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U.S. Stocks Gyrate Wildly on Third Day of Market Mayhem; Trump Urges Patience on Stocks: "Don't be Weak. Don't be Stupid; Mixed Messages from Trump, Top Advisers on Tariff Negotiations; Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Block Order that it Return Mistakenly-Deported Man from El Salvador by Tonight; Judge: Mistaken Deportation "Shocks the Conscience". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 07, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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MANU RAJU, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, market mayhem. We're following chaos on Wall Street, stocks are on a wild ride as President Trump defiantly stands by his sweeping tariffs and confused investors fear a global recession. Plus, the Trump Administration has until the end of the day to bring home a Salvadorian national whom they mistakenly deported to a prison in his home country.

But the Justice Department says that is not possible, and now asking the Supreme Court to block the order. And fatal consequences anti- vaccine activist turn HHS Secretary, RFK Jr., may be changing his tune on the measles vaccine after a second unvaccinated child in West Texas dies from the preventable disease. I'm Manu Raju in for Dana bass, let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics".

We start with the breaking news on Wall Street, the major U.S. stock indices are down between one and 2 percent. Markets have been extremely volatile all morning, plunging, surging and then tumbling again as traders react to unfounded rumors and President Trump's social media posts about the trade war he launched last week.

At this hour, the president is defending his tariff plan and says he will not change his policies. He's threatening an even bigger tariff on China, but he also seems to be opening the door to negotiations with certain other countries. CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich is at the New York Stock Exchange, live for us now. Vanessa, it's only noon it's been quite a day?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS & POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Quite a day, and it's only noon. Well, at 10:00 a.m. this morning, shortly after, there was a post that came out on social media that said that the president was considering pausing tariffs for 90 days, except on China.

When that post went out, we heard cheers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and we quickly saw all the indexes turn green. Look at your screen now, you can see the DOW. See that green spike that is the moment after that tweet went out, investors were encouraged by this news that the trade war could be de-escalating, but the White House came out shortly after, and said that that was, quote, fake news, that that was not happening.

And since then, that individual who posted that on Twitter took that post down. But you can just see how desperate investors are for some indication that this trade war is de-escalating and not escalating. Since then, there has been some news of negotiations. The European Union said that they were open to negotiating.

As you remember, Donald Trump slapped a 10 -- excuse me, 20 percent tariff on the EU. And also, you have other countries like Vietnam saying that they're willing to bring their tariff rate down to zero. But nothing like this rumor has really rallied markets in the way that it did.

But what I'm hearing from investors here is that they're looking for some sense of certainty. We have been talking about that for weeks now. And what they are getting is uncertainty. Just look at this recent post by President Donald Trump on Truth Social where he said that he would retaliate again on China if they did not remove their 34 percent reciprocal tariff. He would lob on another 50 percent.

But in that same post, he says that they're negotiating with other countries. They're going to take meetings, and they will begin talking to those countries immediately, so you can kind of see the whiplash that investors are seeing in one single social media post, and of course, Manu that is being reflected in the markets.

And I spoke to a trader just shortly after that really incredible spike that we saw, and he said that this is going to be a bumpy ride. And I said, how long do you think this will last? And he said, he thinks this is going to last a few weeks, simply because he does not see any indication from the president that he's willing to repeal any of these tariffs.

Negotiations, he said, are good, but they're looking for tangible evidence that these tariffs are going to be repealed and there's going to be some sort of major de-escalation of this trade war, Manu.

RAJU: Yeah. How long will this last? The big question on Wall Street and really around the world. Vanessa Yurkevich, from live from the New York Stock Exchange thank you. And ahead of the markets opening this morning, President Trump had this to say on "Truth Social".

Quote the United States has a chance to do something that should have been done decades ago, don't be weak. Don't be stupid. Don't be a panic in a new party based on weak and stupid people, be strong, courageous and patient, and greatness will be the result. And then last night on Air Force One he made this comparison.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. (END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:05:00]

RAJU: All right, I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters this afternoon. CNN's Kayla Tausche, David Weigel of "Semafor", CNN's MJ Lee and Tia Mitchell of "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution". Nice to see you all. What a day?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: What a day?

RAJU: So, what is -- Kayla take us inside what's happening in the administration right now, and it's in the White House as Trump digs in and uncertainty looms.

TAUSCHE: Well, you have two schools of thought within the administration, one that this is a permanent reset of global trading relations. The other that this is a means to an end, and that end being a new slate of bilateral trade deals with all of these trading partners that President Trump believes are ripping the U.S. off.

And I spoke to an adviser who says that there are talks for an initial set of deals that could first include Vietnam, India and Israel, whose prime minister is visiting with President Trump today. But there is a real desire by the president to look firm on this, even as some of these negotiations are going on.

But there's a real issue here, because he has a credibility problem now with investors, with executives, and it's starting to show with the American people too, as he's put tariffs on, off, potentially paused, not paused, moving deadlines, changing product categories, where it looks like there's not really a strategy behind this.

And you know, there's this broad sense of uncertainty, but there's also an issue where people now feel like they can't trust the president and what he does and what is happening to the economy, and what data it's even based on. And I think one piece of evidence that strongly points in that direction is Bill Ackman.

Who is a major investor, a strident supporter of President Trump's throughout the campaign last night on X was the one who floated this possibility of the president. He said that the president should consider a 90-day pause to restore some confidence in the market. He said business is a confidence game.

The president is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. The consequences for our country and the millions of our citizens who have supported the president are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for.

RAJU: And that is a remarkable thing for him to say, given how much he supported Trump in the campaign. But the Trump Administration saying that pause is not going to go into effect. And you mentioned the concerns about what the impact Goldman Sachs increased the recession forecast to 45 percent And this is what Jamie Dimon, who is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase said in the letter to shareholders just today, so the recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession. Whether or not the menu of tariffs causes a recession remains in question, but it will slow down growth. Why is Trump not taking those warnings seriously?

DAVID WEIGEL, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: You heard it. You heard it just now. It is about confidence and about randomness and the -- I want to slow down and talk a little bit about this, this tweet we're discussing because we're not even using the name as if it's an alleged murder, murder victim or something.

This Walter Bloomberg Account on X has a blue check mark. You can buy one of those now, and it looked to a lot of people like real news, because he's reading something from Bloomberg terminal that moved billions and billions of dollars. That is the randomness with which people are looking at Trump's decisions.

If you add to that, the randomness with the president is acting, there is consistency in the vision he has for America. But if you -- if you start talking through these things, it's incoherent. Do we want more companies to onshore? OK, how long does it take to do that? Quite a while.

It's like -- it's like we're talking about new oil -- starting new oil drilling while the price of oil is falling. Or do we want to deal with these companies? Does that lead to onshoring? It has -- it has been incoherent. This was in the last week was the first time I heard the acronyms of the world. The people who had been saying, just ride this out. Just ride this out.

Worry about it. The only people not worrying about this are the Mike Johnsons of the world who say Trump is right. Trust Trump. Trust him to have to figure out a resolution to this.

RAJU: And that's what the argument is from the administration listen to Donald Trump. That's I'm trying to say. And just take a taste of what these White House and cabinet officials said on the Sunday shows and today, trying to defend what Trump is trying to do and trying to explain what he's trying to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: I've seen some deals that are great at the President Trump -- President Trump is going to decide if they're great enough.

BROOKE ROLLINS, AGRICULTURE SECRETARY: Listen, we've got 50 countries that are burning the phone lines into the White House up and probably the president's cell phone as well.

HOWARD LUTNICK, COMMERCE SECRETARY: There's no postponing. They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks.

PETER NAVARRO, COUNSELOR TO PRESIDENT: So, when you say to me, Ann, what do we want from them? We want fairness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: I mean, at the end of the day, the overriding theme is just trusting Trump.

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL ENTERPRISE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, though, I will say we are starting to see a little bit of a division even among Trump officials. Obviously, there's nobody that speaks for the Trump Administration that is going to outright criticize the president's overall strategy here.

But I think in addition to the officials that are saying, look, you got to just trust that he knows what he's doing, we have to give this time. This is ultimately going to end up in a good place in the medium to long term. We're seeing an emphasis on the countries that are wanting to negotiate.

[12:10:00]

Essentially, officials that are coming out and saying it's not the worst idea if you're interested in negotiating the time is now. I think those are two distinctly different views. You talked about two camps existing in the Trump World. There's the idea that what Trump is doing right now is going to eventually course correct on its own. And then there's a separate idea that these negotiations need to happen in order for that to happen.

I'm not sure exactly where President Trump falls right now. I don't think that most people know, and that's obviously the key thing, and I think it's also why we should be watching Netanyahu's visit to the White House really closely. Does he come out of there having effectively negotiated and gotten himself a better deal?

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Yeah, because that's the thing. It's not just two camps existing in Trump World. Trump has said both things in different social media posts. You know, he'll say, these Trump -- these tariffs are here to stay. We're going to reconfigure the U.S. economy. We're going to bring more manufacturing domestically.

This is about a complete reset. But then in a different post, he'll say, look at all these countries coming to negotiate. My plan is working. So, I think that's where the business leaders are saying, well, what can we trust when we don't quite know the plan? Because it can't -- it can't necessarily be both. Things are -- these tariffs a negotiating tool, which means they may be temporary, and there will be pain.

But it could pay off in the long term, or all the -- are these tariffs about moving manufacturing into the U.S., which will be a long-term problem for a lot of these business leaders, and they don't necessarily want to hear that. I also think saying both allows some of these Republican Leaders, it buys them time so they can say, hey, this is just a negotiating tool.

RAJU: Yeah.

MITCHELL: We're going to wait it out.

TAUSCHE: But Manu, I've talked to a lot of those business executives, some of whom are in touch directly with the White House about what this is going to look like. And they're saying, hey, we would rather pay or pass on to consumers $20 million in tariffs than spend $5 billion to build a new factory in a country with whom we don't know what relations are going to look like in the next administration or under the next party's leadership.

And they are very frustrated because during Trump's first term, where he was primarily targeting China, a lot of them move their factories to Vietnam, and they're saying, hey, wait a second, we did this for you in 2019 and now Vietnam is getting hit with the 46 percent tariff. What are we supposed to do? We're just going to ride this out.

RAJU: You know, meantime, there's the optics of all this, right? Trump is always concerned about how he's viewed in the media and the like. And the message that they wanted to send. This was a decision by Trump and his team, is to tell folks about his golf game this weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How was the Golf Tournament?

TRUMP: Very good, because I won. Good to win. You heard I won. Just to back it up, over there, I won.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: And then on Saturday, as these tariffs were going out, they decided the White House put out a statement saying that the president won his second-round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, Florida, and advances in the championship round tomorrow.

You know, sometimes presidents, if they're in the middle of middle economic turmoil, maybe they would go to a factory or something, or try to make their case publicly. Trump just -- he's doing what he's doing.

WEIGEL: That does go hand in hand with a strategy, if there was a coherent strategy we all understood that would fit with it, having the president be completely unbothered, not going on TV, to calm the market, saying, no, the markets are going to figure out what I'm doing sooner or later, it's everything else that you were just talking about.

He is going golfing while we are on the arch for figuring out if this is worth investing in, if we were willing to -- if we're willing to plan for four years ahead or not? I don't think that is necessarily a bad look for what he's trying to do. The lack of clarity is of what he's trying to do.

RAJU: Yeah. TAUSCHE: And clearly, you know, in the next couple days, we'll learn how serious he is about this idea of the country needing to swallow the bitter medicine. And I think also just what ends up swaying the president who he listens to?

RAJU: Yeah.

TAUSCHE: Is it a Bill Ackman? What if there are 10 more Bill Ackmans? What about the Republican Lawmakers?

RAJU: Exactly, that was my last point. What do Republicans do on the Hill? Some of them so far have backed an effort to try to give Congress more power. But that's not enough support right now for it to become law. We'll see how that ultimately plays out. All right, up next, a judge gives the Trump Administration until midnight tonight to bring back a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, but now the Justice Department wants the Supreme Court to step in.

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RAJU: The Trump Administration, is asking the Supreme Court to block a judge's order to bring back El Salvadorian man it admits was mistakenly deported to a prison in his home country. Now the emergency appeal comes just hours before the 11:59 p.m. deadline put in place by a federal judge to bring Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, back to the U.S.

The administration has claimed they cannot retrieve him from El Salvadorian custody. It also has renewed claims that Abrego Garcia, who is married to an American woman, is an MS-13 gang member, but the administration chose to provide no new evidence after the judge called the 2019 claims of one confidential informant vague and uncorroborated.

My excellent reporters are back. So, what are the implications here? So, if the Supreme Court agrees to say that OK, the administration does not have to bring back this man who back to Maryland, where he lives. What are the implications for that, for the rest of Trump's deportation policies?

[12:20:00]

LEE: Well, for now, I think the strategy that we've seen most consistently coming from the Trump Administration when it comes to this case is to downplay and deflect from the actual fact that this was the person who was erroneously deported from the country when he shouldn't have been.

I mean, we're hearing language from folks, including from somebody like the vice president, essentially saying, why are folks more worked up about this one person being deported than, say, some of the crimes that are being committed by people who are here in the U.S. legally? That is sort of the juggling act that they're doing. And I think in the next 12 hours or so, I mean, we are going to see,

depending on what actions the administration does or doesn't take? What accountability looks like in a case like this? And for the time being, as you know, they are hoping that the Supreme Court is going to side with them ultimately.

RAJU: They have to decide before tonight. So that's so significant, why we're watching this. And you mentioned one of the things is this man was not given a hearing, was not allowed to argue his case in court or anything. Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, was asked about this just yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: -- has testified, members of ICE that he is an MS-13 gang member. And the defense, his lawyers have argued, well, he should be here because he was studying to be an electrician when that first plane left and landed in El Salvador, there were 261 reasons why Americans were safer. We have to look out for the safety of our country first and foremost, and that is Donald Trump's directive, and we're going to continue to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: But again, they're doubling down on these allegations about providing that evidence.

MITCHELL: And it's a deflection from the root point is, is the Trump Administration going to follow rule of law? Is the Trump Administration going to allow due process that is one of the -- you know formative parts of our judicial system, and if they're not, what does that mean? Not just for undocumented immigrants, where it's easy to vilify them.

It's easy for conservatives to say, why do we care whether we give rights and due process to people who are here illegally? But when you start here, where does it go? And that's what a lot of people ringing the alarm are saying, where do we go next if the government, the federal government, admits it made a mistake, won't correct it, and won't give just -- you know just the basic decency of following the court orders that that allows him to be brought home to have that due process improve their case.

RAJU: Yeah. We still haven't. We don't have any real details about these people who were sent to El Salvador, these just a couple weeks ago, sent on a plane Venezuelan. Venezuelan sent there, and the administration has not provided, really any details of who these people are and what the allegations are against them, or evidence in court?

TAUSCHE: Yeah, really, the only thing that we've seen is that video that the Homeland Security Secretary filmed on the ground in front of that prison with those detained.

RAJU: And there are some others who are also alleging that they have no ties to MS-13 and the like that they were mistakenly deported as well.

TAUSCHE: Correct. And I think it's important to note that the judge in this case has said that the Trump Administration has not provided any evidence of the ties of this individual to MS-13, despite the fact that Bondi was referencing that confidential informant and essentially saying, we have to trust the work of our agencies and trust them inherently that they're bringing us the right people.

But I think the bigger question is, how exactly is the legal system going to compel the Trump Administration to do anything that they are ruling going forward? Because we saw before when the judge ordered the Trump Administration's planes to turn around and come back to the U.S. with some of these detainees. They didn't do that.

RAJU: Yeah, they said it was already passed.

TAUSCHE: It was already passed we can't do...

RAJU: -- anymore.

TAUSCHE: What tools do these judges have, and does this equal third branch of government have to compel the executive branch to actually take it seriously?

TAJU: Trump won in a large part in law-and-order argument. He's talking about immigration taking a hard-line approach politically, is there a risk of him going too far over, reaching?

WEIGEL: What you were saying one of the vice president's favorite quotes he mentioned was running for Senate, was Andrew Jackson talking about Judge Marshall, the judge has made decision to let him enforce it. So, there is a political and ideological defense they're willing to make.

They made during the campaign that sometimes we're going to do things, and judges disagree, and that's too bad for the judges. Now that they are much more comfortable defending this in political terms, I think, than legal terms, they're going to sue. They know where they're going to sue.

But you can see what they're doing here, that border crossings are down. Asylum seekers are down. They don't have that footage day to day of people trying to cross the border. What they've been trying to do is find these cases and get Democrats, liberals -- finches, to defend them and to embarrass themselves.

And that's what you hear every time Bondi is talking about this. Oh, do you not want to deport any criminals? But they're not dealing with Democrats who are saying, stop the deportations. They were seven years ago. That's not how Democrats operate anymore. They're not saying moratorium. They're not saying don't deport.

They're saying, no, please but obey the law. How can you get drone footage inside one of these prisons and not identify the person you're putting there? So, I can see what they're doing politically.

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And I don't think it's working, and they might run out of runway with this, certainly in the courts, with public opinion. This is -- this is -- this is Trump's best issue overall, immigration and protecting the border. And these cases are so extreme that they are losing people on them.

RAJU: Yeah. And meantime, Trump said yesterday, when his last time Air Force One about sending people who are in American citizens in the federal prison population to El Salvador. He said, well, I love that. So perhaps he wants to broaden this effort. We'll see how he ultimately deals with it.

All right, the Trump Administration is rewriting history, one web page at a time, the new way they're answering this question, what is the underground railroad?

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