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Trump Touts U.K. Trade Framework As U.S. Negotiators Prepare For Talks With China; Pope Leo XIV Take Helm Of Catholic Church; Sources: Another Outage Hits Air Traffic Controllers Around Newark Intl. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired May 09, 2025 - 11:00   ET

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

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[11:01:01]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, President Trump appears to be softening his trade war talk. He's floating the idea of reducing tariffs on goods from China, but he's leaving it up to his negotiators ahead of key talks this weekend.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

Right now, top members of the Trump administration are preparing for major trade talks with China, as leaders of the world's top two economies will meet tomorrow in Switzerland.

BROWN: It will be their first talks since President Trump's sweeping tariffs ignited a trade war. And this morning, the administration says more than two dozen deals are being worked out, but hammering out an agreement with China could be much tougher.

So let's go now to CNN's senior White House correspondent, Kristen Holmes. Kristen, what is the administration expecting to come out of this weekend's talks?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, as you said, they're really tamping down expectations. We heard from Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, who basically said that he thought these talks would be more about a de-escalation, not so much about actually coming to an agreement.

Now, one thing I want to point to is what Trump posted this morning, because it's fairly interesting given what we've heard from him the last several days. He posted 80 percent tariff on China seems right, up to Scott B., obviously referring to Bessent there.

And this is interesting given the fact that just two days ago, Donald Trump said he was unwilling to lower those tariffs for China to bring them to the negotiating table, as you said. It does seem to be a softening of rhetoric ahead of those talks. But while we don't believe there will be a deal between the U.S. and China, we do believe that there are a number of deals currently in the works, something that Trump's economic advisor mentioned today. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN HASSETT, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR: There are about two dozen right now. And the question of what the priority is, I think, is up to the President. And I think that Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer have suggested that they might be moving towards getting a good deal in Asia. And there are a number of candidates for that. And the interesting thing is that they're kind of bespoke deals. And so they really are going into the things that are the big concerns for the individual countries. And so each deal is quite a bit different.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now, one of the things that we have heard is that the top contenders for a deal in Asia are likely Japan, India and South Korea, though, of course, because of the current conflict in India, it's unclear if that would impact how these trade discussions are going.

BROWN: All right, Kristen Holmes, thanks so much. Wolf?

BLITZER: All right, let's get some analysis right now. The U.S. national editor for the Financial Times, Ed Luce, is here with us in The Situation Room. He's the author of a brand new upcoming book entitled "Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet." It's an excellent new book, brings back a lot of memories for me. It comes out officially in the coming days.

We're going to talk about your book in just a few moments. Ed, thanks so much for -- for joining us. But first, as you know, President Trump is touting this new trade deal with the United Kingdom. In reality, though, it's more like a framework for a future agreement. Do you think Trump's eagerness to announce quick and easy wins is going to work against him at these upcoming negotiations with China and potentially with other countries?

ED LUCE, U.S. NATIONAL EDITOR, FINANCIAL TIMES: So, I mean, what we don't know about this U.K.-U.S. trade deal is whether there's a clause in there limiting what the trade that Britain can do with China. If indeed it has that clause, then he's going to be using countries, friendlier countries like Britain, to warn China of what they call trade diversion, that what it loses from America, it will sell to others.

If that's the case, then some of Trump's intimidation will be working. But I -- but we don't yet know. It's a very hazy deal. And some people are describing it as essentially paying money to the mob boss. It's a -- it's a sort of protection racket -- racket that the U.K. has signed up to. This isn't a real trade deal.

[11:05:00]

BLITZER: Yes. They keep calling it a deal, an agreement, whatever. But it's basically still a framework for a potential deal.

LUCE: It's a framework for a potential deal. I suspect that what it is mostly from Trump's point of view is it's a template for what the other 24 or so countries might sign up to, which is just ceasefire, give Trump a sort of face-saving off-ramp from -- from the war -- trade war that's doing so much damage to American growth prospects and a warning to China.

BLITZER: On China, speaking of China, the President, President Trump, is floating a major reduction in the tariff rate to 80 percent. That's maybe close to half of what it is right now. What are your expectations for these trade talks between the U.S. and China in Switzerland this weekend?

LUCE: I think China is going to hang tough. It's going to be basically the opposite of the U.K. They feel that they've got the winning cards here because they trade so much more with other countries, and other countries trade so much more with them, particularly in Asia, than -- than they do with the United States.

And they've got traditional adversaries like Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam moving closer to China. So I think China feels it's in a pretty strong position, and it's not going to be -- it's not going to offering any cheap concessions.

BLITZER: Yes, significant. New data shows Chinese exports to the United States plummeting in April as Trump's tariffs are kicking in. And Goldman Sachs is now warning inflation here in the United States could hit 4 percent by Christmas. As you know, President Trump campaigned heavily on getting inflation under control. How much political risk do you think he's taking right now, the longer he keeps up this trade war?

LUCE: Huge political risk. I mean, 4 percent inflation combined with -- with higher interest rates, and interest rates that are unlikely to fall because of inflation, is going to really eat into, I mean, it'll -- it'll feel like a war on Christmas to a lot of consumers. You know, those $2 versus $30, five pencils versus bizarrely precise numbers Trump has versus 250 pencils.

That's another way of saying the cost of living is going to go way up. People are going to feel poorer. So he's taking a fundamental risk in the eyes of his supporters, people who voted for him.

BLITZER: I want to talk about your excellent new book that's coming out in the coming days, "Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet." It's -- it's really an important book. In the book, you make a reference to a remarkable exchange that Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger had on my program, Late Edition, back in 2003, my Sunday morning show that used to be on CNN.

And you give me a little shout out in the book. It was all about the U.S. intelligence failures around Iran's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. I want to play this little clip from my interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger on Late Edition. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: Dr. Kissinger, should someone resign right now in the aftermath of this intelligence plethora involving Iraq and its alleged nuclear weapons program?

HENRY KISSINGER, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: I don't think anyone should resign. We should analyze where the problem arose, but I don't think this was a central fact in making the decision.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: The larger problem is that the United States stated at the highest level, repeatedly, without any qualification whatsoever, that Iraq was armed with weapons of mass destruction, not just nuclear, but bacteriological and chemical. And that was stated without any ambiguity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: So you give a shout out to that exchange in in your book, "Zbig." What inspired you to write this book, and why did that moment stand out to you?

LUCE: So Brzezinski and Kissinger were really the great Cold War rivals and friends. They were sort of frenemies, but they were the two sort of grand strategists after George Kennan. And Kissinger had had tons of biographies written on him, and a large multi-volume autobiography.

Brzezinski had not really cooperated with biographers, and he'd kept these enormous, voluminous diaries while he was National Security Advisor that had not been shared. I was presented with those diaries without any strings attached by his family. And when he -- when I started reading them, they were just utterly gripping, and I felt Brzezinski really did deserve a full-life biography.

And the Kissinger-Brzezinski thing is really strong in that. Your show from 2003, I think, captured how they were really beginning to fall out, because Kissinger was maintaining his support for the Bush administration's Iraq War, and the reasons for the Iraq War, namely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

[11:10:09]

Brzezinski was a sort of biting critic of that decision to invade, along with Brent Scowcroft and a few others. Barack Obama, of course, a young, unknown senator from Illinois. And so that was a really sort of, I think, classic T.V. moment that you got. I'm delighted you found the clips from it.

BLITZER: It was really an amazing moment, and I remember it very vividly, having had both Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski on my show for a joint interview. It was pretty cool, and the book is "Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Profit." We'll continue this conversation. Ed Luce, thanks very much for coming in. Appreciate it, and congratulations on the new book.

LUCE: Thanks so much for having me on. BLITZER: Thank you very much.

LUCE: Thank you.

BROWN: Congrats, Ed.

All right. Right now, the world is getting to know the first American pope, as he takes the helm of the Catholic Church. And this morning, Leo XIV celebrated his first mass since being chosen as pontiff, and he became the first to start his first homily in English. The new pope was born in Chicago as Robert Francis Prevost. He has two older brothers who used to tease him about one day becoming pope.

I want to bring in CNN's Whitney Wild from Chicago, because she just spoke to one of his brothers. Tell us about that conversation, Whitney.

WHITNEY WILD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pamela, we talked a lot about what his childhood was like, what were the sights and sounds. And what John Prevost described to us was, it was a really typical suburban American upbringing. It was sports with the neighborhood kids. It was pickup games of football and baseball. He also talked quite a bit about his mother. Their mother had this beautiful singing voice.

She was a member of the church choir. And their experience as a family, as I had said before, you know, was in so many ways very typical, but there's one way it was not typical. And it was very clear from a very early age that now Pope Leo would go on to do something great within the church.

And there was this moment when their family dropped him off when he left to go begin that journey. We talked a little bit about that moment with him. Here's what John Prevost said about the moment that -- that his brother left their family at just 14 years old to begin his journey in the Catholic Church.

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JOHN PREVOST, BROTHER OF POPE LEO XIV: It's bittersweet in the sense that when we dropped him off for freshman year of high school, the ride home was very sad in the sense that, like you just said, he's leaving, he's gone. We'll see him once in a while. Now it's even worse in the sense that will we ever get to see him unless we go over to Rome, you know what I mean? Like last year as Cardinal, the Pope said go take four weeks. So here he was. I don't think we're going to have that anymore.

WILD: How does that feel as a brother?

PREVOST: It's hard. Yes, it's hard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILD: He now belongs to the rest of the world. And that's one thing that John Prevost is coping with at this moment. It's -- it was really extraordinary to hear him talk a lot about that, Pamela, because I think what people maybe don't remember is that these are normal people with normal people around them who love them. And now he is again, he belongs to the rest of the world. But today, John Prevost in a couple hours is getting in the car.

He is going to go to Rome and see his brother now as Pope. So what an extraordinary moment awaits him in Rome. Pamela?

BROWN: Can you imagine just what that is like for a family when a sibling becomes Pope? Whitney Wild, excellent interview with the brother. Thank you so much. Wolf?

BLITZER: Really excellent. We're following the other breaking news right now. Just coming into The Situation Room, air traffic controllers for Newark Liberty International Airport experienced another outage earlier this morning. It's the latest in a series of very troubling technical problems that have plagued the airport in recent days.

BROWN: I want to bring in CNN Aviation correspondent, Pete Muntean. What's going on, Pete?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is the latest in the string of these meltdowns that they've had at the Newark Terminal Radar Approach Control Facility that controls the flights going in and out of Newark, flights descending and ascending after leaving Newark. This is really critical. And we know from one source that the systems went down there.

The radar system went down at about 3.55 a.m. local time today. This is just one more in this series. We know also from another source that they lost radar and radio coverage, which is very similar to the April 28th meltdown that we were reporting on so much 11 days ago that caused controllers there to essentially have to control planes blind and not able to know where they are and not able to communicate with them via radio.

So this is really significant. That most recent incident after this one just last night was the first in a string that really sort of brought this to light. We know that there was an incident back on November 6th when controllers had something similar happen. In fact, in that case, they had a FedEx flight that they were turning, giving instructions to turn on to the final approach into Newark. For some reason, they could not communicate with them. Another meltdown there, and that plane ended up flying essentially straight through the final approach and into the airspace over LaGuardia, which is extremely dangerous, they said.

[11:15:25]

They said it was a miracle by the grace of God that there wasn't a midair collision in that case. This also comes on the heels one day after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy just announced a sweeping multibillion-dollar overhaul of the air traffic control system. This could be $30 billion done in three to four years, he says. It's a very aggressive, bold, and challenging plan, he says. And he says that these incidents really highlight the need for change, although it doesn't really get at what the FAA will do in the immediate. The FAA does say, though, that they will be replacing these telecommunication lines that essentially run this new air traffic control facility, which is actually in Philadelphia, off of the old facility in Long Island. So it's copper wire.

They're going to replace it with fiber optic cable and do this nationwide, but they need to do it at Newark first.

BROWN: I got you. Well, you know, look, and you interviewed the United CEO, who was giving credit to Secretary Duffy for taking aggressive action. But you're right, there's still that question of what about in the near term? It's scary stuff, what's happening.

MUNTEAN: Yes, and it only plays into the hand that United Airlines wants here. They want to limit the number of flights, the FAA to limit the number of flights going in and out of Newark. This is a huge hub for United Airlines. They've been preemptively canceling about 70 flights each day. And the totality here for passengers, let's not forget about the daily doll, about 1,000 flights in total have been canceled out of Newark since this ATC meltdown last week bled into this week. Staffing shortages have been key and five controllers took trauma leave.

BLITZER: Hundreds of flights have been delayed.

MUNTEAN: That's right.

BLITZER: A big time. Very important. Pete Muntean, as usual, thank you very, very much.

Right now. I want to bring in CNN transportation analyst Mary Schiavo. Mary, thanks for coming in. How concerning is it that there was yet another outage?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: Well, it's very, very concerning, because remember, now we have had multiple ones, as Pete mentioned, November 6th, April 28th, now this, plus likely others that -- that we haven't learned about. And so every time we have this recurring, what it does is the risk of this happening.

And every time it happens, you pose a risk to the flight and to the people over whom they are flying multiplies. So now this risk, which the FAA had in -- in, you know, prior reports that, oh, it's -- it's not a -- it's not a real hazard. It's not blinking red. We can manage it, et cetera. Because it keeps happening, this is really a very critical hazard risk, because the way you mitigate this situation is if when you have, you know, you've lost communication or you have aircraft that can be on collision courses, you know, the tower can intervene, the controllers can intervene, or you're left with literally pilots seeing and avoiding.

And -- and the FAA had made a comment, well, they've got collision avoidance systems. Only if all the airplanes that are in the collision path have that system, they must communicate with each other for it to work. Because this keeps happening, this is really a critical, a very serious hazard. And while Secretary Duffy said they will put as many resources as they can to it, the problem, again, stems from the fact that last July 28th, they put this mishmash of a control system, part in New York, part in Philadelphia, but to control Newark. And no one has eyes on the situation if the radar and the radio communications go down. Pete said it right.

BLITZER: Yes, it's a very dangerous situation. Mary Schiavo, thank you very, very much.

BROWN: Still ahead right here in The Situation Room, President Trump taps another "Fox" host for an important government post. This time, it's a judge. We're going to talk about that coming up.

[11:19:01]

BLITZER: Plus, lead contamination has health and school officials in Milwaukee scrambling to protect students. And they're doing it without, yes, without federal assistance. Stay with us. You're in the Situation Room.

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BROWN: President Donald Trump is appointing "Fox News" host and former prosecutor and judge, Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C.

BLITZER: The appointment comes after his first pick, Ed Martin, faced significant pushback not just from Democrats, but from some Republicans up on Capitol Hill as well.

Pirro has been a longtime Trump ally, a regular at Mar-a-Lago, even before Trump ran for president in 2016. Let's go live right now to CNN's Alayna Treene over at the White House. Alayna, does the administration think Pirro will face similar opposition? What's their assessment?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: They could, but that wasn't necessarily what fully went into this decision. Look, they had known for weeks now that Ed Martin, the President's first choice, was unlikely to be able to get confirmed. He had been facing, as you mentioned, significant pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill. And so behind the scenes, they had been plotting a potential alternative.

Now, as you mentioned as well, Jeanine Pirro is someone who has long been very close to the President, even before he had first run for office, they had a relationship. And she is someone as well who has been a top defender of him on her show on "Fox," "The Five," which I should note, she has left immediately. We heard "Fox News" announce that yesterday.

But she is someone who very bellicosely defended the president. She also was someone who touted some of his controversial and in some cases, false claims of voter fraud following the last election in 2020. So they are very close. And he also really enjoys her.

[11:25:13]

We've seen this with a lot of other people that are now serving in top roles in his administration. He likes the way that she has defended him on T.V., definitely one of the qualifications that went into this decision, Wolf and Pamela.

BLITZER: You know, Alayna, another sensitive issue, we're learning that President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is advising the Trump administration just ahead of the President's trip to the Middle East. He's heading to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates this weekend. What more can you tell us about this?

TREENE: Yes, this is some really interesting new details that we were able to break just moments ago, Wolf and Pamela. And essentially, Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, is someone who played a huge role -- role in the Trump administration in his first term. He was the architect of what is known as the Abraham Accords, which was an agreement to normalize relationships between Israel and several different Arab nations.

And we're learning now that as the President prepares for his first major foreign trip to the Middle East of his second term, that Kushner has been privately advising the President, many top officials. He's developed a very close relationship, for example, with Steve Witkoff, the President's Middle East envoy, and helping advise them on -- on really how to approach these conversations.

And one of these goals, the real goal of this trip next week is to come back with economic agreements, we're told. But one of the other goals is also to try and expand the Abraham Accords and really make progress specifically with Saudi Arabia. So very interesting, particularly given we know Kushner's really tried to stay away from politics in this second administration, tried to keep a low profile, but he has been a critical operator on this, we're told, behind the scenes.

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

BLITZER: I know a bunch of Israelis are also deeply concerned that the President is going to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but not going to Israel on this particular trip.

BROWN: He said he would go at a later date.

BLITZER: Maybe down the road, yes, but that's something they're concerned about right now.

Just ahead, Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports from Milwaukee, where officials are fighting a lead contamination crisis right now. It's impacting several public schools and potentially putting kids, students at risk.

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