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Inflation Rate Rises Less Than Expected for Month of May; Trump Claims Deal With China is Done if China Approves; Musk Posts I Regret Some of My Posts About President Trump on X; Trump to Attend "Les Miserables" Opening Night at Kennedy Center. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 11, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:34:15]

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': Some good news on the economy. The inflation rate rose less than expected last month despite President Trump's widespread tariffs. Now, the impact of those tariffs were supposed to be felt more in the month of May. And speaking of tariffs, President Trump now says a trade deal with China is "done." However, officials from both countries say the United States and China have agreed to a framework to carry out their trade truce. Chinese President Xi Jinping still has to sign off on that.

CNN's Phil Mattingly is here to explain. OK, so we were talking in the break and what I want to know is, is this real?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: It's real because of what it prevents. And I think that's actually quite important and a little bit difficult to understand. But let me walk through how I kind of took the Trump truth, if you will, earlier this morning. This is literally my process as I'm trying to navigate school drop off.

(LAUGH)

[12:35:00]

MATTINGLY: This comes out, it's all caps, which already makes it a little bit difficult.

(LAUGH)

MATTINGLY: Here's what you're looking for here. Full magnets and any necessary rare earths, that was the critical component I'll explain in a second, but also what China would get out of any agreement, which in part was agreeing to including Chinese students using our colleges and universities. Remember the visa threats, or visa bans that were put on the table a few months ago. And then of course, the thing we've been talking about from day one, tariffs, 55 percent. So if you're looking at that, the U.S. went into this negotiation focused entirely on the rare earths issue, which again, I will explain, a little complicated. BASH: OK.

MATTINGLY: Second is what are the elements that China wanted or needed out of any potential agreement? And the third, are there any new tariffs? So, the last one is what we're going to start with, 55 percent tariffs. Going into these meetings in London, the understanding was the U.S. had slapped 30 percent tariffs, the equivalent of that after they de-escalated earlier last month. And so, you say, oh, are there now new tariffs? Is this escalating again? The short answer is no, it's not.

What's the math behind that? Well, he's actually adding in, President Trump, his first term tariffs, which are actually still in place and were maintained by the Biden administration.

BASH: Yeah.

MATTINGLY: -- to the 30 percent that we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks since the first round of Geneva talks in early May. So that's where 55 percent is. This is essentially, when you talk to administration officials, a ceiling on the tariff element of the China trade war as it currently stands, no longer a de facto trade embargo. 55 percent is where it stands.

What did the U.S. want out of this? It was clear and the risk was very acute, rare earth minerals. What are those? 17 different elements that are absolutely critical components to things like electronics for cars, jet engines, medical equipment, semiconductors, magnets, defense weapon systems. And when I say critical, I mean they are an absolute necessity and China essentially has a choke hold on the most important rare earth elements.

In fact, 99.9 percent of heavy rare earths, those critical components for things like defense weapon systems, are refined in China. Two days after Liberation Day, China basically shut off exports entirely, forced people to try and apply for licenses, no one could actually figure out the system. It was a matter of days before automotive companies in particular, but generally writ large, world supply chains were going to have major, major, I think COVID-era dislocations. U.S. officials were very, very concerned. That was why they wanted this.

As of this moment, we still are waiting for Chairman Xi to sign off, but U.S. officials say this should be released in full for U.S. companies.

BASH: OK. So assuming that Xi signs off --

MATTINGLY: Yep.

BASH: And of course, President Trump as well, where would that put us vis-a-vis what the president started with when he came in and what he wanted with regard to the trade imbalance with China?

MATTINGLY: Let flesh back to, I think, what is going to be the moment everybody remembers from this administration, no matter what, this is the chart, right? This is the reciprocal tariff chart, and this was part of the wide-scale 145 percent tariffs put on over the course of basically from February through April 2nd. . That really did shut off all exports to China and vice versa. It was as bad as it could possibly be between the two world's largest economies.

The Geneva meetings, which were in early May, the first bilateral negotiations between the two sides, de-escalated significantly, bringing them down to 30 percent. . That was a big, big deal. What did the last two days actually bring us, when it came to the second round of talks? We are basically back to Geneva. So it's not some grand de- escalation. This isn't some grand bargain. The U.S. and China are still very much in a trade conflict at this moment.

What matters more than anything else is what it prevented. There were a ton of different chess pieces being moved around in the last couple of weeks where the U.S. was trying to gain leverage to match up with China's leverage. Things could have spiraled very, very quickly. They didn't. Where it goes from here? Open question.

BASH: But luckily, I have you and this wall, and you'll tell us as we get more information.

MATTINGLY: Just as long as it's in all caps. I got you.

(LAUGH)

BASH: It is harder to read.

MATTINGLY: Little bit.

BASH: How did school drop off go? Did it go OK?

MATTINGLY: That's great.

BASH: OK, good. Thank you, Phil. Up next, regrets. He's had a few. Days after his big breakup with President Trump, Elon Musk is apologizing his way.

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[12:43:50]

BASH: At 3:04 a.m. Easter Standard Time, Elon Musk wrote the following. "I regret some of my posts about President Trump last week. They went too far." Now, this was a message to his 220 million followers on the social media platform he owns, intended to express some remorse about his viral internet feud with the president of the United States. Now, among Musk's posts in question was a claim that President Trump would've lost the 2024 election without him, and that the president is in the Jeffrey Epstein files, which was deleted by Mr. Musk.

My panel is back with me now. And Jeff Mason, The wall Street Journal first reported and CNN is now reporting as well, that part of why Elon Musk backed off his harshest criticisms of the president is because he got a phone call from Susie Wiles, the Chief of Staff and the Vice President, J.D. Vance saying, you got to fix this. JEFF MASON, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS: Yeah. I've have spoken to a bunch of sources on this lately too, and they've been saying that there's going to be an effort to create a reconciliation, so it seems to be happening.

[12:45:00]

What does seem striking to me though about his message is that he wasn't specific about which tweets or posts on X last week that he regretted. Did he regret suggesting that the president should be impeached? Did he regret the one that you showed about saying he wouldn't have won without him? It wasn't very -- didn't get down into the granular details on that. And -- but I think broadly, and this may be one of the reasons along with the China deal, why the market is up today, he knows -- the president knows and people around him know that it is in their interests, both of them, for the feud not to continue.

BASH: It reminds me of, in school, like in elementary school, where you do something wrong, not that I ever did, but where you have to go to the blackboard and write, I'm sorry like a hundred times . It felt like that sort of exercise that we saw on social media.

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION: I found it interesting that for -- particularly for Team Trump, the response was diplomacy. It wasn't crush Musk. It was, let's see if we can go through some back channels and work it out, and get them both on better footing. I also think what's interesting, Elon Musk is saying, I went too far on social media with my feud. It doesn't seem that he's particularly walking back some of his concerns about Trump policies. For example, the reconcile -- the, example, the reconciliation bill.

BASH: Yeah. Which started it all, I should add, Dave Weigel, that The New York Post is reporting that the president told them, "I thought it was very nice that he did that." Meaning that Elon posted his, I think it's an apology, his regrets about his posts.

DAVID WEIGEL, POLITICAL REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Oh, yes. And the president maintains relationships or forgives people if they've insulted him before. He does it all the time. There also was an effort -- I don't think it went very far, but Ro Khanna told me he was back channeling to Elon in order to convince him. If you're this angry, you should be supporting Democrats in the midterms. But Elon's politics have moved so far away from the Democratic Party, not to bring up the entire immigration discussion again, but look at his post, this is not somebody who's eager to support a blue wave in 2026. So where was he going to land? Not with them.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, I asked Bernie Sanders about that over the weekend and he was like, yeah, I don't think so for those reasons, real quick.

(LAUGH)

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR, THE ARENA: Very unlikely. No, I mean, I think, it's also pretty clear who went too far in this, right? I mean, usually, we're reading Donald Trump's posts and thinking -- or President Trump's posts and thinking this is very outside of normal and -- or sometimes, you know, certainly critics are. In this case, I think Elon's, posts --

BASH: Yeah.

HUNT: -- were perhaps farther outlier if that's the way to put it.

BASH: That's such a good point. He out-trumped Trump. Very good point. Tonight, after taking control of the Kennedy Center, President Trump heads there for opening night of "Les Mis." We know he'll hear the people sing, but will he also be the master of the house? I mean, we can't help it, Kasie. Don't laugh.

(LAUGH)

BASH: Stay with us.

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[12:52:17]

BASH: President Trump dreamed a dream of a new Kennedy Center. He replaced its entire board and named himself Chairman, and tonight, returns for opening night of the Broadway Classic, "Les Mis." It's a story, of course, of uprising, a rebellion by the poor. He'll look down from the presidential balcony; he'll hear the people sing. But will there be empty seats at empty tables? At least 10 performers will sit out tonight's show after receiving the option to not perform for President Trump.

One day more, and we'll see how prominent politics are on that stage. And in that hall tonight, my panel is back. Jeff Mason, you wrote about this in the run-up. And just to put a finer point on what I just mentioned, Trump's appearance at Les Mis, a show about citizens rising up against their government comes just days after he sent U.S. Marines and the National Guard to quell protests against his administration's immigration raids in Los Angeles.

MASON: You actually couldn't script this any better. I mean, the underscore of power, politics, culture, division that will be in that room tonight are -- will be both on the stage and in the audience. There are maybe about 200 people there who are donors, coming to a fundraiser beforehand. But the rest of the roughly 200 -- 2,300-seat theater was sold to the public and to subscribers.

So Vice President Vance, when he went to the Kennedy Center recently with his wife, was booed. There are likely to be some kind of reaction to President Trump tonight because of everything that has been going on.

BASH: So, you're saying it's underscore and the actual score?

MASON: Yes. Well done. Good job.

(LAUGH) BASH: You're welcome. I'll be here all day. I just want to quickly, before you jump in, Kasie, I do want to play something that President Trump said recently on a podcast about his affinity for musicals like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: They said, your son is brilliant at music. He'd be an incredible musician. This is not -- this is not what my father wanted to hear. You know?

MIRANDA DEVINE, HOST OF "POD FORCE ONE" PODCAST: Did you ever play any instrument?

TRUMP: I played like for very short periods of time, the flute. Would you believe that?

DEVINE: Oh, really?

(LAUGH)

DEVINE: Did you like it?

TRUMP: I had flute lessons. That's the first person that's ever asked me that crazy question. I had flute -- could you believe it?

DEVINE: Yeah.

TRUMP: I could have been a flutist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I mean, wow.

HUNT: I mean, that is a very sort of textured clip where I feel like we learned something about the man that's been the most famous man in America for a while now, that I sort of didn't fully understand. I mean, there's layers of his father and his father's influence, and I'm surprised he admitted he played the flute.

[12:55:00]

But you know what I would say, Dana, not to play devil's advocate, but while I totally understand the way that Jeff framed his story, I think that there are also a lot of people on the right who actually view themselves as the people who are uprising.

MASON: I agree. Yeah.

HUNT: -- in Les Miserables, right?

MASON: I agree.

HUNT: Like, they see themselves as being oppressed and forced to live their lives a certain way. Or in the case of immigration, not protected from a group of people that they, you know, view in a certain way. So, I'm not sure that everyone who kind of looks at the way this is laid out here is going to share that same perception of the narrative.

BASH: Yeah. We're going to -- we're going to -- sorry, we have to go. We're running out of time -- we're out of time, actually. But we're probably going to see a lot from both sides from in that hall tonight, no question. Thank you so much, one and all. Thank you for joining "Inside Politics."

Before we go, we want our "Inside Politics" panel to answer your big political questions. To put a question in, scan the QR code to submit those questions to us. You might just see them here on the show very soon, and you can find the link on my social media pages as well. "CNN News Central" starts after the break.

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