three, break it down.

JIMENEZ: Works for me.

NEWMAN: So if you're a wealthier American, particularly if you own stocks and you have been benefiting from the run up in stock values, you're feeling pretty good. That's who's doing all the spending in this economy.

If your middle income are lower and you don't necessarily benefit from owning stocks, you're not necessarily better off. Your wealth is not going up.

[08:25:00]

And that's -- those are the people answering those surveys saying this economy stinks. In fact, the confidence surveys you mentioned are at recessionary levels. They -- the best confidence levels we saw this year were in January when President Trump came into office and those have drifted down all year.

And I think for the most part, that's just going to continue into right into 2026. One thing that is important about 2026 is those Trump tax cuts are going to go into effect. But it's really the same story.

They're going to benefit the wealthy the most. And lower earners are not really going to notice very much from that in 2026.

JIMENEZ: And, you know, as you talked about, well, first of all, the term K-shaped economy has been everywhere, sort of highlighting that dynamic you were talking about where some folks are doing great, some folks are doing worse. And both of those rates seem to be increasing and or decreasing.

Look, this year was also full of trade and tariff shocks at various points that consumer confidence, the levels right around where we were when tariffs were first announced back in April. But the Bank of America CEO now expects the Trump administration to deescalate trade strategy next year. Do you agree?

But also, more critically, will Americans feel that to the degree that will actually make any of these consumer confidence worries actually go away in any meaningful way?

NEWMAN: So again, I think let's break it down into two things. I think in terms of financial markets, I think most of the stress or surprise or shock from the Trump tariffs is in the past. So I think financial markets will do OK.

And if there's a rollback of some of those tariffs, that will actually probably be good for financial markets and for stocks. But I think there's also this problem in the labor market and in a lot of companies. So the most worrisome trend we have going into 2026 is this huge slowdown in hiring.

I mean, we're getting almost no new jobs at this point. And tariffs are part of that. I mean, there are a lot of businesses that are saying we're still uncertain about what's going to happen.

Our costs have gone up a little bit. Some businesses just cannot escape the impact of the tariffs. They raise costs just enough to have an impact on businesses.

And I think we're just going to see this sort of moribund labor market in 2026. So again, that just reinforces the K in the K-shaped economy. And I think when we look at that K, you sort of think that the upper stroke and the lower stroke are more or less equal.

They're not equal. There are a lot of people represent -- a lot more people represented by that lower stroke, the downward part of the K, than by the upper one. And that's going to be a big problem for President Trump in 2026.

JIMENEZ: And critically, those folks will have the chance to express their feelings at the ballot box in the midterms coming up this year. Rick Newman, appreciate the time. Thanks for being here.

All right, coming up, the Justice Department released new details about what the accused D.C. pipe bomb suspect told the FBI shortly after his arrest, which could point to a possible motive. We'll bring you the details.

And the investigation into what caused a deadly mid-air helicopter collision. You see some of the video here. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END