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The Situation Room

Judge to Rule on Fate of Menendez Brothers; Americans' Opinions of Trump Administration?. Aired 11:30a-12:00p ET

Aired April 11, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:02]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: "It is based on false assumptions. It rests on no coherent argument in its favor."

I mean, this is a scathing indictment of the Trump tariffs. Why do you reject the administration's justifications of leveling the international playing field and bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.?

DAVID BROOKS, COLUMNIST, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Yes, I have to say, I mean, I'm -- there are all sorts of policies that I have watched and we have all watched in our careers as journalists.

Personally, I have never seen one as stupid as this one. It has no support among economists of left, right, or center, with almost -- with just very few exceptions. It's based on false premises that we should really worry about trade deficits. It's based on just fallacious reasoning in every respect, and that's sort of a consensus among experts.

You don't bring back trade -- you don't bring back jobs by crushing international exchange. When you look at the countries that have flourished in the world from human history, you go back to Venice in the Renaissance, you go back to Amsterdam in the 16th century, you go back to Britain in the 19th century, you go back to America in the 20th century, what have they all had in common?

They were crossroads nations. They were nations not only of trade and productivity, but exchange of ideas, exchange of people. And so they were places where the whole world wanted to send their best people and their best goods and their best ideas. And out of that dynamism, greatness resulted.

And the idea that we can become a great nation by building walls around ourselves, well, your model there is North Korea, and it's not a very persuasive model.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: No.

Tomorrow, David, the U.S. and Iran are due to hold direct face-to-face talks in Oman, very high-level talks. President Trump is looking for a deal on Iran's nuclear program. Tehran is hoping for normalized diplomatic relations and sanctions relief. Do you expect these talks in Oman as a starting point to lead to any significant breakthroughs for either country?

BROOKS: It's possible.

I have been unkind to the Trump administration so far in the segment, but I have to say, in the first Trump term, I thought the Trump policy toward the Middle East was superior to earlier presidents and maybe superior to the Biden administration.

And there's something about Donald Trump who understands the raw power calculus that prevails in regimes like Iran. And I'm hopeful. I don't know. I don't know. But I'm hopeful that maybe Iran has been so economically weakened, they're actually ready to do a deal. Maybe Iran is so weakened by Israel's decimation of Hezbollah that they will want to do a deal.

So I have some hope on that regard, but my hopes tend to be dashed.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: Well, let's see what happens. These talks tomorrow in Oman will be very, very important.

David Brooks, thanks for the good work. Thanks for joining us.

BROOKS: Thank you, Wolf.

BROWN: All right, just ahead in THE SITUATION ROOM, we're going to talk with a pair of podcast hosts for our weekly series "Your Voice" and get the inside scoop on how their listeners feel about what's happening right now in Washington and beyond with the tariffs, the economy, consumer sentiment, all of that.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:37:46]

BROWN: All right, now to our weekly series "Your Voice."

Every Friday, we check in with radio and podcast hosts across the country to hear what their listeners are thinking and saying about what's going on in America.

Today, we have got the co-host of "For You Pod," Cameron Kasky, in New York. He is also the co-founder of March For Our Lives. And from Kansas City, the host of the "Majority 54" podcast and former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander.

Thank you both for coming on. I'm looking forward to hearing what your listeners, what they're thinking.

So, Cameron, on the note, let's tick it off with you and start with these tariffs and Trump's escalating trade war with China.

Is this something your listeners are really following right now? CAMERON KASKY, CO-HOST, "FYPOD": I think one of the things we're

really focused on, on this show that we do is Gen Z and what exactly is going on with this generation.

And what I have noticed is, a lot of young people don't really know what tariffs are. And the Republican Party, specifically Trump, has been able to be so scattershot and confusing in the messaging that, even when we might catch up to what's going on, suddenly, the whole thing is flipped on its head.

So a lot of people kind of just expect that there's some plan and that, oh, things will figure themselves out. And the Republicans seize that opportunity to go in and dismantle something else.

BROWN: So, to follow up on that, that's really interesting. Like is there...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Oh, go ahead, Jason.

JASON KANDER (D), FORMER MISSOURI SECRETARY OF STATE: I was just going to say, it's interesting to hear Cameron say that, because I'm -- I think I have got like 20 years on Cameron. So my audience is much more millennial.

And so they're dealing with stuff like buying cars, buying houses, that sort of thing. So they have the -- I don't know, whatever the opposite of luxury is of having a better understanding of tariffs. And, therefore, they're reacting oftentimes to the volatility in, oh, we have put on this tariff. Oh, now we're suspending it for 90 days.

And so there's a lot of economic anxiety around the question of, can -- should I take my money out of whatever I'm invested in? Should I put it into this? Like, there's just a lot of fear out there that has as much to do with the volatility of not knowing what's going to happen as it does with what David in the last segment referred to, I think accurately, as the dumbest policy in a long, long time.

[11:40:01]

BROWN: The generational divide and how they're perceiving this is actually so interesting to me.

And, Cameron, you note that your podcast focuses on Gen Z'ers and also what drove so many of them to vote for Trump in 2024. Are you seeing any shift away from Trump following his controversial policies during his first months in office, any buyer's remorse there?

KASKY: It's very complicated, because a lot of people in my generation are seeing this dumpster fire and saying, wait a second, we didn't know this was going to happen.

But it wasn't exactly policy that Trump won Gen Z with. It was culture. People in my generation are not focused on the nitty-gritty. They're not thinking about the economy, health care, and how those things exactly work. Trump is just speaking in a language that resonates and is pompous and aggressive enough that people respond to it.

I always say the right has been able to cultivate fear more effectively than the Democrats have been able to inspire hope.

So, what happens is, young men, especially young white men, say, the Democrats are leaving us out, and MAGA is able to manipulate us into thinking that steps forward towards equity for women and minorities are being taken at our expense, right? We are losing something here. And we want to feel like the victim.

So while the Democratic Party is focused on targeting these moderate voters who will mysteriously go from being a Trump voter to voting for Kamala Harris because maybe they got, like, a little bit more moderate on some talking points were missing reaching out to these young white men, who should be voting for Democrats if we care about the economy, should be voting for Democrats because we care about bodily autonomy for women and things like that.

But, ultimately, you need to bargain with people to get them to vote for you. You can't just feel entitled to those votes.

BROWN: Just to follow up on that, are any of them sort of shifting their view at all, or are they still totally on board with Trump?

KASKY: I think -- yes, I think that even when they're really upset about things like tariffs or the DOGE getting in the way of veterans and cancer research, they are shifting their view, but it's more like they're kind of looking away, and they're letting it exist in the peripheral.

And they're saying, you know what, if I tap out and if I just don't really focus on this, I'm sure it'll be fine.

But, unfortunately, what we have learned recently is that our system in these United States isn't as durable as I think some of us thought it would be.

BROWN: It's interesting you say they're looking away. They're not looking toward Democrats.

Jason, do you -- do your listeners think Democrats are doing enough to reflect their concerns?

KANDER: No.

And so my show, "Majority 54," is about bridging political divides, but it is a show for Democrats who want to bridge political divides in their life, talk to their conservative father or uncle or cousin, maintain a relationship, but also maybe bring them around to their side.

And what I sense from our listeners is an overall sentiment that I would describe in all caps as "Do something." And the thing is, is that I think, intellectually, a lot of folks understand that Democrats don't control the White House, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court.

But yet they see all of these bad things happening unabated. And so it's almost like they're screaming, sometimes literally, sometimes on social media, sometimes in their house, maybe at the television right now, they're screaming, "Do something."

And in the absence of the Democrats ability, those who are in power anyway, to really do much to stop it. They will settle for or seek out people who can sort of channel and reflect back to them that sense of desperation, that sense of anxiety.

And that's why you saw Senator Booker's speech a week or so ago just receive the reaction that it did, because if they can't see people exercising power they don't have, they want to at least see that Democrats and power are as upset and flabbergasted and concerned as they are.

BROWN: They want to feel seen, they want to feel heard, is what I'm hearing from you.

KANDER: Absolutely.

BROWN: And that's...

KANDER: Yes, absolutely.

BROWN: And Senator Booker's speech helped do that.

And I'm wondering, just in terms of the generational divide, to go back to you, Jason, and then to you, Cameron, do you get the sense to your -- from your listeners that they feel like the sacred truths that they always held about the way this country works and the -- sort of the underpinnings of it, that maybe that's not the case?

And I ask that because we just interviewed David Brooks, and he sort of indicated that.

KANDER: Yes, absolutely.

A lot of the people that I talk to -- I'm about to turn 44. And I served in the Army. I -- and so, like a lot of millennials, I -- there's experiences in my life that vested me in the American experience, whether it was through my service or just growing up and learning a certain set of ideas about what your country is, and then attaching that set of ideas to who you are as a person.

[11:45:08]

So, then when you see your country acting in ways that feel entirely inconsistent with what you understood your country to be, then it also feels inconsistent with who you understand yourself to be. And that is creating, I think, a bit -- particularly for folks around mid-30s and up, a bit of a personal identity crisis that causes them to constantly ask, well, if this is who this country is now, then what does that say about me?

BROWN: Like an existential crisis, essentially.

KANDER: Very much so, yes.

BROWN: I bet it's different for your listeners, the Gen Z listeners, Cameron, just given how you grew up in this country, with school shootings and COVID and all of that. I wonder.

KASKY: Yes, I was going to say, it was tough for us to really create an understanding of the American dream because none of us are going to buy houses or be able to afford stuff.

We grew up watching little kids getting shot in schools. Then we were locked in our houses. Some people in Gen Z were saying, how could the government be mismanaging this so criminally? Some of them were saying, why can't I be at a party right now? I'm going to go hang out with my friends in big groups and maybe give our grandmas COVID.

There's something so nihilistic in Gen Z right now, because we haven't been given a very clear direction to strive towards. We're not quite sure what exactly we're fighting for at this point. I mean, when I was 15 years old, I saw a guy who had just made sexually aggressive comments about how he approaches women become the president of the United States.

And I was like, OK, I didn't think that that could happen in this country. And yet here it is. It's our reality. And this next generation is growing up with an even more aggressive, unhinged, and fascist version of that.

So, as for what the next generations are going to be fighting for, it's very confusing, because we don't really have a very strong basis as to what this American experiment looks like if and when it's ever actually working.

BROWN: Well, Cameron Kasky, Jason Kander, thank you for coming on to share your perspectives.

More when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:52:11]

BROWN: Happening today, a crucial hearing could soon decide the fate of Lyle and Erik Menendez.

A Los Angeles judge will rule on withdrawing or advancing their bid for a new sentence. L.A. County's district attorney is opposing it. But the brothers' aunt says they have served enough time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TERESITA BARALT, AUNT OF MENENDEZ BROTHERS: For everybody, this is a story. For me, it's very personal. Those kids, they are like the boys that I didn't have. So it's time; 35 years is a long time. It's a whole branch of my family erased, the ones that are gone and the ones that are still paying for it, which were kids.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: CNN's Jean Casarez is following the story for us.

Jean, the brothers are fighting for their release after, what, 35 years in prison for the murders of their parents. What are we expecting in today's hearing?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, today is really a procedural hearing, very important, though. The actual resentencing hearing would be next week.

But this is critical today, because what the district attorney under Nathan Hochman now is asking the court to do is actually withdraw the request from George Gascon, the previous district attorney, to allow the resentencing and asking for them to be released out of prison.

Nathan Hochman said from the beginning, after he was elected, that they were going to spend the hours to look at the thousands of pages of the trial testimony, looking at the witness, looking at the videotape of the trials. And they came out saying that they do not believe resentencing is appropriate because primarily that they have not accepted the responsibility for what they did.

And what Nathan Hochman is going to argue, in asking for his petition to be considered now in regard to the resentencing, is that, at the time of the trial and even to current day, they are asking the court, saying that they killed their parents in self-defense. Self-defense is the fear of imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.

The parents were on their sofa watching television, possibly eating ice cream at that point. But what Nathan Hochman says -- and this is where interviews can really hurt someone -- they quote a Netflix interview that the Menendez brothers did last year. And this isn't the "Monsters" docudrama. This is when they actually did the interview.

And they said that they felt that night that they had to kill their parents first because they were going to kill them. And there was no evidence in the trial record that there were any guns involved with the parents, that they were going to shoot them.

Now, the defense on the opposite side saying that they have rehabilitated themselves in prison. It is quite amazing the number of programs that they have developed and they have helped other inmates with.

[11:55:02]

And the defense focuses on, this is when they're life without the possibility of parole. They didn't think they were getting out. And they still did all of this. And, also, in the resentencing statute in California, there is a subsection that allows for sexual abuse to be taken into the discussion here and the determination if they should be released. But today will be the focus. Will George Gascon's motion stay before

the court, or will Nathan Hochman, as the current DA, be the one that can lead this proceeding?

BLITZER: We will watch it together with you.

Jean Casarez, thank you very, very much for that update.

And, to our viewers, Pamela, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

BROWN: Yes, it was great to have everyone along with us this morning, this Friday.You can keep up with us on social media @WolfBlitzer and @PamelaBrownCNN.

We will see you back here Monday and every weekday morning for our expanded two-hour SITUATION ROOM at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

BLITZER: And before we go, I want to wish all of our Jewish viewers a very happy Passover. Tomorrow night begins with the traditional Passover seder.

"INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" is coming up next right after a short break.