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Trump Fuels Uncertainty on Taiwan and Iran War After Xi Talks; Trump, Xi Tout Progress After Talks But Vague on Specifics; Understaffing, Poor Medical Care Drive Deaths in ICE Detention; Trump Announces Location of Commemorative Sculpture Garden. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 15, 2026 - 15:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A future filled with self-driving cars may be a little delayed. Droves of empty Waymo's -- those are those self- driving cars, you see them there -- they're clogging up the roads of this Atlanta neighborhood. CNN affiliate WNF spoke with residents today who say they are exasperated by all of these Waymo's.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's enough of them but it's -- that it's -- that it's -- it's bothersome. It's not like one. It's like three or maybe four, you know, just -- they do the same loop. They practice their braking and their signals.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We had at, one point, eight Waymo's that were stuck, trying to figure out how to turn around.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Well, residents told Atlanta-based outlet WSB that the Waymo's began circling the neighborhood in large groups weeks ago. They say this behavior has continued regularly since then. In a statement to WSB, Waymo wrote: "We take community feedback seriously and have already addressed this routing behavior." CNN has reached out to Waymo and has not received a response.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

Was Beijing a bust? President Trump returns from the summit in China with no confirmed deals or finalized agreements on several key issues but Trump insists, quote, "a lot of different problems were settled."

And while several countries are trying to win the A.I. race, the Vatican is taking a different tack, putting limits on the technology with the Pope adding his voice to the chorus warning about the impact of A.I. on humanity.

And a debate that is shaken not stirred in the world of James Bond fans, who should be the next 007?

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL. The President is on his way back to the United States after leaving Beijing, but there are no clear breakthroughs, at least publicly, on Taiwan or Iran. After two days of tense talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the President refused to say whether or not he would defend Taiwan if the Chinese invaded the island. And then, he said this about a $14 billion arms deal that Congress has already approved that Taiwan wants finalized. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about the arms sales to Taiwan?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'll make a determination over the next fairly short period of time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not necessarily going to go ahead. It was your proposal.

TRUMP: No. I'm going to make a determination. I'm going to say, I have to speak to the person that right now is, you know, you know who he is, that's running Taiwan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Also, still unclear whether the Chinese leader might do more to end the U.S. stalemate with Iran. President Trump says he did not ask President Xi to help him reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but added, I think he will.

CNN's Alayna Treene is live for us at the White House.

Alayna, what more are officials there saying?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, look, I think when you talk to officials here at the White House, they argue that it was a successful trip. They note kind of the flowery rhetoric used by both leaders to describe the relationship right now between the U.S. and China, and also point out that there wasn't any real tense moments, something they were trying to avoid.

But as you mentioned, Boris, the visit didn't really go far in the way of significant breakthroughs on some of the thorniest issues we know we were watching for when -- when Trump met face to face with Xi. Some of those include Iran, Taiwan, but also on tariffs, on rare-earth minerals. All of these things, we really did not get any significant answers to or any sort of deals among them.

Now, I do want to talk about specifically Iran because this was something we know that the Trump administration was trying to avoid loom over this visit. They had actually postponed this trip by six weeks, hoping the Iran war would be over by now. Of course, that did not happen, and that really was a huge topic of discussion, we're told, when these two leaders met privately.

Now, one thing is that the President said that Xi did offer to help, though he said he didn't ask for it and that he doesn't necessarily need it. And we'll have to see whether or not that's actually something that changes the calculus about how the President and his team here back in Washington have actually been looking at the Iran war.

I would remind you that right before he left, we had reported, and this is according to my conversations with different Trump administration officials, that the President was closer to wanting to move forward with major combat operations in Iran than he had been previously.

Now, of course, they said no decisions would be made while he was in China, and it is unclear whether or not the talks that he had somehow make diplomacy seem more viable at this point in time.

[15:05:00]

But I do want you to listen to what President Trump said when talking to reporters about the response the Iranians gave the U.S. -- to the U.S. proposal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you rejected the latest proposal from Iran or where does that stand?

TRUMP: Well, I looked at it and if I don't like the first sentence, I just throw it away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was the first sentence?

TRUMP: An unacceptable sentence because they have fully agreed no nuclear. And if they have any nuclear of any form, I don't read the rest of their letter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: So, as you hear there, the President still sounding very sour on the way that negotiations have been going between the U.S. and Iran thus far, previously calling that proposal, or excuse me, previously saying that that ceasefire is now on life support. Again, we're still waiting for a full readout of what was actually discussed specifically on Iran between these two leaders and whether or not that changes the dynamic of how the President is going to proceed here.

SANCHEZ: Alayna Treene live for us at the White House. Thank you so much. Brianna.

KEILAR: There's still a lot to dissect after two days of meetings in Beijing between President Trump and Xi Jinping. We're joined now by lead global security analyst of the Washington Post intelligence, Josh Rogin. He's also the author of "Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century."

All right, Josh, so on China and Taiwan, what are the implications of Trump coming out of this visit equivocating on whether the U.S. will actually go through with this pending $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan? JOSH ROGIN, AUTHOR, "CHAOS UNDER HEAVEN": Well, Brianna, it's a good question. I think we just have to wait and see whether he actually pushes the arms sales through. We should remember that the Trump administration has proceeded with Taiwan arms sales. Trump has not been against Taiwan arms sales. At the same time, as he said, as he made clear, he's not a very big fan of getting involved in the Taiwan issue at all. So, it makes sense to me that he wouldn't want to provoke a disagreement by talking about it right in that moment where they just had this nice meeting. They seemed to get along. But in the coming weeks and months, either he's going to have to go forward with the arms sales or not, and people are going to notice.

One thing that he did say in that clip, which I thought was really fascinating, he said he's going to talk to the President of Taiwan, William Lai. If he did that, that would be huge news. Now, I don't really think he's going to do that because that would be the thing that would make Xi Jinping more angry than anything, but he did say it. So, watch that one. I'm not sure what's going to happen there.

KEILAR: Do you think he just sort of -- that was just something he threw out there?

ROGIN: Yes, I think he said it by accident. I remember when, in 2017, it's in my book, he wrote -- he talked to the then president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, and it was a huge problem. And he got really upset that he made -- he realized that he had done something wrong in the eyes of China. So, I think he slipped up, but he did say it. So, I don't know. If he actually does it, that'll be huge. That'll be huge news.

KEILAR: Yes. And I guess he knows that, right? Because he's been there before.

China, of course, is ...

ROGIN: I don't know what he knows or what he doesn't know.

KEILAR: Oh, yes. Well, I mean, let's -- we'll -- we'll see how that shapes up.

So, let's talk about Iran and China there because China is the top purchaser of Iran's oil. Some Chinese tankers have been allowed through the Strait, and the President told Fox that Iran wants to buy oil from the U.S. This morning Trump said he's considering lifting sanctions on Chinese companies buying Iranian oil. What's happening here? Yes, I mean, China.

ROGIN: The -- the -- right. It seems that President Trump wants to have Chinese help in solving the Iran issue. He's trying to figure out a way to do it. There doesn't seem to be a clear way to do it. And this whole notion that China is under a lot of pressure because of the Iran war, I don't think is really bearing out. China seems willing to let America stew in its own juices and just take the pain of Trump's Iran war. And it's not hurting them as much as it's hurting us. But I think the President is looking for a way to get China's help. I don't think he figured it out. I think if he -- if he would have figured out some actual way to have China help us with Iran, he would have told us. But he didn't say anything, so that means it probably didn't happen.

KEILAR: Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about that because you have Secretary Rubio saying the U.S. did not ask for China's help with Iran. It's also very clear from what the President said before this visit, he welcomes help, right? Trump said that Xi did offer help, that he pledged not to provide Iran with military equipment. Here's what else Trump said to Fox.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: He's not coming in with guns. He's not coming in with riffles.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS: I'm not asking ...

TRUMP: They're not coming in shooting, you know?

HANNITY: ... influence.

TRUMP: As some always said. He's been -- he's been very good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: What do you think about that?

ROGIN: I mean, it -- it's kind of bizarre because we know that the Chinese government has been helping the Iranians by giving them intelligence that they've been using to target and kill Americans. And they might not give them the bullets, but if they give them the intelligence that allows them to kill Americans, that's really bad.

Now, I didn't hear in there a promise to stop doing that. That would have been good. One would think if he had secured a promise from them to stop doing that, he would have told us. Then again, it's hard to know because Trump says a lot of things that don't make a lot of sense.

[15:10:04]

But it's not just the -- the bullets. China is helping Iran in a number of ways and, as is Russia, by the way. And that's something that I think the United States has to apply pressure on China to stop.

You're not going to ask China to stop helping Iran. They're not going to do it. You'd have to pressure them, and that means more sanctions, not less. So, it's a muddle because President Trump is talking about both things at once. It's really hard to understand what he's talking about. But the situation on the ground is that China is Iran's ally. They're helping Iran. If they're going to stop helping Iran, that would be good. But I don't think that's exactly what we got to in this two-day meeting, at least nothing that we've heard yet confirms that.

KEILAR: Yes. And it would be maybe strange to even expect that, right? Josh, thank you so much.

ROGIN: Sure.

KEILAR: Really appreciate you being with us.

ROGIN: Anytime.

KEILAR: Breaking news, we are getting some video of the aftermath of a new Israeli strike inside of Gaza. Despite that U.S.-brokered ceasefire, Israeli officials say they were targeting one of Hamas's most senior military leaders who they say helped plan the October 7th attacks. The Israeli military says its strike was successful, but CNN has not been able to independently confirm this. Gazan officials say a residential building was hit. The director of a nearby hospital tells CNN at least one woman was killed and six others were injured.

Still to come, a CNN investigation finds that understaffing and poor medical care are driving deaths at immigration detention centers.

Plus, President Trump expands his Capitol makeover. He's just revealed the location of a sculpture garden that he says will honor American heroes.

And then later, Pope Leo's new warning about artificial intelligence. We have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[15:16:07]

SANCHEZ: Just 10 minutes. That's how long a witness says it took emergency staff at a remote ICE detention center in Southern California to respond to an inmate that had collapsed, even as his cellmates had been calling for help. Fifty-two-year-old Jose Ramos had entered the U.S. nearly three decades earlier.

He left the ICE facility where he was being held on a stretcher, covered by a blanket. Ramos is one of nearly 50 detainees who have died in ICE custody since President Trump took office. And a CNN review of autopsy reports, court records, and interviews has found that many of these deaths appear to have been preventable. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez has this exclusive reporting for us.

So, Priscilla, tell us more about what you found.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, in digging into those documents with our investigative team, as well as speaking with attorneys and detainees, what we learned is that deadly outcomes in more than a dozen of these cases, so cases of detainees dying, may have been preventable. And they are linked in part to substandard treatment by, at times, understaffed medical facilities when the population in these facilities was growing.

Of course, as the Trump administration was ramping up their arrests, they were putting more people in detention. So, these facilities, in some cases, saw a massive boom in a very short amount of time.

Now, you mentioned there the nearly 50 fatalities. Looking at this as a point of comparison, more died in ICE custody in 2025 than any year in at least two decades. In 2026, we're now in May, it is on track to surpass that. One of those deaths was that of Jose Ramos. He died in ICE custody in March. He had been arrested in February.

And in speaking with a detainee who witnessed what unfolded at Adelanto, the facility where they were being held, he said that there -- that the response was delayed from their perspective there, being the detainees who witnessed this, that they did not get help to him in a timely manner. Again, we know that he died about an hour after they found him unconscious.

Now, the California Attorney General has the unique authority since 2017 to go into these facilities and to inspect them, and they released their report today, where they outline what they found in these facilities, again in their state, one of them being Adelanto, where Ramos was held and where there have been four deaths over the last year.

And I want to be precise here, what they found is that there were fewer physicians and advanced practitioners that worked in Adelanto on the neighboring facility in February 2021, when they held fewer than a hundred detainees, than in July, when they held more than 2,000. So, that gives you a sense of how quickly the population was growing and how it appears, according to this report, that the staffing didn't keep up.

Now, we spoke to the California Attorney General about these findings, and this is what he told us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB BONTA, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA: our finding was that they were unprepared. And look, if -- if the federal government is going to be surging its ICE enforcement and detaining more and more Californians and putting them in these facilities, they need to provide them the basics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: Now, we also took our findings to the Department of Homeland Security, and a spokesperson disputed there was a spike in deaths, saying, quote, "there has been no spike in deaths," and went on to say that as bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained higher a standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens, including providing access to proper medical care. For many illegal aliens, this is the best health care they have received their entire lives.

Now, the detainees and the attorneys in some cases that we spoke with might dispute the last bit of that, and certainly there are still a lot of questions as to what happened with Ramos. He has not -- we don't have the cause of death yet in his case, but of course a concern among families, attorneys, and many others that the detainee death rate just appear -- appears to be increasing.

SANCHEZ: A really unsettling reporting. Priscilla Alvarez, thanks so much for bringing it to us. Up next, President Trump's Washington makeover is growing. What we've

learned about his plan to install 250 live-size statues in the Capitol.

[15:20:00]

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[15:24:38]

KEILAR: With his trip to Asia in the rearview mirror, President Trump is now setting his sights on the nation's 250th birthday. He just announced some new details on a big project commemorating it, and that is the National Garden of American Heroes, which is supposed to feature 250 life-size statues of American greats like Kobe Bryant and Amelia Earhart. But we know where it's going to be. We just don't know when it's going to open, and a lot of other details.

[15:25:07]

We have CNN Washington Correspondent Sunlen Serfaty who's working on this story.

All right, Sun, well, we don't know where it is. Is that right?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was just announced today, and this was expected. We have long been reporting that it likely will be West Potomac Park, and the White House formally announced that today.

Now, this is a very picturesque plot of land. That's right on the Potomac River. I'm sure you've been there before, Brianna. A lot of recreational sports teams ...

KEILAR: That's right.

SERFATY: ... played down there. It's a good spot for viewing the cherry blossoms, and it's right nearby. They had just announced golf course that the President Trump wants to put up in East Potomac Park. So, this is a really pretty area of Washington, D.C., one that long President Trump has talked about, but they made it official today.

And -- and it's notable because it is a project that President Trump has been talking about for quite some time, six years in fact, going back to his visit to Mount Rushmore six years ago. And I'll feature, as you said, Kobe Bryant, Amelia Earhart, Whitney Houston, Sally Ride, Christopher Columbus are all names among the 250 Americans that will be featured, statues six to eight feet tall in marble, bronze, copper.

But, as I said, this isn't a personal endeavor, one of the pet projects that President Trump has really overtaken. And it's been through many fits and starts along the way. President Trump's first vision was that it would be completed by January of this year, in line with the nation's 250th birthday celebration, but it's very clear that's not going to happen. When that was clear, they scaled back the goal, said maybe we'll have

two dozen in place by the time of the 250th celebration, and then add the additional statues along the way. But now there's been serious questions whether at least even one statue will be in place in July, given the fact that we're now just a few months before, they're just choosing the location. They also notably have not been through the approval process that's required here in D.C. So,, a lot of big questions surrounding this project, and President Trump has made it a big to-do that he wants to see it in place for the anniversary.

KEILAR: And where are people going to play volleyball and cricket?

SERFATY: Good question.

KEILAR: We don't know.

SERFATY: Around statues.

KEILAR: Around statues.

All right, Sunlen Serfaty, thank you so much.

Pope Leo taking on A.I. Hear his warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence when it comes to faith, next. You're watching CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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