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Vance's Strategy Session Delayed or Moved; Avi Loeb is Interviewed about UFO Debate; Julie Margetta Morgan is Interviewed about School Supply Price Hikes; CNN Rides a Jordanian Air Aid Drop to Gaza. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired August 07, 2025 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:30:25]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. And thank you for joining me on CNN THIS MORNING.

It's now 29 minutes past the hour. And here's what's happening right now.

President Trump's tariffs now in effect. Just after midnight, dozens of new levies went into place. Virtually every country has a 10 percent tariff on it, while others, talk about Brazil, Laos, they're facing even higher rates. President Trump says the U.S. has already raised more than $100 billion in tax revenue.

And the vice president heads to Indiana today to meet with the governor and Republican leaders there. And it comes as the White House is pushing deep red states to redraw their congressional maps ahead of the midterm election.

Firefighters in central California facing harsh conditions this morning as they try to get a handle on the Gifford Fire. It's now burned more than 91,000 acres. Temperatures are expected to peak today around 100 degrees. The heat, dry air and steep terrain are complicating efforts.

CNN has learned intense media scrutiny caused the Trump administration officials to move, cancel or reschedule a strategy session last night to discuss their response to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Vice President J.D. Vance was reportedly hosting the dinner at his residence. The idea was to get all the top administration officials on the same page to deal with the Epstein fallout. It was also viewed as an opportunity for Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to clear the air, since they've been at odds over the whole thing. According to the VP and his boss, an Epstein strategy session was never even planned.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's completely fake news. We're not meeting to talk about the Epstein situation. DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look, the whole thing is

a hoax. It's put out by the Democrats because we've had the most successful six months in the history of our country. And that's just a way of trying to divert attention to something that's total bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, as we said, that meeting appears to have been moved or rescheduled because of all the scrutiny. But Vance and Bondi were actually spotted leaving the White House last night. And while President Trump thinks the entire scandal is, as he says, BS, it's all too real for Epstein's victims.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALICIA ARDEN, EPSTEIN ACCUSER: When I see it on the news every day, Jeffrey's in my brain, and I see him again and again, and I remember what he did to me in that hotel room.

It's very upsetting to me. And I cry with tears, like I am now, in my living room watching this all the time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: The group chat is back.

Part of having some of these folks in the administration is, they were also the proponents of these kinds of conversations when they were in the sort of social media attention economy. So, there was always going to be some connection there. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Like, there was always -- it was going to follow them because you're Bongino, you said you were going to go into the system and, like, find out what happened.

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think there was a real issue here where there was a lot of promises made that then once folks were in power, they were not either able or interested in delivering on in the timetable that many of the activists that they sort of came to power, you know, with as their supporters were asking for.

And the reason why this is stickier, I think, than many of the other times where Trump has done things that his base is not always loved, and they generally will sort of come with him. They will say, you know what, I trust you. We were talking about earlier with tariffs. You saw this around things like the decision to bomb nuclear sites in Iran. There are plenty of people in Trump's base who would say, you know, that's not something I'm really interested in doing, but he does it and they go, OK, well, let's just trust this guy.

But on this one, he ran on the argument, I'm an outsider and I'm going to go take -- once I get inside, I'm going to give you guys what you're asking for. And by right now being that insider and not delivering, this is something that runs really core to a key sort of attribute that his supporters are expecting from him. AARON BLAKE, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Two points on this. One is

that, I think we generally think of the Jeffrey Epstein saga and the conspiracy theories around these as being kind of the domain of like these MAGA influencers in the far right and provocateurs. The kind of general thrust of these ideas, the idea that the federal government is hiding something or that maybe, you know, Epstein's suicide wasn't actually what they say it was, these are ideas that are broadly kind of interesting to people. And there may be very few people who truly endorse them, but huge majorities of people in Reuters/Ipsos polling at least align with the ideas that these probably happen.

The second thing here is that, this is a situation in which the Republican Party, I don't think they're necessarily judging Trump very poorly on this right now, but they have a lot of questions.

[06:35:04]

This is not the transparency that they were promised. It gives them reason to be suspicious that maybe this is kind of a normal political administration and not what it promised to be.

: And these are not the actions of an administration with nothing to hide, right? You're moving a convicted sex trafficker, the number one accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, to a minimum security prison.

CORNISH: You're talking about Ghislaine Maxwell, right.

DANIEL KOH, HOST, "THE PEOPLE'S CABINET" PODCAST: Exactly. With -- with no traditional border fencing and yoga and Pilates. That does not sound like somebody who is not -- it's not a suspicious action.

To the point about polling. He's got a 21 percent approval rating overall on his handling of this. He has less than 50 percent support among Republicans, which, obviously, is -- is pretty unprecedented. And people are seeing this, right? They're -- he's calling it a hoax. Like, they're having secret strategy meetings.

CORNISH: Yes. I'm going to be curious if there's infighting over time. I'm going to be curious if someone like Dan Bongino stays in the administration. There's a lot of speculation about the toll this is taking right now.

You guys, I want you to stick around. There's a lot more to discuss because we were just talking about conspiracies and talking about hiding things. So now we're going to talk about aliens because there's been reports of mysterious drones with strange lights, unidentified objects flying above, and that feeling that you're only getting part of the story. Basically, a new NASA photo showing this circled object, believed to be a comet, is raising questions. At least one member of Congress has called on NASA to explain exactly what it is. And there's one prominent scientist, Avi Loeb, who says it looks more like an alien spacecraft. And that's gaining traction on social media. Some people are actually calling on NASA to share more information.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ROSS COULTHART, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: If anyone from NASA, JPL, planetary science sees this post, can the Juno mission actually be extended to investigate? Would that even be possible based on the current orbit and fuel? I'd love to hear from the real experts on that one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK, so we're bringing in Harvard Astronomy Department Chair Avi Loeb.

Thanks so much for being with us.

I want to start with this. This thing we're talking about. It's the three eye atlas comet. NASA is like, look, it's got an icy nucleus. It's got that cloud of gas and dust. We've got the Hubble. We've got the Webb. They've all -- these telescopes have shown that there's no strange signals, no maneuvers, nothing artificial. Why do you think it could be artificial or alien technology?

AVI LOEB, SCIENCE PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, the brightness -- thanks for having me, by the way.

The brightness of the object implies a diameter of 20 kilometers. And there is not enough rocky material in interstellar space to deliver such a giant object per decade. The -- it takes 10,000 years for that much mass to arrive to the inner part of the solar system.

Moreover, the trajectory of this object is very fine tuned. It lies in the plane of the orbits of the planets around the sun to within five degrees. The chance for that to happen is one in 500. And moreover, it passes very close to Jupiter, Mars and Venus, with a chance of one per 20,000 if you just change the arrival time randomly. And it will arrive closest to the sun when the earth would be on the opposite side. We won't be able to observe it. But that's the perfect time for it to maneuver.

And so, we just need to watch it. I'm not saying it's an alien technology, I'm just saying it doesn't look like a very common thing. And actually, the glow that is around this object, usually for comets, you see a trailing tail behind the object. And here, the glow from the Hubble Space Telescope image is actually in front of the object. We've never seen such a thing. A comet doesn't have glow in front of it.

CORNISH: So -- but can you tell me why your position on this is so different from NASA's, and why, in your paper about it, you kind of talk about this as a thought experiment, a pedagogical (ph) kind of exercise.

You're -- you're casting doubt. And then NASA is saying it's not true. So, why keep talking about it this way?

LOEB: Well, science is about asking any question that you like. It's not that there is no censorship on the type of question that is being asked. And the scientific method is about using data to select the correct answer. Now, assuming in advance that you know the answer is not a productive

approach. We need to collect enough data. And, you know, there should be a scale that classifies objects between zero, where it's obvious that they are natural, when there -- there is a cometary tail behind them, they don't have a special orbit. There is nothing unusual about them. And a ten, when it's definitely an artificial object where it maneuvers, there are some artificial lights, and we should look carefully at any interstellar object that comes into the solar system.

We are in a new era now that the Rubin Observatory in Chile will find a new interstellar object every few months.

[06:40:04]

And I'm suggesting to leave all possibilities on the table because we launched probes to interstellar space. Voyager, Pioneer, New Horizons. And why should we assume that we are the only one in our cosmic neighborhood? We should just check by looking at data.

CORNISH: Yes.

LOEB: It's not a matter of opinion. It's not a matter of NASA having authority on this matter.

CORNISH: And I hope to see that data soon.

Avi Loeb, thanks so much.

LOEB: Thanks for having me.

CORNISH: I wanted to bring you guys in.

You would think there's no political angle to this, but ha, ha, ha. The director of national intelligence, Tulsi gabbard, was on a podcast where she was asked about the issue of unidentified objects, which we all know in the recent years lawmakers have said, look, the Intelligence Committee does have a category of unidentified things. This is a thing we're going to admit exists. And here is how she's talked about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've had some declassification of some very strange videos that look like they are, you know, unidentified flying objects. Is there anything in the files that you think you could find, or you have found?

TULSI GABBARD, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Nothing that I'm prepared to talk about today.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh. So, watch this space?

GABBARD: Say what?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Watch this space? GABBARD: We are continuing -- I'm just going to say this. Yes, we're continuing to look for the truth and share that truth with the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOH: Look, I'm a huge Trekkie and "Star Trek: First Contact," they avoided World War III because they made first contact with Vulcans, and it united the world in a way that they couldn't ever. We are more divided than ever. If this is true, that would be great.

CORNISH: OK, let's rally around the flag against the aliens.

BLAKE: I was going to say, are we -- are we going to invoke the Alien Enemies Act again? I feel like this might be more applicable to this situation.

CORNISH: Yes, though, for the record, I think my kids want to join the Space Force.

BLAKE: There we go.

CORNISH: So, there is definitely hunger for -- for preparedness.

ANDERSON: Great. I'm -- I'm all about -- I'm all about more kids being interested in space. I always get concerned when you hear about things like potential cuts to programs. I mean, the -- the explorer spirit is very important. And I like that there are debates. Science is about debate. Science isn't about, well, we're all right, you're all wrong. I -- I like that this is the chair of the astronomy department at Harvard challenging consensus.

CORNISH: All right, you guys, after the break on CNN THIS MORNING, ICE is planning to hire 10,000 new agents. There's going to be a change they're making to make that goal easier to achieve.

Plus, CNN flies to Gaza on an aid airdrop. We're going to bring that to you next.

And we want to know what's in your group chat. Send us to us now on X. We're going to be talking about ours after this.

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[06:47:16]

CORNISH: It's now 46 minutes past the hour. Here is your morning roundup.

President Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet in the coming days. That's according to a top Kremlin aide after his top negotiator made progress with Russia's president yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't call it a breakthrough. I mean we've been working on this a long time.

There's a very good chance that we could be ending the -- ending the round, ending the end of that road.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: As that meeting was happening, hundreds of residents in the Ukrainian city of Kherson were evacuated, as Russian drones and shelling hit that city. Trump has set a deadline for tomorrow for Russia to agree to a ceasefire or face new sanctions.

And today the man accused of killing four people and leading police on a week-long manhunt is due in court. The Tennessee man allegedly killed the parents and two relatives of a baby found abandoned that same day. The 28-year-old is a convicted felon, has ties to a violent street gang and was apparently dating one victim's sister.

$10 million. That's what it will cost to restore a confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. It's part of the White House plan aimed at bringing back these types of monuments. The Pentagon says it will take about two years to restore it.

And as parents are doing the math to get their kids school supply lists filled, President Trump's tariffs are going to be hitting stores. Two-thirds of back to school shoppers say they went shopping before mid-July this year. That's up 12 points from last year. And more than half say they got an early start to get ahead of tariff- induced price hikes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The tariffs are definitely a little scary. We're trying to get ahead of time because we don't know what's going to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Eighty-five percent of parents said tariffs came to mind when planning their back to school shopping, according to a survey by "U.S. News."

Julie Margetta Morgan is here. She's president of the century foundation.

Welcome to CNN THIS MORNING. Thanks for coming in.

JULIE MARGETTA MORGAN, PRESIDENT, THE CENTURY FOUNDATION: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

CORNISH: So, I didn't know this, but the average family spends more than $800 on its back to school budget. And I only know because we went to look at this number and we found this year it's a little bit less. That number is down. But that's a hefty budget to try and manage. How are they doing it?

MORGAN: Yes. You know, I think families are just doing their best to get by this year. I think we have to remember the baseline here is not just about the tariffs on back to school, but it's really about the effects of inflation over the last few years. The Century Foundation did a poll recently where we found that families are really just trying to get by. We have one in four families saying that they've skipped meals to pay their bills. We've got about 40 percent of families saying that they're dipping into savings or that they're using credit cards or other debt to pay their bills. So, people are really just trying to make it today.

[06:50:02]

CORNISH: So, Amazon reports 175 percent spike in online back to school sales during July's Prime Day event. A big thing they love to promote. I assume retailers are taking advantage of this. But we were talking during the break, if you've got a little kid and you buy them sneakers now, they're going to need sneakers in like six months. Like, you are not somehow getting ahead of it completely.

MORGAN: Yes, this is the struggle for every mom or dad, right? Over the summer, you're trying to take a look at your supplies. Do you have the sneakers? Do you have the t-shirts? Do you have the shorts? And --

CORNISH: And with some schools, pencils and paper.

MORGAN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

CORNISH: Like, you're buying supplies for the classroom.

MORGAN: And as you know, those supplies disappear throughout the year, right? So, families are trying their best to get ahead of it. But I think we all know there are going to be sneakers that need to be bought in August and November and maybe in January. And, you know, the best we can tell with the effects of these tariffs is that those prices are going to continue to rise over time.

CORNISH: Yes, for older students, for example, the Yale Budget Lab estimates that in the short term you're going to see prices rise on computers, right? That could go up 18 percent. Clothing, 37 percent. And we haven't even talked about whether or not these talks with China are going to go anywhere, where a lot of these supplies come from.

What are you going to be looking for? I mean, are people going to, like, Klarna and, you know, short term pay their pencils and crayons? What am I looking at?

MORGAN: I think we ought to be really worried about that. We're already seeing the use of buy now, pay later and (INAUDIBLE) to pay for basics like groceries. So, I think we really should be watching how this affects family's budgets and how much of that ends up on debt.

I think the other thing that we'll be watching for is how this is affecting both educators and school districts. You mentioned laptops. That's an expense for families, but it's also an expense for school districts. So, when the price of laptops are already up, you know, around 10 percent for some companies, and expected to raise quite a bit more, that's going to be an expense for districts that are trying to keep up with replacement laptops that they purchased, you know, maybe during the pandemic that need new batteries or that have gotten lost in a backpack.

CORNISH: Yes.

MORGAN: So -- and then we're also going to look at the effect on teachers, right? Because when school districts slow down their spending, and when families are pulling back a little bit and saying, maybe I shouldn't buy that extra pack of crayons, it's often teachers who are filling that gap right out of their own pockets.

CORNISH: All right, thank you so much for sharing this with us. I know a lot of parents are going to appreciate it.

Now we're going to turn to international news. The dire situation in Gaza, where the interior ministry says the aid being airlifted into the conclave represents, quote, "only a drop in the ocean of humanitarian needs."

Now, for the first time on CNN, our correspondent shares details of his ride along one of these humanitarian flights. This is CNN chief global affairs correspondent Matthew Chance is here now.

Matthew, first, just tell me a little bit about the flight. How does it work?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Hey, Audie.

Well, I mean, it works that you've got these big transport aircraft behind me. These are from the Jordanian Air Force, but there are other countries as well, like Germany and Belgium and the United Arab Emirates and France and Britain. They're all sort of taking part in this international humanitarian effort to drop aid in Gaza. And they're loaded up with pallets in -- in the back cargo space.

You then take off from this airport in Amman, which is in Jordan, head over towards the Gaza Strip. The back opens up and then the aid pallets, they parachute off into the waiting crowds below. And you can see on the tailfin of this aircraft there, there's a very idealistic scene painted of a Jordanian transporter, actually one of the Jordanian transporters, dropping humanitarian aid into Gaza. And people are gratefully receiving it.

The reality is much more chaotic, much more violent. Remember, there's an intense humanitarian starvation crisis underway in Gaza. And so, people are absolutely desperate for any kind of food that they can get. And so, these aid drops result in chaos on the ground, people scrambling, violence. There have been multiple stabbings of people as they try to get their hands on the aid packages. Also, people have been killed by the -- the aid pallets actually hitting them on the head as they drop down.

And so, look, this is a far from perfect means of delivering humanitarian assistance into that crisis zone. But having said that, there is intense starvation that's gathering pace in the Gaza Strip. And so, you know, today, for instance, we delivered six and a half tons of powdered milk and tinned food to Gaza from the back of one of these Jordanian transport, military transport planes. It's not much. It's nowhere near enough to tackle the hunger problems in Gaza. But it's better than nothing. And for some people in the Gaza Strip, it may make the difference between life and death.

Audie.

CORNISH: That's CNN chief global affairs correspondent Matthew Chance. You can see more of his reporting on those flights today.

[06:55:01]

I want to turn now to ICE because it's increasing its recruitment efforts, and they're starting with scrapping the age limits for new officers. Applicants can now be as young as 18 years old. And the agency also says there's no longer a maximum age for new applicants. Remember, ICE just got a huge payday with the president's new spending bill, becoming one of the most well-funded federal agencies. It's set to hire some 10,000 agents over the next few years.

I was actually just speaking with journalist Garrett Graff, who's been following the expansion of ICE for years, and here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARRETT GRAFF, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: And I've had real deep concerns, which you and I have talked about in the past, about sort of who -- who's going to come into ICE over this next couple of years and the long tail of misconduct that we might see, which we saw in the Border Patrol hiring surge in the late Bush years where you saw thousands of CBP officers and agents arrested for misconduct, crime and corruption.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Group chat is back.

One of the things Garrett raises is that you've got this agency that's just about to be bigger than all the other agencies combined in terms of law enforcement, but it's going to have probably radically different requirements to be in it. Should people be worried about that?

BLAKE: Yes, I mean the point that he makes about the Border Patrol ramp up that we saw in the mid 2000 is really a cautionary tale here. They -- they adjusted their requirements because they needed to bring in thousands of new Border Patrol agents. And what it led to was a lot of misconduct. I think Garrett's reported that there was one misconduct report per day for a period of years after that.

And so, you know, the idea is that you bring all these people in, but it's not easy to hire people. It's not easy to find people who are generally qualified for these things. And the question becomes, are they just going to bring in people because they need to fill these quotas, or are they going to bring in people who are actually good at the job? And this is a high-pressure job to be clear.

CORNISH: Yes.

BLAKE: The raids that Trump is pushing for are --

CORNISH: And under big public scrutiny right now.

BLAKE: Are -- are very tense and there are things that can go wrong with these things. And so, putting people who maybe don't have the same qualifications as usual in that mix could be a pretty toxic brew.

CORNISH: What are you guys thinking about this? I know for the longest time Democrats would say abolish ICE. And then they got a lot of blowback for that. It became kind of like the way defund police became sort of a toxic sort of brand to say publicly. Is that going to change?

KOH: Look, I think the reality is, like, there -- it's a difference between wanting to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies and people who are being rounded up by masked men without I.D. Seventy-eight percent of this country supports a path to citizenship. And this, like, Rambo macho thing, we're going to round you up with the boys, thinking that's going to appeal to men. What real men want to do is set an example for their families. This isn't it.

ANDERSON: This is an issue where the politics really did shift to the right, because during the Biden administration there was a perception that the border just wasn't being controlled. And in that kind of an environment, people are willing to move very far places on this issue.

But we've also seen in my data a sort of move back toward the center in response to the pro-Trump cases. Well, now the border's under control so now we have the luxury of thinking about things like path to citizenship, the alternative cases. He's simply gone too far, and that's what people are (INAUDIBLE).

CORNISH: Yes, and we're talking about legislation. But look, these are -- the images people are seeing on their social media feeds. You know, surreptitiously videoing people. Something like this. These big crowd responses. People are going to start seeing ICE in their everyday life if there's 10,000 more officers on the streets around the country.

KOH: People think about Americans -- citizens or non-citizens are waking up every day wondering if they're going to go to sleep in another country and not have due process to them. I think that's scaring all Americans. They don't think this is what this republic's all about.

CORNISH: All right, you guys, I want you to tell me what is in your group chat. We've had a lot of serious news today. What are people talking about?

BLAKE: I don't -- I don't talk politics in my group chat. That's a rule that I have.

CORNISH: I commend you.

BLAKE: It's just healthy that way. We're talking about the Minnesota Twins having sold off half of their team at the trade deadline. Minnesota sports fans are used to indignities. We haven't won a major sports championship since 1991.

CORNISH: I like you switching to "we," just so I know. Yes.

BLAKE: Yes, we. We.

If you -- I should say, if you don't include the Minnesota Lynx, that's a key caveat here. But the idea that you're selling 11 of your 26 players all at once is just -- I'm not sure (INAUDIBLE).

CORNISH: Yes, that's wild. OK.

KOH: I got some rowdy friends who are always looking for a Vegas trip. They're quick to remind me that Vegas visitorship is down 10 percent year over year. Typically, that's a bellwether for the economy. So, I think that should concern us.

CORNISH: It is. And also for that whole tipping conversation, right? That's a big community that was going to benefit.

KOH: A hundred percent.

CORNISH: Last minute to you.

ANDERSON: So, my group chat is also about Vegas, but I'm going to take the other side of the position of this issue.

CORNISH: Your finger went up. Tell me.

ANDERSON: So, this past weekend I was in Vegas seeing the Backstreet Boys at The Sphere.

KOH: Wow.

ANDERSON: And let me tell you, folks, Backstreet's back.

CORNISH: All right.

ANDEROSN: If you are trying to decide -- all right. If you are trying to decide whether you would like to go to Vegas, make the call, bring your friends, go see the show. It is -- it's not just a concert, it's more than that at The Sphere.

[07:00:00]

I'm serious. It is the one.

CORNISH: I know. This is amazing.

ANDERSON: It is larger than life.

CORNISH: Yes. ANDERSON: You need to get there and go experience this show.

CORNISH: I -- well, Kristen Soltis Anderson, brought to you by the Backstreet Boys.

This sounds amazing. I -- I love seeing your millennial just jump out like that at the end of the show.

ANDERSON: I grew up in Orlando in like the '90s. I mean, it is in my veins.

CORNISH: Say less. That's -- that's perfect.

ANDERSON: It's who I am.

CORNISH: You guys, thank you so much for talking with me. We covered a lot of ground today. I want to thank you for being with us. Come back tomorrow. In the meantime, "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" is going to start right now.