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The Situation Room

Americans' Views of Trump Administration?; Into the Amazon; Video of Police Stop of Kilmar Abrego Garcia Released. Aired 11:30a- 12p ET

Aired May 02, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We can tell that -- tell you that Tesla, of course, in recent days has been reported to really be in some financial straits compared to its success in recent years.

[11:30:05]

Tesla's stock has really kind of plummeted. So, you can't say that that company is necessarily benefited from his time at DOGE, but rather possibly been hurt by his time at DOGE, guys.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: All right, thanks so much, Brian.

And just ahead, we're getting new video from a traffic stop involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an incident the Trump administration has used to paint him as a criminal.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Just into CNN, Tennessee officials have released video showing a 2022 traffic stop involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He's a Maryland man who's in the U.S. illegally who the Trump administration says it mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, a country he was barred by a judge from being sent back to out of fear of persecution.

[11:35:04]

Let's go live now to see CNN crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz.

What does this video show, Katelyn?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Pamela, this is a video that the Department of Homeland Security wants out there very likely because they are trying to make the point that there are reasons why this man, Abrego Garcia, should not be in the United States.

There's a lot of legal battles, political battles over this. In this video, which we hadn't seen the video before -- we knew that this traffic stop had existed, but this is the Tennessee Highway Patrol releasing bodycam footage of this traffic stop in 2022 where he was being pulled over for speeding on the interstate.

Let's watch a little bit of that clip. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many rows have you got in here? Four?

KILMAR ABREGO GARCIA, IMPRISONED IN EL SALVADOR: Where?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four seats? Four rows of seats?

ABREGO GARCIA: Yes, three seats. Yes, we -- we did, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you all put an extra one in?

ABREGO GARCIA: Huh?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you all put another one in?

ABREGO GARCIA: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It come like this?

ABREGO GARCIA: The truck?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have never seen one with that many seats in it.

ABREGO GARCIA: What do you say? It's my boss.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I said I have never seen one with that many seats in it.

ABREGO GARCIA: Oh, really?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. That's why I was asking if you could put an extra one in.

ABREGO GARCIA: No, it's the same, like this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Nothing illegal?

ABREGO GARCIA: Nothing, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No drugs or anything?

ABREGO GARCIA: No, no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Herbs?

ABREGO GARCIA: No, nothing, nothing illegal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. If I run my dog, he's -- will he tell me anything?

ABREGO GARCIA: Yes, it's fine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

POLANTZ: So, at this time, this is a couple years after he had already been through some immigration proceedings. He was still in the U.S.. And he was released then with a warning for driving with an expired license, has not been charged or convicted of any crime.

But the Department of Homeland Security, the Trump administration, they want to try and say two things. One, they say that this looks like a suspected human trafficking incident and that also they keep trying to argue they believe he could be part of this gang, MS-13.

Now, we're getting this information at the same time that there is an ongoing battle about Abrego Garcia in court. And it is about whether he should be in the U.S. or can be kept in El Salvador.

There's a judge overseeing it. His lawyers keep saying there is no evidence that he's part of MS-13. And the judge is trying to get more answers from the federal government. They're just not giving over information like this at this point.

BROWN: Right?

And it's worth noting the administration is very focused on trying to paint him as a criminal gang member and so forth. But Judge Wilkinson, that conservative judge, the appellate court judge, right, I mean, he said in his ruling that, whether he's a gang member or not, a criminal or not, even if you're in the U.S. illegally, you get due process.

POLANTZ: Right. It's about whether he went through the process before he was put on the plane to El Salvador.

And, as far as we know, as far as the courts have revealed, that he wasn't given that. He wasn't given a hearing to change his immigration status. And then his attorneys are also saying that he's been denied the most basic protections of due process.

BROWN: All right, Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much.

Well, since the launch of its first satellite in 2019, Elon Musk's Starlink has been providing Internet access to some of the most remote and otherwise unreachable places on earth.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh and his team journeyed deep into the Amazon rain forest and documented once-isolated indigenous communities who are now getting Internet access. It's all part of his upcoming documentary, "The Wired Rainforest," premiering Sunday on "THE WHOLE STORY."

Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The thing that has changed our world forever is now seeping across this vast, vital expanse that has kept us all alive for as long.

The Internet is coming to here, the Amazon, the forest that gives the world breath. And to the indigenous communities that have for centuries called this splendid isolation their only home. And the slow windup river provides a rare, vanishing glimpse of a world before the Internet of a people who have never been online.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Here now is CNN chief international security correspondent Nick Paton Walsh.

Take us back to these communities, Nick. How was their way of life affected with these connections?

[11:40:00]

WALSH: Yes, I mean, it's amazing.

You and I have been used to 20, 30 years of the Internet slowly creeping into our lives, and now this. You probably thinking about when you're next going to look at it, dominating pretty much every minute that we're awake.

BROWN: That reality.

WALSH: Yes.

There, you can feel that isolation, that silence, that calm when you arrive, and you can see the immediate effect of this extraordinary technology, a dish this size on a roof bringing every piece of information earth to people who, frankly, may not even know that they needed it.

And after a week, one village we saw, freshly installed dishes, people crowded around one device looking at this extraordinary Chinese version of TikTok, built for Brazil, it seems, called Kwai, and the attention they had around that.

But there's also two interesting lessons to take away, really. This device brought some benefits, health care improved, certainly. Some bad things. The loggers, the miners, the poachers used it to evade the authorities. They kind of plunder the rain forest there.

But I think it brought home to myself and the team we were with just how all-consuming a smartphone is, when you see that stark change. We have grown up with the fax machine, the landline, the dial-up Internet, the broadband, and now A.I., ChatGPT, how every moment you're alive is logged on these devices.

They haven't. And you can see that change very clearly there. And the thing that really stood out to me too was just how fast they learned that they needed to set rules. We don't even have any, right? I mean, who tells you to switch your phone off at night? Maybe your partner does. I don't know mine does, certainly.

But, there, the people in charge of the dishes knew that it had to be off at a certain time to protect them, to protect their way of life, to protect their physiques of hunching over a device, but also to protect their kids.

They were acutely aware of the need for rules around all that. And that's what was startling, because it's reminding me, frankly, how little we think that's important in our worlds.

BROWN: That is fascinating. And perhaps we could learn in our world the benefit of maybe some more boundaries and rules around the use.

Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much.

An all-new episode of "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER" airs Sunday night at 8:00 Eastern and Pacific only on CNN.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:46:52]

BROWN: And turning now to our weekly series "Your Voice."

Every Friday, we check in with talk radio hosts and podcast hosts across the country to hear what their listeners are thinking and saying about what's happening here in Washington. Today, we have got conservative hosts Martha Zoller in Atlanta and liberal talk show host Dylan Douglas in Los Angeles.

Thank you both for being here with us.

Martha, let's kick it off with you and this new jobs report. Job gains are up. It's higher than expected. Tell us about your listeners. Is this something they're paying particularly close attention to?

MARTHA ZOLLER, HOST, "THE MARTHA ZOLLER SHOW": Well, of course, the economy is the number one issue for everyone. People are really happy about gas prices going down. And we have seen this low as $2.40 a gallon around here in North Metro Atlanta, North Georgia.

So, yes, they looked at the jobs report and they're -- but they're happy that they're paying less at the pump.

BROWN: Dylan, what are your listeners saying? Tell us who they are and what are they feeling?

DYLAN DOUGLAS, HOST, "YOUNG AMERICAN WITH DYLAN DOUGLAS": Yes, sure.

BROWN: Are they as excited about what's happening at the pump? Are they feeling more the impacts of the tariffs on their wallets yet?

DOUGLAS: Pumps down. Jobs report this week, we were just reporting, was better than expected. This is, though, the quiet before the storm. I think that's just the economic truth.

And I think very much the country feels that. Consumer sentiment in the economy is the lowest in 30 years. Trump's approval rating, he was elected probably on the economy most of all, is the lowest of any president in recent modern history.

And we're seeing right now, I mean, there were so many buy orders in the immediate aftermath of the tariffs. So we're getting the last buy orders. I'm in California right now, Los Angeles. The port here is the biggest port in the Western Hemisphere. They're predicting just next week a 35 percent decrease in imports.

I mean, that's going to have a real effect not just on consumers nationwide buying goods from that port, but in L.A., the economy itself, where so many members are a part of that, that import economy.

BROWN: Martha, are your listeners...

(CROSSTALK)

ZOLLER: Well, I got to tell you, though...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Go ahead.

ZOLLER: Yes, I'll tell you, though, as far as how the people are reacting to it -- and I think it's great to know those numbers and that kind of thing.

BROWN: Yes.

ZOLLER: But I think it's folks like us follow those numbers all the time, and maybe we think about them and talk about them at the dinner table.

But what I'm hearing from folks here, I hear the word grace a lot. They want to give some grace, because they voted for President Trump. They're still happy that they voted for President Trump. I think the polling is showing that too. Even though the approval rates down, even at CNN, they said people are -- still voted the same way, even knowing what they know now.

And so what we're seeing, and we have a very large Latino community that we're in about the second generation of that, and our community has worked with ICE for 25 years. So we are not seeing big differences in those areas.

That said, there was a protest right outside of our office yesterday that was a more liberal-leaning protest. And so this is a community where we're plus-26 Republican in this community, but we were able to get a liberal-leaning protest yesterday relating to DOGE and things like that.

So what I'm hearing from my listeners is that they're willing to give some grace and that they feel good about what's happening because they do feel like we have been taken advantage of for a long time.

[11:50:04]

DOUGLAS: Right.

BROWN: All right, let me -- hold on. Let me just follow up.

DOUGLAS: Martha, you would say grace. I would just say brace. I think we're bracing. And if you look at the economy, it's -- all the losses when Trump first put his tariff policy in, we have rebounded, but all those rebounds have been off the back of the Trump administration walking back some of the tariff language.

There's a direct one-to-one relationship.

BROWN: Right.

Let me just -- and just to be clear again, it's more about what your listeners, what they're saying to you. And what Martha's saying is her listeners are saying, I'm going to give President Trump grace. I have faith in him. I voted for him.

But what I'm wondering on that, Martha, is, a lot of people voted for him to bring the prices down. And he said he would do that on day one. Pretty much every economist is saying these tariffs are a tax on the American people. What do they say about that? And how long do you think -- what is the sense you're getting from your listeners about how long they're willing to give him grace? Do you think that there's a shelf life to that?

ZOLLER: Well, I don't know if there's a shelf life or not, but they do need to actually start seeing -- what I heard a lot today is, we'd like to see the first deal. We'd like to see it in there.

We don't have to have 100 deals or 200 deals, but we'd like to see the first deal. That's what they're talking about. And I also think what they're trying to say is, is that we really want to see the American worker come back. We have got -- the middle class feels very squeezed.

What I hear from a lot of people in their late 30s, early 40s, those people that are making that second job change and maybe buying that second house or maybe even buying the first house, what they're most concerned about is not being able to do that. And they believe -- and, again, this is risky.

This is risky what's happening here, but they believe this is a risk worth taking. And I heard that over and over and over again, even from my liberal callers.

BROWN: All right, let's talk about immigration.

Dylan, I will kick it off with you on this. There's obviously been a lot of controversy over Trump's crackdown and the way many of these people are being detained. Some say it's unfair, it's un-American.

DOUGLAS: Sure.

BROWN: Others applaud the crackdown. Dylan, what are you hearing specifically from your listeners on immigration?

DOUGLAS: Yes, I mean, I'm the host of a liberal-leaning talk show. So my listeners are not -- no fan of Donald Trump's.

So, let's just get the facts out of the way. Donald Trump was elected, I would say on economy first, immigration second. Illegal immigration across the border is at all-time low. That's just got to be real. That's a win for Trump and his supporters.

Do I believe putting kids in cages is the greatest thing for our country? Absolutely not. But when my listeners are talking to me about is, of course, Kilmar Garcia. Outrageous. I just spoke to Congressman Delia Ramirez, who's on the Subcommittee on Border Security Enforcement, just yesterday.

She says there's going to be a hearing with border security coming May 14, because we got to need more facts, because there's two degrees that I think the American people need to know about this with the Ramirez (sic) case, is firstly the human element.

This is a man who was not a natural-born citizen, but had papers, who was, without due process, taken from community, detained, and sent to El Salvador to -- a prison is not even the right way of describing it. They're really concentration camps.

(CROSSTALK)

DOUGLAS: And we have no insight on how he's doing, no insight on the conditions he's being housed in.

And then the other level, if we just take a step back here, and this is where we should really point criticism at Trump, at the executive branch right now, is, you have a president who's saying, this guy's a bad guy. He was part of a gang. He had gang tattoos on his hands, which has been proven to be completely false.

At the same time, in the same executive branch, you have a Justice Department that has said that he was wrongfully detained, that they made an administrative error.

Now, in the coming days, recently, they have walked that statement back.

BROWN: So what are your -- yes.

DOUGLAS: A Justice Department and a president shouldn't be in cahoots.

BROWN: I just want to get to -- I think we know the facts of the case, a lot of us. I just want to get to the bottom line of, like, what your -- how your listeners are...

(CROSSTALK)

DOUGLAS: They're not happy.

BROWN: Yes, OK. So...

DOUGLAS: They're not happy.

And the Supreme Court has ruled that he should be brought back. So it's a complete overreach by a president... BROWN: That it should be facilitated.

DOUGLAS: And it's a human being used as a political pawn.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: So, let -- and I just need to do a quick fact-check. Hold on.

ZOLLER: And what we have is kind of the reverse response, yes. Yes.

BROWN: OK.

I know you said kids in cages. I just want to be clear there's not evidence that that's happening in this administration. Some have been deported, U.S. citizens, but the administration says the parents who were here illegally chose to take their kids with them.

But, Martha, go ahead on that. How did -- there is real concern, as Dylan laid out, about the lack of due process from a lot of Americans. And you're actually hearing that from even conservative judges. Is that resonating with your listeners, or not? Do they not think that those who are here illegally should get due process?

ZOLLER: Well, I think that due process is -- it's not the same for everyone.

And what the listeners are saying is, they didn't use due process to come in and they shouldn't have to have due process to go out. And what they're concerned about is the safety of their neighborhoods.

[11:55:05]

They believe and what I heard all week long is that there is more safety in their neighborhoods. They feel more confident about that. But, again, in our community, we have had cooperation with ICE for 25 years. And so we have always been cracking down on gang members in our community.

So they're positive about this because the illegal immigration problem was the number one thing for them and economy number two in this community, in this wider-ranging -- and we have roughly about 350,000 listeners at any given point.

So, we...

BROWN: OK.

ZOLLER: It's a different view, but, again, it's what we see, right?

There's a different view. There's not two Americas. There's probably 20 Americas.

BROWN: Which is why we can to have this conversation. Right, which is why we do this.

(CROSSTALK) DOUGLAS: The other thing -- the other thing...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: We have to go. Unfortunately, we're at the end of the show.

DOUGLAS: OK.

BROWN: We can't -- I'm so sorry.

But it's good to hear the different perspectives from people out in the country.

DOUGLAS: Thank you.

BROWN: ... how they're viewing what's happening here in Washington.

Martha, Dylan, thank you so much.

Thank you all for joining us on this Friday morning. You can keep up with us on social media @WolfBlitzer and @PamelaBrownCNN. We will see you back here Monday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

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