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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Marriage Rates In America; Teen Internet Usage In The U.S.; Unhappiness Of American 12th Graders. Aired 1-2p ET

Aired December 28, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

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FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: Welcome to Disconnected: Life in a Disruptive Digital Age. I'm Fareed Zakaria and this is a GPS special.

Social connection is one of the most important human needs. It starts immediately after birth when babies go skin to skin with a parent. Later when we make our first friend and later still when we find our tribe. That is connection. People make love connections and declare their love in front of family and friends. But in today's world, much of what I've just described is unraveling.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many are finding themselves lonelier than ever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Far greater sense of isolation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: More people are missing that connection.

JOE BIDEN, U.S. FMR. PRESIDENT: Loneliness and isolation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Concerns that we have to prioritize.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Loneliness is on the rise.

ZAKARIA: Marriage rates are near all time lows in America, 1 in 5 people report feeling lonely every day. And the number of Americans who say they have no close friends has quadrupled in the last three decades. Why is this happening?

It is a tumultuous time in the world. We did, after all, just lived through a dangerous and disruptive pandemic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All 50 states now have Covid cases.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The worst hit country is the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The world surpassing 1 million deaths from the coronavirus.

ZAKARIA: War and strife and deep political division glare from the headlines every day.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Israeli government plan to occupy the whole of Gaza.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Famine thresholds have been reached.

TERRY MARTIN: Russia has pummeled Kyiv with drones.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Republicans issuing civil arrest warrants.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I hate them too, you know that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The deadline for a government shutdown now just days away.

ZAKARIA: And then there are those supercomputers in our pockets which may just be more interesting than any kind of face-to-face human relationship. We'll explore our disconnectedness and how to get reconnected in this next hour.

I want to start this hour where life begins and where increasingly both the ever-present screens and the isolation begin as well. Childhood. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is a professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU. He has written the defining book on the generation that grew up with technology in the palms of their hands. "The Anxious Generation" was on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year.

Jonathan Haidt, Welcome.

JONATHAN HAIDT, NYU PROFESSOR OF ETHICAL LEADERSHIP: Fareed. Pleasure to be with you.

ZAKARIA: So you talk in your book about this very big shift that takes place where we move away from play based childhood at one point and then we move toward a kind of technology based childhood. Explain those two shifts.

HAIDT: Sure. So my book isn't really about social media. It's really about childhood. And children need to play and take risks and run around and practice adult skills. And childhood is an evolutionary product. It's part of the path from childhood to adulthood. We have to go through it.

But we did a weird and tragic thing in America and it turns out in much of the west in which first we kind of stop letting our kids out. We lose the play-based childhood in the 1990s for a variety of reasons, we become overprotective. We don't let kids out to play. We think they'll get abducted. We think they'll be hit by a car.

ZAKARIA: Is that even true? In Europe, where there was much less of a fear of crime?

HAIDT: It's much less true. And in Scandinavia and northern Europe, they still let their kids out at age 8. But as one Finnish journalist told me, yeah, we let our kids out early and they walk around looking down at their phones so.

ZAKARIA: And that gets us to part two. HAIDT: That's right. So part two. So the technology is coming in.

Since the 80s, video games are getting more enticing. But you have to sit, you know, in your basement to play the video games. You can't be playing the video games when you're walking around or on the school bus.

And so it's really, once we get the -- everyone gets a personal devices, a touch screen. And that really happens between 2010 and 2015 is when kids change from basic phones or flip phones. So, I call this the arrival of the phone-based childhood.

And at first, we all thought, well, you know, they're connecting to each other, it's going to be good. But it turns out that we're biological creatures. We're humans. We have to be with people physically, as you and I are right now. Zoom is better than nothing, but kids have touch each other and they have to share laughter and share food and if they're just swiping and it doesn't substitute.

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And so when kids went through puberty, this is the real thing, the key thing, when kids began going through puberty, when the brain is changing very rapidly on a touchscreen, on social media rather than in the lunchroom, arguing and playing and flirting and all those things that kids have always done, that seems to be what created Gen Z. Kids born after 1996 have much higher levels of anxiety, depression, self- harm and suicide.

ZAKARIA: Particularly among women, right?

HAIDT: Yes. Those numbers go up more for girls and women. Yes.

ZAKARIA: Explain to me why the technology does was it -- what it does, in your opinion? Because I noticed this. The smartphone, which is essentially really a supercomputer, allows you to stay connected to people all the time. But the result of it, I find, is that I have stopped talking on the phone with some of my friends who don't live in New York. And paradoxically, the effect is I feel less in contact with them that the phone actually, the physical human voice, the long conversation that I would have 20 years ago connected me much more than just the constant little texting that you feel like you're in touch, but actually you don't know the person as well.

HAIDT: That's right, because our relationships require synchronous communication. So, talking on the phone is really good. I say something, you say something, we laugh. So synchronous is good. One- on-one is good, whereas one to many is bad.

When kids are, if they're talking on the phone to a friend, that's great. And FaceTime or Zoom is very good too, if it's one on one. But now so many kids are spending a lot of time on these group chats, it's one to many. It's not you're worried about what you say, you're worried.

ZAKARIA: It's performing -- HAIDT: It's performative. Exactly. And then there's also the question of depth. You know, when you meet a friend and you have a meal together and you're talking for an hour, you just go much deeper than if it's just passing on the street. And a lot of electronic communication is the equivalent of passing on the street.

So for all these reasons, we didn't know this in 2010, 2012. We didn't know what we were doing to kids, but we basically allowed the tech companies to rewire childhood, take control of it. They own our children's attention.

Half of our kids say that they are online almost constantly. Five hours a day is the average for social media, if you include TikTok and YouTube. So these companies now own our children's childhood. Our children are not developing. Well, if you're born after 1995, really '96 and on is Gen Z. If you're born in that cohort, you had most of your human experience taken away from you. So you asked, how does the technology do this?

The simplest method is just by pushing everything else out. And so if the average kid is spending eight hours a day on touchscreen devices, not counting schoolwork, that has to come from somewhere. And where does it come from? Time with friends. Kids are spending a lot less time with their friends than they used to time outside, sleep, exercise. So you push all these healthy things out, you're going to have a lot less health.

Then there's so many other ways that being on social media, growing up, in a sense, in the center of the Roman Colosseum, with fans cheering for conflict and bloodshed or whatever.

ZAKARIA: You buy the sort of the dopamine that we're constantly getting these little dopamine hits.

HAIDT: Yes, I mean, I buy it because that's literally what the people who made it say. Like, they literally say that's what they were trying to do. A lot of them took a course, some of the founders of these companies took a course at Stanford on persuasive technology. And they learned about behaviorist methods. They learned about, how do you train animal.

Quick little rewards, each of which the animal does a behavior. They get a reward, then they get a hit of dopamine, just anticipating the opportunity to make. And so that's why you get this feedback cycle with a touchscreen, which you don't get with television. This is a very important point. I'm not telling parents out there, no screens. Don't ever let your child see a screen. I'm not saying that.

I'm saying the touchscreen device creates a behavior, a stimulus, response, reward, feedback loop very quickly. It can train your child very quickly the way a circus trainer can train animal. Whereas stories on TV or long shows like this, whatever it is, the point is, if you're paying attention to something for a long period of time on a screen that's good. There's nothing wrong with that.

ZAKARIA: Next on this GPS special. How do family background, gender, political and religious affiliations impact social media's effects on children? Jonathan Haidt explains. When we come back.

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ZAKARIA: More now with NYU professor and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. You have an interesting finding that conservative religious kids actually are affected much less than kind of all others. Why?

HAIDT: That's right. So Jean Twenge was the first to really dig into the stats. She's a master of these giant data sets that we have in the U.S. that have been running for decades. And she's the one who first showed that things were pretty stable until around 2012. And then they go up like a hockey stick. And as she showed, it's bigger for girls than boys, and it's happening for all races, all demographic groups.

When I really got deeply into this in 2019, me and my lead researcher, Zach Rauch, we parsed the data in all kinds of different ways and we looked internationally. We found some interesting patterns.

One is this hockey stick shape that you get when we look for kids who say that they are religious or the question is, religion is important in my family. And if you agree with that, then yours is not quite a hockey stick. Everybody's up. Nobody has escaped. But the religious kids are only up. It's not as much.

Same thing for left right. If you're in a conservative family, it's up, but not as much. So it's really. Secular liberals are like the sharpest. They are up the most. And especially secular liberal girls. There's a lot we don't know why exactly. There's a lot of speculation, a lot of reasons why it could be.

But part of this is just if you are bound into a real community of adults who expect you to be at church every Sunday, they expect you to do your chores, they expect you to say your prayers, okay, you might be on social media, but you're not on as much. That Jean Twenge has shown.

Liberal girls used to not be much different, but once you get the iPhone and social media and Instagram, liberal girls actually use it the most. And so you're sort of, you're washed away the most.

ZAKARIA: So we understand the problem that this produces for girls, but for boys, it has its own effect, right?

HAIDT: Yes, that's right. And I didn't see that at first, the data, the evidence was just much clearer about social media, girls and depression, anxiety as the outcome. That had been clear for a long time. And I wasn't sure what the story was for boys.

But what we discovered, my team discovered, and drawing in part on the work of Richard Reeves, his book of Boys and Men, is that boys have been being pulled out of the real world, really, since the 70s and 80s, as the technology got better and better, as the video games got better. And better as school became more hostile to boys. No more recess, no more shop class, no more auto mechanics.

Boys have been withdrawing from the real world and putting a lot more of their time and effort into video games and other online pursuits. And boys also seem to be a bit more responsive to dopamine loops. So there are now all these companies whose business model is to addict boys. Starts with video games, it goes on to porn, vaping, marijuana pens. All of these things are dopamine, all of these things are addictive, all of these things are hitting boys.

And gambling within video games. Many video games set you up for gambling or they have actual gambling with variable ratio reward schedules, like a slot machine. And as Anna Lembke says, she's one of the nation's experts on addiction. She says any addiction you develop at one point sets your brain to be more susceptible to future addictions.

Our boys, once they reach 18 or around then, now everything else is gamified. Investing has become gamified. Crypto investing is gamified. Sports. Boys love sports. Now it's all about betting.

And so I think we're really destroying the boys. And I think what we're going to see over time is that actually the boys are doing worse than the girls. The girls are much more likely to have finished high school, gone to college, finished college, gotten a job, moved out of home. Boys are less likely to do those things now.

So I think this is going to affect everything. Demography, it's going to be hard for young women to find a young man worth marrying. Employment. It's going to be harder for companies to find workers who are able to focus and stick with a job.

So we're changing humanity at exactly the moment when our machines are getting so much smarter than us. This is not a good trend.

ZAKARIA: AI, the question we have to ask about nowadays, about everything, is how does AI make this worse or better?

HAIDT: Yes. So there's a couple of things to keep our eyes on. The first is let's take all the bad things about social media, that it's addictive, that it lures us in with amazing content, beautiful content, exciting content. Until now, all of that content has been created by people. And AI is now able to create much better, more beautiful, more gripping content than people can. And it can create a billion times as much every day.

So all of the addictive features of video games and we should bring video games in here too. That's especially important for the boys. So the online world is going to suck our kids in much harder. Everything's going to be much more personalized. So much more addictive.

ZAKARIA: We're getting dumber and the machines are getting smarter.

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HAIDT: Exactly. ZAKARIA: Jonathan Haidt, this is such important work you're doing.

Thank you.

HAIDT: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Jonathan Haidt just mentioned Jean Twenge. She and Robert Putnam have done seminal work studying social isolation. I talk to both of them next.

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ZAKARIA: My next two guests are giants in their respective fields who have been studying social isolation for years. The political scientist Robert Putnam was one of the first to identify this problem in America with his landmark 1995 study "Bowling Alone", which later became a bestselling book. In 2020, he looked to solutions with the book the "How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again."

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Jean Twenge is a social psychologist who looks deeply at the data on social isolation within generations. She also focuses on technology. She has a new book out "10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World." I sat down with both scholars to get their insights.

Robert Putnam, Jean Twenge, welcome.

ROBERT PUTNAM, AUTHOR, "BOWLING ALONE": Thank you, Fareed.

JEAN TWENGE, SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: So Bob, you are in some ways the origins of all of this in scholarship because in the middle of the 1990s you write this essay, "Bowling Alone" and you notice something that Americans are losing what you call social capital. They're not doing things together the way they used to. They're increasingly alone. What did you see and why did you embark on this project?

PUTNAM: I had earlier freed, as you well know, discovered the idea of social connection, or what I came to call social capital in a research that I had done in Italy over many years in which it seemed to say that the quality of democracy was affected by the degree to which people were connected with one another.

So I came home from Italy and I was worried about it, just about America as a citizen, I thought, you know, American democracy wasn't working very well. And so, I began to explore whether what I'd been studying as a scholar, namely social capital, social connections, might be related to American, the failures of American democracy. And to my shock, that turned out to be true.

And I began capturing different flavors, different acts, examples of it beginning with the PTA, but eventually stumbled onto the to the fact that people were bowling more than ever before. People were more people bowl than vote in America, but they were bowling alone. They were not bowling in teams. That's where the title comes from. ZAKARIA: And you then go on to do years of research, pathbreaking

research on this. And one of the things you point out is that there's a historical pattern here that the kind of things that we associate with this degree of isolationism, rise in economic inequality, loss of social cohesion, or all these things used to be pretty bad, actually almost as bad as they are now. Then they get better, what you call the upswing in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s really. And they've started to go down again.

Talk about what you think, what does that tell us? What was going on? You know, why did it go up and then down again.

PUTNAM: Well, the first thing to say, Fareed, is that it's, it shows that doesn't have to be the way it is today. Indeed one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Danny Freeman. Right now, we're following breaking news out of Florida where as you can see on your screen, President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky are about to hold a meeting on ending Russia's war on Ukraine. Let's take a listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: We got to make a deal to get it done. Too many people dying and I think both presidents want to make a deal. We believe that they're going region.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need food again too.

TRUMP: It depends. It depends. I do believe that we have the makings of a deal that's good for Ukraine, good for everybody. It's very important. There's nothing more important. I spoke, we settled eight wars and this is the most difficult one I thought would be in the middle of the pack. This is the most difficult one, but we're going to get it done. We're going to have a great meeting today.

This gentleman is worked very hard and he's very brave and his people are very brave, but they've gone through no nation, very rarely has a nation ever had it go through this.

So we're going to have a very good meeting today, I think. And I'm also calling President Putin back after the meeting and we'll continue a negotiation. Pretty complex, but not that complex.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you meet the New Year's Day deadline?

TRUMP: I don't have deadlines. You know what my deadline is? Getting war. And we don't have deadlines. You agree with that? Well, it depends what the security agreement says. What a dumb question.

Nobody even knows what the security agreement is going to say. But there will be a security agreement. It'll be a strong agreement. And the European nations are very much involved in that, have been very much involved in protection, et cetera. [13:30:09]

But the European nations have been really great. They're very much in line with this meeting and we're getting a deal done. They -- they are all -- they're terrific people, I think you can say that. There's nobody there. They all want to get it done and they've been very supportive. I thank them.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, UKRAINE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much, Mr. President. Thank you for all (inaudible), for your invitation. Because really, I really present with our teams. They do what they can. And I think that during last month they moved forward with negotiations and America said thank you very much for your Steven (inaudible). And they work very well.

They worked on different documents. I hope that all these countries can bring this as quick as possible. And I agree with the president that really the Europeans, they are (inaudible). I'm sorry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, did you want to come here in Mar-a-Lago being president. Why (inaudible).

ZELENSKY: So we have, we spoke about our teams. They work on 20 points plan and they work on prosperity and security government. And 20.7 is very important. We have to discuss and secret very important. Our teams talked about strategy, how to make step by step and bring this close. And we will discuss this strategy.

We will speak about 20 points plan. There are -- there in 20 points plan, 90 percent, by the way, was done by our two teams. I think they made a great job, great work. And yes, we will discuss these points also.

TRUMP: And there are great economic benefits for Ukraine, as you know. There's a lot of rebuilding to do. There's a lot of wealth to be had and they have great wealth, potentially. They have great wealth. They want to get started. But there's a great economic benefit for Ukraine in what we're talking about.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump, some are saying that the recent attacks in the past couple days that Russia staged against Ukraine shows that President Putin isn't serious about peace. What is your reaction to that?

TRUMP: No, he's very serious. I think I can say that I believe Ukraine has made some very strong attacks also. And I don't say that negatively. I think you probably have to. I don't say that negatively. I think he hasn't told me that.

But there have been some explosions in various parts of Russia. And it looks to me like, I don't know. I don't think it came from the Congo. I don't think it came from the United States of America. It possibly came from Ukraine, but I haven't asked that question. Maybe I won't bother asking, you know, they're fighting a war and we'll see what happens. But I believe it's a war that we have two willing parties. We have two

willing countries. They want to see it end with. The people of Ukraine want it to end and the people of Russia want it to end, and the two leaders.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible) to end on economic benefits for Ukraine, Europe is holding some billions in frozen Russian assets. Do you believe that you go to Ukraine to help rebuild or go back to Russia?

TRUMP: None of that's been determined. But it'll go. It's going to go very quickly. I think we're very -- we're in final stages of talking and we're going to see otherwise it's going to go on for a long time. It'll either end or it's going to go on for a long time and millions of additional people are going to be killed. Millions. And nobody wants that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you say that you think it will either end for a long time and you say you don't have a deadline? So what are you expecting us to date?

TRUMP: I just think we can do. I think we can move very rapidly. I really feel like we've spoken. I know you had dinner with Steve.

Steve Witkoff and Jared have done a fantastic job and everybody has. Marco has been incredible. The whole group has been, our group has been incredible. And Ukraine appreciates it and Russia appreciates it. They both want to see it end and we're going to get it ended. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

ZELENSKY: Thank you so much.

TRUMP: We'll see you, I think, at the end. But I do think we'll call Europe also. We're going to speak to the European Council. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FREEMAN: Okay. We were just listening to President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky ahead of a meeting that they're about to have in Florida in Mar-a-Lago. A lot of that a little bit challenging to hear, but thankfully we have a bunch of reporters who can break down really the preview of what we can expect in this meeting coming up basically right now again in Mar-a-Lago.

So let's bring into the conversation senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak. He's near Mar-a-Lago. We also have CNN senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen with us in Berlin.

Kevin, I want to start with you. President Trump saying this is going to be a great meeting, really asserting that he believes both Presidents Zelensky and Putin are interested in peace, even in the face of some of those attacks that we have been seeing in Ukraine over the past few days or so. What's your takeaway, Kevin, and what should we expect in the next few minutes as they enter those doors to Mar-a- Lago? KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and when it comes to those

attacks that we saw overnight on Ukraine, the president was asked about them specifically and was fairly equivocal. He says that Ukraine has also been making some very strong attacks, so didn't necessarily condemn them outright. And I think one of the backdrops to that scene that we just saw in the steps of Mar-a-Lago was the phone call that President Trump held about a couple of hours ago with Vladimir Putin ahead of these critical talks with Vladimir Zelensky. And he said just now that he planned to speak with Putin again once this meeting wraps up.

He is confident that both sides of this are ready to strike a deal. He says he thinks Putin is serious about peace. He thinks that both Ukraine and Russia want to make a deal here, and I think that's significant. He says that they're in the final stages of these negotiations. And you heard him kind of tick through some of what's on the table here, including those very critical security guarantees for Ukraine essentially to ensure that Russia isn't able to reinvade that country once this war ends.

The president said that there will be a very strong security agreement as part of this deal, that the Europeans will play a major role in that. He did stop short of saying specifically what the U.S. was putting on the table for those security guarantees. And that is something that Zelensky in this meeting today has said that he wants to talk more about. He wants to get more details to get into the nuances of what precisely President Trump is offering up as part of those security guarantees.

But I think all in all, the president voicing quite a bit of optimism, but also suggesting that if a deal isn't reached sort of immediately, imminently, that this war would just go on and on. I think trying to make the point that now is the time for these leaders to come to kind of to come to some kind of agreement that whatever hang ups Zelensky has had about these peace talks, now is the time to put them aside, because sort of the offers that the U.S. has put out may not be on the table forever. Danny.

FREEMAN: Yes, and I think that it's also notable that this meeting is occurring at all, especially while President Trump is on vacation. Clearly, there is the feeling, at least from President Trump's side, that perhaps progress will be made in just a few moments. Fred, I want to bring you to the conversation. It was very fascinating because President Zelensky this week really did open the door to compromise in his latest version of this peace proposal. What's your perspective? How could that play out in today's talks?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Danny. Well, I actually think that's a key point. And one of the things that Volodymyr Zelensky has said for the first time is that possibly the Ukrainians would be willing to concede territory to the Russians as part of a deal. But of course, what they say is they're going to have to be a referendum in Ukraine. And also those very strong security guarantees that Kevin was just talking about that apparently the U.S. is offering also play a big role in that as well. But I think one of the things that you're seeing there today is really the culmination point, or one of the culmination points of a flurry of diplomatic activity led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner that certainly seems to be paying out some dividends now for the United States.

One of the things, and I been following this process pretty closely, which essentially started about two weeks ago in Berlin with the first meeting between Witkoff, Kushner, and Zelensky and the Ukrainians on the other side. And I know that the Germans, who were the mediators in all that, they were a bit skeptical about the U.S. side, feeling that possibly the U.S. team was too close to the Russians, was getting too much input for the Russians. But I know that when they sat down, the Germans were very impressed by how Witkoff had prepared, Kushner had prepared, by how much compromise the U.S. Was willing to make. And all sides after that meeting felt that a serious step had been taking, had been taken forward.

And essentially the deal or the possible deal that seems to be crystallizing in all of that is that the Ukrainians might indeed have to concede territory, but only if there are those very strong security guarantees. And I think one of the other things that President Trump has now said as well is also extremely important, and those are those economic incentives where the U.S. is essentially saying, look, if you go for this deal, if you make these territorial concessions, there won't only be these strong U.S. backed security guarantees, but there's also the possibility of major U.S. and international investment. And the Europeans, of course, possibly part of that as well. President Trump also saying that the Europeans want the same thing, that they have been very constructive in that process. And certainly that's also the vibe that we're getting on the ground here in Europe as well.

[13:40:06]

One of the things, of course, that we know is that the president did speak to the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, before all of this, and the Russians once again saying that they are against a temporary cease fire, even if it is to hold a referendum in Ukraine on possibly ceding some of its own territory. That's something that the Russians have said in the past, and certainly something that could make progress quite difficult. Of course, we know that the Russian side has been very staunch in its stance, saying they want a wider deal. The last thing that the Russians want, they say, is a temporary cease fire because they believe that it could give the Ukrainians the chance to regroup. Danny.

FREEMAN: Thank you, Fred, for sharing that perspective. I just want to go back to Mar-a-Lago for a moment because we actually have images from the inside of this bilat beginning. Let's listen in for a moment, if we can.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Are you okay? Is everyone fine? Margo, if you would. I think you could sit outside and have some food. Would you like to have food, or do you consider that a bribe and therefore you cannot write honestly, or therefore you have to write a bad story? Okay. Because if you'd like. Would you like something to eat at this time, yes or no? You can speak.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

TRUMP: Yes. Okay.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, sir.

TRUMP: Margua.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, sir.

TRUMP: Take them outside. Tell the chef serve them little lunch. Okay.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Press. Thank you, Press. Thank you, Press. Thank you, Press. Thank you, Press thank you.

TRUMP: You lead the way. Go outside of the porch. Because we have the House close for the day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FREEMAN: Okay, you can see right there as this bilat lunch begins between President Trump and President Zelensky. President Trump having the press taken out as this evening, or I should say, afternoon begins. A lot of notable people, though, in that room as that meeting and lunch began. We saw the Secretary of Defense Hegseth, Secretary of State Rubio as well Jared Kushner, who we know has been part of the negotiations prior to this moment. You can see in the back of the room on your screen right there, Stephen Miller also in the front.

We're going to take a quick break for a moment, and then on the back half, we'll have Fred, Kevin, and all of our Reporters break down what's going to be, no doubt, a consequential day in Florida. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:47:30]

FREEMAN: And we're back with our breaking news. President Trump and President Zelensky meeting for talks in Florida as we speak. We just watched the press escorted out, but presumably at this moment now, President Trump, President Zelensky and their teams are talking about potentially a peace agreement over lunch at Mar-a-Lago, we have reporters covering all angles of the story.

Let's start, though, with Jill Dougherty. She's a CNN contributor and our former Moscow bureau chief. She's also written a great book about her time in Russia. And also with us, of course, we have senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak, who's near Mar-a-Lago, and CNN senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen in Berlin.

So again, we have all angles covered here. Jill, let's begin with you, though. Thank you for joining us on again a consequential holiday weekend Sunday afternoon. Let's start top level. When you see President Trump and Zelensky standing there together and

now sitting down to this meal and these talks, what are you thinking about? Do you think that peace is a little bit closer potentially?

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I mean, you can certainly see that President Trump is setting this up as a crucial moment. I mean, he did say it'll end or it's going to go on for a very long time and a lot of people are going to die. So I think he is setting this up as a turning point.

And if he is meeting with Zelensky and putting all of his effort in publicly at this point, you would have to say that he probably does believe that he is closer than ever to some type of deal. And I think what I was also watching was how President Trump was dealing with President Zelensky. He was very complimentary, said that he's a brave man, he's been working very hard, that his country has been going through a very difficult period.

And then he also, in contrast to previous times where maybe he would praise one side and condemn the other, he also praised President Putin, said that both leaders want peace. And then I think picking up on something that Fred said earlier, I think this economic aspect is really important because the president was saying economic benefits, rebuilding and then great wealth that Ukraine has. So essentially this is one of the big issues. Who's going to rebuild Ukraine after all of this?

Some certainly would say Russia should be doing it because they destroyed parts of it, they should rebuild. Others are saying, well, you know, the United States might get involved, not paying for it. But that I think will be a big question.

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Yes, rebuild, but who pays for it and how does it happen? I think you can probably say that the Americans would be involved in some way, maybe actual construction, reconstruction and then the wealth. That is a hint, I would believe, for rare earth metals and things that could be mined in the future that could be important. I think the big question here again, is Putin, because Putin, with that bombing of Kyiv last night, really made it clear that he is trying to look invincible and that no way Ukraine can win, Russia is going to win. That's always been his negotiating.

FREEMAN: Fred, I want to bring you back into the conversation for more on the European perspective here. One of the things that President Trump said is that there should be a call between himself, Zelensky and European leaders after this meeting. What more can you tell us about that? What should we expect from that conversation?

PLEITGEN: Well, I think the two leaders, President Trump and Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, are going to brief the European leaders as to what exactly was decided. And I think, again, this is part of a process where the Europeans have really inserted themselves into these negotiations a lot more than they had been up to that. And that, once again, is something that certainly seems to have started about two weeks ago when the Germans hosted that summit between the U.S. and the Ukrainians here in Berlin, where the German mediator and mediators from France and the United Kingdom were also in the room.

And certainly, one of the things, Danny, that we have to point out is that the Europeans right now really are the nations that are bankrolling Ukraine, that are still supplying Ukraine with weapons, and that so therefore certainly have a say also in the way the diplomatic process moves forward. And one of the things, one of the changes that we've really seen from the Europeans is that in the past, what they've said is that they feel that Ukraine should not give up any territory at all. That was the European position. And one of the ways that shifted now is that the Europeans are now saying that any sort of territorial concessions have to be made and okayed by the Ukrainians, that it's up to Ukraine themselves to make those decisions.

And of course, we know now that Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, appears to be more open to possible territorial concessions than he has been in the past, in light of those possible security guarantees, strong security guarantees from the U.S. and of course, that big investment that Jill was just talking about as well. One of the big issues that I think is still really very much on the table is whether or not there's going to be a cease fire in order to set up a possible referendum.

If something is agreed here in Mar-a-Lago or somewhere down the line where the Ukrainians are saying, look, territorial concessions is definitely something that the Ukrainian people are going to need to decide, because the Russians are already saying that they do not want a cease fire, even if it is to protect a referendum happening in Ukraine. They believe that the Ukrainians are going to use that to try and regroup their military forces. So that certainly seems to be one of the big issues that still is on the table. But at the same time, both President Trump, both the Trump administration and the Ukrainians have said that they believe that over 90 percent of the big issues have already been dealt with. But of course, the ones that are remaining are still some of the toughest ones on the table.

And Joe was talking about those economic incentives that the Trump administration says it has on the table for the Ukrainians. Of course, they're trying the same thing with the Russians as well, saying, look, if you sign on to this deal, if the killing stops, then there is also a big economic future for the United States and Russia also talking about rare earths and minerals, talking about deals in the Arctic, talking about sanctions relief. So all of those things, those economic incentives are things where they're dangling those in front of the Ukrainians, but also in front of the Russians as well, hoping that both sides will then say, look, we need to stop this and then have an economic future with the United States, both countries.

FREEMAN: Kevin, I just have about a minute left. I wanted to actually get your perspective on this, though, because you sent an email about this at the same time. I was thinking it. President Trump seems like in full Florida White House, Mar-a-Lago host mode. What's your take on this? LIPTAK: Yes, and it was interesting, you know, in that spray, all that

we really heard from him was offering the reporters in the room some lunch. And I do think it could potentially, you know, portend perhaps a more casual mood. The president, when he hosts world leaders at Mar- a-Lago, has in the past developed a more friendlier atmosphere.

You know, I remember back to the first term when he hosted Xi Jinping or Shinzo Abe, the late prime minister of Japan. Those meetings were really intended to cultivate relationships. This is the president's home, and you see them sitting there in the dining room, you know, with its murals and its frescoes, all based on the shaggy palace in Rome. You know, this is kind of like an ornate moment that the president likes to show off.

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I still think the President recognizes that this is a moment for statesmanship, one that he is trying, as he has said so many times in the past, to bring a peace to a conflict that he once said he would be able to resolve within 24 hours of taking office. So certainly, very serious talks. But I do think any time the President sits down with Zelensky, it's so critical to look at what the tone is and what the tenor is after that explosive, disastrous meeting in the Oval Office back in February. Certainly, they're avoiding that today.

And I think the fact that it's occurring down here in Florida does demonstrate on the part of the President a degree of reception, like a host attitude that perhaps wouldn't be in place if he was meeting back up in Washington.

FREEMAN: Yes. Yes, indeed. All right, Fred, Kevin and Jill, thank you so much. Everyone stay put. We'll have much more on the other side of a quick break.

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