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Ceasefire Shatters as Israel Resumes Deadly Strikes on Gaza; Trump and Putin to Speak This Morning on Potential Ukraine Ceasefire; Trump Says He'll Release Thousands of Unredacted JFK Files. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired March 18, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to speak on the phone. The two leaders will talk about ending the war. Notably missing from that conversation, Ukraine.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Ceasefire shattered, Israel pounding Gaza with a wave of deadly strikes. We have new CNN reporting live from Tel Aviv.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in The Situation Room.

And we begin with the breaking news. After weeks of relative calm, the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has collapsed.

The blistering sound of bombs rang across Gaza overnight as Israel resumed deadly airstrikes on the enclave. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, more than 400 people have been killed and hundreds more wounded. An Israeli official says the attack targeted mid-level Hamas commanders, but a doctor in Gaza tells CNN that the majority of victims were civilians.

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DR. RAZAN AL-NAINHAS, VOLUNTEERING WITH HUMANITY AUXILIUM IN GAZA: I've lost count of how many patients, you know, I've pronounced dead myself. But it was at least maybe 15 or 20 with just myself.

The majority are women and children. The majority are women and children. I mean, I just babies, like one to three year olds just lined up, four, five to a structure. And many, you know, young women, entire families wiped out. But the majority of cases that we've seen tonight are children.

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BLITZER: All right. Let's go live down to CNN correspondent Jeremy Diamond. He's joining us from Tel Aviv. Jeremy why did Israel decide to carry out these strikes now? JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, Israeli officials have offered different explanations for why. The Prime Minister's Office said that Hamas had repeatedly refused to release additional hostages based on the latest terms presented by the U.S. special envoy, Steve Witkoff. Another Israeli official described Israel's attacks to me as, quote, preemptive strikes following preparations by Hamas for attacks against Israel, although they did not provide any evidence or any details to back up that claim.

Hamas, for its part, rejects this notion that it was preparing any attacks on Israel and it says that it was willing to continue engaging in negotiations to reach phase two of the ceasefire agreement that both Israel and Hamas had agreed to, which would ultimately lead to an end of the war and the release of all the hostages.

But what has become very clear, Wolf, in recent weeks was that Israel was never really interested in engaging in those longer term negotiations to end the war, at least not right now. Instead, what Israel, with the support of the Trump administration, has been seeking is the release of a limited number of additional hostages in exchange for an extension of the ceasefire as it stands, without having to engage in the authority negotiations about ending the war.

What is clear, though, is the impact that all of this is having in Gaza, where more than 400 people have been killed, more than 500 have been wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. That makes for the deadliest single day in Gaza since November of 2023, more than 15 months ago. And as we have seen far too many times in Gaza, Wolf, many of the victims once again are children.

And now, Wolf, questions about what happens next as the Israeli military threatens to launch a, quote, massive offensive, widening this beyond airstrikes, potentially with ground troops going into Gaza once again as well. Wolf?

BLITZER: And there are reports that Israel has launched some airstrikes at various targets in Syria as well.

All right, Jeremy Diamond reporting for us from Tel Aviv, thanks very much. Pam?

BROWN: And now the White House is reacting to the strikes in Gaza. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says that Israel notified the Trump administration ahead of time.

CNN White House Reporter Alayna Treene is live at the White House. So, what did the administration say, Alayna?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That's right. Well, you're right, Pamela. Karoline Leavitt has said essentially that they were consulted by the Israelis before they moved forward with those strikes, essentially, as Jeremy laid out, ending this ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

[10:05:09]

Leavitt also said, quote, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America will see prize.

Now, look, this comes after we know that the White House has been growing, you know -- their patience has been growing, I should say, very thin in recent days as how Hamas has responded to them asking for this new proposal in a ceasefire deal, for an extension of a ceasefire deal, as Jeremy laid out. We know that Steve Witkoff, who recently traveled to Gaza to have negotiations on the ground with Hamas, came back very frustrated with how they were responding, arguing that they're making impractical demands. So, some of this is not entirely surprising, as already we knew those negotiations were not going well.

BROWN: Also at the White House today, President Trump is holding a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They're focusing on a ceasefire deal for Ukraine. Putin has called, as we know, for these conditions on any deal. Are we expecting any real significant progress from this call?

TREENE: It's hard to say as of now, Pamela. My conversations with White House officials on this, they argue that they're cautiously optimistic. We heard the White House press secretary say yesterday that they feel like they're on the ten-yard line of peace, but they are very reticent to offer any details or any expectations of this call.

However, also in this conversation, I've learned what one of the key priorities are, which is essentially what concessions will Russia agree to? Already, we know that Ukraine has accepted the U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire. They want to see some commitments from Russia as well on how they are going to get there. One of those concessions includes, I'm told what territory, occupied territory in Russia that they're willing to give up some of the territory that they've gained over the last three years. All of that still a big question.

We're told the call is either about to start is already underway. So, hopefully, we can bring you some more details soon. Pamela?

BROWN: All right. Alayna Treene at the White House, thank you. Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Pamela. Leading up to today's call, Vladimir Putin says he agrees with the ceasefire with Ukraine but wants conditions added before he will sign on.

Let's go live right now to CNN Senior International Correspondent Fred Pleitgen. He's joining us live from Moscow. Fred, how is the Kremlin framing this morning's phone call between these two leaders?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think the Kremlin, Wolf, is a little bit putting the brakes on all of this. In fact, the spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, he said earlier today that this call is just one step in many in a move towards what the Russians believe will be a larger peace treaty that will then last longer than just a ceasefire that, of course, could be in place almost immediately.

Now, at the heart of all of this, Wolf, the Russians essentially want almost the opposite of what the Trump administration wants, which is that immediate ceasefire. The Ukrainians, of course, have essentially signed on to a 30-day ceasefire without any preconditions, whereas the Russians are saying there are still conditions that they want to see met, like, for instance, where the ceasefire demarcation line is going to be, who's going to enforce the ceasefire, who's going to monitor the ceasefire.

Another thing, interesting thing about the Russians as well, is that they say they want those conditions to be met before the weapons are silenced. So, that certainly is something where there does seem to be pretty big differences between what the Ukrainians are saying and what the Russians are saying.

At the same time, the Russians do seem to want all of this, especially this call, to be about more than just a ceasefire. They say this is also about possibly restoring U.S.-Russia relations. Wolf?

BLITZER: All right. Fred Pleitgen reporting for us from Moscow, thank you very, very much. Pamela?

BROWN: Very busy news morning, Wolf. This morning we're also watching for something else. At any minute, we could see the release of tens of thousands of documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Here's President Trump teasing the longtime campaign promise last night.

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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: We have a tremendous amount of paper. You've got a lot of reading. I don't believe we're going to redact anything.

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BROWN: And joining us now to break this all down is CNN Correspondent Tom Foreman. So, Tom, the big question is, what exactly could we see in these documents?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What people hope to see in these documents is what has fascinated Americans for more than 60 years, and recent polls have confirmed, most people do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

So, in these last documents, which represent less than 1 percent of all the documents collected by the government over the years, they hope to get any evidence that supports that claim. Are they likely to get it? No, they're not. Mainly, what you see here is minutiae that the FBI and the CIA did not want released for operational purposes, even after all these years.

However, the really intriguing part about this is once this decision was made, there were a couple thousand documents that were found in FBI offices that were basically paper documents. As they became digitized, the computers searched and said, well, these have something to do with this case.

[10:10:03] But, again, if you're expecting to find something extraordinary here, probably not, but every detail is important to the people who have been looking into this all these many years.

And important to note, this has been an ongoing process. This isn't just a recent thing. Donald Trump in his first term said he'd release it all. He released some of it. Joe Biden actually released much more. But now Donald Trump is the one who gets to take it across the finish line.

BROWN: So, the part before that was redacted, now we will?

FOREMAN: Well, maybe. I mean, think about -- if you listen specifically to what the president said, he said, I hope it's redacted. I'm going to bet there's still some redactions in this because they still want to protect their methods, some of their sources, some of their relationships, even after all these years.

BLITZER: Didn't Trump say that these were going to be unredacted documents?

FOREMAN: He did, but he said it -- listen carefully to what he says. He said, I told him to redact it. I hope it's redacted. I think it'll be redacted, that kind of thing. It wasn't a definitive no, absolutely this way.

BROWN: Something has changed in his tune.

FOREMAN: Well, he's kind of walking along the edge there, so we'll see when we get the documents.

BROWN: Those documents though that the FBI found, will that be in this --

FOREMAN: It should be because he's saying it's going to be all of them. And, again, all indications are that it's kind of tangential information. It wasn't something that automatically leaped out as being part of the process. What it's not going to be is a that is the Russian government thanking the mob for taking part in a hit. That's not going to happen. Let me tell you that.

BROWN: All right. Tom Foreman, thank you so much. We'll watch and wait.

BLITZER: You're going to read all thousand, thousands of those --

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BLITZER: I'm really anxious to get your reporting on.

FOREMAN: I'll drop them on your desk.

BLITZER: Happening now, a homecoming, nine months in the making.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And undocking confirmed. Freedom is free of its moorings.

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BLITZER: All right. That's the moment the SpaceX capsule carrying NASA's Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore left the International Space Station en route back here to Earth.

Let's go live right now to CNN's Ed Lavandera. He's joining us from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas for more.

Ed, first of all, tell us more about the challenges of getting these two astronauts back home safely.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now, those astronauts are orbiting planet Earth, preparing in the hours ahead later this afternoon around 5:00 Eastern time to begin the descent back into the planet and gravity. So, right now, that's where those astronauts are orbiting and beginning that process here. And very -- a lot of anxious people here on the ground in Houston as this crew, which was launched into space back in June, a crew -- a mission that was only supposed to last about ten days saw this has now lasted 286 days.

And later on this afternoon around 5:00 Eastern Time, when that capsule begins to descend through the Earth's atmosphere, it will be traveling at about 17,000 miles per hour. The heat shield there on that capsule will withstand heats of the temperatures of 35 degrees -- 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and then about 45 minutes later, they will splash down in the Gulf waters around Florida. The crew will be taken out of the capsule and then eventually brought here to the Johnson Space Center as they begin their re-acclimation here to Earth's gravity. Wolf?

BLITZER: And we'll watch this very, very closely. We wish, of course, a very, very safe landing and these two courageous astronauts are back home safe and sound.

Ed Lavandera, thank you very, very much. Pamela?

BROWN: Happy for their families as well.

Well, Numerous town halls are scheduled to take place across the country. And if recent town halls or any indication, tempers will be running high. Here's Republican Congressman Michael Baumgartner's town hall in Spokane, Washington, last night. Watch this.

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REP. MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER (R-WA): You have a perception that America is spiraling to some kind of a constitutional crisis. By and large, what people of -- America see, what people of Eastern Washington see is President Trump delivering on his promises. And so --

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BROWN: And Democrats are also feeling the heat from voters. Here's what one frustrated Medicaid recipient told Senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego at a town hall in Scottsdale.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're trying to shield ourselves before we're wounded, and we don't know how. Would you mind telling your colleagues in Washington that when they're burning down this house, there's people still inside. My kid is inside.

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BROWN: A lot of emotion and passions there. We're joined now by CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju.

You know, Manu, typically during recess, as members of Congress are in right now, they hold these town halls, but you don't typically see this kind of fiery reaction.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You really don't. In fact, this reminds me a lot about 2010 during the old Tea Party wave, and as the Obamacare was being pushed through Congress, we saw Democratic members at the time really getting a lot of backlash from voters.

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This time, you're seeing Republicans also in a lot of the cuts, spending cuts that have been happening, the Doge effort, and the like, a lot of anxiety among voters. Republican leaders have counseled their members not to have town halls, because they're concerned about these viral moments distracting from their message. They contend that some of this is manufactured, but it's clearly some real constituent concern as well.

There is also concern on the Democratic side of the aisle, as you saw there from those Democratic senators from Arizona, fueling some heat because members are not happy with their own party. We saw that from CNN polling this week about how they are held in such low regard among Democratic voters.

And, of course, this comes as it made this leadership battle that is facing Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, his decision to allow the government to be funded by this Republican spending bill, not blocked. This is the House Democrats as well. Earlier today when he was asked about whether he would step aside, he made clear that he was going to stay as Democratic leader, said he was the best person for that position.

What will be interesting today is Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader is having in his own press conference today. The last time he had a press conference on Friday, he was asked, does he have confidence in Chuck Schumer? He said, next question. What will he say today when he is asked about this very same question? We'll see what he has to say there because Democrats are trying to get on the same page after this really messy internal battle.

BROWN: They certainly are. And the two met, the two leaders met on Sunday after that press conference. So, we'll see if he changes his tune after meeting with Schumer.

Thank you so much, Manu Raju. Wolf?

BLITZER: And it's interesting that Manu still can join us here in The Situation Room because the House and Senate are in recess.

BROWN: Yes, we love having you here.

BLITZER: Otherwise, you'd be chasing those guys through the halls of Congress.

RAJU: It's very nice to sit down every once in a while, Wolf.

BLITZER: Good to have you in The Situation Room.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post is reporting this morning that the Trump administration's purge of DEI materials from the federal government now includes, get this, erasing a tribute to an American war hero. Ira Hayes was depicted in the iconic photo of the U.S. Marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima in World War II. He was also a Native American from Pima, the Pima Nation. But a page on the Defense Department's website honoring him has now been taken off.

CNN National Security Correspondent Natasha Bertrand is here with us in The Situation Room. This webpage wasn't the only one about Native Americans being deleted.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No, Wolf. Multiple articles and pictures of the Navajo code talkers in particular, have been removed from Defense Department websites. And it's all part of this broad effort to crack down on anything on the Department of Defense social media sites or websites that may be celebrating diversity in the military. And that includes taking down multiple articles and pictures of other minority groups as well as women and LGBTQ service members. And all of this is in service, they say, of complying with President Donald Trump's executive order to essentially purge anything DEI related from the entire federal government.

Now, the indigenous Americans kind of erasure on these websites is interesting because they do enlist in the U.S. military at a rate of about five times higher than the average American. And so it is very important to continue, of course, the outreach to them. And, in fact, President Donald Trump, he said in a proclamation in 2018, which has also since been removed, that these Native Americans and indigenous Americans are extremely key to the U.S. military's success.

So, in a statement about the removal of these images and these articles, the press secretary, John Oliep (ph), he said that, quote, as Secretary Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Efforts to divide the force to put one group ahead of another through DEI programs erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution. In rare cases, that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly.

Now, that appears to have happened in the case of the Enola Gay, which was an aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II. That image of that plane was actually removed, according to the A.P., because it had the word gay in it.

And so they're scrambling so much to erase so much of this content that in some cases they are making errors, something that the Defense Department said they will be fixing when it comes to that particular image as well.

BLITZER: It's really horrible what they're doing. Trump is responsible for this decision?

BERTRAND: Well, he did issue that executive order, ordering that DEI be essentially eliminated from the whole workforce. And Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, he is really taking that to heart. He is really pushing to purge anything related to any diversity, equity, inclusion programs across the whole U.S. military.

BLITZER: But doesn't he know that these were war heroes, that they're deleting references to war heroes?

BERTRAND: Well, their argument is that, and this was actually made just yesterday by the new Pentagon press secretary, that it is dividing the force by focusing on certain service members because of their diversity, that that is essentially making it so that the force is more divided.

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But, of course, critics would say that this is just erasing history.

BLITZER: Yes, it certainly is. And I speak as a former Pentagon correspondent myself, it's pretty obnoxious to see what they're doing right now.

Natasha Bertrand, thank you very, very much. Pamela?

BROWN: Well, still ahead, Wolf, living out of suitcases in an empty house. We'll speak to an Army veteran dealing with the fallout of government cuts firsthand.

And then later, we're going to speak to President Trump's former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on the broken ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

You're in The Situation Room, where the news comes first.

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BROWN: At any moment, we could see a massive document dump related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Joining us now to discuss his Presidential Historian Douglas Brinkley. Hi, Douglas. So, we saw nearly 3,000 documents, I believe, related to this assassination released during Trump's first term. What is the significance of this release?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, HISTORY PROFESSOR, RICE UNIVERSITY: It's Donald Trump trying to fulfill the promise that he made about it. But also the American people have been clamoring in general to say enough time's gone by, just release it all. I think when we were using words like these documents will, there can be no redactions or there are going to be redactions. And there is very well may have been sanitized over the years. Who knows?

But nevertheless, it's an impressive number of new documents and Kennedy scholars or people that are trying to solve what exactly happened are going to be looking for puzzle pieces. They'll find a few, but, you know, we're just going to have to read that many and it's going to take days.

BLITZER: You know, Doug, this is Wolf. Back in 2023, as you know, the Biden White House announced that after a National Archive review of classified documents related to the assassination, 99 percent of the files had already been made public. What more is there to learn from these remaining documents supposedly they will be unredacted?

BRINKLEY: I think, Wolf, you know, there's a -- some people think it's case closed about Lee Harvey Oswald, who was the shooter, but there are questions about how the agencies of government interacted. Oswald had been in Mexico City, meaning the CIA knew he was there and they knew he was a loony bird. Did the CIA report Oswald going back into the United States to the FBI?

So, suddenly, scholars will look, what was the link of CIA? Mexico City knew about this. Did the FBI know about Oswald or were those two, you know, FBI, CIA not communicating properly together? So, there are going to be all sorts of interagency looks, and then anything that is redacted, people will say that was the missing link.

I'm afraid there's no easy solve on the Kennedy assassination over the years, though. The fact that Oswald was the shooter hasn't been disproven to my mind. However, there's still a lot of a lot of mystery if there are other people in collaboration with them.

BLITZER: We'll see what we learn. All right, Douglas Brinkley, we'll stay in very close touch with you. Thank you very, very much.

And coming up, stuck in limbo, we'll speak to a U.S. Army veteran who was supposed to be moving to Japan for a new job, but is instead stuck stateside due to the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce.

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