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Johnny C. Taylor is Interviewed about the Job Market; Trump Wants to Change Names for Defense; Newsmax versus Fox; Trans Gun Ban Suggestion Prosecutions of Government Officials over Loan Applications. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired September 05, 2025 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:31:37]
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 now half past the hour. And here's what's happening right now.
President Trump praising RFK for his performance in front of senators, saying while he didn't watch the hearing, he heard the HHS secretary did well. RFK Jr. has had a tumultuous tenure at HHS, but the president says he's still on board, and he likes that Kennedy is, quote, "different."
And Donald Trump facing one more deadline of his own making today to get Russian Leader Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table for Ukraine ceasefire talks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The one that I thought would be an easier one, because of my relationship with President Putin.
We'll get it done. But that's turned out to be the most difficult of the group.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Trump set the Friday deadline for Putin to agree to the talks or face unspecified consequences.
And two hours from now the Labor Department will release the August jobs report. It's the first since Trump fired his jobs data czar after a Labor Department report showed slowing job growth. Economists predict today's report will show that slowdown continues.
And in the meantime, they've also been pointing out that in this era of the Trump economy, job hopping is out, or job hunting or the big stay, whatever you want to call it, that's in, because people are scared to leave their jobs. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm job hunting. I don't know anybody right now, at least in my position, that's job hopping. We're holding on to our jobs tightly, loving, kissing it, cuddling with it every night.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: The job to job change rate has taken a nosedive since the Covid-19 pandemic, especially with job openings dropping to a ten- month low in July. That's according to Labor Department data.
And if you were hoping to get a pay bump by switching roles, well, that's fallen too. Just 7 percent in July.
I'm joined now by Johnny C. Taylor, president and CEO of SHRM.
Welcome to the program.
JOHNNY C. TAYLOR, PRESIDENT AND CEO, SHRM: So glad to be with you.
CORNISH: So, I understand this goes both ways. We just heard someone saying that they're holding their job tight and kissing it and saying good night. But then I'm also hearing that employers, and looking in those numbers, are hoarding, right, keeping employees on even if they don't think they're essential because they don't want to do layoffs right away. So, what's going on?
TAYLOR: So, gosh, it's really complicated these days. No question that job hunting and hopping, I should say, is over. Also hunting. People are trying to keep their jobs because of uncertainty in the market.
That being said, employers are in an interesting spot as well. It's really, really hard to find employees who not only have the technical skills that you want, but are culturally aligned with your organization. So, to the extent you think you have that, you are going to hold on to those people as well.
The challenge that we're having as employers more and more is that people don't have the skills that we need. So, it's a really interesting point. We're holding the people. We're going to train them. You're going to see more investment in people. So, it's not -- you know, the headline was, employers are going to throw away employees. That's not true. We're going to do our best to get the best out of them, because we're just not sure that we're going to find better in the market.
CORNISH: Is a generational? I've heard some gen z saying their relationship to work is a situation-ship (ph). Like, there's kind of a distrust there with employers.
[06:35:01]
TAYLOR: Hands down. And fair enough. And I'm glad you mentioned generational. Yes. But the longer you've been in the job market, the more you will realize that this is cyclical, right? Gen X has had a relationship at some point that was very similar to their -- what we're experiencing and the sentiments that we're hearing from employees. And then they grew older and realized that, you know, as the market ebbs and flows, so too will your relationship status be.
But, yes, it's -- it's definitely, right now, more transactional and situational.
CORNISH: The thing is, we all use the data to make these decisions, right? Certainly, employers do.
TAYLOR: Yes.
CORNISH: So, ever since Trump fired the BLS jobs data leader and the economist there, what does it mean for the numbers today, especially if the president ends up being dismissive of them again? How will employers be thinking about this?
TAYLOR: Well, fortunately we have several sources of data. SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, has data. ADP has data. BLS is the authoritative data. But we can all -- we're going to take a combination, sort of a composite view of all of the data to indicate where things are.
A lot's going on right now, right, that's unsettling in the market. We don't quite understand what we -- what -- we don't know what we don't know. And so, you're going to see employers looking really, really critically at what areas are seeing growth, what areas aren't.
For example, health care sector, social service agency type sector jobs are slowing down as well. So, we're seeing slowing everywhere. And I think that's the headline. It really won't matter specifically, maybe to the financial markets, what the specific reported numbers will be today from BLS, but more it's the trend. And the trend is definitely not the friend of employees right now because hiring is slowing. It's like for the first time in a long time, I think it's since 2018 or so, it's actually '21 since we've actually seen more jobs -- people -- more people looking for jobs than job openings. That's an absolute big twist for us in the last three or four years.
CORNISH: Johnny, before I let you go, you said something about how you do data at your organization. And I have to ask, is there a future where we're no longer looking to the government or people in your industry are no longer looking to the government as the authoritative source? We're, in a way, having the same conversation about the CDC. Is there a scenario where the private sector is now going to be the ones who tell us the truth about the economy?
TAYLOR: I think so. I think so. There's that -- it's not a -- there's no question that we are closest to it. We know where the jobs are being created, literally down to the zip code. The government, you know, we need the government to fact check -- check us from time to time and ensure that we're doing the job. But I think this is best served by industry. After all, we're the one hiring the vast majority of people who work in the United States, an 168 million person workforce and they're mostly in the private sector.
CORNISH: OK. Johnny Taylor, thank you.
TAYLOR: Thank you.
CORNISH: And President Trump today expected to sign an executive order that will turn back the clock and change the name of the Defense Department to the Department of War.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know, we -- that was the name when we were -- we won World War I. We won World War II. We won everything. And just, to me, seems like just a much more appropriate. The other is defense -- is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive too. If we have to be. So, it just sounded to me better.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: The Department of War was first established by George Washington when he founded the U.S. Army. The name was later changed in 1949 as part of a military reorganization under President Harry Truman.
OK, with that history done, the group chat is back.
We actually heard why the president wants to do this. He was very direct. And it was interesting late night's take on it, Seth Meyers, was that this was part of the president's overall fixation on strength.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SETH MEYERS, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": Trump cares very much about making sure the soldiers are big and strong, especially because, as he said before, the quote-unquote bad guys are also big and strong.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are tough people in many cases. A lot of young men. Strong men. It's actually mostly young men and a lot of rough people.
MEYERS: He sounds like a Long Island mother trying to set up her daughter on a date.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: I think he's sort of alluding to -- like people are laughing usually when there's a shared thought. But the thesis is, peace through strength, right? This was always how the Trump administration sold their vision for strength in the world.
EUGENE SCOTT, VISITING FELLOW, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY AGORA INSTITUTE: It is. And, I mean, we know he cares deeply about branding. And as he said, he wants to come off as more offensive and more strong and -- and mightier. But I think it also draws attention to the fact that this president campaigned promising to end or decrease America's involvement in a number of global conflicts and just bringing people's attention to the word war, I think, will bring their attention to the fact that he hasn't actually done that.
[06:40:04]
And some things have, in fact, gotten worse in terms of America's involvement in wars.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: The thing that I'll also say is that his biggest deployments have been in American cities. And so, you know, the war on whom exactly is -- is the question, I guess, I would ask.
ROB BLUEY, PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "THE DAILY SIGNAL": It was a big topic at the National Conservatism Conference this week.
CORNISH: It was?
BLUEY: Not -- not the name change --
CORNISH: Oh, OK.
BLUEY: But this issue that Eugene talks about.
CORNISH: Yes.
BLUEY: And -- and the fact that this president is different than past Republicans in that he does want to be seen as the peace president. And I mean that is clear from the first six months in office.
I think it's why you have a move afoot on Capitol Hill with Senator Mike Lee and Congressman Greg Steube to put this in legislation and make this name change official. Obviously, it's one of those things that I think that this president wants to make sure that he leaves his mark.
CORNISH: Yes.
BLUEY: And this is one way that he's going to try to do it.
CORNISH: But, I mean, it's one of those things where it's like, nothing says give me a Nobel Peace Prize like my new Department of War. Like it feels like I'm hearing mixed messages.
BLUEY: Perhaps. But I think at the same time that deterrence that you talked about in terms of his peace through strength doctrine --
CORNISH: Yes.
BLUEY: Is what he's going for. We don't want to enter into war. But maybe it is the deterrent that -- the message that it will send to those adversaries in the world, whether it be Russia or China, they want to provoke a war, that may have them think twice.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But one could argue that this is a sign of weakness and not a sign of strength. I mean, if you need to carry a big sign saying, we are the Department of War and we will mess you up, is that really kind of showing strength? I mean we've had a long period in the United States since the end of World War II where there has been pretty much peace, stability and prosperity. And so, I don't know that the name change is exactly -- might be signaling the thing that -- that he wants to be signaling.
However, at the end of the day, war, defense, it's still soldiers --
CORNISH: Yes.
GARCIA-NAVARR): Boots on the ground. It does what it does.
CORNISH: OK, so stay with me. We've got more to talk about on a couple other things today.
Next on CNN THIS MORNING, why the administration wants to ban a particular demographic from buying guns. What happened to the Second Amendment?
Plus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's very clear, this lady signed these documents or she didn't. She committed mortgage fraud or she didn't.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: We've heard a lot about mortgage fraud in the news lately. But is the call coming from inside the house?
And more money, more problems. Can celebs monetize those problems?
We want to know what's in your group chat. Send it to us now on X. We're going to be talking about ours after this.
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[06:47:04]
CORNISH: OK, it's time to lawyer up with some of the big legal stories this week. CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams joins the chat.
Elliot.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Hello.
CORNISH: Thanks for being here.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Whoo, whoo, whoo.
WILLIAMS: Oh my God.
CORNISH: Nice. Nice.
So, we want to dive into this lawsuit that we're seeing about Newsmax and Fox.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: Both are right wing news outlets.
WILLIAMS: Right.
CORNISH: Newsmax is accusing Fox of trying to basically elbow out other conservative news competition.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: I didn't even know you could do this.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: Be like, we -- you have a monopoly on ideas and representing those ideas in the marketplace.
WILLIAMS: Why do you need me here? Because you basically just explained it.
CORNISH: Oh, really?
WILLIAMS: You did.
CORNISH: No, I didn't know.
WILLIAMS: You just -- you just lawyered up with Audie Cornish.
CORNISH: I didn't.
WILLIAMS: No, but -- but it's fascinating in that, you know, when we think of antitrust, it's about ending monopolies. The railroads in the 1910s or Bell in the 1980s, that's what antitrust is. What is the market? Now, the interesting thing about how Newsmax has defined the market here, it's just the market of conservative media organizations.
CORNISH: Which I feel like you can quantify because it is so -- there's so many outlets. It's so sort of specific in its branding.
WILLIAMS: Can you quantify it, though? Like, for the purposes of an antitrust lawsuit, can you say definitively, this is a conservative station and this is not? And you, other conservative station, are crowding out other entities, right, because --
CORNISH: Even one as big as Fox?
WILLIAMS: Even -- even one as big as Fox.
Now, the size of Fox really plays into the lawsuit a lot.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: And they're saying that because Fox is such a behemoth, they have a power to crowd out what they have identified as their competitors. And they've said that we, Newsmax, are a competitor that they're forcing out by putting all kinds of onerous restrictions on cable providers that make it hard for us to compete.
So, if it were --
CORNISH: OK, there it is.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: If it were just television, if it were -- it would be much more straightforward. But this will be an interesting legal fight over how do you define what a marketplace is, even though, yes, we all know that the content on both of these entities tends to skew a certain way.
CORNISH: All right, I'm going to ask you about some serious things, but there's one other thing I have to touch on, which is the Cardi B assault trial.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: She, obviously, was cleared of charges in that case of a security guard who accused her of assault. And everyone was talking about her testimony, which went viral.
I want to talk a little bit about what she said after the case when she won. Here's some of it.
WILLIAMS: OK.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARDI B, RAPPER: Even if I'm in my deathbed, I swear to God, I will say it in my deathbed, I did not touch that woman. I did not touch that girl. I didn't lay my hands on that girl.
I think people have like this misinterpretation of celebrities. Like, is that, oh, well, we could ask for this and they're going to settle.
I work hard for my money, for my kids and for people I take care of. So don't you ever think that you're going to sue me and I'm just going to settle and just give me my money.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: I like that she was just like, you're messing with my finances, my reputation, my image. She's got an album coming out this week.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: And that she was fighting on a lot of fronts here.
[06:50:01] WILLIAMS: Now, what's --
CORNISH: Oh, wait, that is actually the cover of the album.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: Which is amazing also.
WILLIAMS: So, there -- there are two big things to look at here. So, let's start with the album.
She has taken moments from the trial and put them and memeafied (ph) them and put them as album covers. She's profiting off of the trial.
Now, look, being in the criminal justice system can demoralize, take someone's soul away. It's hard on everybody, unless you're wealthy, and people often can capitalize on having been through the system. The president of the United States did it quite magically like -- or masterfully in that it benefited him politically to have been targeted all the time.
CORNISH: You mean like selling images of the mug shot or things like that?
WILLIAMS: Or fundraising off of it or whatever else.
CORNISH: Oh.
WILLIAMS: You know, Tupac Shakur released an album from prison. Martha Stewart, in many ways, has done so. And it's really interesting in that she has sort of managed. quite savvily, to -- to help -- to use this to help her reputation.
Another thing, and she talked about this here, this idea of, people thought I was just going to settle, right? And it is always, for virtually anyone in the system, to -- wise to settle a case. It's cheaper. It's better for your reputation. Makes the thing go away quickly, right? She said, no, you're coming after me, you're going to lose and I'm going to shame you and embarrass you publicly. So, let's go to trial and get all the information out there. And she won. Again, the kind of thing you can do when you can afford the lawyers to take something to trial. It's very, very expensive.
CORNISH: All right, so another legal issue I want to talk about is a new sort of proposal from the DOJ basically saying that when it comes to -- I think -- I don't know how they're articulating it, trans youth, but -- but that the Justice Department wants to ban transgender people from owning guns.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEBASTIAN GORKA, DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: In just a couple of years we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature or who were confused in their gender. Seven in just the last couple of years. That is inordinately high.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: So, the transgender gun ban is gaining momentum in conservative circles after police confirmed that the Minneapolis school shooting that killed two children last week, that was carried out by a 23-year-old transgender woman.
So, I'm bringing back the group chat, because when you heard Sebastian Gorka say that about the -- the last couple of shootings, I immediately was like, we've got a lot more data than that. Seven.
So, here are the demographics of mass shootings that we know so far. And this information is actually from the National Institute of Justice. So, it is available to the government.
I see mostly men. I see people around the age of 34. Prior criminal record, 64 percent. Military background, 28 percent. White, 52 percent. There's a lot of different people you could look at and say, we think you're a group that maybe we need to deal with your gun rights. Why trans?
WILLIAMS: I -- well, it's politically advantageous to do so. I -- you know, it's -- it's -- what's interesting about it is the movement away from gun prohibition generally in the law. We've seen movements to sort of weaken the restrictions on people with prior felony convictions owning firearms and drug users owning firearms on people with domestic violence allegations having access --
CORNISH: Yes, which is a huge percentage as well.
WILLIAMS: Right, which went to the Supreme -- which went to the Supreme Court. And so, this notion of, as we're -- you know, as the country is making it easier for many sort of classifications of people to get firearms, adding in a new one that's a prohibition just seems incongruous with that. And, you know, it's hard to say that it's not politically motivated in at least some way.
CORNISH: Anyone else?
BLUEY: I think this will be interesting, Elliot, to watch at the Supreme Court level because if you -- as you just indicated, I mean we've seen --
CORNISH: You're already at the court. Is the proposal --
WILLIAMS: Oh, it'll go. It will --
BLUEY: Right. I mean --
CORNISH: You think it'd just be challenged no matter what?
BLUEY: It will be challenged by somebody in the courts.
CORNISH: OK.
BLUEY: And -- and we've seen the Supreme Court generally take side -- side with the pro-gun or Second Amendment rights of -- of individuals. But I think, stepping back, and thank you for sharing those stats,
Audie. But, I mean, fundamentally, regardless -- we can have a debate about guns, but there's something seriously wrong with -- with society and with our kids. And I think there are a number of factors that we -- we probably should be looking at here beyond just the guns themselves.
CORNISH: Yes, which is why we have the demographics up, right?
BLUEY: Sure.
CORNISH: I mean the traits of mass shooters. I went and looked up that as well, they know a lot because even though they don't have everything in common, there's a couple things they do. Childhood trauma, exposure to violence, identifiable grievance, right. Even -- and this one, which is directly related to the last shooting we saw, inspirations in past shootings.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, I think it wawas really good of you to show all these different ways in which mass shooters have common identities. And I don't think, you know, the transgender issue is necessarily among the most prominent, according to the statistics. And so, therefore, I agree that it's politically motivated.
[06:55:02]
I also think there is, you know, if you're talking about Second Amendment rights, I think this is going to be very complicated for the conservatives because they have always pushed the fact that, you know, you need to have your gun rights. And so, there needs to be very clear, defensible reasons why you'd be taking away the gun rights from a particular group of people.
WILLIAMS: You know, it's --
SCOTT: And in particular -- I would say, a particular group of people that has been affected, we've seen in recent years the number of deaths among trans women, specifically black trans women, has actually gone up. And to take guns away from a group that has been on the receiving end of violence doesn't make a lot of sense to be -- if the goal is to keep them safe.
WILLIAMS: You know, one thing that's interesting is that the -- the one aspect of the gun rights debate that everybody seems to agree on is mental illness. Like, what we should do better at keeping people who are mentally ill from having firearms. Well, the political savviness of this move was, you know, linking being transgender to -- to being a mental infirmity, which many people in the country believe, which certainly many in the administration believe. And they can sort of make the rhetorical point that all we're doing is just keeping more mentally ill people from having firearms.
CORNISH: OK.
All right, I want to turn to this now. The Trump administration promising to prosecute anyone who received preferential mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their loan applications. So, the White House has already flagged this with Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, accusing her of mortgage fraud. Trump fired her. She is currently fighting that in court.
A Propublica report just found at least three Trump cabinet members also listed multiple homes as their primary residences. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. So, now this is raising a couple questions about whether or not Republicans are going to be immune from this kind of scrutiny.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: AP had a report in July that Texas A.G. Paxton cited three homes as primary. I mean, how broad are you willing to use this tool?
BILL PULTE, FHFA DIRECTOR: We will look at any allegation of mortgage fraud. And we do not care whether you're a Republican, a Democrat. We do not care whether you're wealthy. We don't care whether you're a prosecutor. We don't care whether you're a Fed governor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: All right, group chat is back.
A lot of people are asking Bill Pulte this question. He's the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. And in Republican circles is also known as somebody who is helpful to the president in sharing information. And the question is, is he allowed to share this information? Is he just going into the documentation and --
WILLIAMS: Yes, like --
CORNISH: Of just enemy?
WILLIAMS: Right.
CORNISH: Like, I think people are asking about this as, is it weaponizing the information you have at the data -- the agency you're in.
WILLIAMS: Right. Well, perhaps. And that Propublica report notes that there are many people, you know, Senator Adam Schiff was also accused of having done so. The question is going to come -- for the Justice Departments going to come down to not was there irregularities in your mortgage, but did you intend to do so in violation of the law? People make mistakes on their mortgages all the time and often don't even know -- these -- these rich folks who have three or four houses often check the wrong box.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: So, the question is, can you establish that she not only did it, but did it intentionally?
Now, her mortgages, you know, all happen in a short amount of time, and it sort of raised some questions.
CORNISH: Yes. But I think the --
WILLIAMS: But convicting in court is going to be a stretch.
CORNISH: It's a combination too. It's a legal question, these things that you're raising.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: And as always, when in the world of lawfare, it's like, are you being targeted for your ideology?
BLUEY: Sure. I mean politics -- I mean, I thought Pulte made a point. You have to have a situation where you're applying the law equally. And so --
CORNISH: Do you think he is?
BLUEY: We'll have to --
CORNISH: Like, has he actually announced a Republican investigated of this?
BLUEY: Well, he indicated that he -- that he would. But, no, I mean up until now he's -- he's not. But, I mean, I think that this will -- as you have journalists who are going to be now poking holes in these mortgage documents --
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: Yes.
BLUEY: Chances are you're going to find Republicans and Democrats.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: You know, but --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: They care so much about what journalists investigate and uncover.
You know, what I would say about this is that they have always used -- governments have always used financial instruments to target people that they want to target. So, if you think about tax evasion, if you think about, you know, all sorts of different ways in which people who they want to get, for one thing, they get for financial fraud. And so, this is just another version of that.
WILLIAMS: This is the same thing that Fani Willis in Georgia and Tish James in New York were accused of doing, which is going on the campaign trail and talking about how they're going to prosecute someone, which ultimately undermined the strength of the case because people saw this as, in many respects, a political movement.
CORNISH: Yes. WILLIAMS: Maybe there's some merit to some of these cases. But the fact that the president and Bill Pulte are out tweeting about how they're going to go after these people immediately and, you know, and taking these steps very -- these steps very quickly, just undermines that.
CORNISH: Because to your point, Trump, on a number of these cases --
WILLIAMS: He's made clear, yes.
CORNISH: Would say, they're going after me for minor paperwork. They're going after me for these things that are not serious because its political.
[07:00:01]
And so, you're saying that you're giving away the whole game when you go out and talk about it leading up to the situation.
WILLIAMS: It's hard to take you seriously if you've been so forthright about the fact that you're going to take a legal action. And this is exactly what dogged these Democrats last year. And it's sort of happening again.
CORNISH: OK.
All right, I'm sure we're going to hear more about this. As we said, Lisa Cook is appealing that case.
I want to thank you all for being with me. I want to thank you for waking up with us. We know you could spend your time in a lot of other places, so we're glad you're here.
"CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.
