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Trump Takes Out GOP Rival Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) in Stunning Election Loss; New Settlement Term Bars IRS Probes into Trump for Past Tax Issues; 500-Plus Suspected Ebola Cases Linked to Outbreak in DRC and Uganda. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 20, 2026 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump gets his way in Republican primaries, or as one White House official put it, F around and find out. But Punchbowl writes this morning that the president seems maniacally focused on things that will hurt Republicans in November.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And the fine print, the IRS is now forever barred from bringing claims against President Trump, his family, or his businesses for any past tax issues, any of them. The new reporting around the unprecedented deal to compensate Trump allies.

And SOS, a shipwrecked boater rescued, but could the flare he sent out to call for help be what sparked the biggest wildfire burning in California right now?

I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman. Sara is out today. This is CNN News Central.

BERMAN: This morning, a stunning display of muscle within his own party, but Politico suggests Trump's grip on the party threatens his grasp of Congress. We'll have more on that in a moment.

First, the president got his wish in Kentucky, ousting incumbent Republican Congressman Thomas Massie. This after Massie led the charge to force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. In his concession speech, Massie was defiant.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. THOMAS MASSIE (R-KY): By the way, today is the six-month anniversary of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. We've taken out two dozen CEOs, an ambassador, a prince, a prime minister, a minister of culture. And that was just six months. I got seven months left in Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Also in Kentucky, the president's candidate, Andy Barr, won the Republican Senate primary there to replace Mitch McConnell.

In Georgia, in the Georgia Republican Senate primary, Trump ally Mike Collins and Derek Dooley, who was endorsed by the state's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, are headed for a runoff, so it's a Trump candidate versus a Kemp candidate.

The biggest political earthquake though was in Texas, and the aftershock's felt on Capitol Hill. President Trump issued a last- minute endorsement of Attorney General Ken Paxton over Republican Senate incumbent John Cornyn ahead of a runoff next week. So, we're watching that closely.

Let's get right though to Covington, Kentucky. That is where Jeff Zeleny is this morning, the morning after the president flexes.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John, good morning. There is no doubt it has been a remarkable run for President Trump through the month of May, starting in Indiana defeating those Republican state senators, certainly here in Kentucky, Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, the endorsement of John Cornyn, as you said.

But the question hanging over all of this morning, is any of this score settling? And it is that, there's no doubt about it, going to help Republicans in the broader context here and hold onto their Congressional majorities. That is very much an open question.

But right here in Kentucky, it was a convincing defeat for Thomas Massie. Of course, he has been in office here for 14 years, but has never faced anything like this, an onslaught from the president, at the president's direction.

But at the concession speech last night, John, it was anything but that. Massie talked about how he's been suddenly part of a growing movement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MASSIE: Yes, it started out as an election, and it turned into a movement.

I mean, we stirred up something. There is a yearning in this country for somebody who will vote for principles over party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So, that, of course, raises a central question here. These are Republican primaries, closed Republican primaries. That means independents and, of course, Democrats cannot vote in them.

So, what does this mean for the bigger picture here? The Cornyn endorsement in particular, certainly for the first time, really threatens the majority of Republicans in the Senate. That could certainly change the rest of the Trump administration's time in office here. But the White House, the president, are focused on these specific races. They're focused on trying to get rid of people the president does not like or who have crossed him.

So, the loyalty test is clear. [07:05:00]

But, again, the broader point, is any of this helping the president with his ultimate objective of holding a Congressional majority? That is very, very much an open question.

As for Massie, there were shouts of 2028, 2028 in the room. That also is an open question. Even if he was thinking about the idea of running for president, the question, what party would he do it in? John?

BERMAN: That is an interesting question. And now, of course, there are seven months left for Thomas Massie, as he noted. John Cornyn, who still actually runs next week against Ken Paxton, the president- endorsed Ken Paxton, but, you know, Cornyn could be a lame duck senator. There are a lot of Republican lame ducks who still have a vote for a few months, and a grudge, potentially, against the president.

Jeff Zeleny, in Covington, Kentucky, much more to talk about in a little bit. Thank you so much for being with us. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And we're seeing that potentially what unleashed looks like with a vote from Bill -- a new vote from Bill Cassidy overnight on war powers. So, unleashed and unplugged, as we were starting to talk about yesterday. Let's see what this looks like.

There -- so there was also already anger and head-scratching coming from Democrats and Republicans alike about DOJ's new fund seen as essentially compensating Trump allies with taxpayer dollars. Well, now, there is more to it. According to additional terms quietly released as part of the overall agreement, the IRS is now barred forever from bringing any claims against President Donald Trump, his family, or businesses for past tax issues.

That was just Monday that Justice announced that one -- nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who believe they were unfairly targeted by the federal government. Ds and Rs alike, though, are skeptical, fearing it will go only to the president's allies, like violent January 6th rioters.

CNN's Alayna Treene tracking this one, she's joining us now with much more on this. What are you hearing from the White House about this one?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, there's obviously a lot of scrutiny, Kate, that is being paid to this new settlement that they have worked on. And I do want to focus on what you just brought up about this new addendum that we saw posted to the Justice Department website yesterday, essentially saying that in this settlement, the IRS cannot go after the president, his family members, or their businesses, again, for past, you know, potentially -- you know, it's backwards-looking, for past violations or anything like that, at least for now. I'd remind you, though, that of course the president can always file some sort of blanket pardon when he leaves office to protect him from any future consequences. Now, I do want to say, we knew from our reporting last week, Kate, that this was something that the president's attorneys at the Justice Department, the lawyers at the IRS and others were looking at, including lawyers here at the White House, and they were discussing this potential move to protect the president and members of his family. So, we knew that this was something that they were considering.

But, of course, this raises even more questions because, you know, there's a lot of people in the Trump administration, and specifically Trump administration's lawyers, that are overseeing this personally. A lot of these people were the president's personal former attorneys. That includes the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, had previously worked to represent the president.

Now people are asking, you know, how can you file this $10 billion lawsuit against your own government and have your own personal attorneys look at this?

Now, I do want to bring up something we heard from the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, on the Hill yesterday as well, where essentially he said, this fund is open to anyone. He says that there was no partisan requirements in order to file a claim for this.

But then he was asked specifically by lawmakers about what is the architecture of this actually going to look like, and he didn't have a lot of great answers for them. There was one specific exchange that I thought was very fascinating to watch from Senator Chris Coons with Blanche about this. And Coons had actually pointed out, you know, he'd been talking, he said, to law enforcement who were concerned about this idea that people who were violent toward different Capitol Hill policemen on the day of January 6th could now be getting funds, taxpayer funds to compensate them. I want you to listen to that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Will you commit that no one who has been convicted of assaulting a police officer will receive a payout from this fund?

TODD BLANCHE, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: So, I share the concerns that apparently members of law enforcement gave to you last week, although none of this was announced last week, so that's surprising. But I accept that --

COONS: They had heard rumors there would be a settlement fund.

BLANCHE: Okay. But anybody can apply. The commission will -- the commissioners will set rules, I'm sure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: So, Kate, the problem here, of course, is that if Blanche doesn't necessarily know what the rules are right now, what the guardrails are, it's hard to understand what this is going to look like.

So, again, a lot of scrutiny that this is facing, and we're likely to see potentially some legal challenges around all of this down the line.

BOLDUAN: Yes, a lot of questions that still remain unanswered even having the acting attorney general sit before them yesterday for hours.

[07:10:01]

It's good to see you, Alayna. Thank you so much. Much more to come on that one.

Also breaking overnight, the world's top health organization says that they are concerned about the scale and the speed, that's how they're talking about it, when it comes to the spread of the Ebola virus. 139 people have now died so far.

And new video is coming in from the attack on a California mosque. Doorbell cams capturing the two teenage suspects opening fire in a neighborhood as they were fleeing the scene.

And talk about a terrifyingly close call, steel beam falls off a bridge, impaling a car, look at that, just narrowly missing the driver.

We'll be back.

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[07:15:00]

BERMAN: Breaking overnight, the World Health Organization held an urgent news conference warning that the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa is getting worse. The WHO officially declared the outbreak a global health emergency.

CNN's Meg Tirrell is here with the latest on this, and these numbers, they say, rising very quickly.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they absolutely are. So, right now, we're at almost 600 suspected cases, about 51 actually confirmed with testing, and 139 deaths. And, remember, we just learned about this late last week, so this is really growing very quickly.

And the director of the World Health Organization saying this is a public health emergency of international concern. It does have international concern. It has -- we have detected two cases in Uganda from travelers from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's centered here in this Ituri province in the northeastern part of the country.

What he says, though, is that there is national and regional high risk, but not high risk for the globe, low risk globally. So, this doesn't have pandemic potential, they really emphasized that this morning, but saying that there are several factors contributing to their serious concern that this could continue to get bigger, including the size of the outbreak and how big it was by the time they detected it, the fact that it had been spreading for some time.

Expanded epidemic, including several urban areas, so that's a big concern as well, as well as deaths among healthcare workers, so that makes it seem like this has been spreading in healthcare settings.

They also note that there's significant population movement here in the Ituri Province, both because of conflict. They say there are 100,000 displaced people just recently, as well as the fact that this is a mining area, so there's a lot of movement around here.

The other thing that makes this extremely concerning is the fact that this is a different strain of Ebola than we typically see. It's the yellow here, this Bundibugyo strain, where we've only seen two prior outbreaks. The red is what we typically see with Ebola, the Zaire strain. And so we don't have an approved vaccine or any approved treatments for this strain.

Now, just to put this into context in terms of previous outbreaks, this was the one in West Africa starting in 2014. 11,000 deaths, 28,000 cases, and of course, that was the Zaire strain. This more recent one in the Democratic Republic of Congo, also quite large, but we are approaching this number, unfortunately, very quickly, 600 cases right now, 139 deaths. We are not at this scope yet, but there is a big concern about that.

So, we heard yesterday from the CDC that they have staff already in those countries, about 100 in Uganda and 30 in the DRC. They're trying to assist with technical assistance, tracking infection prevention and control.

They also have imposed these entry restrictions on non-U.S. passport holders from these regions, anybody who's traveled in those countries in the last 21 days. This is getting some criticism because they say this is not a way to actually contain the spread, and it's sort of discriminatory against folks who've been in those countries without actually helping.

We do have one American patient who was treating folks in DRC, has been moved to Germany for care, along with six high-risk contacts who were also transported, so folks watching that situation also very closely.

BERMAN: So, no vaccine. You said no approved treatment. What can you do?

TIRRELL: Right. So, we heard a little bit from the WHO just this morning about prospects for a vaccine. We have a vaccine for the Zaire strain, which was developed during that 2014 outbreak and deployed then. So, using that same technology, they say the most promising candidate targets this new strain, Bundibugyo, it'll take six to nine months though for them to ramp up a trial supply of that vaccine.

There is also another vaccine that uses the same technology, the AstraZeneca vaccine during COVID used. They call it the ChAdOx technology. That's from Oxford University and being ramped up at the Serum Institute of India. They say they can ramp that up in two to three months, but we don't have even the pre-clinical data on that, so it's not considered as promising as this approach right now.

BERMAN: So, months at a minimum at this point with an outbreak that is already much further along than they ever would have hoped, and, frankly, at this point, they're in great fear of. This is really good information.

Meg Tirrell, thank you so much for all of this.

All right, this morning, thousands forced to evacuate their homes in California, more than a dozen fires burning out of control.

And I want you to listen to this statistic. NBA Reporter Nate Duncan writes, the teams trailing by 20 points with seven minutes left in playoff games had lost 643 times and won 0 times, until last night, a historic comeback by the Knicks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BOLDUAN: So, from trailing by 22 points to an overtime win, the Knicks pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in NBA history in something like eight minutes last night.

CNN's Andy Scholes has it all. What happened?

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: I mean, Kate, if you went to sleep early in the fourth quarter and you're waking up this morning asking that question, what happened, it's Jalen Brunson is what happened. You know, he really got going late. He started targeting James Harden. And then once that MSG crowd got back into the game, you can forget about it. The Knicks just feeding off the crowd's energy. They completed one of the greatest comebacks in NBA history.

New York was down 22 with under eight to go. At this point, the Cavs, according to ESPN, had a 99.9 percent chance of winning, but Brunson kept going at Harden. He scored 16 of his game-high 38 points in the fourth quarter, and he hit this bucket right here in the final seconds to tie the game. It would go to overtime. And in O.T., the Knicks just kept up the momentum.

New York closed the game on a 44 to 11 run. Landry Shamet played huge for the Knicks. Harden and Donovan Mitchell, meanwhile, scored just three points on one for ten shooting during that final stretch, an epic collapse by the Cavs.

The Knicks fans celebrate. They take game one, 115-104.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JALEN BRUNSON, NEW YORK KNICKS GUARD: I'm just happy we found a way to win. We kept believing in each other, taking the shots, kept running. My teammates, they believe in me, my coaches. It's all credit to them.

MIKE BROWN, NEW YORK KNICKS HEAD COACH: When you got nine minutes and seven seconds left on the game clock, I've seen us defend in the fourth quarter out of this world. And, you know, you open the floor up a little bit, now it just takes the right guys shooting the basketball and knocking down some shots.

[07:25:01]

Like I said, Mikal hit a couple big ones. Landry hit some big ones. And when that happens with the crowd that we have, a shout-out, Knicks fans, you guys were freaking awesome tonight. Anything can happen.

DONOVAN MITCHELL, CLEVELAND CAVALIERS GUARD: We lost. We (BLEEP) blew it, all right? Let's rally for game two, simple as that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: And game two will be there tomorrow.

Finally, here's something you don't see happen very often. Nationals match, James Wood at the plate with the bases loaded, hits this ball deep to left. Nick Morabito almost makes a play on it, but then it bounces into center field, and center fielder Tyrone Taylor, he didn't see it for a minute there.

Wood got all the way around the bases in 15.15 seconds for an inside- the-park grand slam. It was the first in baseball since 2022. There's actually only been 12 since 1990. And, Kate, I did some math. That's pretty impressive considering there's been more than 83,000 baseball games since 1990. So, inside-the-park grand slam, now you can say you've seen one, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Now I've seen one, and I'm just going to be quiet. I'm sorry, Monaco (ph). Oh, guys, why am I always on set with poor Monaco has to deal with this. Monacs, we love you so much. You're so good at everything except for the sports teams you choose. Thank you, Andy. All right, I can't stop myself.

Okay, let's go to this. This morning, we are so -- Monaco, I love you. This morning, we are standing by for a potentially big move by the Trump administration, an expected indictment of the former president of Cuba, Raul Castro.

And a very close call for one driver, a steel construction beam plunges into her vehicle while she is inside.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:00]