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FBI Searches Bolton's Home and Office; Garrett Graff is Interviewed about Immigration Arrests; Ronald Moten is Interviewed about National Guard in D.C.; Trump Meets with South Korean President; Democrats Should Stop Saying Woke Words. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired August 25, 2025 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:30:30]

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

It's half past the hour, and here's what's happening right now.

National Guard troops are now carrying firearms while patrolling the streets of D.C. It's a notable shift from the Pentagon, which had said that the troops could only be armed if the circumstances warranted.

Today, Kilmar Abrego Garcia will meet with immigration officials. He was released from Tennessee custody Friday and reunited with his family. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully deported to El Salvador back in March. Now, the Trump administration wants to deport him again, this time to Uganda.

Dry and hot weather fueling the flames in northern California and central Oregon. Thousands of people have been evacuated as two wildfires rage out of control. The area is facing a sweltering heat wave with no relief in sight.

And the FBI's investigation into former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton has other Trump critics wondering who's next. Agents searched Bolton's Maryland home and Washington office Friday. People familiar with the case tell CNN, it's part of a criminal investigation into whether Bolton disclosed classified information in his book and potentially to others. Bolton had served as Trump's national security advisor in his first term but was fired in 2019.

Another Trump official says he wouldn't be surprised to see agents at his door.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MILES TAYLOR, FORMER DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICIAL: Yes, we expect it. I mean, really, we expect it.

We have thought for years that Donald Trump, if he came back to power, would do something like this. And look, folks don't have to play the violin for John Bolton or Miles Taylor. Maybe they don't like either of us. That's fine. Because it's not about us. It's about the criminal justice system that all Americans expect to be able to treat them fairly. It's about a president of the United States weaponizing the tools of his office to reshape our society. And he's doing that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK, group chat is back.

And I wanted to talk to you guys about it, because I think the overriding question has been retribution or investigation. And we're cautious about that because they haven't said exactly what -- what the problem is, other than there might be something in this book, da, da, da, da, da.

How are you thinking about it?

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: It's notable that a notable critic of Donald Trump had his home searched, right? This is something that people --

CORNISH: You're saying notable, but like he's saying inevitable, right? Like, that people felt like they were waiting for this to happen.

DOVERE: Well, the -- I mean and -- and not just -- not just from the big guy. I was sitting with -- when -- when Tim Walz post-election started doing his tour of the country, I was with him in Wisconsin in April, and he said to me that he assumed that before very long we would have Trump's political opponents begin to be investigated and put in jail.

CORNISH: Right.

DOVERE: He said that was -- so -- so that's a pretty wide spectrum politically from him to Miles Taylor.

This is what Trump talked about a lot on the campaign trail last year.

CORNISH: Yes. And people paid attention when Kash Patel, who ascended to the FBI, in the book he had written previously, had listed, like, these are the enemies.

I want to play J.D. Vance, who was asked specifically about Bolton.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is Ambassador Bolton being targeted because he's a critic of President Trump?

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, not at all. And, in fact, if we were trying to do that, we would just throw out prosecutions willy nilly, like the Biden administration DOJ did, prosecutions that later got thrown out in court.

If we bring a case -- and, of course, we haven't done that yet. The Department of Justice has not done that yet. We are investigating Ambassador Bolton. But if they ultimately bring a case, it will be because they determined that he has broken the law. We're going to be careful about that. We're going to be deliberate about that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, except, you know, just in the last 24 hours, President Trump started on Truth Social going after Chris Christie, another former ally of President Trump, who is a major critic, because he was on television this weekend criticizing Donald Trump and the actions that he took against John Bolton.

And we see this over and over again. First of all, the president hates to be criticized on television. Second of all, he really hates people who were former allies and have turned against him. That, to him, is a very, very sore spot.

CORNISH: When we talk about retribution, it's also for what I think on the right people describe as lawfare, right? That Trump was under siege from various investigations. And you heard J.D. Vance trying to make this distinction, like, look, we're not just willy nilly throwing these things out there.

[06:35:06]

Do you think that explanation holds?

MICHAEL WARREN, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE DISPATCH": No, because I lived through, like all of us, what happened in the run up to the raid on Mar-a-Lago, which now has sort of been transformed into this great sort of injustice done on Donald Trump. But let's remember what actually happened. There was an attempt over several months for the National Archives and then the Justice Department to retrieve these documents.

I'm told by a former Justice Department official, how do these things go? The number one priority in these sort of classified documents and information cases is, they want to get the information back. And they usually work with attorneys --

CORNISH: Just by asking.

WARREN: Just by asking.

CORNISH: OK.

WARREN: That was the difference. The question I have in this Bolton case is, what process did they go through? Because the raid is supposed to be the end, the sort of last resort of that process, not the beginning. And right now we don't know if that's the case.

DOVERE: And that's why it's an important word that the vice president kept using in that clip, which is, "we." He says, "we're doing this investigation," "we're going after it," not the FBI, not the Justice Department. He is very clearly saying that this is coming from the White House. The "we" there is -- is not separate. CORNISH: Is doing a lot of work.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Is doing a lot of work.

CORNISH: Doing a lot of work.

No, but could be a legal point to make later on.

You guys, stay with me, because while the FBI raids the home of Bolton, the administration is looking to a spike in arrests here in D.C. as proof that its crime crackdown is working.

But if you look closer, you're going to see something else. More than 300 of those arrests since August 7th have been people without legal immigration status. That's ten times the usual number of ICE arrests in a typical week.

And one group being hit especially hard, delivery drivers. Here's video shared with CNN that shows a delivery driver being taken down by masked agents in Logan Circle. One law enforcement agent tells CNN, the new tactic by ICE is to trail D.C. police officers, to question people who get pulled over, leading to many of these arrests.

And nationwide, more videos of ICE encounters are going viral. We're going to warn you, because some of these videos you see might be hard to watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can't do that. You can't do that. I'm driving (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out of the car.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, you can't do that. You can't do that. Why? What are you looking for? What are you looking for?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: All right, so this video shows the moment ICE officers arrested two brothers from Mexico. This happened in Connecticut. They're dragged from the car as they asked to see a warrant.

And a disturbing bystander video then sees one of the men tased as he tries to run on the sidewalk, hitting his head as he falls to the pavement.

The daughter of the driver spoke to CNN about seeing these images.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEONELA CHAVEZ, FATHER ARRESTED BY ICE: It made me feel just very angry and very disappointed in my country and this is how we're treating people. We're treating them like they're nobodies.

The use of excessive force is unnecessary, it's dehumanizing, and it's honestly just disgusting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining me now to discuss, Garrett Graff, journalist and historian.

And, Garrett, we keep talking about what it's going to look like as ICE raises the number in recruits, the number of people in the agency. Can you talk about the role of these videos, how citizens are starting to affect how ICE is seen?

GARRETT GRAFF, JOURNALIST AND HISTORIAN: Yes, I think one of the things that's really disturbing to me about the recent behavior that we've seen from ICE is that it's clear that they are losing the sort of support of the public and the moral legitimacy of the American people. And that's a very dangerous situation for a law enforcement agency in a democracy to be in. And it strikes me that as they certainly understand that they are under this increased scrutiny from the public, that you have sort of random members of the public trying to step in, document what is happening. You're seeing ICE actually get more aggressive, more violent and more brutal in their policing tactics, which is exactly the wrong direction that one would hope a healthy law enforcement agency was heading.

CORNISH: What's different about the control of ICE, how it's run compared to other law enforcement agencies? We talked about them sort of trailing D.C. police vehicles. But in terms of them being in all these unmarked vehicles, being able to kind of snatch people. You heard that person saying -- asking about a warrant. Do those things matter under ICE's sort of rules of engagement?

GRAFF: Well, in theory, they are supposed to. In theory, due process and civil rights apply in all law enforcement situations across the country. That's a cornerstone, a bedrock of American --America's legal system in a free and open democracy.

The challenge is, and worries me about these videos, is the extent to which ICE is blocking itself from that public accountability.

[06:40:00]

You know, you see them increasingly moving about the country masked. You see them not identifying themselves clearly with law enforcement credentials.

And one of the things that actually really troubles me about a lot of these videos is, federal agents, federal officers, in high risk situations, they -- they don't wear name tags, but they have unique identifier codes that go on their tactical vests, on their uniforms, that would help identify them internally in the aftermath of an internal investigation, for instance. You saw Justice Department officials, prison guards, for instance, wearing these types of identifiers in the George Floyd protests when they were called to D.C. in 2020. It's really notable to me that ICE is not wearing, in at least many of the videos that I'm seeing, those unique identifier codes that would even make them accountable internally to internal use of force investigations.

So, these are agents who are operating as anonymously as possible, even for their own agency.

CORNISH: That's Garrett Graff, journalist and historian. I'm sure we'll have you back to talk more about this. Thank you, Garrett.

GRAFF: Any time, Audie.

CORNISH: Next on CNN THIS MORNING, the White House says the plan is to make D.C. safer. We're going to talk about whether or not that's actually working. A D.C. community activist joins me next.

Plus --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Some free political advice from the president of the United States is stop sounding --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Don't help them too much.

VANCE: Stop sounding like crazy people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: That's advice from the VP for Democrats. And some may be taking it to heart.

Then, if you're expecting a package from overseas, it may not come. Why Asian and European countries are suspending some shipments to the U.S.

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

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[06:46:07]

CORNISH: Despite plans to expand this federal crackdown to cities like Chicago, National Guard troops are still lining the streets of D.C. And last night, something changed. They started carrying weapons. The Pentagon had previously said troops could be armed if the circumstances warranted, but that shifted last week when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave the green light.

The goal, according to the Trump administration, is to crack down on crime. Some residents say they're not feeling any safer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm really worried about the amount of police and military and FBI.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In this city, in this state that we're in, it's everywhere you go you see police.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're here to help clean up the city. And I understand the message. Next year, America's going to be 250 years old. Let's have a nice, shiny city for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Here we have Ronald Moten, the co-founder of Ward 8 Violence and Prevention. He's an advocate. And you are joining the chat.

Thanks for being here.

RONALD MOTEN, CO-FOUNDER, WARD 8 VIOLENCE AND PREVENTION ADVOCATE: Thanks for having me.

CORNISH: So, one of the things I wanted to talk about is that idea that they are collaborating, that they're helping. What are you actually hearing in the ward from people on the street, especially over the weekend, right, when you might have people kind of hanging out?

MOTEN: Well, there's no collaborating with the community. The community feels like there's an occupation. Most of us believe that we do need police in our community. But the way it's being done is not the right way. Putting fear in the community only stops the community from working with law enforcement. And what we're seeing is, criminals are getting smarter. The community is getting very -- they're being traumatized. And this is not a long-term solution.

And most of the people who are being locked up are not the violent criminals that we went off the street. They're petty crimes. We're filling the prisons up for optics. And that's not the solution.

CORNISH: Can you talk more about that? I mean Ward 8 did have a higher murder rate than other wards in the city. And you're saying the criminals are getting smarter. So, help me understand how this is playing out.

MOTEN: Well, if you know the police are coming, you just don't go outside. You go inside. So, it doesn't -- it doesn't mean that it is necessarily getting like, have we locked up a lot of murderers over the last ten days? I mean I -- I would love to see the police lock up people committing the homicides in our community. But what they're doing right now is not going to do that. Let's solve the murder rate in our community. Let's figure out how these guns are getting to our community. I would rather see resources go on, stopping guns from getting in 12 and ten year old hands in Washington, D.C., in Memphis, Tennessee, where I was at four or five months ago, and I saw people with AK-47s, people getting shot in broad daylight in a red state, by the way. You know, let's really come up with a solution.

I would love to work with the president. I think he's done some great things, like the First Step Act. But what he -- what he's doing right now is going to eliminate everything that was done with the First Step Act, because it's going to lock up a lot of non-violent criminals -- I mean non-violent people, just like we did in the '80s and '90s with mass incarceration breaking our families up, and we're still dealing with the residue from those -- from those mistakes.

CORNISH: I want to bring in the group after this, playing Trump Deputy Stephen Miller talking about the crackdown and specifically making his comments to appeal towards black Americans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: Most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C., are black. This is not a city that has had any safety for its black citizens for generations. And President Trump is the one who is fixing that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Silence. I'll give you a minute to digest that.

MOTEN: Black people are 47 percent of the population in Washington, D.C. The disparities in Washington, D.C., affect us the most. I would rather see the resources of the president help us with after school programs so children are not on the streets and they have something to do in the evening. Help -- like when I came up in D.C., every weekend there were tons of places for us to go so we wouldn't have to do these meet ups and things that you see children doing that a lot of people don't like, right?

[06:50:07]

So, help -- help us create the atmosphere and safe havens for our young people. And yes, there are some children that we need to get off the street. I'll be the first to tell you. I have advocated against some of my own elected officials about it. But the way this is being done is not the way to get them off the streets.

CORNISH: You guys, I want to bring you in. I don't know if you have any questions for Ronald.

WARREN: I'm -- I'm curious, Ronald, what are you concerned about if and when the sort of federal intervention ends? I mean it does seem like there have been short term numbers that suggest crime has gone down. What is the long-term effect of having kind of a temporary band aid from the federal government on this?

MOTEN: I just think that we, as a community, need to come together and figure out ways to better let our police department do their job, because in some ways, I would say in the past, we have gotten in the way of police in D.C. doing their job, all right. It has to be a balance where we hold them accountable, but also can produce what I call love and order, all right? It's a way to keep order in the community, but do it with love. And right now this is not love.

Just imagine the first day of school today. Children going to school and seeing ICE people pull up and locking their parents up. That's turning a school into a terror dome (ph). We don't want to see that. That -- that is not acceptable, all right. These are things that will affect not only these children, it will affect the teachers, their peers and everybody.

Today I'm trying to get somebody to fix my air condition in my -- in my building. And guess what I can't find. Because all the workers are afraid to come to Washington, D.C.. We are turning Washington, D.C., into a place where people are scared to drive. It's messing up our e- commerce, our businesses, everything, all right? This is serious. This can actually drain our city. So, I'm not saying that nothing doesn't need to be done better in D.C., but just saying it (ph).

CORNISH: OK. Ronald Moten, thank you so much for being with us.

MOTEN: Thank you.

CORNISH: Thank you for being with the group chat.

President Trump also today hosting the president of South Korea at the White House. Their meeting comes as South Korea pauses shipping packages to the U.S. And this is because of tariffs. At the end of this week, a tariff exemption, which allowed shipments worth $800 or less to get into the U.S. duty free, is being eliminated. Several other Asian and European countries joined South Korea in stopping those shipments.

Another issue on the docket, a dispute over the flexibility of U.S. troops in South Korea. We've got CNN's Mike Valerio live in Seoul.

Mike, can you talk about the expectations for this summit?

MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure. Well, Audie, you know, I'm so glad that you brought up troops because that is first and foremost what we're going to be homing in on in terms of what is the most important element of conversation to happen in the Oval Office. Troops, really much North Korea, shipbuilding, and then the rapport between these two leaders who have never met. This is their first time meeting around noon Washington time today.

So, when we're talking about troops, Audie, the price tag, first of all, is in dispute. Right now, South Korea pays about $1 billion a year to host 28,500 U.S. troops here on the peninsula. President Trump, on the campaign trail last October, has said that South Korea should be paying potentially up to $10 billion to host those troops. And when you're talking about strategic flexibility, like you mentioned in the intro, Audie, that means do they have the flexibility to potentially take on another mission? Right now they're meant as a counter to North Korea, but could they also serve, these U.S. troops here in South Korea, could they serve as a counter to China, God forbid there is a conflict with China, in this part of the world. So, that is something that could certainly be talked about.

North Korea, both of these presidents want to reengage with Kim Jong- un, bring him back to the negotiating table to talk about the nuclear program. But right now, Pyongyang and the Kim regime have shown zero interest in reengaging.

Shipbuilding. South Korea, Audie, actually has one of the world's leading shipbuilding industries. And if you see any red hats in the Oval Office with the words "make American shipbuilding great again," that is a conscious move by politicos here in Seoul and the presidential administration to try to deliver something, some key investment in a flagging industry in the United States that they hope to rejuvenate. A real deliverable for President Trump and the United States.

And then finally, the rapport will be key. They've never met each other. But these two presidents, Audie, are actually linked as survivors of assassination attempts. President Lee here in South Korea, surviving somebody stabbing him in the neck in January of 2024. President Trump, with those two harrowing attempts on his life during the campaign trail. So, it will be fascinating to see what they talk about and how they interact later today, Audie.

CORNISH: That's CNN's Mike Valerio. Mike, thanks so much.

So, looking at the domestic politics here, you've got Democrats trying to break out of the political wilderness, so to speak.

[06:55:02]

And so, they're still searching for a message to deliver to voters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): They feel the same pressures I do about the existential threat of what Donald Trump and some of these Republican states are trying to do.

REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): Driven by an ideology of othering.

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): The American people are expected to absorb dramatic cuts to food insecurity programs.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I want to spend time listening and dialoging (ph).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: But are many of those phrases on their way out? A new left- leaning think tank, Third Way, just published an exhaustive list of woke words and phrases for Democrats to cut from -- you can see that's a very small font because we had to fit them all. The group tells "Politico," quote, "we're doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they're leading a seminar."

The group chat is back.

Hate to say it. Some of this stuff comes up on panels as well. But there's a section on gender orientation correctness, which I expect. They don't want people saying "pregnant people," "chest feeding," "cisgender" or "deadnaming." But then there's other things that are just like "body shaming," "holding space," just terms that I think have actually migrated their way into the mainstream. I know -- this was in my group chat over the weekend. People making fun of it. What about you guys? GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, what I think is that language is something that is

always being policed by governments, by the media, by regular people. It is the way we communicate. And so, it is very normal and robust to have these dialogs about how we communicate. If you're trying to communicate to a lot of people, you want to use words, right, that are going to bring in as many people as you can and -- and divide them less. And this has been part of -- you know, this back and forth has been part of -- part of the culture for a long time.

That said, I think Democrats have always had this tag, right, that they are leading -- you know, I mean, Obama, looking at him, wasn't the whole thing about him that he talked like a professor, that he had this professorial kind of delivery, even though he's known as one of the best orators in the world.

CORNISH: You know what's different? One of the things Third Way is arguing is that it makes it sound like you are hiding behind things, right? And that in a way, like saying "unhoused" instead of "homeless," that that comes off as just silly.

WARREN: Well, they're shibboleths, right? They're -- they're these ideas, these words that sort of suggest I --

CORNISH: Is shibboleths allowed? I feel like that one should not be allowed.

WARREN: Well, I'll explain. I'll explain. I knew that.

CORNISH: Go ahead. Go ahead.

WARREN: It's a way to say, I'm in the in-group. And if you don't use that word, or you don't understand what that word means, you're in the outgroup. But I think ultimately what Third Way is trying to do, maybe a little heavy handedly, is just say, talk authentically. And I think when a lot of people, particularly politicians who are supposed to appeal to a large group of people, not just, you know, college educated people between the age of 20 and 40, they've got to talk more authentically. And these words don't sound authentic.

CORNISH: Well, but what happens if it comes from that age group? Like "Latinx," "bipoc." I actually thought those came up from youth movements --

DOVERE: Although you can't --

CORNISH: Even though they did not catch on.

DOVERE: Right.

CORNISH: And they were rejected by older counterparts in the demographic.

DOVERE: And Latinx in particular has been -- a lot of people have rejected that term.

This is a problem. GARCIA-NAVARRO: The same thing. I did, too. I was never about it. I

was never about it.

CORNISH: I know.

DOVERE: This is -- this is a --

CORNISH: But, like, I didn't want to be the last person saying negro.

DOVERE: Right.

CORNISH: Like, some things go out of -- of -- of -- of fashion, and that's OK.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean I think our culture is constantly evolving and using words in different ways. What's dangerous is when you start outlawing words, when you make it a political project. I don't have a problem with Democrats using words or another. The ballot box shows them, you know, what --

CORNISH: What's rejected. Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What's rejected.

CORNISH: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What is a problem is when you have the government, which you see now, telling you what words can be inside federal documents or not.

CORNISH: Yes. I see.

DOVERE: Right. Like, we -- this is a problem Democrats have had of seeming like skulls and seeming like they're talking down to people. But it is notable that while they have to deal with that problem, the president has introduced all sorts of things into the political discussion, talking about enemies, right? All these -- now, maybe it's not words out of college seminars, but there is a language that has been introduced and normalized by the president that would not have been part of a --

CORNISH: Has -- becoming more common.

DOVERE: Yes.

CORNISH: Though don't say it has expanded the "overton window" because that's on the list as well.

DOVERE: No, I don't think anybody would say that.

CORNISH: That's not an option for y'all.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes.

WARREN: It is the woke right, right? Gulf of America, right?

CORNISH: Right.

WARREN: This is -- this is the idea of the woke right --

DOVERE: Like I --

WARREN: That policing their own language of what people can say, that, I think, it's -- it's kind of a human impulse and --

DOVERE: We're -- we're all pretty experienced in politics and -- and this stuff. If -- if they're -- a lot of the words on that list, I feel like people, even us, would have to sometimes go on to Google to figure out what they actually mean. That's a problem for sure.

CORNISH: Yes, or just very cerebral. And if you're in a backlash to elitism, to academia, then those things are going to really hit the ear.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think the one really good example of this is if you think about how you've had LGBTQ plus, and -- and they keep on adding letters to it, you know.

CORNISH: AI, yes.

[07:00:02]

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And -- and I understand the impulse, which is to bring as many people in. But at the same time, all of that just gets lost and people don't understand what it means.

WARREN: And I think there's a problem too, staffers on Democratic campaigns, they often come from young, educated, maybe even overeducated backgrounds. I think that's a problem that Democrats are going to have to shake as well.

CORNISH: Yes. So much of it with language is who's in and who is out. It will be interesting to see how Dems navigate this.

You guys, thank you for playing ball on the group chat. Thank you for waking up with us. I'm Audie Cornish and "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts now.