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Erin Burnett Outfront
Trump Golfs While Markets Tank; Vaccine Scientist Resigns; Vance's Flip Flop. Aired 7-8p ET
Aired April 04, 2025 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:23]
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next:
Breaking news, tariffs taking effect hours from now as markets lose $6.6 trillion.
And where was Trump? At a Saudi-run golf tournament today, playing golf.
Plus, an OUTFRONT exclusive, the FDA's top vaccine scientist told by RFK Jr. to resign or get fired. He chose to leave on his own, and tonight, breaking his silence.
And Trump's cheerleader J.D. Vance now celebrating the trade war. But as our KFILE uncovers tonight, he had a very different view about tariffs not long ago.
Let's go OUTFRONT.
Good evening. I'm Erin Burnett.
OUTFRONT tonight, the breaking news, it's about to start for real. The tariffs, they're actually about to start, hours away from taking effect. But the chaos and selloff on Wall Street today was brutal. Dow down more than 2,000 points. The market-wide toll, $6.6 trillion over the past two days. That is a stunning number.
And to give you some context, that amount that's greater than the GDP of France and the United Kingdom combined. The Nasdaq closing in bear market territory. A bear market. We were talking record highs recently.
Look at this. Look at how hard it would have been to find anywhere that didn't go down. Loss after loss after loss. I mean, this is a crisis. As one of our guests will say here, this was a mini crash.
So where was Trump? Well, he was on a golf course. From 9:45 a.m., which is just a few minutes after the stock market opened until 3:38 p.m., 22 minutes before the stock markets closed. You can see what was happening in the markets. This is the same man who trashed others like Obama for focusing on golf during crises.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When you're president, you sort of say like, I'm going to sort of give it up for a couple of years. There are times to play golf. We all love golf, there are times to play, and there are times that you can't play, and it sends the wrong signal.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
BURNETT: Well, it sent the wrong signal today and yesterday. As the conservative website Drudge said, Trump's decision to spend the day golfing was all about putting his relationship with the wealthy Arab state of Saudi Arabia first. The headline, "Saudi first: Trump focused on golf during spiral". Of course, Ivanka Trump's husband Jared received $2 billion from the Saudi royal family for his investment fund just after Trump left office last time.
And when Trump did respond to the markets today, he did it by taking fire at the independent chief of the U.S. Federal Reserve, posting on social media in all caps, cut interest rates, Jerome, and stop playing politics.
As for Jerome Powell, he would not be bullied.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: To me, it's -- it's not clear at this time what the appropriate path for monetary policy will be. And we're going to need to wait and see how this plays out before we can start to make those adjustments.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Calm and considered. No all caps delivery.
Trump did post something else today. He said, and I quote again he was in all caps. This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before. Three exclamation points.
Now, at the end of a two-day disaster, when stocks lost the equivalent of 25 percent of the entire American economy, that is rich and not in the way that he means it.
And as for getting actually financially richer, stocks account for 69 percent of Americans' retirement savings, and they're getting hammered.
One of the hardest hit, Apple -- I mean, this is a stock in pretty much all certainly the vast majority of 401(k) portfolios down again today, more than 7 percent. The loss for Apple since its high, which is right after Trump's election, is $850 billion. That is $1 trillion almost for Apple alone. That is bigger than Walmart has ever been in its entire existence.
I mean these are stunning numbers. And one of the reasons that Apple specifically is taking such a hit are the tariffs on China, where they make so many iPhones. China is now hitting back hard, imposing -- they're striking back, 34 percent tariffs on all U.S. goods to match Trump.
Trump responding, caps again. China played it wrong. They panicked. The one thing they cannot afford to do.
That, of course, is not how they see it in China. You're getting a lot of patriotism on this. Some of the social media comments online. We must strike back hard, fight them to the end. Hit the dollar.
Our real goal is not to retaliate tariffs, but to cause civil unrest within the United States, which something that tonight isn't even that insane to consider. I mean, Beijing is Americas third largest export market. China spends billions on American soybeans, cotton, pork, corn, wheat.
When it comes to soybeans, by far the biggest buyer of American soybeans from the heartland of America. And the president of the American soybean association tonight saying, I don't support the use of tariffs as a negotiating tactic. It threatens our global markets and increases the costs of fertilizer, seeds and other things we need.
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And yet, in one of the most cognitively dissonant moments of the day, Trump's agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, went on national television this morning and said, what you are about to see here, I'm sorry, as what you see on your screen was happening.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BROOKE ROLLINS, AGRICULTURE SECRETARY: We are really, really excited and very grateful to President Trump's leadership.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: The cognitive dissonance of those words and what was happening in the market, the red on that screen is extreme. And maybe you chuckled, but -- but it's not funny. I mean, as for Trump's leadership in this specific tariff moment, according to "The Washington Post", Trump was provided a number of options from several agencies, and many of them very thoughtfully designed on tariffs specific to country and product, and, you know, all the nuance and layer that might be needed in such a moment.
Trump passed, though instead, "The Post" reports personally selected a formula that was based on two simple variables the trade deficit with each country and the total value of its U.S. exports, which is how we ended up with situations like Trump saying Vietnam has a 90 percent tariff against the U.S. when its 9 percent, and saying all sorts of other things on tariffs that were false.
Well, one White House source says if Trump tonight something that I guess with all of this would make sense to anybody listening, he's just at the peak of just not giving an F anymore.
Jeff Zeleny is OUTFRONT live in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Jeff, I know you've got new reporting tonight. You know, now he's off the golf course. He's back. He's been meeting with advisers.
How is he reacting to this bloodbath, this mini crash on Wall Street?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Erin, the president and the White House are defiant, at least on the surface, in the wake of this second straight day of a dramatic fall, not only in U.S. markets, but, of course, global markets as well. But the day began about 15 minutes after the U.S. markets opened, already falling.
The president arrived at his golf course here, where he spent nearly six hours. I'm told it was a mix of working as well as golfing, but of course, we saw some of those messages he was sending out throughout the day. He tried to pressure the chairman of the Federal Reserve. He talked about conversations he was having with the Vietnam and other leaders.
But at the end of this day, the president did not say anything publicly, and his advisers were not out selling his plan. This is the biggest policy proposal his administration has had. And instead, his treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, were told, was taking phone calls from concerned business executives, worried about what they were seeing about their investments in the market.
So, now, there is a concern. Is this truly a national emergency? That they actually also began with pretty strong jobs numbers for March. So, is this actually an emergency? Will there be lawsuits filed to challenge that? The whole basis of these tariffs in the first place?
But talking to one top Republican adviser who's in conversation with the president tells me this, the president isn't guided by the market, but of course, he watches it like everyone else.
So, as we end this week here, one of certainly the most consequential. The president is spending the rest of the weekend here. He's likely to golf tomorrow, as he normally does.
But, Erin, the question as the -- the first deadline begins tonight, is he open to any adjustments for that next deadline next Wednesday? He has signaled that he is. And there's certainly some belief that he might be -- Erin.
BURNETT: All right. Jeff Zeleny, thank you very much, in West Palm Beach tonight.
OUTFRONT now, Richard Quest, Peter Tuchman, one of the most recognizable traders on Wall Street, and Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the council of economic advisers under President Obama.
Peter, when we're talking about in our preamble here, mini crash, a word that you are using to describe what you are -- what you were in the midst of on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange today.
PETER TUCHMAN, TRADER AT THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE: You know, and I don't use that word lightly, right? You know, we've seen a handful of actual crashes over the last 100 or some years. And crashes is a significant experienced -- significant experience. And but, you know, over this last week, you know, we came in during
the week. The weekend was a little bit more positive news coming out. We were up 1,000 points on Monday after a weekend of sort of, you know, there was going to be pinpointed softer landing with the tariff story. And then, Tuesday was the auto tariff story that came out.
And then Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were so significant. We're talking 1,600, 1,800 and 2,200 points on the Dow, right? Weve gone from 45,000 to 30 -- almost 37,000, 1,000 points in the S&P.
You know, you have to look at it as a mini crash without any question. Six-point whatever trillion dollars out of the market, stocks are trading literally 50 percent of where they were at their record highs.
February 19th, we were trading at record highs. This is six weeks ago. We were at a record high, to think that where we are.
BURNETT: To think about where we are, and it was the decision of one person, right, as the point, as you said, you knew something was coming.
TUCHMAN: I said that yesterday.
BURNETT: You knew something was coming. And -- and that something could have been supported by the gain you saw on Monday, right? I mean, they knew something was.
It wasn't like, oh, my gosh, tariffs on their own, Richard.
RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS AT LARGE: No, look, this -- my first stock market crash was '87. So I've seen a few of them.
BURNETT: Yeah.
QUEST: And --
TUCHMAN: As was mine.
QUEST: -- over the years.
[19:10:00]
And you can usually pinpoint them. It's the global financial crisis, 2008. It's the pandemic, 2020. It's dotcom boom and bust.
But this is totally self-inflicted and unnecessary, which is why I'm calling it economic vandalism because what the administration has done is taken a policy that is largely discredited, has offended on foreign policy, Greenland, Canada, whatever you want, and has now ruptured relations both with markets and governments and investors.
And the reality of this is why it's so important, Erin. The reality is not Peter and myself were talking about large numbers and traders and whatever. The reality is tonight's 401(k)s. This is --
BURNETT: Well, you talk about being at half of the value at the high. I mean, think about what that did to Americans. Thats $6.6 trillion.
QUEST: I can't even look at what's -- at what's happened to my retirement fund. I can't even look at it because I'm thinking, you know, with my perspective, how long will it take to get back? How long? How much has to happen?
TUCHMAN: Think about it. We are in a level of somewhat of privilege to a certain extent --
QUEST: Absolutely.
TUCHMAN: But basically, the average person out there who is thinking about retiring in the next couple of years, who's eight weeks ago was looking at their portfolio, so many percent, double digit percentage, higher going, you know what? Now I can finally retire.
Every one of the crashes that we've seen, and I lived through '87 as a clerk on the floor, 2000, 2007 and the pandemic. Each one of them, the only thing that was the same was we came off of record highs each time. Each one of them had a component that was explainable.
There was a health, a health crisis. There was a predatory lending practice that was the explanation. Theres no explanation to this.
And I said it to you last night ,singlehandedly, we've taken something. And I think Richard's terminology is right. Its actually its irresponsible, inexcusable. And it surely is vandalism.
BURNETT: Jason, you know, I want to play something. As we talk about the word used to describe this and the moment, as people look at, maybe thought they could retire and now can't, and what it will take to get back there.
You know, Jim Cramer said something, you know, my friend, on CNBC today, he was -- didn't mince words. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM CRAMER, HOST OF CNBC'S "MAD MONEY" AND "SQUAWK ON THE STREET": They could have a crash. I don't see why not. I mean, why would you buy stocks? I do think that what's happened, Carl, is that I struggle for why -- for what the president's game plan is because if you wanted to make the market crash, I think you would go with this game plan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: I mean, you know, what do you make of that, Jason? If he -- if you wanted to make the market crash, I think you would go with this game plan. I say this, by the way, I want to highlight -- Jim Cramer is not against tariffs, right? So, it's not just an anti-tariff point he's making there. Its how Trump has done this.
JASON FURMAN, FORMER CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS: Yeah, I mean, this was an extraordinary way of developing policy. It seems like the president finalized the plans of what he was going to do for each country at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, three hours before he announced it. We saw all the sloppiness of the tariffs put on that island that just has penguins on it, and no people in the Antarctic.
But then much, much more seriously, tariffs that go way beyond what he talked about in the campaign.
In terms of the market, here's the scary thing -- if the market believes that the tariffs that have just -- are just starting tonight are going to last for the next year, it would go down even more than it already has.
The market has not fully priced in on these tariffs. They're expecting that the president will at least partly blink and take some of them back. That would be good if he does that. If he doesn't -- expect, you know, even more pain down the road.
BURNETT: And, of course, he says he's not going to move any. He's -- he's not -- I mean, he'll do individual negotiations. And he said I am not changing.
FURMAN: And China made that harder for him today. China just retaliated, which is totally understandable. Thats what countries do when you attack them with tariffs. And that's going -- that was part of what went on in the market today. They think, you know, it's not going to be quite as easy a way to settle this and get back to peace as they were hoping.
QUEST: The market has just been told that the earth is flat essentially. And how you adjust to that with -- with economic formulas that you've never had to deal with. So, this is why JPMorgan today, yesterday, put up the recession rate to 60 percent. Tonight, it is basically also coming out with its own forecasts --
BURNETT: They're saying an actual recession at a -- at starting what would be in June.
QUEST: And -- and if you look at what they're also saying, they're saying that the bank -- the Fed will cut. But Jerome Powell got an impossible position because he's facing stagflation. He's facing the difficulty of cutting or raising. What do you do?
BURNETT: Well, I mean -- and this is the question. And I want to ask Peter. We know, you know, you just -- you take all politics out of it. But you see how Trump spent his day.
Now, I know he had this live thing in his calendar. And you can take aside what he said about making sure you read the moment and not playing golf.
[19:15:01]
But this is the images that he put out today, right? And then the comment that he made in one of his social media posts, right, that I read in all caps, is I look for it. But, you know, this is a great time to get rich, right? And you're going to -- you're only going to get richer.
This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before. He's on a on a golf course. How much does that dissonance matter?
TUCHMAN: You know what? I think it matters a lot. And it was also the gentleman from Cantor Fitzgerald who's his new adviser.
BURNETT: Howard Lutnick.
TUCHMAN: Right, when was asked about what he thought of the situation on the stock market, and he started to talk about his wife renovating their $25 million home. That was where he went with this story.
It's such a disconnect. This is -- these are real numbers, trillions of dollars. In the beginning, think about it, February 19th, record high. We started to see in the old days on Wall Street, when there was data that was coming out that had major economic implications. It happened before the market opened or after the market closed. When you were down on the floor or at a designated news conference, so that everybody had a level playing field, right?
He does his own way. He has sort of a bully tactic. And so, for those first 3 or 4 weeks when the market was sort of, you know, unraveling, it felt like maybe there's a comeback from this.
If he changed the narrative, we could get back to even at some point, what's happened since this reveal, because I was and I played it all wrong. I thought the reveal was going to be the turnaround moment, that he was going to come out, whether we understood it or not, that these numbers were going to make sense or not, and that we were going to be able to turn the market around.
We're beyond turning this market around at this point.
BURNETT: And, Jason --
TUCHMAN: And it feels, and obviously, he doesn't -- he today would have all of these are individual opportunities where he could have said, you know what, guys, I need to sort of -- everyone's got to calm down. I've got this under control and he's playing golf.
BURNETT: No, I mean, the signal was the signal, which was this doesn't bother me, right? I mean, it is what it is. That was a signal sent.
TUCHMAN: Nothing to see here.
BURNETT: And, Jason, I mean, you know, you look at China coming out and matching. Obviously, that's crucial. But now that does that just give the green light, the gates open for everybody else to -- to do that, especially of the big trading partners.
FURMAN: Yeah. You're going to see different countries doing different things. The European Union is certainly going to be retaliating against the United States. Theres some places that are so dependent on exports to the United States. The trade situation is so asymmetric that they may settle. You might see that in a country like Vietnam.
BURNETT: Yeah.
TUCHMAN: But let me tell you something --
FURMAN: If Vietnam lowers its tariffs on the United States, it's going to matter a tiny, tiny, minuscule little bit to our economy. We just don't export much to Vietnam. We're not going to make America great again by selling more to the country of Lesotho if Lesotho chooses to lower its tariffs now that it's been faced with a 50 percent one from us.
BURNETT: Right, right. And of course, many of those things made in Vietnam. I don't care how much you lower the cost of making them, it's still going to be a hell of a lot more expensive to make them here.
Thank you all very much, I appreciate it.
And next hour, breaking news continues. Trump's treasury secretary claiming the revenue from Trump's tariffs could reach as high as $600 billion a year. So, where does he get that number? Fareed Zakaria is next.
Plus, I'll talk exclusively to the FDA's now former top vaccine scientist. Today was his last day. He was told resign or be fired. So, this is going to be his first television interview. What's his message to RFK Jr.?
And Republicans sounding the alarm, hoping they can get to Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): If we go into a recession, particularly a bad recession, 2026 in all likelihood politically would be a bloodbath.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:23:01]
BURNETT: Breaking news tonight, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claiming that Trump's tariffs will bring in as much as $600 billion in revenue annually to the United States. He made the case to Tucker Carlson.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: It's going to be a moving target, for sure, but could it -- could it be anywhere from $300 billion to $600 billion a year? Sure.
TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Okay. So that's -- that's meaningful revenue.
BESSENT: Very meaningful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: So, a massive range. Bessent also saying the ultimate goal or result of the tariffs will be
for companies to move their factories to the United States in exchange for lower tariffs, something, of course, that would take many, many years. And it came as the Dow plunged more than 2,200 points today amid growing global fears of a recession due to Trump's tariffs.
OUTFRONT now, the host of "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS", Fareed Zakaria, also the author of "Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present".
Fareed, in this incredibly chaotic moment, looking at the op-ed that you wrote, Trump's trade war on reality, you know, you're blunt and you use words you don't always use. You say capricious, destructive, and dumb way. Talking about how Trump is using American power tonight.
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": Yeah. You know, this may be the biggest economic policy-making error of my lifetime. I've never seen anything like this. And, you know, you are seeing the verdict already in from the markets.
And the stock market is not the economy, Erin, but the stock market, the bond market, the commodity markets, everybody is signaling that this was a disaster. And it's going to be more pain to come.
It reminds -- there's only two occasions I can recall when markets have gone so badly askew so fast all at once, and that was the pandemic and the 2008 global financial crisis. But at least in those cases, those were genuine crises.
[19:25:02]
Here, you have an own goal. You have an unforced error of policymaking, creating a global financial crisis.
BURNETT: And, Fareed, you know, we're finding out as all of this Trump is, you know, saying, oh, well, he'll negotiate with some countries. It turns out that two of the countries that he's indicated that he might negotiate with in terms of these tariffs, whatever that means at this point, are countries that, according to CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, two countries were where right now there are Trump branded real estate projects going forward.
I understand on all the layers of the onion, it's hard to even think about that. And yet that in and of itself is stunning.
ZAKARIA: Well, it's actually a very much a feature of the kind of economy Donald Trump is trying to create. The more you have tariffs, the more you have this kind of blanket political decisions that govern the economy, the more businessmen have to curry favor with politicians.
You know, what's extraordinary is the American economy was always about the fact that you just did your business. You didn't have to worry about the government that much, light hand of regulation, lower taxes than in, say, Europe. What Trump is creating is an economy in which everyone is going to
have to come to Washington to beg for a favor, for an exemption, for a special rate, whether you're a country, whether you're a company.
It's really fundamentally un-American. It is the opposite of what the American economy is about, is supposed to be, which is a free economy without you having to curry favor with politicians.
So, you're absolutely right. There is going to be inevitably questions of whether or not there was deal making, whether there was corruption. But that's the nature of protectionism.
BURNETT: So, you know, here's the thing. When you talk about the light hand of regulation, right, that is -- is what many see as the strength of the American economy. But it is certainly with the tried-and-true bread and butter of the Republican Party is, at its ethos and its core. And that's what GOP presidents have believed in.
Ronald Reagan, you look at him as part of a brand new documentary that you have coming out about conservatives' long-running war against the government, which is taking a totally different form now. But Ronald Reagan is unrecognizable compared to Donald Trump. Let me play a piece.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RONALD REAGAN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Reagan's solution, the most radical attempt to downsize government since the new deal conservatives hopes were sky high. But in the end, the Reagan revolution would fall far short. Big government got even bigger, and many hardcore conservatives once again felt betrayed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: You know, now, you see, obviously Ronald Reagan couldn't have had a more different view when it came to protectionism than Donald Trump. But in the in the concept of making government small, something Reagan wanted, something Obama said he wanted. Right. We heard it. But this is a very different way. It seems to be being tried.
ZAKARIA: Yeah. You know, and the truth is with -- with getting government smaller, it's really all about the big programs, Medicare, Social Security, the Defense Department. If you're not tackling them and it's really not waste, fraud and abuse. You can talk all you want about that, but these are going to be rounding errors.
The real issue is, are you going to means-test Social Security? Are you going to raise the retirement age? Are you going to stop Medicare from, you know, overcharging and over-testing?
But those are very hard political decisions to do. So, it's much easier to rant and rail against you know, against Medicare or to go and cut spending on foreign aid, which is tiny, but it's -- you know, it's an easy target because you're spending on foreigners.
The real challenge is the big programs. But as you said, Erin, it's important to point out Reagan was a principled conservative. He believed in small government both at home and small government with regard to tariffs.
He was a free trader. I think he would be turning in his grave to see what Donald Trump has done to the legacy of conservatism here.
BURNETT: All right. Fareed Zakaria, thank you so much.
ZAKARIA: Pleasure.
BURNETT: And you can catch "THE WAR ON GOVERNMENT: A FAREED ZAKARIA SPECIAL". It is this Sunday at 8:00 Eastern and Pacific here on CNN.
Next OUTFRONT, an exclusive. The FDA's now former top vaccine scientist is speaking out tonight after being forced out from the place he has worked for the past 13 years, breaking his silence.
Plus, one of the nation's top economists joins me. Why? He says Trump's trade war is the biggest economic mistake in a century.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:34:05]
BURNETT: Tonight, an OUTFRONT exclusive. FDA's top vaccine scientist, Dr. Peter Marks, in his first television appearance, speaking out after HHS secretary RFK Jr.'s team told him to resign or be fired. He says the employees of RFK, quote, mistakenly fired and once back, may never return.
Here's RFK Jr. just in the past 24 hours.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., U.S. SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: There were a number of instances where studies that should have not have been cut were cut, and we've reinstated them. Personnel that should not have been cut were cut, we're reinstating them. And that was always the plan. The part of the DOGE -- we talked about this from the beginning is we're going to do 80 percent cuts, but 20 percent of those are going to have to be reinstalled because we'll make mistakes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Dr. Marks also confirming tonight that Kennedy, quote, gutted his office and that even more top vaccine regulators are right now being forced out by Kennedy.
[19:35:01]
And Dr. Marks's last day was today. He wrote in an -- writes in a resignation letter that he left because RFK Jr. wanted, quote, subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies. Quoting from your letter, Dr. Marks, who is OUTFRONT now, former
director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and the top vaccine official at the FDA.
So, Doctor, was your last day at the -- at the -- at the FDA, and you have spent 13 years there. You say that they said "resign or be fired".
You are speaking out about why you are no longer welcome there. Why not?
DR. PETER MARKS, TOP FDA VACCINE OFFICIAL WHO JUST RESIGNED: I fully don't understand it, but I suspect it has to do with a devotion to science and to the public health of this nation. The people. And it's an incredibly great group of people at FDA who are devoted to the public health of this country. They work tirelessly to make sure that we are safe, that we have safe drugs, safe biologics, safe foods, safe pet food and we do that by following the science.
And if you don't believe in science or if you want to ignore the science, it's very hard to have people around who can't see anything other than following.
BURNETT: In a moment, I want to -- I want to read to you what the HHS said about you, but I want you first to be able to talk about science, because RFK is reportedly hiring a new vaccine researcher to study a possible link, they say, between vaccines and autism, which, of course, has been debunked by science. But RFK Jr. also said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KENNEDY: There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.
I don't think the vaccine worked.
If you got vaccinated, you're more likely to get sick, you're more likely to get severe illness, and you're more likely to die than if you were unvaccinated.
And if you take the vaccine, you have a 21 percent increased chance of dying over the next six months.
Theres no science that says that these children are a threat to other children.
The biggest exposure is not coming from power plants or old mining claims, as you might think. It's coming from our own vaccines.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: So -- so how much does what happened to you have to do with RFK's position on vaccines?
MARKS: Look, I'm just going to say this -- and I'm not going to directly confront Mr. Kennedy. He'll have to confront his maker for those lies. I just need to say to you as if I was under oath. The vaccines that
make it through the vaccine approval process in the United States are not. Every vaccine is safe, but those that make it through the approval process are safe, effective and are high quality.
No one at FDA would ever let a vaccine out that they would not give to their own children, and it is just breathtaking that anyone would try to dissuade parents from giving their children vaccines, such as the measles vaccine, which is among the safest and most effective vaccines that we have. And one just needs to look at the estimate that 50 million lives have been saved over the past 50 years by that vaccine alone.
BURNETT: So, on that vaccine, right, and measles, we are facing a measles outbreak in the United States because of low vaccination rates in certain areas. Right now, you're seeing cases in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, possibly Kansas. So, you've got 600. Measles is obviously incredibly easy to transmit, right, because it is aerosol.
And a new report finds that a third, nearly a third of children eligible to be vaccinated against measles did not get their first shot on schedule this year. I mean, that is a stunning reality. Dr. Marks, that is -- this is vaccine has been around for decades, right? For decades. And now you've got a third of kids in America eligible for the vaccine that are -- did not get their first shot on schedule.
I mean, the HHS, as you just left it, which is in charge of this from the national level, are they going to the way you see it, what RFK is doing there? Are they going to do anything about that?
MARKS : I don't know what he's going to do, and I can't make him do anything. But I can tell you as a viewer, please consider getting your child vaccinated if they're not vaccinated. It's easy to ignore measles because we haven't seen it.
I had measles, I had the vaccine as well. It is not just an innocent disease, benign disease. It kills 1 in 1,000 children in a developed country like the United States. We've already had two deaths in the United States. One in a child from this. And there's -- these are needless deaths because the vaccine is 98 percent effective against preventing measles, but close to 100 percent effective in preventing death.
And I need to tell you, Erin, that the measles vaccine does not. It does not kill children. The measles vaccine, honestly, it doesn't cause encephalitis. The measles vaccine can cause a fever about a week after.
And if you're not careful and you don't take the kids temperature. Yes, they rarely about 15 out of 100,000 will get a febrile seizure, which is scary, but it goes away. And if you take your child's temperature and keep it down, you don't end up with that problem.
And the other couple of problems that come with it are ones that come and go. So really a remarkably safe vaccine. The 100,000 kids get the measles, 100,000 kids get the measles vaccine. And guess what? Very few adverse events.
That is the truth. Unfortunately, if 100,000 children in the United States get measles, we will end up with at least about 100 dead up front. And then there's a complication whereby measles infection persists in the brain, and about 10 or 20 will then die in the next several years.
What do you want? A hundred to 120 dead children per 100,000, or a vaccine that we know from global use is incredibly safe and we know what can happen, because if we look at American Samoa, where there was a measles outbreak, 5,700 cases there, the supportive care was not as good. There were 83 deaths.
BURNETT: Yeah. Well, we've been talking a lot with the governor of Hawaii, Governor Green, who is out there after RFK Jr. was there.
Before you go, Doctor, I know that you're concerned about obviously, the vaccine of this, but I know one of your biggest concerns as you leave the FDA, and I know you're resigning, but obviously not by choice, you wanted to continue doing your work is biowarfare that that is a big concern you have because of what RFK jr. is doing in terms of firing. Biowarfare, what are you talking about?
MARKS: So let me just back it up, if you don't mind, for one quick second. I just didn't regulate vaccines. I also regulated innovative biologic products by leaving -- I leave behind the what we did with cell gene therapies that could have helped people, for instance, kids with cancer who had no other treatments, adults with sickle cell disease. I leave behind people who were doing their best to try to speed up treatments for rare diseases, and I -- I also leave behind a group now gutted, that was ready to respond to natural and manmade threats at any given time.
There are many, many viruses that could come. Things like Ebola and others that could be very dangerous to our country. We had a group that was prepared to deal with those. Additionally, I can't go into all the details, but there are manmade threats that we were prepared to deal with.
Having that capacity means that today I believe we are weaker as a nation, and I believe our adversaries know that we are weaker as a nation because we don't have that capacity.
BURNETT: Dr. Marks, very sobering, but thank you very much for taking the time and for speaking out. Appreciate it.
MARKS: Thank you so much for having me.
BURNETT: And next, a top Republican tonight with a message for Trump. Turn back now before it's too late. Wait to see who it is.
Plus, our KFILE uncovering audio of J.D. Vance breaking in a big way with Trump when it comes to trade. Wait until you see.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [19:45:49]
BURNETT: Breaking news, Republicans warning Trump that his trade war is bad for America and bad for politics. Senator Ted Cruz tonight saying there are enormous risks. His words if other countries retaliate.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): And it's terrible for America. It will hurt jobs and hurt America. And there is a very real risk of that.
If we go into a recession, particularly a bad recession, 2026, in all likelihood politically would be a bloodbath. You would face a Democrat House, and you might even face a Democrat Senate.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
BURNETT: And Republican Senator Rand Paul, writing in an op-ed for Fox News, quote, terminate the Trump tariffs before it's too late. They don't punish foreign governments. They punish American families.
Well, politics aside, if you can, on this one famed economist tonight says Trump's trade war is the biggest economic mistake in almost 100 years. 95 years. And he has OUTFRONT now, Jeremy Siegel, professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton Business School.
And, Professor, you and I spoke so many times during the great recession, 2007, 2008 and -- and some of the feelings that people have here in the markets right now are reminiscent of those very frightening times.
Professor, why do you believe, when you look at this in, in the context of history, that this is the worst economic policy in a century?
JEREMY SIEGEL, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF FINANCE, WHARTON SCHOOL OF BUSINESS: Well, I go back to the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which is a passed in 1930. With -- with rates that are similar and in fact, some of Trump's rates are even higher than that tariff. But what's interesting, Erin, is if you go to the U.S. Senate website and just, you know, senate.gov. The Senate is, of course, controlled by the Republicans.
And if you do on search tariffs and you come up to the Smoot-Hawley tariff right away, and I'm going to quote you right from their website on June 13th, 1930, the Senate passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff comma among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history. Now, that seems puzzling to me. That, the Republican controlled Senate would say that the Smoot-Hawley tariff again, which had rates that are not dissimilar to what Trump now has, was among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.
And then they go on to say it had such a bad effect on the economy at and in this, you know, you talked about Cruz and Rand Paul, that the voters turned out the Republicans, both from the House and the Senate and the presidency two years later. So, you know, I don't know whether Trump knows that this is on there or he's going to scrub the website now because I think that this is -- this is what the received wisdom of economists.
In fact, they said a thousand economists signed a petition back then drafted by Paul Douglas, who was actually a future senator, imploring the president to veto the tariff. Now, back then, it was only Congress that had the ability to pass tariffs. Unfortunately, congress gave over -- well, from over the last 50 years, all the power of the tariffs to the president. We wouldn't have that if that didn't happen.
But, you know, he ignored it. Hoover ignored the pleas and signed it.
BURNETT: Well, it is pretty. It's -- I think it's fascinating that you say that and point that out about how things are different. You know, people talk about Congress with the power of the purse as to why they don't, in this case, have the power of tariffs. When we talk about one person being able to singlehandedly do it, it's not an exaggeration. It is one person. And it happens to be the president because they gave the power up.
You know, professor, what do you -- what do you think people should do right now? And I know you're not going to come out and give investment advice.
[19:50:00]
But just in the context of, you know, a quarter of the value of the United States' entire economy was lost in the stock market in the past two days, right? People's 401(k)s have been decimated. It is a frightening time. What should people do?
SIEGEL: They should hold on. You know -- you know, I've done all the long term research, and it's always a mistake to panic and sell out.
Yes, there might be more short-term turbulence. And certainly, if he keeps them on and we don't know.
BURNETT: Yeah.
SIEGEL: You know, Erin, by the end of this broadcast, he could have a tweet. Oh, yeah. Hey, listen. Decided to suspend them for a month. So. Yeah, totally unpredictable.
And, by the way, that unpredictability is a negative for business and the market in and of itself. But certainly, if they are kept on at these levels for protect -- protected number -- number of days, you know, I think a recession would be almost a certainty.
BURNETT: All right. Well, that another somber conversation this evening. But, Professor, I do appreciate your time. I am glad to see you again. Thank you.
SIEGEL: Thank you.
BURNETT: And next, our KFILE uncovering audio of J.D. Vance doubting Trump's trade policies.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:55:29]
BURNETT: Tonight, J.D. Vance flip flopping again. Here is the vice president cheering on Trump as he announced sweeping tariffs on 185 countries. You see him there.
Tonight, our KFILE, though, has unearthed new evidence that Vance used to say something very different about the economy before he joined MAGA.
And KFILE's Andrew Kaczynski is OUTFRONT.
So, you know, you see Vance at Trump's side in the Rose Garden, right? He is there supporting his president. But you found that he has actually talked about trade extensively in a very different way than Trump.
ANDREW KACZYNSKI, CNN KFILE SENIOR EDITOR: That's right. And J.D. Vance is now one of the loudest and really, frankly, most articulate voices within the administration defending their new tariffs, calling them key to bringing back American manufacturing.
But just a few years ago, he wasn't just skeptical of protectionist trade policies. He was outright dismissive of them. He said that those jobs that went to China were gone. He said a number of times that they weren't coming back. Let's just listen to a couple of those comments from him right here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I do think that trade hasn't necessarily been in the best interests of a lot of these communities. Now, the question of whether you can go backwards in time, I think the answer is no.
Now, does that mean that we should be hyper protectionist in our approach to trade? I would argue no.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KACZYNSKI: And one thing, Erin, that was really interesting that we found was that was 2016, 2017. But then we fast forward to 2019. He supports Trump's policies. He found an exchange where he's just kind of going back and forth with someone.
And even then, he says in this exchange, talking about tariffs and trade, quote, for what it's worth -- this is J.D. Vance -- for what it's worth, the policy may very well fail. So even then, when he's supporting Trump around trade, not a ton of confidence in 2019 that this is going to be a successful policy.
BURNETT: No. Okay. So, he also had the opposite view of Trump on what was to blame for U.S. manufacturing job losses, right? Those have happened, right. Jobs have gone overseas, right? That is a reality that that is at the core of this. But Trump blames other countries, right? He's blaming protectionist trade policies. Vance has said loud and clear that that was wrong. It's something else to blame.
KACZYNSKI: Exactly. Yeah. He made the opposite argument, basically from Trump. He said that American manufacturing jobs were lost, not because were shipping them overseas, not because of trade deals, he said. They were lost because of robots, because of automation, because basically robots were taking the jobs of people.
And he said, you know, that the protectionist trade policies, the same ones that he supports now, were not going to be -- were not going to bring those jobs back because they weren't lost because of trade deals. They were lost because robots took them away. Listen to him here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: The fundamental issue with American jobs and manufacturing right now is not that all of our jobs have gone to Mexico and China, it's that they've been automated. It's that mechanization has sort of reduced the manufacturing work base.
They haven't disappeared so much from globalization or from shipping them overseas. They've largely disappeared because of automation and because of new technological change.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KACZYNSKI: I also want people to look right here at this tweet that we also found from Vance. This was a deleted tweet where he said, quote, 2017 can't be repeated enough. If you're worried about America's economic interests, focus on automation and education rather than trade protectionism. He said that actually, on a day we found we looked up the date. He said that on a day that Trump was attacking, you know, the trade deficit with Mexico, with his obviously his huge thing and why he's doing the tariffs now.
BURNETT: Well, and it would appear to be clear that's why J.D. Vance would have posted on that day. Just out of curiosity, can you tell when he deleted it? I mean, that wouldn't be a tweet one would ordinarily delete.
KACZYNSKI: Yeah. So, he runs for Senate in 2022, okay?
BURNETT: Yeah.
KACZYNSKI: He's, you know, full on MAGA. He's full Trump. He got the beard. He was like, he's full Trump supporter. Now, he deleted all of his tweets at some point before that run.
BURNETT: Okay.
KACZYNSKI: And that's where you know, the thing where he said Trump's reprehensible. He makes people that, you know, make me afraid. Immigrants afraid. So, I think he's reprehensible. All -- literally all that stuff, that's all gone.
BURNETT: That's when he gets rid of that, at that point.
KACZYNSKI: He gets rid of it. Now, you know, he's the opposite, right?
BURNETT: So, what is he how is he trying to clear clean this up tonight that on this issue of tariffs he has been just on every level on the opposite side the president in the past.
KACYZNSKI: So, we reached out to his office. I'm going to read this is the statement that they gave us here. They said Vice President Vance has been crystal clear in his unwavering support for revitalizing the American economy, by bringing back manufacturing jobs and sticking up for middle class workers and families since before he launched his Senate run. And that is a large part of why he was elected to public office in the first place.
BURNETT: Well, there's his response. All right.
KFILE Andrew Kaczynski, thank you very much.
And thanks so much to all of you, as always, for joining us.
It's time now for "AC360".
