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Inside Politics

Italy's Meloni Is First European Leader To Meet With Trump Since He Announced New Tariffs; Trump Blasts Fed Chair After He Warns Of Tariff-Fueled Inflation; Top Nutrition Scientist Quits NIH Over "Censorship" Claims; Scientists Detect Signature Of Life On A Distant Planet; Maria Shriver Debuts New Book Of Poetry, "I Am Maria". Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 17, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: -- CDC, all of the research across the board that leads to breakthroughs and all of the -- whether it's cancer or obesity drugs, it starts at these institutions.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it really does.

Everybody stand by. When we come back, President Trump threatens the Fed chair, as we were talking about, with, quote, "termination" for not cutting interest rates. Richard Quest will be here to give us analysis, as only Richard Quest can do. Stay with us.

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[12:35:07]

BASH: The European Union's Central Bank today warned of a deteriorating economic outlook because of Trump's trade war. Raising the stakes for the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's meeting happening with President Trump now.

She was asked moments ago if the E.U. considers the U.S. a reliable trade partner. Here's how that went.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

GIORGIA MELONI, ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER: believe in the West's unity, and I think simply we have to talk and find ourselves --

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She believes in the President. She believes in the President.

MELONI: Also, and find ourselves in the best middle way to grow together. That's why I'm here.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: CNN's Richard Quest is with me now. Wow, that was about as diplomatic as it gets from Meloni, but she does have a better relationship with Donald Trump than other European leaders. Still, she's fighting for herself and for her country. There's a significant trade deficit that Italy has with the U.S. right now.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR AT LARGE: Yes, and that's the fascinating part about it, because she should be one of those countries that the President is attacking strongly, as it has one of the worst bilateral trade deficits within the E.U. against the United States. But of course, political bedfellows make strange partners, and therefore the President's probably overlooking that.

The reality here is Meloni is a very close to the President politically, but it is the European Union, the whole lot of them, all 27 nations, that will be negotiating, and that's the competency of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

Where Meloni comes in is at the next level up, the Council of Ministers, where all the prime ministers get together. That's where she's going to have huge influence in basically saying to the Germans, to the French, and to all the others, listen, this is how we've got to do it, this is what the President wants, this is how we can get the deal that will be the best for the E.U.

It won't be easy by any means, not bearing in mind the vitriol that Donald Trump has spewed all over the European Union.

BASH: Yes. And I do want to ask you about the Fed, Richard --

QUEST: Oh yes.

BASH: -- because my question for you is the pressure that Jerome Powell feels right now. It's not the first time that Trump has threatened him, it's not the first time that he has complained about the interest rates being too high, but this is different because he was clearly kind of clapping back on Powell for making pretty clear how he feels about this trade war.

QUEST: Yes. And Powell said yesterday, fine, go ahead, I can take the criticism, people can say what they like, we will ignore it and carry on. Powell knows that there's nothing the President can do to fire him. But what Powell also knows is that as the President continues to undermine him, that's very damaging for the credibility of the Fed, it's damaging for the integrity and the independence of the central bank.

And eventually, bearing in mind, in January, there's a Fed governor coming up to be replaced. Donald Trump is going to -- there's only seven of them, there are seven governors, and Donald Trump is going to get a chance to replace two in the next 12 months, so that is going to show you how the Fed's credibility and integrity can be seriously undermined because everybody is now saying, just what is the President going to do to wrest control of the Fed in the next 12 months.

BASH: Yes, so interesting, although he did appoint Jerome Powell, so we'll see.

QUEST: Well, yes, true. True.

BASH: He can change his mind like that, Richard. QUEST: Absolutely.

BASH: Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Always good to see you.

QUEST: Thank you.

BASH: And coming up, is anyone out there? The new discovery that is out of this world.

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[12:43:34]

BASH: Topping our political radar, RFK Jr. was nominated as Health and Human Services Secretary to, quote, "Make America Healthy Again". A huge part of what's known as the MAHA movement is performing America's diet and cracking down on ultra-processed foods.

The National Institutes of Health, top researcher on that, that exact issue, is now calling it quits. Kevin Hall says he's leaving the NIH after two decades due to what he calls censorship from top aides to the HHS secretary, and HHS spokesman responded, quote, "It's disappointing that this individual is fabricating false claims".

Plus, potentially endangering endangered species. Trump administration officials are trying to redefine what it means to harm a plant or animal in America. They're specifically looking to remove, quote, "habitat destruction" from activities that are considered threatening under the Endangered Species Act. Now, it's a blow to environmentalists, but it would make it easier to build in the U.S. something that is a top Trump priority.

And to infinity and beyond, a potentially landmark discovery. Scientists say they found the strongest signs yet of life beyond our solar system. They've detected two types of gases in a planet's atmosphere that are made here on the U.S., excuse me, here on Earth, by living organisms like algae.

[12:45:02]

But the study cautions this isn't about actual living organisms, but rather a possible indicator of past or present life linked to biological activity.

And coming up, my next guest was eight years old when her uncle Jack was assassinated in Dallas, 12 when her uncle Bobby met the same fate in Los Angeles. I'll talk to Maria Shriver about how those moments shaped her extraordinary life and are part of the inspiration for her next book.

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BASH: "Let's see how the universe responds when I pull back the curtain on my soul." That's a verse from perhaps the thesis of Maria Shriver's new book, "I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing and Finding Your Way Home". [12:50:13]

In publishing her poetry, she explores what it means to be a Kennedy, her career as a journalist, becoming the first lady of California, as well as marriage, motherhood, betrayal and loss. And Maria Shriver joins me now.

Thank you so much for being here. This is such a terrific book. I just -- I loved all of it. And I want to start with kind of the big picture, which is, you obviously come from the most famous political family on Earth.

Your mother was Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She was the sister of JFK, RFK, Teddy Kennedy. And so from the outside, looking in, your youth was not only full of privilege, but glamour and excitement. But what you write in here was how hard it was to be seen. You never felt like you were enough.

MARIA SHRIVER, AUTHOR, "I AM MARIA": Well, first of all, thank you for having me. And I think that just the introduction of mummy, they're, you know, being introduced as the sister of, as opposed to the founder of the Special Olympics, as opposed to the mother of, I think, everybody's fighting for their identity in society today, right?

I think everybody wants to be seen for who they are, for their contributions in the world. And I think I watched my mother fight for her identity, fight for her visibility, fight to be seen in a family where all of the attention was on the men.

And so I kind of, in many ways, replicated that fight, right, to be seen in a family where there was a lot of attention on the men. And I chose journalism. She chose her social justice fight for people with intellectual disabilities.

But this book is really about identity and what happens when we lose our jobs, what happens when we lose our identities that might be specific to a job or specific to a family. And I tried to go back in my life to look at where my heartbreak began, where my loneliness began, where I started to develop an outer shell, an outer identity, and to look for who I was beneath all of that.

BASH: Yes, and you write so poignantly about, in your poems specifically, as a little girl banging on your mother's padded bedroom door, desperate to be let in. That just says so much.

SHRIVER: Well, I think my mother and father and so many people's parents came from a generation that didn't talk about their grief, didn't talk about their trauma. My dad was in the war, World War II. He didn't talk about it.

My mother lost both her brothers, as you mentioned earlier, to assassinations. She lost another brother to the war, a sister to a plane crash, but she never spoke about it. That was the generation where you just soldiered on and you worked, and she was raised to go out and change the world. And that's definitely the message I got from her. So I think we all have our own padded doors, and I think she was very much alone in her grief. And my heart goes out to her in life and in death that society didn't have -- society wasn't, and still, I don't think, is grief literate. We still struggle to hold space for people who are hurting.

BASH: Your book, the poetry, I believe it's poetry that you've written over the years. One on that note is called Dallas.

SHRIVER: Yes.

BASH: And I just want to read part of that poem. You write, quote, "Dallas, that word pulls the trigger. Rips through my house like the wind. I can't catch my breath of save anyone who's here. Alone in my room. I'm scared."

I mean, this goes to what you were just saying, Maria, that your parents never talked to you about your Uncle Jack or Uncle Bobby's assassinations. You wrote they both dug in and carried on.

SHRIVER: And I think that's how they processed, that's how they were able to carry on. And thank God we've advanced as a culture. Thank God there are now grief literate groups. There are books on how to process grief. And what we know now is that you can soldier on, but grief stays in your body.

Trauma stays in your body, and it comes out in other ways. And so I've been a big proponent of talking about grief. The first book I ever wrote was a children's book called "What's Heaven?"

BASH: Yes.

SHRIVER: And it was to answer children's questions about what happens after we die. And so I've tried to write over the course of my journalism career and my career books about intellectual disability, books about Alzheimer's, books about questions that children have, but really those of us who are adults have them as well.

And I've tried to promote conversations across generations on all of these subjects.

BASH: Yes.

[12:55:06]

SHRIVER: And I'm hopeful that this book will do the same. I hope this book will ignite people to look at their own life stories. I hope it will ignite --

BASH: Yes.

SHRIVER: -- people to think about who they are separate from, you know, being a female journalist, separate from being somebody's mother, somebody's wife --

BASH: Yes. SHRIVER: -- somebody's ex-wife. Who are you? What are your values? What do you stand for? Can you stand when all of those titles and jobs are ripped away? And I think what I've learned kind of going around the country is that so many people are struggling with their own heartbreak, struggling with their own grief, struggling with their own trauma, trying to find their way home to themselves, to what that means, to a country, to families broken apart by politics.

So there's a lot going on out in the country --

BASH: Yes.

SHRIVER: -- that I've been feeling and sensing and talking about.

BASH: Maria Shriver, daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who was the founder of the Special Olympics. Eunice Shriver, the daughter of Rose Kennedy --

SHRIVER: Thank you.

BASH: -- who is the matriarch of your amazing family.

SHRIVER: There you go.

BASH: There you go. Maria, thank you for being here.

SHRIVER: Thank you.

BASH: Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.