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Inside Politics

Trump: "I Have My Own Deadline" On Ukraine Peace Deal; Trump: U.S. Held Trade Meeting With China Today; Trump Undoes Federal Efforts To Fight Climate Change; Pope Francis Met With LGBTQ Activist In 2023 And 2024; Holocaust Survivors, Hamas Survivors Unite At Auschwitz. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 24, 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]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- whatever it is to be great. Seung Min?

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I mean, I think that I have my own deadline and declining to reveal what that deadline is, is notable. He obviously continued to express confidence as we saw heading into the meeting that Putin will listen to him after his -- imploring him this morning.

But again, it's unclear whether that would happen. And it's just -- you do see just -- again, I don't know if the President is kind of really being confronted with the limits of his own powers of persuasion, his own negotiating skills, but it's clear that just whatever progress, if any, that had been being made, like there really isn't anything that -- to speak of at this moment.

BASH: And at the end there, you heard, I believe it was Jeff Mason of Reuters asking about the idea that the President claims that back on trade --

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Yes.

BASH: -- that there was a meeting between the U.S. and China to try to work something out or at least begin to talk --

NICHOLS: Yes.

BASH: -- with regard to China. And he at first said that there was a meeting, but the Chinese are saying there wasn't.

NICHOLS: Yes. And the President didn't want to get too specific on who these conversations are taking place with. I don't really know -- I feel bad for Jeff who has to go back and write a story on that. I don't know how you write a story based on what the President just said there, but I don't know, Jeff Mason is a talented guy. He can figure it.

BASH: He'll figure it out.

NICHOLS: Just back on the Russia issue --

BASH: Yes.

NICHOLS: -- the President had a clear opportunity, though, to walk away from his optimism on a peace deal.

BASH: Right.

NICHOLS: And he didn't. So I think that tells us something. And then sort of the other sort of bucket, and it's sort of a separate category, is that once again, the President went out of his way to cast doubt on NATO as a lasting and enduring alliance. He said it'd be good for Europe. It's been good for Europe.

There's nothing clear from the President -- and we know this. But sitting next to the former secretary general of NATO, he had an opportunity to say something that NATO is an important, crucial alliance. He said Norway is a good ally, but he didn't say anything about NATO.

And I don't think any of us should be surprised down the road if that alliance changes its fundamental nature.

BASH: Yes, I mean, he's never been a giant fan of NATO. He did praise the now former secretary general of NATO for helping to --

NICHOLS: Yes.

BASH: -- get out the countries --

NICHOLS: Bump up the contributions to pay.

BASH: Right, to pay which was a big thing that we heard a lot about from President Trump.

SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think when we tie it all together, though, in our conversation on Russia and the conversation on China and the tariffs, I mean, Trump is under tremendous pressure now to show that he actually is a great negotiator.

We talk so much about the art of the deal, and right now there really is a question. He's projecting this confidence he can get a peace deal brokered between Russia and Ukraine. He's talking about this deal that he'll get done with China after, you know, upping the ante repeatedly and reaching a point where now we have 145 percent tariffs with China, and they've, you know, done their own reciprocal tariffs.

So there's a real question right now just about what exactly is going to get done, and especially when he's created, you know, his own deadline, doesn't give us a date, then goes back and forth about deadlines on trade deals. What exactly is he going to accomplish here? And I think we just -- that's the part that's so unclear right now.

BASH: Yes. I mean, obviously, I have my own deadline is -- it just translating here, a realization that this is hard, and boxing himself into a timeline didn't work out so well because it is very hard.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:37:58]

BASH: The White House marked Earth Day by releasing a statement entitled, quote, "We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science". It goes on to list several ways the White House claims President Trump is, quote, "leveraging environmental policies rooted in reality to promote economic growth while maintaining the standards that have afforded Americans the cleanest air and water in the world for generations".

CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir joins me now. Bill, good to see you. So the President, his first 100 days, he has reversed a lot of what the federal government has been trying to do across parties, across presidents to slow the fight against the climate crisis.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: And it's not just climate crisis work, Dana. It is air pollution. It is every kind of environmental protection is under the DOGE chainsaw these days. And that headline about finally a president that follows the science is just cruel irony to the hundreds, thousands of scientists across different agencies that are being purged right now, from NOAA to NASA to even the Department of Education, how they talk about this.

Because it touches so many aspects of the economy, all the agencies are involved. Just a few -- this is just a handful of recent days, fired 280 EPA staffers on Earth Day who work around climate justice and communities that have more pollution than others. They roll back 31 Clean Air Act regulations.

The Department of Research and Development fired members of the Science Advisory Committees. This is set up in the 70s. So there's an unbiased third party umpire to basically inform the people in charge, here's the best science going today. And that's just scratches the surface of all the areas he's trying to attack any sort of environmental regulation.

BASH: And the sort of rallying cry for President Trump and his allies with regard to the environment, specifically the EPA, was we need to sort of take the EPA, the regulations for lack of a better way to say it, ease up on them in order to help businesses. Is that what we're seeing play out?

[12:40:05]

WEIR: Not really. What we're seeing is just ideological purging that really doesn't make sense. It's incoherent for the science. For example, he put out an executive order to prop up coal mining.

Well, the only reason the country's not mining more coal is it would be more expensive. You would lose millions of dollars opening a new coal-fired power plant. Texas is the greenest state in the country when it comes to wind and solar and storage, not because they're woke, it's because the economics now. Those are the cheapest forms of energy these days.

And another one in his memo about the science, he wants to end the forced use of paper straws because according to a new report, paper straws contain dangerous PFAS chemicals that are bad for human health. Well, how about going after the PFAS chemicals or the microplastic pollution that is such a scourge globally? None of that.

So it's cherry picked to favor certain industries, but all of this still has to wind its way through the EPA rollbacks. There has to be new science that supersedes the old public comment periods. But the big fear is they're just going to ignore all of those traditional checks and balances.

BASH: Yes. They don't like the paper straws because they don't think they work as well as the plastic ones.

WEIR: Exactly.

BASH: That's the truth. I do want to sort of remind our viewers about your most recent book, which focused on innovators with climate solutions. Let's end on some hope here, Bill.

WEIR: OK. Well, that's the thing. I mean, even under all of this, the experts I talked to in the clean energy sector and earth repair, the world is going that way regardless. And when you look at the adaptation of thermal batteries and solar around the world, it is exploding in huge ways.

We look at the way we can rebuild cities to be fireproof in the age of wildfire storms or float communities in the age of sea level rise. This is a place in Amsterdam we visited. It is resiliency.

Adaptation is now a must for communities trying to live on this hotter, more unpredictable planet. And there are so many exciting solutions out there, which will make an entirely new class of future billionaires because everything in the modern world is in the process of being reinvented right now. The people standing in the way are those getting rich off the status quo and the folks in power helping them right now.

But below the surface, there's this sort of invisible industrial revolution that's happening right now. There's a lot of worry in that sector because so many of the grants and incentives that were built into the Inflation Reduction Act, which led to a huge manufacturing boom, are in the balance. And nobody knows for sure what comes next.

But blue states, blue cities, leaders in those places, as they did during the first Trump administration, are vowing to keep the climate momentum going. And it just makes economic sense. There's a solar -- a big solar company here in the United States that just got something like half a billion dollars in foreign investment, regardless of the Trump stuff, because the momentum is there.

BASH: Yes.

WEIR: There was a certain point when humanity wasn't going back to riding horses. We're past the point. We're not going back to internal combustion in this next generation. And it's not just health and wealth, but it's also prosperity.

China now is loving that they've been given the post-carbon economy. We'll see what happens next.

BASH: Bill Weir, we are so lucky to have you. I always learn so much from you. Thank you so much for being here.

WEIR: My pleasure, Dana. Good to see you.

BASH: Up next, an ally or a bystander. An LGBTQ activist who met with Pope Francis gives us her take on whether the pontiff did enough for the gay community. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:48:11]

BASH: You're looking at live pictures of mourners lined outside of St. Peter's Basilica for hours to pay their respects to Pope Francis as he lies in state. One group of Catholics the Pope made a big impact on are LGBTQ Catholics.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

POPE FRANCIS, HEAD OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND SOVEREIGN OF THE VATICAN CITY STATE (through translation): If a person with homosexual tendencies is a believer and seeks God, who am I to judge?

Being homosexual is not a crime. It's not a crime. Yes, it's a sin. But let's make the distinction first between sin and crime.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Those statements from Pope Francis signaled a big shift in the tone that the pontiff took towards gays, lesbians and the trans Catholic faithful, even if the substance of the church doctrine stayed pretty much the same.

My next guest is one of the people pushing the Pope to make the Catholic Church more welcoming. She met with the Pope twice to share stories of LGBT folks alienated from the church.

And I want to welcome now Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD. Thank you so much for being here. We just showed the pictures you met with the Pope more than once, 2023 and again in 2024. Can you take us inside those meetings? What were they like?

SARAH KATE ELLIS, CEO & PRESIDENT, GLAAD: Well, first we meet at his residence and we had 30 minutes scheduled and he spent over an hour with us, more like 70, 80 minutes with us. And, you know, what was really fascinating about the Pope was not only how warm and welcoming he was, but he wanted to know our stories and understand us as a community and as individuals and as humans. And, you know, I think about the Vatican and how it has not changed its stance on LGBTQ people in centuries. And this man in a decade would say very affirming things.

[12:50:12]

Now, it wasn't perfect, Dana. There were missteps, but it was a step in the right direction. And I think even having the Catholic Church at the very top, recognize our humanity and our dignity was really powerful.

BASH: What did you say to him? How did you try to help get him there?

ELLIS: So I think the first visit I shared with him about my wife and our kids and how we had to leave the Roman Catholic Church when our kids were born because they wouldn't be baptized. And he put his head down, shook his head and said, that's not right.

And it was only a week later or two weeks later where he came out and said that same sex couples should be blessed. So he really took in what we were saying. The second time that I went there was we brought a group of trans folks with us and to introduce him to trans people.

And he told the trans team -- the folks that they needed to keep fighting and that they should have everything that they desire. And he gave special rosary beads out. And when the Pope gave those rosary beads out, they're gendered, actually. There's one for male and one for female. And he recognized their gender, which is more than is happening in this country right now.

BASH: And before I let you go, I just want to look ahead because the question, of course, is going to be who comes next. Multiple cardinals published anonymous critiques of his papacy. They are pushing for a more conservative vision for the next Pope.

The most recent critique was February of 24, and it said, "The church can never be reduced to a system of flexible ethics or sociological analysis and remodeling to fit the instincts and appetites and sexual confessions of an age".

It's called transgenderism and an attack on human nature and identity. How concerned are you about what comes next?

ELLIS: I'm very concerned. I think that we made some real progress in these past 12, 13 years, and that this could roll the progress back. We as humans all want to move forward. And we as an LGBTQ community want to be recognized for our humanity and our dignity. And that's all we're asking for.

BASH: Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. We are going to obviously stay in touch as we see the conclave begin.

ELLIS: Yes.

BASH: Sarah Kate, thank you. And a quick programming reminder, don't miss CNN's new original series, "Searching for Spain". Eva Longoria explores Spain's vibrant and daring cuisine, one bite at a time, and it starts Sunday at 9:00 p.m. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:57:39]

BASH: Today is Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance, the day the world remembers the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel wrote that, quote, "It is all about memory, its sources, and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences". Today, we remember the magnitude and consequences of pure evil in the 20th century.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

(SIRENS)

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: It is -- that's an Israeli street, stopping to the sound of sirens. And to make space for remembering what the world promised it would never forget. Eighty years have passed since Allied forces liberated Auschwitz.

Survivors like Ruth Cohen. In 1944, Cohen was shipped on cattle cars from Hungary to Poland and the Camp of Horrors. In January, she walked back through those cursed gates where millions were murdered, including her own mother, brother, and cousins. She returned to the barracks where she and her sister slept, lifted her arms, and declared, quote, "I am still here".

Ruth is one of maybe a thousand survivors still living. Survivors whose pain and consequences of memory have now crossed over generations to bond them with another set of survivors.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE)

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Irene Shashar, now 87, was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto when she was only two years old. Agam Berger, who you see there, was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists overran an Israeli air base. She was forced to watch her friends die.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

(SINGING)

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: What you are seeing there is a chorus of Holocaust survivors and Hamas survivors singing. They're inside a gas chamber next to the crematorium, where countless Jews were murdered and then burned. One lyric echoes the loudest. Our hope is not yet lost.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for remembering. CNN News Central starts after the break.