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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

Trump And Putin To Meet In Alaska For High-Stakes Summit; Ukrainians Rally Outside U.S. Embassy In Kyiv; D.C. Officials General Reject Push By Bondi To Name Emergency Police Commissioner; Gavin Newsom Announces Plan To Redraw Congressional Maps. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired August 15, 2025 - 04:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And good morning to you. Welcome to all of our viewers joining us from the United States and all around the world. I'm Polo Sandoval. It is Friday, August 15, 4:00 a.m. here in New York, midnight in Anchorage, Alaska. And straight ahead here on Early Start.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All eyes on Alaska with President Trump and President Putin's high stakes one on one meeting.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I think that President Putin would like to see a deal.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are concerns among U.S. officials and European officials that Trump will be charmed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The current American administration is making quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump's law enforcement surge in Washington ramps up.

CROWD: Get off our streets. Get off our streets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: And we are just a few hours away from a rare and high stakes summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. President Trump says that he hopes the meeting will help bring an end to that grinding war in Ukraine following Russia's full scale invasion more than three years ago. Already Ukraine's president is not scheduled to attend this summit. Presidents Trump and Putin, they will be meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska later today. That's where we find CNN's Kristen Holmes who starts our coverage.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: With just hours to go until this critical sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. President Trump sounding optimistic, saying that he believes that Putin wants to make a deal.

TRUMP: I believe now he's convinced that he's going to make a deal. He's going to make a deal. I think he's going to and we're going to find out. I'm going to know very quickly.

HOLMES: So that's some optimism. But we are still hearing a lot of caveats. We heard President Trump also say that there was a chance this was going to fail, that he was just going to end up getting back on the plane and coming back to the U.S. but it does seem like there's been somewhat of a shift in the last couple of days to where he's starting to say more about Putin making a deal, unless that this is just a listening exercise.

Unclear at this point what has changed his opinion about this. But at one point he also even started talking about a potential trilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, Putin and him in Alaska the following day after the summit. If things were to go well, a Ukrainian source is saying that is highly unlikely. It would be very difficult to get Zelenskyy here in time to have this sit down.

One other thing to point out is that President Trump talking about this meeting, the next meeting after the sit down with Putin, that would include Zelenskyy. He also mentioned European leaders being involved in that somehow. The reason why that's critical is that he does appear to be leaning more into European allies, into these leaders this time around than we've ever seen before when it comes to him sitting down with Vladimir Putin.

But of course, there are still skeptics on all sides here. There are concerns among U.S. officials and European officials that President Trump will be charmed by President Putin. Of course, that is something we have seen before. Kristen Holmes, CNN, Anchorage, Alaska.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL: And more on Russia's leader. He appears to be heading into today's summit hoping to make it more about just Ukraine. Putin and Russian officials, they seem to be floating the idea of discussing nuclear agreements as well as economic cooperation. But whatever Putin's game plan is, he's really setting the stage with something that he's used before with President Trump called flattery. Here's CNN's Frederik Pleitgen with more.

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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Russian state TV counting down the minutes to the landmark summit between President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. After days of silence, Putin with his first public remarks, meeting his most senior officials, praising President Trump.

The current American administration, he says, which is making, in my opinion, quite energetic. And since efforts to stop the hostilities, stop the crisis and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict in order to create long term conditions for peace between our countries.

But more than long term peace talks, President Trump says he wants an immediate ceasefire as the fighting on the battlefields in Ukraine grinds on.

[04:05:00]

Trump threatening, quote, severe consequences if the summit doesn't yield real progress towards a ceasefire. I asked a member of Russia's delegation about the US's tough talk.

PLEITGEN: So, sir, President Trump has threatened severe consequences if there's no movement towards a ceasefire. What's Russia hoping to get out of this meeting?

KIRILL DMITRIEV, RUSSIAN SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY: Well, I think dialogue is very important and I think it's a very positive meeting for the world because during Biden administration, no dialogue was happening. So it's think it's very important to hear Russian position directly. And there are lots of misunderstandings, misinformation about the Russian position. And it's also a chance to sort of reset if the meeting goes well U.S.-Russia relations.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): Moscow hoping for sanctions relief and lucrative business deals with the U.S. in the future, especially in the Arctic. Russians fascinated by the summit venue. Alaska, once part of Russia till it was sold to the U.S. in the 19th century. Some Russians still bitter, feeling Alaska should be theirs.

Neither in the tsarist, nor in the Soviet, nor in the post-Soviet era have the top leaders of our country visited Alaska, a Russian State TV correspondent says in a report from Alaska. But should they not take back the land sold in 1867 by Alexander II for the colossal sum at the time of $7,200,000.

But for now, many Russians hope their president will able to take back the diplomatic initiative and persuade President Trump into laying off possible severe sanctions and tariffs.

The Kremlin spokesman praising Putin's relations with the U.S. president. President Trump is demonstrating an unprecedentedly unusual approach to solving the most difficult issues, he says, which is highly praised by Moscow and President Putin personally.

While both Washington and Moscow say the personal chemistry between the two leaders is good, the coming hours will show if they're strong enough to move closer to ending the fighting in Ukraine. Fred Pleitgen, CNN Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL: And then there are those who have been caught in the grips of this year's long war. Ukrainian civilians, in fact, many of them rallying outside the U.S. embassy in Kyiv ahead of today's summit in Alaska. They certainly will be watching very closely today. CNN's Ben Wedeman live at the Ukrainian capital. Ben, from your

moments that you've spent there speaking of people, what seems to be the general feeling among Ukrainians as they watch for developments out of Anchorage, Alaska?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Frankly, polar Ukrainians are fairly skeptical about the possible outcomes of this summit in Alaska. There is a feeling that President Trump really doesn't have Ukraine in his corner. And certainly speaking to the people here, there's about 75 to 100 people outside the U.S. embassy here.

Their feeling is that they don't trust President Trump, that they rather than see land swaps, they'd like to see swaps of people. These are people who have either relatives who are currently prisoners of war being held in Russia or civilians being held in Russia.

In fact, according to the Ukrainian government, there are 8,000, approximately 8,000 prisoners of war currently being held in Russia. 37,000 people are missing, unaccounted for, since hostilities began back in 2014.

And people we spoke to, for instance, one woman, her son has been in Russian captivity since the Battle of Mariupol back in the beginning, at the very beginning of this war. She says he's been in captivity activity for 1,188 days. She wants him to come home. And she says that's her priority and the priority of many Ukrainians now after three and a half years of war, they'd like to see the war to come to an end.

But there's a lot of fear, trepidation that President Trump, who has a soft spot for President Putin, you might say, is going to offer something, commit to something land swap that Ukrainians simply cannot support at this time. So lots of skepticism here among these Ukrainians outside the U.S. embassy in Kyiv. Polo.

SANDOVAL: And so many questions about what a land swap would potentially look like. Ben Wedeman, our thanks to you and your team there on the ground, bringing us the voices of some of those people on the ground. You know, either European leaders nor Ukraine will actually have a seat at the negotiating table in Alaska, at least not this initial round.

We're going to talk more about what could be at stake for some of the European allies.

Also, Donald Trump's push to take control of Washington, DC's police department now being met with some opposition from not just officials, residents in the nation's capital.

[04:10:05]

The very latest developments right here. You're watching Early Start.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SANDOVAL: Welcome back to CNN's Early Start where we are watching for the U.S. and Russian presidents to hold their high stakes summit in Alaska in just a matter of hours as the U.S. pushes for an end to the war in Ukraine. Donald Trump says that he believes that Vladimir Putin wants to make a deal and is threatening very severe consequences if there isn't a deal.

[04:15:00]

President Trump predicting that there is, as he put it, a 25 percent chance that the summit will fail to keep players from all of this. They are going to be absent from the talks. Ukraine, which says it's not ready to surrender any land reportedly demanded by Russia and also European leaders also will be absent. They have been concerned that President Trump could be potentially swayed by his Russian counterpart.

Want to dig a little deeper on that front now with my next guest. He's a former British ambassador to Belarus, Nigel Gould-Davies. He's also a Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, joining us live from London. Nigel, welcome to the show.

NIGEL GOULD-DAVIES, SENIOR FELLOW FOR RUSSIA AND EURASIA AT THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES: Good morning.

SANDOVAL: I'm wondering if we could just pick up on that last point and really focus on Europe here. How worried do you think our European leaders this morning that President Trump could, as we just put it, be swayed by President Putin, be it convince him to recognize any sort of sovereignty that Russia may potentially have or lessen sanctions.

GOULD-DAVIES: For the whole of the European continent, the stakes are very high and the uncertainty immense. It was a great shock last week when Trump suddenly announced that the summit was taking place. That caught everyone off guard. And in recent days we've seen a very concerted, very full court press by the Europeans to concert their position and to engage the White House. There was a virtual summit a couple of days ago which both sides seem to have judged to have gone fairly well.

But the Europeans will be watching from a very anxious distance. Remember, this is Alaska. This is not the Washington, D.C. diplomatic bubble. It's all happening along where way. And the prospect that Trump and Putin in this relative isolation could reach an agreement that would fundamentally threaten not only Ukrainian, but wider European security is a great concern.

SANDOVAL: I'm wondering if you could just expand on that last point for me and our viewers around the world, Nigel, just really putting into context just how much Europe may have, especially if you think it has much more at stake than the U.S. in this war.

GOULD-DAVIES: I think the stakes are high for everyone. I don't think it's in the fundamental American national interest for Russia to jeopardize the security of what has been until now America's most important partner, Europe. That was a iron clad guarantee throughout the Cold War. There's a lot of worry during the Cold War of a sort of potential decoupling of the alliance that never came close to happening.

And that objective American interest, you know, hasn't really changed now. It's, of course, an even more immediate and direct threat for Europe because this, for all of the talk of territorial swaps and so on, this is not fundamentally a war in Ukraine about territory. That's a part of it. But Russia's wider ambition is to subordinate the whole of the Ukrainian state, this is Europe's largest country, to Russian control.

It's not about getting a little sliver of territory and then in due course, using that as a springboard in various ways to threaten the larger security of the continent they're already threatening. Russia's already threatening European security, carrying out an active campaign of sabotage and potential assassinations as well.

So Europe is acutely aware that it is. We are on the front line of this, and we are still dependent on America's security.

SANDOVAL: And with that awareness in mind, Nigel, do you get a sense that the White House and its European partners are actually on the same page ahead of today's meeting, even with that communication that's happened thus far?

GOULD-DAVIES: Yes, I think there are people around President Trump who understand very well what is at stake. And they, of course, will be trying to sort of nudge the president in a sort of Atlanticist direction, which ensures that Europe's fundamental interest and America's own interest in European security is not compromised.

But the fascinating, an unnerving thing if you're European, about this fluid diplomatic moment is that no one really knows where President Trump himself will land in the course of this conversation.

[04:20:05]

Summits are usually a sort of ceremonial culmination of agreements already reached at lower levels and worked out well in advance. That's not happened here. It's all a matter of the alchemy of the Trump Putin relationship. So again, high stakes, high uncertainty. It's all about what goes on in the mind of one man.

SANDOVAL: And in that alchemy is a master manipulator, of course, President Putin. I do want to thank you so much for your valuable insight. Nigel Gould-Davies joining us live from London, watching closely for developments out of Alaska. Thank you.

GOULD-DAVIES: Thank you.

SANDOVAL: Well, officials in Washington, D.C. they are pushing back against an order from Attorney General Pam Bondi that essentially sets up the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as the emergency police commissioner for the nation's capital. Bondi ordered Terry Cole be given full control over the Washington

police department. But DC's mayor is rejecting that directive, saying that the federal government lacks the power to make such a change. Bondi's order is just coming a day, just really days after President Trump declared a crime emergency, as he put it, in the nation's capital and also sending in the National Guard. You see them here outside of the union administration. Brian Todd looking at how the move is being received on the ground.

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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Open tension on the street between D.C. residents and local and federal officers as President Trump's law enforcement surge in Washington ramps up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is your badge?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How's that work?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What part of the government do you work for?

TODD (voice-over): Metropolitan D.C. police and federal agents, some wearing masks, set up a checkpoint in an area pop for bars and restaurants, stopping motorists handcuffing and detaining at least one that we saw as furious local residents screamed at the officers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you guys go fuck yourself. What the fuck you're doing out here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anything for a check, right?

UNDIENTIFIED MALE: Go home, fascist.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go home.

TODD (voice-over): The spur of the moment protest was nonviolent, but residents got angry when we relayed that one of the commanders told us this was a routine operation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hell no. I've lived here for 17 years off of this street and this has never happened.

TODD (voice-over): The president's law enforcement surge clearly getting more aggressive Wednesday night and Thursday. Early Wednesday evening, CNN did not see significant federal units in the Anacostia section of DC, one of the area's hardest hit by crime. But late at night, we saw six FBI vehicles pull a motorist over and question him in Anacostia.

We tailed a caravan of Metro Police and federal vehicles as they snake through the area looking for criminal activity. The president and his team on Thursday applauding the daily arrests and getting criminals off the streets.

TRUMP: People are so happy to see our military going into D.C. and getting these thugs out. TODD (voice-over): On Thursday, near the Lincoln Memorial and the

Kennedy Center, where President Trump's motorcade and a lot of tourists often pass by, bulldozers uprooted a homeless encampment, its occupants forced to move out.

DAVID BEATTY, REMOVED FROM DC HOMELESS ENCAMPMENT: And the idea that he's targeting this and persecuting us feels wrong to me.

TODD (voice-over): The president said he wants to move the homeless out of the city and give them places to stay far away from the Capitol. One homeless person we spoke to doesn't hate the idea.

LONDYN STEVENS, HOMELESS DC RESIDENT: it'd be a place to live for one. I won't be outside. If it takes me having to move to get a place, I'm all for it.

TODD (voice-over): D.C. National Guard troops also out in greater numbers on Thursday. A National Guard official telling CNN, for now, these troops will be stationed near the monuments at Metro train stops and have not been asked to deploy to high crime areas.

The guardsmen could help with crowd control and could detain people if needed, the official says, but won't make arrests or carry firearms.

TODD: Law enforcement sources tell CNN that some rank and file FBI agents are now worried that the deployment of FBI agents on the streets of D.C. will pull those agents away from investigation into terrorism and other high priority cases. But President Trump is downplaying those concerns, saying those agents aren't being pulled away from anything. The president again claiming that the streets of D.C. are now safer. Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL: California Governor Gavin Newsom, he is now moving ahead with his push to redraw his state's congressional maps. Newsom says that the proposed new maps will be released in the next few days and that he hopes to put them up for a statewide vote come November.

This move is a direct response to the efforts to reshape House maps in Texas, where Republicans could pick up five additional seats.

[04:25:00]

Earlier this week, Newsom said that Mr. Trump missed a deadline to respond to a letter that he sent that was urging the president to have Texas and other red states or Republican states call off their redistricting efforts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D) CALIFORNIA: He doesn't play by a different set of rules. He doesn't believe in the rules, and as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. It's not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt and we have got to meet fire with fire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: And then there's this. While the governor was making that announcement on Thursday, these were U.S. immigration agents that were patrolling outside of the facility where that speech was happening in downtown la.

Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News that the agents were there because they had information that suspected criminal migrants were in the area. That's how they explained this presence.

Much more on the way here on Early Start, including Moscow. It has reportedly pushed for more territory in Ukraine ahead of the summit. We're going to take a deeper look at those front lines and the areas that the Kremlin has its eyes on.

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