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Team USA Star Reinstated After Trump Call to FIFA; Investor Lost Billions Betting on Trump Memecoin; Russia Launches Deadly Attack on Kyiv Ahead of NATO Summit; White Nationalist Group Marches Through D.C. Aired 2-2:30p ET
Aired July 06, 2026 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:00:00]
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": -- the lining. We'll see if those charges someday come. Sunlen Serfaty, thank you so much.
(CROSSTALK)
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Hope we see the evidence as well.
SANCHEZ: Fair point.
A new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.
SCIUTTO: Red card reversal. A star player for Team USA will now get to play in tonight's big match against Belgium, but only after President Trump made a phone call to FIFA.
A losing bet, most people who bought President Trump's Memecoin lost, potentially, billions of dollars in total. This according to a new analysis. How that investment enriched the president, but ultimately cost a lot of investors.
SANCHEZ: And a preview of the prosecution. The accused killer of Charlie Kirk in court for a multi-day hearing. Kirk's wife, Erika, now sitting in the same courtroom.
We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."
We begin this hour with major Breaking News on the World Cup. Team USA counting down to a make or break game in six hours with their star striker, Folarin Balogun, cleared to play. Just a little over an hour ago, FIFA rejected Belgium's appeal of its decision to overturn Balogun's red card suspension from tonight's match.
The controversial whiplash sent into an even bigger frenzy when fans learned that President Trump himself called FIFA's president on Thursday. Earlier, Trump explained that call.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: All I did, I asked for a review because I didn't think it was a foul. And you know, again, I'm good at this stuff. If they wouldn't allow, you know, a top player, maybe the best, maybe among the best players on the team, to play, I think it would have had a big stain. And I related just that feeling. I didn't tell him what to do. I can't tell him what to do. But -- and I don't believe he made the decision, I think it was the committee that made the decision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: FIFA's president, in a statement after Trump spoke, said it is not uncommon for him to take calls from heads of state. He also said he told Trump an investigation into the red card was already ongoing before that call.
CNN's Coy Wire is live in Seattle where that big match kicks off tonight. And Cory, I really hope for this team and for Balogun's sake, right, who is such a gentleman and he was a gentleman in the wake of the red card. I hope this is not disturbing their mojo for tonight or their preparations.
Do you think they're able to tune this out?
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: I think they're going to be able to tune that out. Maybe not all the fans that are going to be in the field behind us, including your son. So I understand.
(LAUGH)
SCIUTTO: Yeah.
WIRE: Listen, when news broke less than 48 hours before kickoff that FIFA overturned Folarin Balogun's red card suspension jaws dropped, because that meant America's hottest striker is back. Flo is a game changer, leading the U.S. with three goals this World Cup. And suddenly, the conversation isn't about Captain America, Christian Pulisic. It's become Balogun. He's become the nightmare. Defenders can't wake up from this, American attack is simply in another gear when he's on the pitch.
The U.S. celebrating his return. Belgium, let's just say, they're not exactly sending FIFA any thank you cards. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUDI GARCIA, BELGIUM COACH (through translator): I didn't realize that at FIFA headquarters, July 5th was the equivalent of April 1st in Europe. The Belgian Football Association isn't defending itself. It's defending football in general, the integrity and ethics.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: All right. Listen, now comes the biggest mountain for the U.S. to climb yet. Right? Jim, the Americans chasing just their third-ever World Cup quarterfinal, first since 2002, against Belgium, a really good group of players they're going to be facing in just a few hours.
SANCHEZ: Yeah. And the last team that eliminated the United States when they got close to the elimination rounds back in 2014. Coy, which team is going to be more fired up over all of this?
WIRE: Yeah. Over this big decision, right? This controversy. Whether it is meters on a track or 115 yards on a pitch, the distance that's going to matter most is the six inches between the ears. Right? Which team will control their minds, their emotions best. Belgium haven't lost a match in 15 months. They're a veteran group of stars like Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku. They beat the U.S. five to two back in March. Now they have this added motivation, feeling gut punched by FIFA.
Forget butterflies. They're going to be coming out with a dragon in their stomach, breathing fire and probably a few snot bubbles.
(LAUGH)
WIRE: The U.S. on the other end of that roller coaster. They're getting rocket fuel injected into their veins, getting back their star, chasing that third-ever World Cup quarterfinal. One of their stars, Tyler Adams, says this team has grit. Listen.
SCIUTTO: Yeah.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TYLER ADAMS, UNITED STATES MIDFIELDER: That's kind of what Americans are built off of. And it's nice to see that in our DNA, the way that we compete every single game, the way that we believe that we can do something special. Again, you know, to go to battle with your brothers next to you and see them go through the same kind of struggle at certain moments.
[14:05:00]
You know, we've put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this thing. It's been a long time on the road and you want to make it all worth it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: Jim, Boris, I've played in that NFL stadium during my playing days. It's one of the toughest environments, loudest that you can imagine. The players told me they feed off the energy they've been getting from the fans, propelling them off to fast start, scoring first in every match. We may see Seattle registering on the Richter scale tonight.
Monday night football, footy style, 4th of July weekend, 250th birthday. This may end up being one of the most raucous environments --
SCIUTTO: Yeah.
WIRE: -- American sports has seen.
SCIUTTO: See, that's something Coy has on you and me, Boris. He's played in that stadium.
SANCHEZ: Yeah.
SCIUTTO: Yeah.
(LAUGH)
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: He's earned his 12th medal (ph) in Seattle. Closest we get is the snack bar. Anyway, when the whistle blows, I hope it's all about the soccer on the field because it's going to be a great game. Coy Wire, thanks so much.
WIRE: Thanks.
On the eve of an important NATO Summit, attacks between Russia and Ukraine intensifying, just huge blasts overnight in Kyiv, killing at least 19 people. This, according to Ukrainian officials, Russian ballistic missiles and drones, once again targeting civilians there and piercing Ukrainian air defenses. Shortly after, Ukraine launched a strike deep inside Russian territory, targeting the country's largest oil refinery.
It's the latest in a string of attacks on Russian energy infrastructure.
SANCHEZ: Now, this all comes just before President Trump will soon head to Turkey to attend the NATO Summit, where he is expected to meet on the sidelines with Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Let's go live to the White House with CNN's Betsy Klein.
Betsy, the president has a thorny relationship with NATO in the past, notably sometimes a hot and cold relationship with --
SCIUTTO: Yeah.
SANCHEZ: -- Zelenskyy as well. How is he approaching this summit?
BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, Boris, if you're reading tea leaves or if you're just reading the president's social media feed, expect status quo for President Trump as he heads into this very high-stakes, consequential NATO Summit, departing just a few hours from now. President Trump has had this long, simmering feud with the NATO alliance dating back to his first term.
And in the president's view, he believes that the U.S. is bearing a disproportional share of NATO defense spending and other countries in the alliance are not spending their fair share. But the war with Iran has just really intensified that disconnect between the United States and many of our European allies, who have declined to get directly engaged in this conflict. So we do expect security for the Strait of Hormuz, that critical oil thoroughfare, to be a major topic for discussion while this ceasefire continues to hold, if fragile for now.
Now, the president is attending this after some uncertainty as to whether he would even participate, saying that he was solely planning to attend out of respect for the host country for this year, President Erdogan of Turkey. Now, there are also going to be some major discussions, as you mentioned, about the future of Russia's war in Ukraine. And we have seen that conflict intensify in recent weeks, including that very deadly strike overnight in Kyiv.
The president, this weekend, speaking by phone separately with both President Zelenskyy of Ukraine and President Putin of Russia during a conversation that the Russians described as businesslike. So we'll be watching to see if there's any new momentum there.
Now, separately, the president is contending with some very fraught relationships for the alliance, including Spain's prime minister who's been critical of that war with Iran, as well as a feud with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and of course, the president taking aim at Keir Starmer, as well as Belgium, also a NATO member, after that World Cup.
We'll be watching that all very closely.
SCIUTTO: And of course, Meloni was quite public friends with Trump. They were quite friendly until, well, that broke up recently. Betsy Klein at the White House, thanks so much.
Still to come, how President Trump made more than a billion dollars himself on crypto when most of his Memecoin investors lost money, a lot of it. Plus, a white nationalist group marched through Washington right in the middle of America's 250th birthday celebrations. What message were those masked men trying to spread?
SANCHEZ: And later, your favorite barista may soon be serving social media on the side with your macchiato. Starbucks adding an incentive for employees to post on TikTok. We'll discuss next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:14:00]
SCIUTTO: A new analysis is quantifying exactly how much money people lost on an investment that has allowed President Trump himself to cash in big. The crypto analytics firm, Nansen, found that nearly a million investors who bought the president's Memecoin lost $3.8 billion through the month of June. Contrast that to the more than $500 million the president himself made from the Memecoin as detailed in the financial disclosure he released just last week.
The president earned most of his crypto money from transaction and licensing fees. Earlier today, he spoke about his interest in that venture.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I've become a big crypto guy only for one reason. If we don't have it, China is going to have it. And I got involved in a little bit for politics, you know, because I realized that a lot of people love crypto.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: The White House this past week rejected the notion that President Trump cashed in at the expense of his followers, saying his actions are taken in the best interest of the American people.
[14:15:00]
Let's discuss further now with Stephen Moore. He's a former Trump economic adviser. So Stephen, he says it's in the interest of the people, but the facts are simple. More than a million people lost money. The Memecoin itself dropped by 98 percent in value. I mean, that's like bubble burst. Yet he walks away richer and most people walk away poorer. Is that a good thing?
STEPHEN MOORE, FORMER TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISER: Certainly it's not, and it's not a good thing for anybody to lose money. I should say, Jim, that I know a lot of people have gotten really, really rich off the crypto market too. So most people --
SCIUTTO: Most people who invested in his Memecoin lost money.
MOORE: Oh, I know. I'm just saying that this has been -- I've always believed that this is a very risky, new kind of investment. And people took gambles. Some of them made a lot of money. We made a lot of millionaires with crypto. And in this case, this was a venture that failed. You know, Trump would have made a lot more money, by the way, if this had not. It's not like he wanted this to fail. I don't know all the specifics behind it, but I do feel very sorry for the people who lost money.
SCIUTTO: But what's different about it, he's not just any other person. He's the president of the United States with an enormous political following. People bought it because of him, right? And if you or I started a Memecoin, we wouldn't get that many people to invest and be able to walk away with $500 million in fees.
MOORE: Yeah.
SCIUTTO: Is that not taking advantage of the office?
MOORE: I think, look, this was something that people wanted to believe in these coins. I think the president, in good faith, really believed this would be a good investment. And it turned out not to be one. But again, a lot of people have made a lot of money off of these kinds of investments, too.
Cryptos are inherently risky. And you make this investment and you could get rich, but you can lose a lot of money, too.
SCIUTTO: Here's the thing, though. If this was isolated, you could say it was one bad investment. But you have the president and his sons investing in companies that have government business before them. You have a lot of questions about President Trump making trades prior to or connected to decisions he made that benefit those companies.
It's not just one bad crypto bet for the majority of people. It's a question of profiting from the office.
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: Give me an example of what you're talking about.
SCIUTTO: Sorry?
MOORE: Give me an example of what you're talking about.
SCIUTTO: Well, I mean, there's a Kazakh mining deal that his sons bought into months before the deal was signed. I mean, these are widely reported.
MOORE: What Trump's sons are doing, what the president is doing, those are not aligned in many cases. And Trump Industries is a big industry. It's a multibillion-dollar industry. I would separate out what the Trump Industries are doing versus what President Trump is doing in the Oval Office.
SCIUTTO: Well, but it goes right into his bank account as his financial disclosures reveal. I mean, he profits from it quite directly.
MOORE: But he's not directing any of that kind of investment. He's not running the companies.
SCIUTTO: He's not benefiting at all from his position as president of the United States?
MOORE: He's not using his position to get rich off of these investments, in my opinion.
SCIUTTO: In your opinion? OK. I mean, you --
MOORE: I mean, look, I don't know all the specifics of these. I do believe that this is a president who is doing amazing things to rebuild our economy. I feel very proud to have served as an economic adviser to him. I think he's doing, you know, we're seeing wealth gains for most American families. And we see this in all the improving economic statistics and the jobs numbers.
So I think this is a president who's done really well for the American people.
SCIUTTO: Well, as you know, the polling shows that most Americans believe their economic situation has not gotten better. I wonder if you, given, I mean, you're an economic adviser, but you know the politics of economics.
MOORE: Yeah.
SCIUTTO: Is this a political problem for the president and Republicans for him to be making so much money when most Americans say, hey, I'm not sharing in this bonanza?
MOORE: Well, you know, there's some new data we just released last week that shows the average family actually has gained $3,000 in income since Trump came in. The big losses that people suffered were under Biden. So there's been a real reversal of fortune.
SCIUTTO: As you know, incomes have not kept up with the rate of inflation. Income growth has not kept up with the rate of inflation.
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: No, that's my point. If you look at the median family income, those are people, Jim, right in the exact middle. Their incomes are up $3,100 in the first six months.
SCIUTTO: Then why are they rating their economic situation worse rather than better?
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: I think people are angry about -- look, people are angry about gas prices. People are angry about food prices. But the country is doing better, and I think we're going to see inflation continue to fall. I mean, I just had a friend today email me with a sign that showed that, in Texas, they're now paying $2.90 a gallon for gas, so gas prices are falling.
And I feel very bullish about the future of the U.S. economy.
SCIUTTO: OK. We'll see how the numbers back that up. Stephen Moore, appreciate you joining us.
MOORE: Thank you, Jim.
SCIUTTO: Still to come, it will likely be an emotional week in court for the family of Charlie Kirk. They are attending the hearing in person for his alleged killer. We're going to have the latest on what is happening inside that courtroom.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:24:41]
SANCHEZ: Happening now, prosecutors are giving a preview of their evidence against the man accused of killing conservative activist, Charlie Kirk. Suspect Tyler Robinson is at the hearing in Utah. These are live -- or actually these are images from earlier today. You see that he's seated on the right side of your screen in a lightly colored suit.
[14:25:00]
Robinson, of course, facing multiple charges, including aggravated murder for allegedly shooting Kirk in September of last year at an event at Utah Valley University. SCIUTTO: Yeah, amazing. The suspect in close proximity in that courtroom to family members of Kirk. Kirk's widow, Erika, she was seen at the courthouse along with Kirk's parents. You see them there, their arrival.
CNN's Nick Watt, he is outside the court in Provo. Nick, tell us the latest that's going on inside this hearing room.
NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, Jim, as you say, there are a lot of people in that room. Don Jr. and his entourage, Erika Kirk, her family, Charlie Kirk's parents and, of course, Tyler Robinson, the 23-year-old accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk 10 months ago or so, about a couple of miles from where this courthouse is. And it is not a big courtroom.
All of those people packed in there, listening to the first witness who was a Utah Valley University police officer on that day, a campus cop on that day. Now, he described hearing a gunshot, said it sounded more like a rifle, like the violence you would hear from a rifle rather than a handgun. At that point, Erika Kirk, who had been emotional most of the hearing, she actually had to leave the room at that point.
Now, this is not a trial. This is a preliminary hearing. It looks a bit like a trial in that you have this witness and then you have the cross-examination of that witness. And we saw a little bit of that. So, we had Tyler Robinson's lawyer was asking this cop, so, you guys saw a holster on the ground. Whatever happened to that? Did you ever identify it? No.
Then she said, you know, you just told us that you could tell the direction that the shot came from, but why didn't you put that in your police report? So, that's -- let's just play a little bit of what, of that cross-examination to give you a flavor of what's happening inside the court.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATHY NESTER, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: So, you never attended any kind of, I'll just use the word debrief, or meeting to talk about what the officers on scene were going to do that day to keep everybody safe?
CHRISTOPHER BAGLEY, FORMER SENIOR OFFICER, UTAH VALLEY UNIVERSITY: No, not that morning.
NESTER: Do you know if there was such a meeting?
BAGLEY: I don't know, because when I got there, it was starting to, people were throwing stuff down on the tent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATT: Now, there were about 3,000 people there, so there were a lot of witnesses. There's a lot of video, both from them and surveillance cameras. The prosecution say they have DNA on, for example, the trigger of the rifle. The defense says there's a bunch of DNA on that rifle.
The prosecution also has, and they will play during this hearing this week, a tape deposition with Tyler Robinson's roommate/romantic partner. And those messages back and forth, the prosecution basically say, are tantamount to a confession.
So, the defense attorney is picking holes, objecting to pretty much every photograph that is put into evidence, saying we don't know who took it, we don't know when it was taken. Prosecution is going to seek, they say, the death penalty in this case. But first, this judge has to rule that they have proved probable cause, that there is enough to take this to a trial. Guys?
SANCHEZ: Nick Watt, thank you so much for the update live from Provo, Utah.
Still to come, a group of white nationalists marching through Washington on the 4th of July. We're going to talk about what the Patriot Front is, and what the Trump administration is saying about their demonstration.
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