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Trump Hosts Private Dinner For His Top Crypto Coin Investors; Soon: U.S., Iran To Meet For Nuclear Talks; Kid Cudi Testifies Diddy Broke Into His Home, Set Car On Fire. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired May 23, 2025 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:32:06]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for joining me on CNN This Morning. It is 31 minutes past the hour. And here is what's happening right now. A, that beautiful sunrise over Chicago, the best coast, of course, the Trump administration. However, barring Harvard from enrolling international students, the move comes after the university refused to bow to White House demands. So all international students who currently attend Harvard may be forced to transfer. The university is calling this unlawful.

The Justice Department investigating the murders of two Israeli embassy staff members as both an act of terrorism and a hate crime. Acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. Jeanine Pirro says the murder charges filed against the suspect are initial and more may be added as the investigation plays out.

And there are only about a dozen cancellations and delays at Newark Liberty International Airport so far this morning, but they are expected to grow throughout the day. Some Memorial Day weekend travelers are arriving up to six hours before their flight. The FAA is reducing the number of flights at Newark to counter runway construction, staffing shortages and recurring equipment issues.

And a night of black ties and billionaires now raising serious ethics questions after President Trump's crypto ball. Two hundred twenty of the Trump meme coin buyers got to have dinner with the President over the past few weeks. They dumped an estimated $148 million into his cryptocurrency. Their identities were not revealed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): This might be close to the top of the most corrupt things that the President has done. You know, there are 200 plus anonymous individuals who paid their way to meet with President Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: This is what the White House had to say about those concerns. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This question has been raised with the President. I have also addressed the dinner tonight. The President is attending it in his personal time. It is not a White House dinner. It's not taking place here at the White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: The group chat is back. I think it's interesting that she's making that distinction because optics not great, right? Rob, can I start with you? Because I don't know how people justify the meme coin thing.

ROB BLUEY, PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE DAILY SIGNAL: Sure. Well, so I think two things can be true at the same time. On the one hand, I think it's exciting that President Trump is -- is focusing so much on crypto and -- and the promising future. And -- and there's obviously a big change between what Biden did and what Trump did on that front.

At the same time, he has held out that he wants to be the most transparent administration in history. The challenge that you have, Audie, is that -- that these meme coins, there's an amount -- anonymity. So unless they self-disclose who they are, it's difficult for --

CORNISH: But also they're interested, right? They're like private, his own time. And then yet you hear about people who are there, Justin Sun, Chinese-born crypto billionaire. In February, the SEC actually asked a court to pause a lawsuit filed against him and his company in 2023. Needless to say, he's one of the top purchasers of this meme coin. So why are you laughing already? I didn't even get the question out.

[06:35:15]

CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I was thinking -- I was thinking, remember the first term when we all lost our mind because he was hosting events at his golf club? Now he's literally like, if you will pay me, you can meet with me. We just can't do it at the White House. You can be as transparent as you want to be.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: So there was a White House tour as a part of this --

CORNISH: It was for the top 25 donors, yes.

KUCINICH: Yes. So -- so --

ROCHA: You had to make the top 25 to get the tour?

KUCINICH: Yes. Did you not get it?

ROCHA: I did not get in this. No. Not even went to Harvard for just a little bit, but I didn't get in. KUCINICH: No, but -- but this is -- this is just one thing, right? There was a great "Wall Street Journal" piece, I think it was yesterday, about not only that, you have Mar-a-Lago's dues apparently going up, you have this other -- the other golf clubs charging more. It just -- it is -- it is vast how this President appears to be profiting this round.

CORNISH: Yes. Can I ask one more question, Chuck, before we go? I feel like for "Politico" is watching this, they are now seeing a path to getting a ton of money into your coffers that no one knows where it comes from. And if there's one thing I can say people have embraced across the board, it's what I'll call fundraising innovation. And do you think you're going to see why not an ActBlue coin or whatever other kinds of coins as basically the way to get to the candidate.

ROCHA: It's a great question, because in politics, as you're self- describing, money always finds a way. And, you know, it's kind of like a river running through rocks. It's always going to find its way to get to the powerful people. Will we get to the time when bitcoins and all this wealth, you've already seen these crypto folks take that money, put it into Super PACs and have giant influence. And I think it's just growing as their popularity grows.

CORNISH: Yes. And people maybe are like crypto, I don't know, so I don't care about that. But you will be hearing more about it.

Group chat, stick around. We've got a lot more to talk about. Today, for instance, the U.S. and Iran, their negotiators are going to meet for a fifth time as they try to come to a nuclear agreement. The main sticking point there, Tehran's uranium enrichment program. So Iran's foreign minister tweeting overnight that figuring out the path to a deal is not rocket science. Zero nuclear weapons. We do have a deal. Zero enrichment. We do not have a deal.

CNN senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman joins me now from Rome. Good morning, Ben. And I wanted to ask you first, of course, about Iran's supreme leader. That's kind of where all of this gets back to. Is there anything likely to come out of this today?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Expectations, Audie, are fairly low at this meeting. This is contrast with previous meetings where the optics coming out of them were more optimistic. In this case, certainly, it does appear that the Iranians are increasingly frustrated with the mixed messages coming out of the Trump administration. And it all comes down to this question of uranium enrichment.

U.S. officials have in the past said perhaps they will allow a certain level of uranium enrichment. The JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was concluded between the United States and Iran, in addition to Russia, China, the U.K., France and Germany back in 2015, allowed for Iran to enrich up to 3.67 percent, enrich uranium.

Since then, since the Trump administration pulled out of that agreement, the Iranians are enriching uranium up to 60 percent, which is close to nuclear-grade uranium. Now, the Iranians, as we heard from Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, they say that enrichment is a red line, that they have invested billions of dollars in their nuclear program.

They say it's for peaceful means, for energy production, as well as medical uses. But if the Americans insist that the Iranians completely end their nuclear program, then there simply will be no deal. And it doesn't appear that the Trump administration, which has changed its position multiple times on this, but now insists that there will be no enrichment whatsoever. If that's the case, there will be no deal. Audie?

CORNISH: Ben Wedeman in Rome. Ben, thank you.

Now, another high-profile witness took the stand in the trial of music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs. Rapper Kid Cudi testified, Thursday, and told prosecutors about an incident where he alleged Combs broke into his house in Hollywood. Cudi remembered calling Combs and asking him, mother F-er, are you in my house?

Now, a few weeks after the break-in, Cudi's Porsche was set on fire with a Molotov cocktail in the driveway outside his house. A hole was cut open in the roof. Cudi testified meeting with Diddy alone a few days after the fire and said this, quote, Sean Combs was standing there staring out the window with his hands behind his back like a Marvel supervillain and described the meeting as off-putting.

[06:40:15]

After several hours of testimony, Cudi got on social media to talk about the experience.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT "KID CUDI" MESCUDI, RAPPER: I just want to say thank you so much, man. People have been hitting me up the past week, just checking in and -- and even today, and it just -- it really means a lot to me, man. This is a stressful situation. I'm glad it's behind me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining me now to talk about all of this, Alyse Adamson, former federal prosecutor. Alyse, you and I always, when we see each other, we're like, what is going on in this trial now? With this situation, you have Kid Cudi. He's -- he's not the main victim. He's adding important context. And in this case, it was the relationship he had with Cassie Ventura and the, quote unquote, consequences of that. What did you make of his testimony?

ALYSE ADAMSON, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Yes, Audie, it was explosive and pun completely intended there. He is now helping the prosecution prove up this RICO. Last time we spoke --

CORNISH: RICO, you said, again, the criminal enterprise aspect of it.

ADAMSON: That's right. So there's five charges in this case, and one of them is racketeering conspiracy. We call that a RICO. And in order to prove that, one of the things the prosecution must prove is that there were these underlying criminal acts that were being committed by the corrupt enterprise, this Combs enterprise.

So it needs to be at the direction of Combs with some other associates, and they need to be doing these predicate acts. Arson is one of the things that's charged in the indictment.

CORNISH: Definitely an act. That sounds like it could be it.

ADAMSON: Definitely an act under the RICO statute. So they had to get this testimony out. And what Cudi described was, quite frankly, terrifying. Now, also in the indictment is the means and methods of how this corrupt enterprise operates through threats, violence. Arson was also mentioned as one of the violent acts that carries out this corrupt enterprise.

So Kit Cudi's testimony laid the foundation for a lot of this RICO charge. Now I am going to say the prosecution is going to have to follow up with more because --

CORNISH: Yes.

ADAMSON: -- the defense was really effective on this.

CORNISH: Let's talk about that, because then they started getting into kind of the psychology of the relationship. And you had, I -- I believe, Cudi saying things like, oh, well, she lied to me about this, or she played us like we were two men, just kind of. And I was like, what -- what does this have to do with arson? What kind of effect can that have in this conversation where there's eight men on the jury.

ADAMSON: Yes. Audie, first of all, it has nothing to do with arson. You're absolutely right. But it was a defense tactic. They shot their shot, as the kids would say, because they're trying to paint Ventura as a woman who had free will. That was in their opening statement. She had agency. And so what they said to Cudi was, well, she played you, right? And he said, yes. And it's like, just like she played Mr. Combs. And he said, yes.

So they made it seem like a love triangle that Cassie was somehow in control of. And that is the impression that they kind of have to leave with the jury, that Ms. Ventura was making all these decisions on her own, and she wasn't, in fact, being coerced. So I think that was important for the defense to do.

Now, whether or not the jury decides to credit Cassie or to see Cassie as that individual, well --

CORNISH: Yes, like you manipulated yourself into your ex-boyfriend getting his car bombed.

ADAMSON: Correct.

CORNISH: This case is supposed to be wrapped up early July. Is that possible? What more is to be done for this prosecution?

ADAMSON: Yes, I mean, it's a question that we're asking ourselves --

CORNISH: Yes,

ADAMSON: -- in the legal community.

CORNISH: Yes.

ADAMSON: Because it's like, wow, you've got all your star witnesses who have already testified. But I just want to go back to this RICO, this racketeering conspiracy. There's a lot of dots that still need to be connected. Some of it might be a little boring. I think we can expect to see records being entered into evidence. We don't know more of the e-mails or the text messages that were sent amongst Combs' employees. Because remember, for racketeering conspiracy --

CORNISH: I got it.

ADAMSON: -- we need co-conspirators. We haven't really seen enough of that.

CORNISH: And co-conspirators have not been charged, which has been a red flag, right? People are like, if this is an enterprise, why hasn't anyone else been charged?

ADAMSON: That's right. You don't usually see a RICO where someone's in a RICO on their own.

CORNISH: By themselves, yes.

ADAMSON: By themselves. You can have unindicted co-conspirators -- co- conspirators. And in the indictment, they mention associates known and unknown. It is odd to only have one individual. But the whole purpose of a RICO is to take down those people at the top, because they usually have lower underlings committing the crimes on their behalf.

That sort of happens here. I don't think anybody believes that Sean Combs threw a Molotov cocktail into Kid Cudi's car himself. But Combs did participate in a lot of this criminal conduct personally, which you also don't typically see in RICO cases. So all that to say --

CORNISH: So this case is not as easy as it sounds for the prosecution.

[06:44:59]

ADAMSON: No, it's a very technically complicated case. And this fact pattern is difficult, which is why the defense chose to take it to trial. I think they had a shot of acquittal or at least a hung jury, which would be a win for the defense.

CORNISH: OK. Oh, my God. You packed a lot into there, Alyse. OK. Alyse Adamson is host of the At-lyse You Heard It Here, very clever podcast. Also, our own Laura Coates has a podcast called Trial by Diddy. I hope you'll check that out as well.

Straight ahead on CNN this morning, a business jet crashing into a home leaves a trail of destruction. What we're learning about those moments right before the crash.

Plus, should have gotten a license to -- license to ill the Beastie Boys fighting Chili's over unauthorized use of one of their songs.

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[06:50:16]

CORNISH: Welcome back and a warm welcome to this group of students from Penn State in our studio this morning. God love them. They want to go into journalism and I can't stop them.

This weekend, on a more serious note, this weekend marks five years since the death of George Floyd. And this was a major moment that sparked a nationwide reckoning over police reform in America.

Just days ahead of this, though, the Trump administration's DOJ announced it would step back from federal investigations into police departments accused of civil rights violations. Police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis were at the center of these efforts. This is what the mayor of Minneapolis had to say about the move.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR JACOB FREY (D), MINNEAPOLIS: Minneapolis is serious about our commitment to police reform, even if the President of the United States is not. The bottom line is, regardless of what the White House does here, we are moving forward with these necessary reforms anyway.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CORNISH: So it's time to lawyer up with Elliot Williams. He's a CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. Elliot, this was such, I can't believe it's been five years.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Five years.

CORNISH: And I think for these students, it would have been most of their young adult lives. But one of the big things it was supposed to bring was accountability police reform to these departments. And the DOJ was the mechanism to do it.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Well, so folks may not know the Civil Rights Division, the Justice Department has the ability and the authority to work with state and local law -- law enforcement officials to craft these agreements over future policing. It happens across administrations, has for quite some time.

Now, certainly when new presidential administrations come in, they shift their focus a little bit, and that's OK. Now, here, what you're seeing is these agreements that were agreed to by Minneapolis and other cities.

CORNISH: Yes. The police departments, the mayors, they all get together in order to move forward. WILLIAMS: The city council, and one, make for better policing, but also two, it's good P.R. and good for the community to have the police department on the side of the community. So a lot of these are being suspended here. Yes.

CORNISH: Yes. It will be interesting going forward because so many police departments also face massive lawsuits.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: And the expense was the thing that was driving some cities to get involved with these. I want to talk about graduation season now.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: Because a central theme coming up in a lot of law school graduations has been the importance of the rule of law, right?

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: People talk about these rollbacks in the industry or executive orders. How -- what do you make of how you see it's coming up?

WILLIAMS: So the most remarkable and the most 2025 thing possible is somehow the words rule of law have become politically radioactive. All the rule of law is --

CORNISH: A lawfare.

WILLIAMS: -- and law -- well --

CORNISH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- well, lawfare is sort of a slur, but rule of law is that all individuals are accountable and that all laws are evenly enforced. It's a basic concept and basic principle. Now that's starting to show up in graduation speeches quite a lot.

CORNISH: Can I play one for you?

WILLIAMS: Let -- let's hear it. Let me see if we have one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Will we submit to the powerful and the strong, or will we continue to be ruled by the law?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are officers of the court, guardians of the rule of law, with the fate of our democracy in your hands.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are living at an inflection point in American history. Our democracy, our rights, and the systems that we rely on to protect them are under threat.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CORNISH: Graduation speeches, they're -- they're always high stakes.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: This -- this one feels like an inflection point.

WILLIAMS: It is an inflection point. And if you notice, a lot of the places where the most high profile graduation speeches are, are very prestigious universities. And who's under fire from the President right now, a lot of very prestigious universities.

Now, again, they're just-- they're stating a basic fact, but even that concept, because it's sort of a finger wag at the President and a lot of what we've seen since January 20th, there's this tension showing up in these graduation speeches. And the President himself issued a True Social statement calling them, blasting them as leftist speakers and so on.

CORNISH: OK, last one. I can't stand it because I know you planned it. This copyright lawsuit between the Beastie Boys and Chili's. It's over a social media ad that the band says parodied their hit "Sabotage" video.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: The Beastie Boys actually have agreed to settle, which surprised me. What do you make of -- of that?

WILLIAMS: Well, I mean, I make of it that you got to fight for your right to use someone else's intellectual property in your, you know, in your advertisements. Here's the -- what's fascinating here is that the Beastie Boys have a policy, a practice of not using their music, not licensing it to any commercial.

In fact, Adam Yauch, one of the Beastie Boys members in his will has a provision saying, don't use our likeness here. What -- what Chili's did was spoof the "Sabotage" song and video --

[06:55:02]

CORNISH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- and use this music.

CORNISH: Which is not uncommon for corporations to do to --

WILLIAMS: Which got to pay for it.

CORNISH: Yes, but well, they also sometimes ask music to be created. That sounds suspiciously like the music they want.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: It sounds like they crossed a line here.

WILLIAMS: They really did. And they didn't pay for it. You know, this started my son, I think I mentioned this to you, my son, my 11-year- old asked me the other day, can you use someone's music in a stadium or a commercial or whatever? No, you have to pay for every use of it here. And because of how explicit the Beasties were about the use of their likeness, their image, their music, this was a no, no. So they settled it out of court. And here we go. So it's over. No sleep until --

CORNISH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- the bottomless mimosas show up.

CORNISH: Exactly. I also learned that your child is asking about copyright law. So to me, that really is -- this is why we have lawyer up.

WILLIAMS: You know, you know, no sleep until --

CORNISH: OK.

WILLIAMS: -- we talk about the law.

CORNISH: Elliott Williams, thank you so much. You can go now. It's 55 minutes past the hour. Here is our morning roundup.

OK, right now, the NTSB trying to figure out what actually caused a small plane to crash in a San Diego neighborhood. This was minutes after takeoff. The jet hit some power lines. It came crashing into a hall.

Now, the jet fuel actually rained down, igniting several cars. Investigators are looking to see if the weather was actually a factor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For 0955 Zulu with wind calm, visible one half and indefinite ceiling 200.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, that doesn't sound great but we'll give it a go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Six people were on board. Officials say they do not believe anyone survived.

And a third person has been charged with helping 10 inmates escape from a New Orleans jail last week. A 59-year-old woman accused of sending money via a cell phone app to one of the inmates. Five of those escapees still have not been caught.

And Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. hasn't shied away from hot button issues, especially when it comes to the food you eat and the medicines you take.

Now, his Make America Healthy Again commission is releasing a new report on toxins in those items and how it's contributing to a rise in chronic illnesses, particularly in children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: People don't understand that these processed foods are poison. They're more -- they're more and more -- and you're watching -- you're watching companies now that are changing their ingredients because of this movement and are making good food more available to Americans because they're demanding it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Group chat, at what point does this crash into corporations, businesses that support the Trump administration? At what point are you going into the area of commercial life where you're going to have businesses saying, well, wait a second, like, how far is MAHA going to go?

KUCINICH: Or other cabinet secretaries or agencies.

CORNISH: Oh, what do you mean?

KUCINICH: Like -- like the EPA is --

CORNISH: Yes.

KUCINICH: -- is -- is not putting more regulations on things like that.

CORNISH: Right. It's deregulating.

KUCINICH: It's deregulating. You're already seeing their stakeholders scream about this. So, yes, that -- that -- that is the open question of the many questions that came out of this report.

CORNISH: What do you think the impact could be in terms of reform and obstacles to reform? So very much, it's clear that RFK wants to move forward. Do you get a sense that there are Republicans to follow or objections?

ROCHA: Look, I think that there's a lot of these corporations. Matter of fact, all these corporations that make this food all support normally Republicans and this White House, and they openly have wrote checks to say that that's how much they love them.

I could remember a time when a black first lady said we should eat whole foods and maybe plant a garden and stop eating so many potato chips, and Republicans called her a communist. I'm just saying.

CORNISH: So -- so I guess you shouldn't go after school lunch, Rob. That's what we're learning. Stay away from the school lunches.

BLUEY: I think there's a role probably for the government, but as a conservative, I would like to see people make personal decisions and change their habits on a family level. And let's make sure that they're feeding their kids the best foods. I mean, that's what we try to do in our family. And I hope that R -- RFK and the MAHA agenda really inspires people to do that.

CORNISH: We're going to do a lightning round with what we're keeping an eye on. And Rob, let me start with you.

BLUEY: Sure. Well, your colleague Jake Tapper's new book really made a splash this week. And now Senator Ron Johnson is calling on those Biden cabinet members to come before his committee over the next two weeks to testify as to what they knew over the course of the four years that he was in office.

CORNISH: OK. Chuck?

ROCHA: We found out yesterday that it cost the government costs us 3.6 cents to make a penny. And they're going to phase out the penny. I just want to make sure they don't get rid of them penny machines at the grocery store where I put my pennies in and they give me real money back.

CORNISH: Yeah, I think there's been a lot of headlines that say, like stop making sense, that kind of thing. I appreciate you and you, Jackie.

KUCINICH: I mean, big legislation passed this week that usually members go back home and they hear about it from voters, what are town halls going to be like? And if they're -- are they even going to happen?

CORNISH: Town halls not improving. That situation still tough for lawmakers. I want to thank you guys. We talked about a lot.

[07:00:03]

ROCHA: Memorial Day weekend coming up.

CORNISH: Memorial Day weekend coming up. I'll be here for you guys.

ROCHA: Don't go to New Jersey.

CORNISH: So I hope you'll come back and wake up with us. I'm Audie Cornish. And CNN News Central is going to start right now.