Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Trump Speaks With Putin After U.S. Pauses Some Weapons To Ukraine; Poll: Most Americans Believe There Is A "Serious Threat" To Democracy; America 249 Years After The Declaration Of Independence; CBO: Trump Megabill Cuts Nearly $300B From SNAP Program. Aired 12:30- 1p ET

Aired July 03, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:32:18]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. The president just did wrap up his phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I want to get straight to our terrific reporters.

Kristen Holmes is still here, Natasha Bertrand as well, and we have joining us our one and only Jill Dougherty who has been covering all things Russia for a very long time. Kristen, I want to start with you. You have been doing reporting. What are you hearing?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so the call is over. It started around 10:00 a.m. It lasted for nearly an hour, and we still don't have a readout from President Trump. And just, you know, when we look at this White House, they're usually waiting for the principal, President Trump, to post himself instead of a traditional White House readout of how the call went.

So we'll see if he puts something on Truth Social. But two things to keep in mind about why this phone call is so critical at this time. One, it comes right after we reported that the Pentagon paused some of the military support ammunition that had been sending to Ukraine, something that the Russians celebrated.

Two, it also comes after we heard President Trump in his most candid moments at NATO talking about the difficulties of working with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said for the first time that it was harder than he thought to end the conflict in Ukraine. He said for the first time that he believed it was possible that Putin had ambitions of obtaining more land and more -- acquiring more property, I guess is a better way to put it, but -- than just Ukraine, that it wasn't going to stop.

And he said that he's been very difficult to work with, that Putin had been more difficult to work with than he thought. It's been surprising to him. So all of that is in the background of this call with these two leaders. And I will note, nearly an hour is a lot different than what we heard last time, which was two and a half hours. BASH: Right. OK, so you mentioned the reporting that you and other colleagues have about the U.S. pausing some munition shipments to Ukraine, including air defense missiles. That's according to senior White House officials.

Natasha, I was talking to somebody who is an expert on such things who was saying, well, why did that happen before the phone call? Isn't that giving up some leverage that you might need? I mean, obviously there are different ways to negotiate, but it's giving up some leverage with Putin. Like, if you want to get Putin to do something, say, if you do X, then we will pause the munitions.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, this has been really surprising. And it was a decision that was made by the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby. And according to the Pentagon, it was done in conjunction with the White House. It was done in conjunction with the Secretary of Defense.

This was not a unilateral decision that Colby made. But at the same time, it did seem to kind of directly undercut what President Trump had said just last week about perhaps providing Ukraine with more patriot systems, more patriot interceptors, because he has throughout this conflict demonstrated empathy for the civilians in this war, particularly those in Kyiv who are under daily barrages by these Russian missiles and drones and where these patriot interceptors in particular are so, so critical and so needed by the Ukrainian people.

[12:35:25]

And so for them to pause the delivery of a package of patriot interceptor missiles, which again are crucial air defense systems that weren't even allocated by this administration --

BASH: Right.

BERTRAND: -- they were actually allocated by the previous administration and that were not even actually currently in U.S. stockpiles. They were actually taken from defense contractors that were building them, is really kind of baffling, I think, to a lot of people that we've spoken to.

And I think it speaks more broadly to this Pentagon and this administration's desire to say, look, we are now prioritizing the American warfighter. We are now, you know, if you're Elbridge Colby, who's the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, we are now prioritizing the China --

BASH: He's trying to send a message.

BERTRAND: -- theater. Right, exactly.

BASH: Yes.

BERTRAND: So whether or not the White House is completely happy with this, given that it seems to be a little bit undercutting what President Trump said is another question, because we have seen this Pentagon do things before that the White House has not been fully briefed on.

BASH: Jill, we are getting some information coming from the Kremlin. Here is their readout of this phone call between Presidents Trump and Putin, that they talked about Ukraine and Iran. The Kremlin said it was a businesslike call, but that Putin said Russia will not back down from war goals in Ukraine.

JILL DOUGHERTY, FORMER CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF: Well, what's new? I mean, that is what Putin says. That's what Putin has been saying for three years. So it looks as if nothing in this conversation, and again, we have to find out the details, but nothing in this conversation convinced him to stop fighting, you know, go to a ceasefire.

I know he does, and I believe in this conversation he also said, no, but we are willing to get into negotiations. But that, again, is exactly almost verbatim what he said in previous talks. So I think, you know, what's really important about this -- and I'm not clear who asked whom to talk, you know, who initiated the call.

That would be important. Perhaps the others on the panel know. But I think this is a really crucial moment, because Russia is pulling out the stops. This is their summer offensive, or at least the beginning of the summer offensive.

They have people masked on the border, ready to go into Ukraine if they haven't gone in already, an estimated 100,000 troops. They -- according to CNN, they are going to bring in three times the number of North Korean troops to go into Ukraine and fight.

This is a very big moment. And so I think, you know, there's been some vacillation from President Trump. I will -- maybe I will give the patriots -- no, maybe now, you know, we won't. And these are really important weapons.

Putin can bleed the Ukrainians dry by simply these massive attacks where the Ukrainians have to burn up all of their defensive weapons. And that may be the purpose here. So I don't see any progress. In fact, I think we're regressing here.

BASH: Jill, real quick, you heard Kristen talk about -- and we heard the President, President Trump, talk about the fact that he's been surprised at how difficult Vladimir Putin is to work with. You have covered Vladimir Putin since the beginning of his time in government. Are you surprised?

DOUGHERTY: No, not at all. I mean, Putin has been in power for a quarter century, and before that he was in the KGB. So he knows how to manipulate. And in this situation, he has set out something that he wants and he's going to find a way to do it, either by, you know, force or devious methods or negotiations and pressure and exploiting situations.

So no, I'm not surprised at all. This is his modus operandi.

BASH: All right, Jill, thank you so much for your insights. It's always great to have them. Natasha and Kristen, as well.

Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:43:49]

BASH: Tomorrow, when fireworks light up the skies, the country will celebrate 249 years since 56 men made history by signing the Declaration of Independence, famously writing, quote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Now, the United States faces vastly different challenges than being led by a monarch across the ocean. According to a recent poll, 76 percent of U.S. adults and a majority of Democrats, Republicans and Independents believe there is a serious threat to American democracy.

Joining me now to talk about all this is historian Jon Meacham, who is the author of a new introduction to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Thank you so much for being here. It's always good to see you.

I want to start talking about that poll about democracy. As a historian, you have looked at this from a very long lens, as long as this country has gone. What does that tell you, looking in that lens, about how concerned you are about the future of U.S. democracy?

[12:45:09]

JON MEACHAM, AUTHOR: Well, one way to think about this is what have other moments felt like? Other moments of crisis, has there been this kind of deficit of trust in democracy itself? And this is unusual. And that's against my business model, right? Historians are supposed to say that, you know, this is part of a great pattern.

BASH: This has happened before. Yes.

MEACHAM: Right. But, you know, and as Mark Twain once is reputed to have said, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Unquestionably, we have faced extraordinary hours of tension and crisis. We had a civil war.

We came to the verge of civil war in many ways as early as 1832. We had people in New England wanting to break away from the slaveholding south and as early as the early 19th century. So we have, in fact, faced enormous crisis, what Lincoln called a fiery trial before.

What is different is that so many people have chosen to follow a movement and a leader in the incumbent president who have demonstrated that they are willing to put their own interests ahead of the principles of the Declaration and the workings of the Constitution. They haven't quite pulled it off yet, but just because the aftermath of the 2020 election did not work, as President Trump attempted to hold onto power, doesn't mean that the instinct has gone away. And so one of the key things about a day like the Fourth, like the book you kindly mentioned, is let's remind ourselves why we're doing this. We get obsessed with the how, right, and the what. That's what you and I do for a living. It's the why. It's the why.

BASH: Well, on that, you write in that new introduction to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution the following, quote, "The making of the Constitution is an instance of a large truth. The end of politics and a democracy is to find a workable consensus while preserving a due measure of liberty. Little can be more complicated. Little can be more important."

And just today, Jon, we're seeing examples of lawmakers not working across the aisle to find consensus. President's agenda bill is, you know, front and center in the news. What should today's legislators, Democrats and Republicans, learn from that quote that I just read?

MEACHAM: What do they want the future to think of them? And I think that that's -- I call it sometimes the portrait test, which politicians actually kind of listen to because they can't imagine a world where we're not looking at their portrait at some point.

What do you want to be judged on? Are you just in this to avoid a primary challenge? And I'm not being dismissive of that. I've never been on a ballot. I understand. Lincoln said all men act on incentive. We live in a fallen world. You know, there was no mythic moment, including Philadelphia in 1776 and in 1787.

Those were ferocious political, economic, cultural, racial battles over how to organize power, who was going to have power. And we excluded a lot of people for a long time. So the American experiment is not an uncomplicated story of this wonderful march of liberty.

But we have stumbled toward greater liberty, and we've stumbled toward greater liberty because people from Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan have been president at hours where you had to make a decision. Were we going to tend toward autocracy, toward the power of a single interest, a single man, a single party?

Or were we going to acknowledge the complexity of the world, understand that the Constitution, however flawed it may be, has in fact now for a quarter of a millennium kept us going toward that more perfect union? Is that the story in which you want to be a character that the country endures? Or do you want to be a character in a story about the breaking of that compact? And so what I would say to the president is, how do you want to be seen?

[12:50:00]

BASH: Yes. Very, very, very well put, as usual. That's why you're Jon Meacham. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

MEACHAM: Thank you.

BASH: And as we are speaking about the Fourth of July, please join me tomorrow night right here on CNN. I'll be with Boris Sanchez, and we are going to have a really, really fun evening with lots of fireworks, lots of musical guests. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Millions of Americans rely on SNAP benefits. It was once known as food stamps. They rely on them to eat and put food on their table. The SNAP program is one of the government programs that will be impacted by President Trump's agenda bill. The Congressional Budget Office estimates nearly $300 billion will be cut from the program in the next 10 years.

CNN's Tom Foreman is here to walk us through, first of all, just the program itself. Who receives them? How does it work?

[12:55:05]

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Big numbers here. About 42 million people receive these benefits, and about 23 million households, roughly. Who's eligible for this? Well, forget this below poverty line. This is always confusing to people. Look at this one over here.

BASH: OK.

FOREMAN: People who are making about $33,000, close to $34,000 a year, so not a whole lot of money. That's for a family of three out there. Also people with disabilities, people with small children at home who don't have much money, people who are quite old out there.

These are the people who are involved in this, and those are the people who are potentially targeted in this. And they don't really get much out of this. It varies a little bit state to state, but look at the average per person. This is per month, so that's about $6 a day. So that's not a lot of food that you're going to get for $6 a day, but nonetheless, that's the benefit.

What are the changes in all this? Because this is really the big part that matters here. They would expand the work requirements for people receiving this from 55 years old now up to 64 years old for individuals. So if you're 60 years old, you're going to have to find a job. You're going to have to find something to do to help get these. Parents of children 14 years and older.

So those kids are going to maybe be coming home to houses where mom or dad are off at work. They not have to. Veterans, former foster children, and people experiencing homelessness. Beyond that, the other big change in here is that this will put pressure on the states to pay more for this. Many of the critics of this have said the states are not going to be able to afford it, which could reduce the benefits for them (ph).

BASH: So talk about that. Talk about the states.

FOREMAN: Which states are involved here? Yes.

BASH: Yes.

FOREMAN: A lot of states. You know, it's not the same in every state who relies on it, but a lot of these are states where the Republicans and Donald Trump were supported by these voters. Look at this. Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, to name just some of the biggest recipients of this.

So there are going to be millions of people out there who voted for the Republicans, who voted for Donald Trump, who are going to feel the pressure of this program. Although I will note, because you talk about politics here all the time, many of these provisions don't really kick in until after the midterm election.

So this is absolutely going to have people all over this country saying, hey, where's my food? Where is my way to deal with this? But they're not going to face that until they voted the next time.

BASH: Yes, which was written in a very --

FOREMAN: Yes.

BASH: -- intentional way politically.

FOREMAN: Yes, it is. And it's going to -- and it's -- some of these people, in an effort to do all of this, some of these people are undoubtedly going to feel pushed off a cliff, even as Republicans are saying, well, no, it's going to push them into the workplace. They're going to become more productive.

We are hearing so much about these SNAP benefits and walking us through explaining what they are and who receives them and what the cuts will be is so critical. Thank you so much for doing this, Tom.

FOREMAN: Yes.

BASH: Appreciate it.

And thank you for joining Inside Politics. Before we go, we want our Inside Politics panel to answer your questions. What questions do you have? Well, scan the QR code. You see it there at the bottom of your screen. Submit questions to us.

You may see them right here on this show very soon. You can find the link on my social media pages as well.

CNN News Central starts after the break.