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Erin Burnett Outfront

Trump Tries To Divert Attention From Epstein Ties With Probe Into Dems; KFILE: New Epstein Emails; Dow Closes Down, Nasdaq Sheds $1.74T In Two Weeks, Nvidia Takes A Hit. Aired 7-8p ET

Aired November 14, 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, Trump demanding the DOJ open a new Epstein investigation, only into Democrats. Pam Bondi quickly agrees. Is this Trump's last-ditch effort to keep the Epstein files from ever getting out? We'll explain how it could work.

And more revealing emails from Jeffrey Epstein. KFILE went through thousands and thousands of documents and found more. Wait until you see what Epstein says about Trump in this trove.

And the controversial official behind the stepped-up L.A. and Chicago raids now headed to another American city, Charlotte. That was news to city officials there. The top sheriff is our guest.

Let's go OUTFRONT.

And good evening. I'm Erin Burnett.

OUTFRONT tonight, the breaking news, Trump's last ditch effort to prevent those Epstein files from ever seeing the light of day.

Today, Trump directing his Department of Justice to open a new investigation. Only into Democrats related to Epstein. Trump posting on Truth Social, which, of course, is his own platform, calling for the DOJ to investigate his political enemies. I mean, he's done this in other cases, but in this case, it was specifically about Democrats.

He said: I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton. Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JPMorgan Chase and many other people and institutions to determine what was going on with them and him. This is another Russia, Russia, Russia scam with all arrows pointing to Democrats.

Of course, we should point out just in the emails in recent days, right. Trump's name is in there again and again and again.

Obediently and swiftly, though the attorney general, Pam Bondi, responded on social media, saying, :Thank you, Mr. President. SDNY, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I've asked him to take the lead. As with all matters, the department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.

Now, obviously, there wasn't a single Republican named on the list. Certainly, Trump himself was not listed. As I said, Trump is named in the newly released Epstein documents, right, which are not part of this massive trove at the FBI. But the newly released emails, right. He's named again and again and again and again and again and again. And I could go on and on and on.

Emails like this one from April 2011, from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking. Epstein writes, "I want you to realize that the dog that has embarked is Trump," and then Epstein added that a victim, quote, spent hours at my house with him has never once been mentioned."

Now, to be clear, still, to this day, Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing. So, well, then it would stand to reason that he would want the files out there. But he doesn't. He will do anything, it seems, to avoid that. Any federal investigation into Epstein at this point would, of course need to look into emails like that one. If there were to be an investigation at the DOJ.

But that is not what Trump is asking. He is demanding only that Democrats and JPMorgan be investigated. JPMorgan, of course, was the bank where Epstein was a longtime client. The bank dropped him in 2013.

And actually, last week, I had a chance to talk to the CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, explicitly about the Epstein investigation. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMIE DIMON, JPMORGAN CEO: I have no problem with any transparency. Zero, none, nada.

BURNETT: Well, you said you would testify.

DIMON: There's nothing that they're going to learn from me. That's important. We kicked him out in 2013. You should know it's important to me. And I think our government should listen closely. We had been finding these suspicious activity reports which were not allowed to disclose, but it came out in the courts recently, I think as early as 2002 and 2004 and 2008, the government knew a lot more than we did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: And JPMorgan issued this statement to OUTFRONT tonight, in part saying, "The government had information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks," saying, "we regret any association we had with a man but did not help him commit his heinous acts."

Jamie Dimon referred to Jeffrey Epstein to me last week as a as a beast. None -- nevertheless, by launching this new investigation, right, Trump and Pam Bondi, they could succeed at something that is absolutely at the core of what Trump wants, which is to refuse to publicly release any Epstein information because once they open investigation, its ongoing. And then you can say, oh, we can't put anything out because it's an ongoing investigation.

And this is not new for Trump. We have seen him use this exact same tactic before. Do you remember all the times that he said he was going to release his tax returns?

[19:05:05]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'd love to give them, but I'm under audit. When the audit is finished, I'll give them.

As that's finished, whenever that may be. And hopefully, it's going to be before the election. I'm fine with that.

If I were finished with the audit, I would have an open mind to it. I would say that, but I don't want to do it during the audit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Remember that audit, that audit, that audit. It never ended, did it? Well, maybe it did, but we didn't get the goods.

It is not hard to see what Trump could be doing with launching a new Jeffrey Epstein investigation now, days before a vote in the House could actually start to push those files into the public eye where they should be, why is an investigation being launched now?

Kristen Holmes is OUTFRONT live outside the White House.

And, Kristen, what more are you learning about Trump's strategy here with this sudden, you know, asking for an investigation into something which, by the way, he has repeatedly referred to as a hoax?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right. How can you investigate something that you believe is a hoax? I do want to get to the strategy in just one second, because we've actually just heard President Trump react to those emails on camera, or at least audio for the first time. He was talking to reporters aboard his plane on the way down to West Palm Beach, where he's going to spend the weekend.

He was specifically asked about the email in which Epstein says, Trump knew about the girls. He was asking. The question was, what did he mean by that? He said he doesn't know. He then he turns it onto Democrats, particularly Bill Clinton, as we've seen Larry Summers, et cetera.

But then he says, Jeffrey Epstein and I had a bad relationship for many years, but he also saw strength because I was president. So, he dictated a couple of memos himself. Give me a break.

Now, there are more questions that were being thrown at him about Epstein. He seemed to pivot away from that. So, we'll obviously be monitoring this quickly. This is the first time that we've heard him actually verbally or audio respond. Everything else has been these kind of blasts on Truth Social.

So, quickly, moving on from that, what is going on with this strategy? Well, this is a clear shift. This is President Trump trying to take control of the narrative. After months of really being plagued by the Jeffrey Epstein story.

And we know that allies have been telling him you're getting bad advice. The way you're handling this is not right. And even as even as recently as the last few days, one of his allies on Capitol Hill said when it comes to his denying and his downplaying, these release of these Epstein files, that was bad advice that he should be confronting this head on.

Now, whether or not that's exactly what linked to this change in strategy unclear, but it is a shift in strategy, because what we know is that President Trump, he has been really dictating all of the response here. So, this idea that he's taking bad advice, well, he was the one who was giving his own advice and following his own advice. And so, in this moment, we see him trying to take control of the narrative instead of what he had been doing.

And I was told this was on purpose by sources, which was letting the information come out and then reacting to it, saying it was a hoax. That was intentional. Now they are trying to flip the table here.

BURNETT: Yeah, right. Of course, with that, I don't know how anybody can square the circle of launching an investigation at this point into something that you continue to call. Already been investigating, because it's funny.

HOLMES: That's why --

BURNETT: Right.

HOLMES: It's been investigated. And we know that there have been multiple law enforcement agencies who have said there was no one else to charge. And then President Trump again saying it's a hoax, and then saying they're going to investigate the hoax. This is a shift in strategy, though, because it is putting them on the offensive now.

BURNETT: Right. Well, we'll see. All right, Kristen, thank you so much. New reporting there from Kristen.

I want to go straight now to the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Congressman Robert Garcia.

Now, congressman, you know, this is happening at a moment. And my jaw sort of dropped when I saw it today, because you have finally got the GOP seemingly unmasked to back releasing the files, right? That there has been this this mass abandonment of Trump on this issue in the House, right? So, you're going to get this vote and it's going to pass, it seems all but certain. And Trump tonight then comes out with a last ditch. But what might be

incredibly effective effort to block those files from seeing the light of day. Are you worried that he has found a way to stop the Epstein files from coming out?

REP. ROBERT GARCIA (D-CA): Look, we are going to get to the truth regardless of whatever efforts Donald Trump tries to put in place, and clearly, right now, he is panicking. And he's -- I mean, it's crazy that he's putting out this new investigation through Pam Bondi to go after Democrats when there have been hundreds and hundreds of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials that actually have compiled the files through an investigation that right now are sitting on the attorney general's desk, according to her.

It is outrageous that right now the president knows that he alone has the power to release all the files immediately. There are women, hundreds of women that have suffered abuse, rape. Many of them were children at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

[19:10:00]

And Donald Trump could help bring them justice, but refuses to even acknowledge their survivors.

And the fact that he's considering a pardon or a commutation for Ghislaine Maxwell, Donald Trump has backed into a corner. We're going to get the files regardless of what he tries to do.

BURNETT: Okay, but let me ask you about that. Are you confident of that? I mean, if you have this house vote, but they launch an investigation, then they can say, hey, ongoing investigation. We can't release these.

I mean, is there anything you could do in that scenario?

GARCIA: Well, look, I think we're obviously monitoring this. There's a couple of things that are important. We know that right now the 23,000 pages that we just released were not from the Department of Justice. They were from the Epstein estate.

BURNETT: Right.

GARCIA: There are more documents that the Epstein estate that we intend to get and put out to the public. The testimony of the survivors and victims of which we are at daily talking to. I spoke to one just yesterday. That is important information for our investigation.

We're talking to numerous other people. There are hundreds of good civil servants of FBI agents that have worked hard to believe in the Constitution in our country, that have worked to compile the Epstein files at the DOJ. The reality is, is that no matter how much they try to hide those files, they are going to come out. They're going to -- they're going to try to slow this down. They're going to try to stop it. But one important step is the congress going on record next week to release the files. And I think we'll have an overwhelming number of Republicans join us.

BURNETT: It seems -- it seems that way now.

All right. So, Trump's DOJ, we talk about that. Just the irony of the fact that he calls all of this a hoax. And now he wants to launch an investigation into something that he's called a hoax. Well, that is one blatantly absurd thing.

However, there's also this layer, Congressman, and that is that the Trump's DOJ ended their investigations into Epstein's web back in July. They had a statement at the time that said there was no credible evidence, found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions, something, of course, that Trump's, you know, one of Trump's own cabinet officials, Howard Lutnick, has said that that Epstein did do.

So, obviously, though, for them to launch an investigation after concluding that is also absurd. But today, Trump went and listed. In fact, who he wants investigated. He said Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JPMorgan Chase and many other people.

Now taking a step back, Congressman, if you take Trump's possible motives out here, do you support investigations into anyone and everyone whose name may be in these files with connections to Epstein?

GARCIA: Absolutely. And I've been saying that from day one, we don't care what political party you're in, your power, what position you have, how much wealth you have. If you are in the files or if you have information that could help us bring justice to the survivors, we want to talk to you, and we're going to hold people, anyone accountable.

What Donald Trump, though, is forgetting is in the tens of thousands of pages that were just released. And of the names that he just mentioned, who, by the way, were in some of those documents in different ways. The one name that was in those documents, more than all of those, was the president's, was Donald Trump's. So, this idea that he's trying to deflect when he was in these documents more than anyone else, is outrageous.

And so, I think the president clearly understands that his base is turning on him, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, anyone that I talked to, they just want these files released. And what -- we can't understand is, why? What are you hiding? What is the White House covering up?

Just released the damn files.

BURNETT: Well, I think a lot of people share your frustration there. You said something there, Congressman, though, that really just -- I want to repeat. You said that Donald Trump's name, just in those emails that came out the other day from the Epstein estate that his name was in there more than any of those other individuals that I mentioned. You said, some of whom were also mentioned.

I mean, do you have any general idea of how many times Donald Trump's name was in those emails? GARCIA: I couldn't tell you off the top, but I understand it was a

lot. We're talking about 23,000 pages. And so, there's been some reporting. You know, we're obviously -- we're looking into that, but it was more than all those folks that were mentioned.

BURNETT: Yeah, I mean, it, which is just pretty incredible to say. But I think also important, as you say, that you want an investigation into anyone and everyone mentioned.

Congressman Garcia, I appreciate your time and thank you.

GARCIA: Thank you.

BURNETT: All right. Congressman Garcia, there on that all important committee.

Okay. Stacy Schneider, Mimi Rocah are here with me now.

Stacy, you were on "The Apprentice" with Trump, so obviously you know him. You worked with him. You're also an attorney.

So, when you saw this today, you sort of went, whoa, I know what's happening?

STACY SCHNEIDER, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Yeah. This is masterful on his part. And the words that came to my mind were crafty, diabolical, manipulative, and probably one of the best strategies for himself to save himself that I've ever seen him do. He basically is going to have this turned over to the Southern District of New York, U.S. attorney's office to investigate the file.

[19:15:05]

As soon as they open the investigation, files off limits. I don't even think Congress can get it. Yes, they have other means to go to the Epstein estate, but the actual government file that everyone's been asking for since Trump took office, inaccessible.

And they're going to claim we have to protect witnesses. We have to protect evidence. We can't have corruption of what the investigation that was undergone. It's unbelievable that they pulled this.

BURNETT: Mimi, you have obviously, you know, the SDNY. How it works so well. How do you see it?

MIMI ROCAH, FORMER SDNY PROSECUTOR: Yeah. I don't disagree with anything Stacy just said. But what I want to bring it back to is, first of all, I cannot fail to point out how abnormal it is for the president to be directing anything of the DOJ. I know we are almost becoming numb to it because he does it all the time, but we have to keep saying it.

And here, let's take him out of it for a second and the direction of it. Sure, you have new emails, new potential leads, because emails themselves are not necessarily evidence. They are there leads, right? You can't build a case just on emails, but that might be something that DOJ would look into.

But here, you have it being directed by a person who's mentioned in the emails, as you pointed out, there's a huge conflict mentioned a lot and incriminatingly. And he's calling out targets. So, it's not go look at this. See where the evidence takes you, which is what prosecutors and DOJ are supposed to do. It's go -- look at these people. It is -- it is a perversion of justice.

That is not how the SDNY works. And I don't believe anyone at SDNY would conduct an investigation that way for what it's worth.

BURNETT: Okay. So, can I ask you a quick follow on that? What happens then, if this is given to the SDNY? Do we see more resignations? I mean, we're in unchartered territory if that's where it goes, Mimi.

ROCAH: Right. We are. And you know, again, Pam Bondi made this infinitely worse, right? We're sort of becoming a little bit immune to the president saying, go investigate my political adversary. Now he can say it, it's not right, but he can say it.

She has tried to declare previously when he did that, some independence he or she retweeted his tweet and said, okay, sure, we'll go look at, I guess these people that is, I mean, gone to a whole other level. So now you have the U.S. attorney's office.

It is in -- they can be directed to do something and they will have to, I guess, look at it, which is not in and of itself so abnormal. But Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney, is going to have to decide at some point, I am sure, whether he's going to be an Erik Siebert or he's going to be a Lindsey Halligan, and I hope he's going to be an Erik Siebert if it comes to that. He's going to hold up the integrity of the office. And I have faith that people in the office will 100 percent do that.

BURNETT: Stacy, when Mimi is referring to what Pam Bondi, how she responded, her exact response when Trump said to go after Larry Summers, Bill Clinton, JPMorgan Chase, Reid Hoffman was, "Thank you, Mr. President. The department will pursue this with urgency and integrity."

I mean, there wasn't any sort of like there's no beating around the bush. Thank you, Mr. President. Urgently, we're going.

SCHNEIDER: But you know, what that really means deep down in Pam Bondi's mind is thank you, Mr. President, because you're putting my job on the hot seat and you are putting me in a seat where the American public is going to hate me a second time and not you as much for this incident, because I'm now ordering the investigation.

And she got all that flack when she said back in February of 2025, the Epstein files on my desk and I'm going to release it imminently. And she didn't do it, and she was ripped to shreds. And she did a press conference after she looked like she was in tears.

I feel like this is Trump throwing her under the bus, and he's going to get this done because this is the one thing that can save him from that file coming out.

BURNETT: Which and again, as we end all of this, as I always do, you say, what the heck is in there? Why not just put it out there? I mean, the level of time and effort that he has spending to prevent it from coming out. It just defies reason.

Thank you both very much.

And we do have breaking news. More Epstein emails, KFILE's, been digging through thousands of documents, and at one point he found Epstein referring to Trump as nuts and dangerous. Andrew's next, and a tech stock sell off.

These fears of an A.I. bubble. Is this real? Is it bursting? Einstein, Ives the whiteboard coming up.

And blindsided. Trump's controversial border chief on the move tonight. Heading to charlotte for his next crackdown. It was a total surprise to officials there. The county sheriff will be OUTFRONT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:24:07]

BURNETT: Breaking news, KFILE unearthing new and incredibly revealing details about Jeffrey Epstein and his opinions of Donald Trump. Someone that Epstein once called his closest friend for ten years.

The emails and text messages show that Epstein continued to be focused on Trump when he became president, questioning his sanity psychoanalyzing him as someone who feels alone and might, quote, crack, even suggesting without explanation in one email quote, I am the one able to take him down.

Obviously, in the context of all of this, you want to know more there, but we don't have the context. The two men, of course, were once extremely close. Several associates of both of them have told us over the past year that they were the best of friends.

Andrew Kaczynski of KFILE is OUTFRONT now with his new reporting.

And, Andrew, you actually went through and it's a lot. You get document dump like this.

ANDREW KACZYNSKI, CNN KFILE SENIOR EDITOR: Yeah.

BURNETT: You can wear word search, which actually was not easy in these documents because they were scanned.

[19:25:02]

But then you have to really try to read them, and you read through thousands of pages. What did you find?

KACZYNSKI: That's right, Erin. And after going through thousands of these newly released emails, there's a few things that quickly became clear to all of us. One is that Epstein kept bringing up Donald Trump long after Trump said their friendship ended. His private comments about Trump were, for the most part, remarkably negative and harsh, and he sort of often cast himself as someone who understood the former president's mindset.

Now, in messages in 2017 and 2018, he described him as, quote, "f-ing crazy". You can see it right there speculating he might have early dementia. Called him a maniac, borderline insane. There was something where he compared him to a mob boss or something, where somebody messaged him and said, Trump is truly stupid, to which he replied, duh.

So, you know, one of the emails that we found, that was very interesting was this one to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, in which Epstein harshly described Trump writing, quote, I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump. Not one decent cell in his so yes, dangerous.

Another we found seemingly mocked Trump. It was a 2019 exchange in which a contact wrote, just met your friend POTUS, and he responded back, see if you still have your wallet.

And this one where he discusses his view of how Trump was handling the Russia investigation. Epstein wrote, "Your world does not understand how dumb he really is. He will blame everyone around him for the bad results."

BURNETT: I mean, it's really incredible when you go through this, right? And you realize how these files, how, you know, as Garcia was just talking about, right? Just the frequency with which Trump's name was mentioned, he was the subject.

You know, Trump obviously has never been accused by law enforcement of any wrongdoing. And it's important to always note that when we're talking about this. But the emails do suggest that Trump was a recurring fixation for Epstein, right? He keeps talking about him. He keeps analyzing him.

What kind of insight did Epstein claim to have into Trump, Andrew? And I say that in the context of the fact that we know for many years the two men were very close.

KACZYNSKI: Very close, very close, Trump had said in that "New York Magazine" article where he called him a, quote, terrific guy that they had been he had known him for 15 years at that point. And that was in the year 2000. So, going all the way back to the 1980s.

And, Erin, what you see in these messages is if he was someone, he had special insight to, if he understood how Trump thought in a way other people didn't, he described Trump as impulsive, isolated in his own words, quote, "nuts and dangerous".

Take a look at this 2018 email where they're discussing this "Daily Beast" story that suggested that Trump was having a mental breakdown. He wrote, "He feels alone and is nuts," using three exclamation points. "I told everyone from day one evil beyond belief, mad, and most thought I was speaking metaphorically. It's obvious he could crack. Stormy Daniels, lies after lies after lies," he wrote.

In another exchange, he offered this assessment of Trump to someone who maybe was looking for insight into him. Donald is close to no one. He talks to many people. He tells each one someone something different.

Now, Erin, it's going to be -- well, still have to see, you know, are these emails going to change anything politically? But that vote is coming up next week where the House is going to report or vote on releasing the Epstein files. That will then have to go to the senate and be signed by the president.

So, this isn't going away. It's going to stay in the news, and we're going to see if more revelations keep happening.

BURNETT: Yeah, we will. And Garcia making it clear, going to go back to the Epstein estate, if for any reason Trump's called for investigation stymies their efforts at the DOJ.

KFILE's Andrew Kaczynski, thank you so much.

And next, a wild ride on Wall Street over fears of an A.I. bubble. Why one particular stocks plunge could be the most important sign. Einstein, Ives, the white board are next.

And she quickly became a global phenomenon after being elected prime minister at 37. But it wasn't just her politics that got international headlines.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACINDA ARDERN, FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND: I have three years to do as much as we can. But in the back of my mind I thought, how am I going to do this with a baby?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:33:22]

BURNETT: Tonight, the Dow closing down, ending what was a wild week on Wall Street. Tech stocks taking a huge beating. There are a lot of fears out there that there's a big bubble, right? That Wall Street is completely disconnected from the reality on the ground for most Americans.

Now, that disconnect is a reality. But whether there's an A.I. bubble, that's another question. And the Nasdaq, which of course, is full of those A.I. related companies, lost nearly $2 trillion in market value in just the past couple of weeks.

Nvidia, remember that we talked about it with Jamie Dimon, the A.I. darling that has a market cap greater than every single economy on earth except for that of the U.S. and China has lost 8 percent of its value from its record high last month. I mean, 8 percent is still pretty gigantic. But that's why there's the fear that this could be the beginning of an avalanche.

Einstein and Ives are OUTFRONT.

So, Dan Ives, you cover so many of these stocks, you see what's happening with A.I. and of course, you see with some of the retail things that you do, this incredible disconnect between the real world and the A.I. stock world right now. So many selloffs, many panic, which I think is what you thought we've seen recently. Many can get messy really fast. It's emotional.

I mean, how fragile is this moment?

DAN IVES, GLOBAL HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH, WEDBUSH SECURITIES: Look, it's a white knuckle moment. It's a white knuckle week. And actually, white knuckle a few weeks, right?

I think look, tech has been -- that's been the rock of Gibraltar in this market. I mean, this fourth industrial revolution that we're seeing with A.I., but it's a small group of companies that ultimately is sort of leading it.

And if you look from Nvidia, the godfather of A.I. and Microsoft, Oracle and others, you're seeing right now a lot of nervousness. And I think it ultimately is something where this tech bull market continues next few years.

[19:35:01]

But you go into next week, Nvidia earnings, you will not hear anything.

You could hear a pin drop on trading floors. Einstein, he's going to be, you know, waiting there front and center. In terms of when Nvidia reports Wednesday night.

BURNETT: Yeah. And that's going to be huge.

All right. Now, Einstein, Peter --

PETER TUCHMAN, TRADER AT THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE: Yes.

BURNETT: Okay. You know, Nvidia is -- it is -- it is the poster child, right? And in part because the CEO is, you know, the leather jacket wearing Jensen, he's got a cool name and all this.

Okay. But let's take a look at Oracle, which has been involved, you know, what was it a month ago, they announced the deal. Oracle announces a deal with OpenAI.

TUCHMAN: Earnings first, right? And then they had -- then they came out with a deal, and then they committed billions of dollars to the A.I.

BURNETT: So billions of dollars to A.I. The deal that was announced was with OpenAI.

Okay. So, Oracle plus OpenAI, $300 billion deal. Everything is great. This is not that long ago.

Okay. Stock goes up to a record.

TUCHMAN: Oracle -- hundred dollars, the second only to Nvidia. The largest growth in capitalization in one day.

BURNETT: Okay, so $100. We're up there.

All right. This was about a month ago. And then we kind of go like this. And we're down 32 percent since then for Oracle. So, it goes for Oracle is king. They can do no wrong.

My God they have enough cash. They can buy anything they want to. Whoa, 32 percent drop. I know you're going to talk about whether to buy or sell Oracle. That's not what you do. But that is -- that's a terrifying chart. It's a -- it does -- it raise question marks for the whole idea of A.I.?

TUCHMAN: Not at all. Look, I fortunately have this -- this wonderful gentleman next to me to keep me cool, to keep me cool around that because, yes, look, we've had the VIX. The fear index is up 12.5 percent two days in a row. You're talking about that. There's all this fear in the marketplace.

I think this is all about profit taking. You have to realize that the most profitable stocks this year for the big players and even smaller players has been the tech sector. And so, when at one point, if you have -- we're in the last six weeks of the year and we have all this unknowns around the -- around the government shutdown, right? And the -- and what the Fed plans on doing.

BURNETT: So just sell some because you've made a lot of money and --

TUCHMAN: We want -- why not lock in the profits that you've had for this year and not worry about the next six weeks. Because you have to answer to your -- to your investors. And so, that's why the names that are the highest fliers are the ones that are getting sold.

That hundred point sell off in Oracle is only taking it down where it was before that big announcement.

BURNETT: Right. The one with OpenAI.

TUCHMAN: Almost one for one for A.I. and that announcement.

BURNETT: Yeah.

IVES: And I'd say exactly what he's saying is that it speaks to open A.I. is just like Nvidia. They're the foundation for the A.I. revolution. So, the concerns of circular financing is that that look, in my opinion.

BURNETT: Well, there's a lot of questions about oracles debt. I mean, there's a whole another set of questions about them out there.

IVES: But I believe, look, this is just one of those moments right now that I think will ultimately prove to be more of a buying opportunity, but still a nervous moment.

BURNETT: All right. So, Nvidia, you talk about next Wednesday crucial. And it is going to be crucial. $5 trillion valuation. I mean, there's a part of me that just goes -- I mean come on.

But I mean all right, President Trump obviously has talked about Nvidia. He has met the CEO. He's been a champion of the company, leather jacket wearing Jensen Huang.

That one almost looks like it's got diamonds encrusted. Anyway, the guy has become a pop culture icon. He runs a company called Nvidia. Who would have? Which makes semiconductors. I mean, it's kind of crazy. Okay, but this is the world we live in. And here's Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You're taking over the world, Jensen.

Jensen's a very brilliant guy.

Well, Jensen's an amazing guy. He's become a friend of mine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

IVES: Look, I mean, look, the reality is there's one godfather of A.I., and that's Jensen.

But it speaks to like, there's one chip in the world fueling the A.I. revolution. And that's Nvidia. And that -- that as we've talked about, that's one of the biggest chips on the poker table in the U.S.-China trade negotiations.

BURNETT: There's been some speculation that people said their chip is kind of average. It's sort of like a keyboard. It was just first, not best. I mean, it doesn't really matter as long as you're first?

IVES: That's like saying -- that's like saying Peter's average. He's a weed. The point is like -- I mean, we're talking about something that is so -- there are four or five years ahead of Huawei.

TUCHMAN: How could we -- suddenly, we've loved this sector. We've loved these stocks for the last 238 days. They've been the flavor of the moment and best of breed. And you suddenly have two or three days. We're not taking into account all the murky waters that we are in now, right? I mean, with the government shutdown and the Fed and uncertainty around interest rate cuts, there's another --

BURNETT: Consumer confidence at record lows. I mean, people, regular people are not --

IVES: Are bifurcating market.

BURNETT: Yeah, bifurcating.

TUCHMAN: It's almost -- it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. You start to get that ball rolling around fear. BURNETT: Yeah.

TUCHMAN: Right? And you catastrophize this situation. It's a couple of days. One or two days does not make a market. Let's be clear, this morning, yesterday we were down a lot. This morning, we were down a lot. By the end of the day, we had completely rebounded and taken back all the losses.

[19:40:03]

So, it's not even we're sitting. We could have been sitting here today down a thousand and we weren't. We closed up today.

IVES: It's like a wedding. It's like a wedding. There's the -- there's the great table. Then there's the bad table by the kitchen with all the random people that speaks to text, the cool kids table. And now, you see a lot of other value names on the other side to bifurcated market.

BURNETT: The junior high, the junior high.

IVES: Going back to -- going back to junior high school prom, right? Right?

BURNETT: All right. Thank you both. Thank you both. And next, a surprise visit by Trump's top border official about to arrive in Charlotte. A shock to many.

So, what are his plans? And is the city okay with it? Apparently, they knew nothing about it. The county sheriff is OUTFRONT next.

And she captured the world's attention after becoming the youngest female world leader, became known as an anti-Trump. But who really is she? I mean, can her kind of politics survive the political moment we're in?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:45:07]

BURNETT: Breaking news, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman just responding to President Trump's demand that he be investigated for his alleged involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. Hoffman saying the move was a, quote, obvious ploy to delay release of the Epstein files, writing, "Trump should release all of the Epstein files. Every person and every document in the files," Hoffman wrote in a thread on X, adding later the call for an investigation is an obvious ploy to avoid releasing the files, "simply release all the files and expose the people who had both deep and ongoing relationships with Epstein."

Now, this is very significant, coming as it does after Trump earlier today had come out and said that he wanted an investigation from his own DOJ into several individuals, all of whom were Democrats or with deep Democratic ties. Reid Hoffman is the founder of LinkedIn and one of the biggest Democratic donors out there. Trump had repeatedly said he wanted an investigation into Hoffman already, along with George Soros. Trump also mentioning Larry Summers and JPMorgan, as well as Bill Clinton in his list.

Pam Bondi immediately acquiesced and said she would do the investigation.

Kristen Holmes is back with us.

But, Kristen, you know, you hear Reid Hoffman coming out, posting this online with his response. And Trump now answering questions on the Epstein emails. Right. This big treasure trove that came out in the past 24 hours or 48 hours, thousands of pages, his name is in them, all over them. Congressman Garcia just said his name is in them more than anyone else's that Trump mentioned.

So, what is Trump saying now?

HOLMES: Well, President Trump has been answering questions about all of this, essentially saying that he believes that they need to they being the Department of Justice, uncover all of the different relationships between Epstein and these various individuals. Obviously, Reid Hoffman, one of them, Larry Summers, one of them, one of them, Bill Clinton.

I do think we just need to make it very clear that these investigations have already happened, not necessarily just into these individuals, but into Epstein as a whole. And ties that he had to a lot of prominent people. And these investigations have actually happened in the Southern District of New York, found that they couldn't charge anyone else. And of course, this goes to the whole thing that we have been discussing, which is how can you say that this is a hoax? But then call for an investigation into a hoax?

Now, I do want to note one other thing, Erin, because we have been talking about this extensively and just a reminder, you know, I asked Karoline Leavitt about this in particular, and she said to get back to me and we never did, which was about this MRI that President Trump said that he had. Now, I know this is a separate topic, but I do think it's really important because we've been covering it so closely and we've never gotten answers from the White House on this.

Essentially, he says that he doesn't know why he got an MRI. He was asked about it again and then said that it was part of a routine checkup.

Well, part of the reason that we've been pushing for answers on this MRI is because an MRI is not part of a routine checkup in general. And so now he is saying it was part of that routine checkup, but he doesn't know why he got it. But again, this doesn't really give us the answers that we have been asking for when it comes to President Trump's health.

And just a reminder, President Trump himself said, ask the doctors. Of course, we've reached out to the doctors. They're not going to answer us. They haven't.

But then on top of that, he said he wanted to be transparent, but we still don't have any of these answers here, in terms of his health. BURNETT: Well, I think those are really important things. And I'm glad

you brought it up, Kristen, because obviously you know, it also defies belief to think that you wouldn't know the reason you got an MRI if you went in and got one.

Kristen, thank you.

And next, she catapulted to international fame after being elected prime minister at 37. Her politics are not the only thing making headlines. A special interview next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:53:15]

BURNETT: Tonight, damned if I did, damned if I didn't. That's Jacinda Ardern, a direct quote when she was elected the prime minister of New Zealand. It happened to be days after she discovered she was pregnant. Ardern quickly became a global headline. All of this in the new CNN film, "PRIME MINISTER".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACINDA ARDERN, FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND: No one thought it was plausible that we could win.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the end, we chose the labor party.

ARDERN: I think I have natural levels of anxiety for someone who's 37 years old and who's also pregnant.

Oh, look. Well, this is normal.

I have three years to do as much as we can, but in the back of my mind I thought, how am I going to do this with a baby? I just feel sorry for myself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Right now, Audie Cornish, who sat down with Ardern for a rare and candid conversation about everything that she went through. And of course, you know, leading New Zealand as she did in the time that she did an incredible moment in history. And the documentary captures something that really almost no world leader has experienced and certainly not documented on camera, leading a country while becoming a mother for the first time.

One thing we see her open up about the film, as you know, is how much she struggled for basic things that all of us working mothers have to do -- breastfeed and do your job. But her job was being a prime minister. What more did she tell you?

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN HOST, THE ASSIGNMENT WITH AUDIE CORNISH PODCAST: Well, I think a lot of parents can kind of relate to the idea that people maybe already have doubts about you doing the job, especially if you're a woman doing a very high-profile job, which she was, with very high-profile politics. She was seen as an international symbol of progressive politics. She had helped form a coalition government.

[19:55:03]

So, she was really, really scrutinized. And then in her life, privately, she is reckoning with having a newborn.

So, we actually sort of traded notes about that. We had children around the same time and talked about what that pressure can feel like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARDERN: My first problem was I had this unrealistic expectation of how it was meant to be. And, you know, because I had a bit of a plan and I really needed that plan to work, that when it wasn't working, I felt like things, you know, how was I going to keep it all, hold it all together? And that plan simply was I wanted to be a breastfeeding mother, you know, I felt like that was what I was meant to do.

And when that wasn't working out, it added this extra layer of logistics to everything that became really difficult to manage. But actually, on reflection, no one else was putting that pressure on me. No one else was saying, this is absolutely the way that you have to do it. It was me.

CORNISH: Yeah.

ARDERN: And as soon as I started letting go of some of that expectation, it got easier. And what I didn't expect was actually how much easier it would be for my partner.

So, actually, in the end, it was our daughter who decided she was like, nope, four months in, this isn't working for me anymore.

CORNISH: Yeah. And were you sad? I was sad. Mine was like underweight and it felt like -- I felt like a failure. I was sad.

ARDERN: Yeah, I was sad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: It's so fascinating watching the two of you talk and your own experience. I mean, you know, obviously I've been -- I've been through this, too. And each child then is different, right, in terms of the breastfeeding. But just how -- how -- I mean, how -- I mean, she and you both. But her talking about how much of it is the pressure she put on herself, right? And dealing with that.

And that is so relatable for any, any working mother, frankly. I mean this is breastfeeding we're talking about.

CORNISH: And I have to be honest, I felt sheepish asking. I didn't want to be yet another reporter saying, gee, you were a mom. How do you do it? Because the thing to understand about this is everyone was asking how she was going to do it, whether she should be doing it, and whether she was up to the job. BURNETT: And then it came to the job, right? Which she did. And she

became a global phenomenon. I mean, she was nicknamed the anti-Trump. And, I mean, we all remember her on stage with him, right? She gave the powerful U.N. speech after she was elected, right, where she brought the baby to the floor of the U.N., right?

So doing it all in that moment, she gets an assault weapons ban passed after a mass shooting, something that obviously hasn't happened in the U.S. She runs the country during COVID, shuts the whole places down. Some of the harshest lockdown measures on the planet, right? She gets things done that others can't. That did come with a price, and some, you know, turned on her because of this.

And you talked about that. I want to play that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARDERN: I think we're witnessing a globalization of political culture. I think we've taken for granted that it's one of the really important principles of a strong, healthy democracy is our ability to debate and build consensus. You need to really agree on what you're debating in the first place. What's fact, what's fiction? And some of that has been eroded.

CORNISH: Over time, so many Western democracies have turned to populism, to turn to more -- kind of a conservative politics. And that is not just the U.S. That's in Europe as well.

Is that a rejection of the kind of politics you were trying to practice?

ARDERN: I think that might be a -- I think there might be more to it than that. And there is some research now that's telling us some really interesting things about where the public are at.

We have more than 60 percent of people who feel like they are worse off than they have been. They don't feel like predominantly that their children will be better off. And you get a portion of people who, as a result of that, feel that hostile acts are justified in that environment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Where -- where does she see herself in the future, in these fraught moments that she's discussing there with you?

CORNISH: I asked her if she was ready to come to politics again, or even be in the public eye again, because after she left office in New Zealand, there were a lot of people who reviled her politically. There were people waving Trump flags during the demonstrations, people who saw themselves as part of a global movement and backlash against her kind of politics.

I think what she's come to reckon with now and what she said to me is that you can grievance is going to exist no matter what. People feel very frustrated with where they are and where their children are. And as a result, you can either play on that grievance and that be your politics, or you can try and address the issues that they are struggling with.

And she sees voters looking to outside the mainstream parties because they want to hear someone who's focused on the solution.

But it's tough, right? She's out of office and Trump is back in. And I think one of the things she's trying to do is talk to a new, young generation of leaders. We were at Oxford University about what it would mean to do something different from the kind of strongman approach that we're seeing around the world.

BURNETT: All right. Audie, thank you so much.

And, of course, Audie's full interview and the CNN film "PRIME MINISTER", that airs Sunday night at 9:00.

And thanks so much to all of you for being with us on this Friday.

"AC360" starts now.