Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Trump Says Russia and Ukraine Will Start Negotiating Ceasefire Immediately; Trump Says Walmart and China Should Eat the Cost of Tariffs; Biden Diagnosed With Aggressive Form of Prostate Cancer. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired May 19, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": -- saying that Russia and Ukraine will begin negotiations right away after talks with leaders of both countries. But the devil, as always, is in the details. And the president admits the two sides have work to do.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Plus, Biden's battle. The former president addresses for the first time his diagnosis of an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Ahead, what we're learning about his diagnosis and the potential treatment options. And soon we will receive an update on that naval training ship that veered off course in crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge. What we're learning about that incident and the critical piece of evidence that investigators are searching for. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

SANCHEZ: President Trump is now responding after his lengthy two-hour phone call with President Vladimir Putin today. In a post on social media, Trump says that ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. Now, before the call with Putin, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and we should note that delegations from both those countries already started speaking a few days ago, albeit at a lower level.

Let's take you now live Kyiv with CNN's Nick Paton Walsh. Nick, what are you hearing from officials there regarding this statement from Trump?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, not a lot from the Ukrainian side yet. We may hear from the Ukrainian president soon, but it was the Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was kind of first out the gate here after the phone call speaking to state media, essentially saying that there could potentially be a ceasefire if documents memorandums were worked on, suggesting there could be compromises on both sides in the future.

And indeed saying that he noted that President Trump said Russia was in favor of peace, but importantly saying the key thing is addressing the root causes of the conflict. And through what Putin said, important to point out, no real substantive concession or practical move forward from the Russian president. Interesting to hear him say similar things that we heard in Istanbul from lower-level officials, but no real change in his position and harking back to root causes, while that's talking about all sorts of things to do with the expansion of NATO and the often false Russian narrative about how we got here.

President Trump emerging an hour or so later and putting out a lengthy post in which, to some degree, he tries to sound very positive about that conversation. But also, there's a tone slightly of him stepping back, no longer the guy saying let me get Zelenskyy and Putin together. I'm willing to broker that meeting. In fact, no mention at all of the two presidents meeting from President Trump and except suggesting indeed that the conditions for a ceasefire will be negotiated between the two parties, as only it can be, because they know the details of a negotiation no one else would be aware of.

That's not putting the U.S. at the heart of that, a lot of talk about the positive future for potentially trade and the economy. A lot of talk about all the European allies he briefed alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy who got into his ear just before that phone call with Putin in a separate unanticipated earlier call, but also to throwing to the Vatican saying maybe they could be the host for these talks. A different tone from the man who a matter of days ago was saying, let me try and get Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy together and be the peace broker here. And that may be a reflection I think of, frankly, how he got nothing we can see of substance out of his conversation with Vladimir Putin.

SANCHEZ: Nick Paton Walsh, live for us in Kyiv. Thank you so much. We're joined now by CNN Chief National Security Analyst, Jim Sciutto to break down the details. Jim, here Trump is striking a positive tone, but as only it can be. That phrase about the negotiations being directly between Russia and Ukraine, is it fair to read that as the U.S. just stepping back?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: May be. In fact, I spoke to a senior European diplomat just a few moments ago for his reactions to this and two things he pointed out from both readouts. One is exactly the point you bring up. This appears to be the U.S. not involved directly in these talks. Trump basically saying you two talk together, we will be in the background, one.

Two, no mention of U.S. sanctions on Russia. In other words, that stick that had been looming over. And now listen, one might calculate that Trump heard enough positive in that phone call that he doesn't feel the need to deploy that now, but we should always remember, the Trump administration quite quickly sanctioned Ukraine early on, when it -- when the perception was from the White House, it was not signing onto the ceasefire.

The third thing I was going to mention, there is no mention of a commitment to a ceasefire here from either Trump or Putin. They're just going to continue talking. And that had been the demand, right? And that had been the source of Trump's frustration, was that Russia was not abiding by the ceasefire. There'd been no answer. And at least based on these readouts, no further Russian commitment to sign on.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, only more bombing and drones and further military action. Jim Sciutto, thanks so much for the perspective. Jessica?

DEAN: All right, thanks guys. And for more on all of this, let's bring in Michael Bociurkiw. He's a former Spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, now a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Thanks so much for being here with us.

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW, GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST AND FORMER SPOKESMAN, ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY & COOPERATION IN EUROPE: My pleasure.

[14:05:00]

DEAN: So, I just want to start by pointing out that Putin previously ignored this 30-day ceasefire proposal from Washington and Kyiv. He ignored that the 30-day ceasefire kind of threat from the -- those European leaders. Why is this time different?

BOCIURKIW: Well, I think actually we're no further to peace than we were say a couple of weeks ago. There's a couple pieces of bad news. One is that, as Nick pointed out, Mr. Putin said we need to examine the root causes of the conflict. It's exactly what he said, is that that's going to spend things out longer. He doesn't want to see Zelenskyy stay. He doesn't want to see that Ukraine as part of NATO.

The other bad news more for Ukraine is in the Trump long statement, is there was nothing about a commitment to continue military aid and intelligence gathering. The good news from my point of view is that it does look like, yes, the U.S. is stepping back. Let's give the Turkeys of the world a chance, or even the Vatican, because Turkey, of course, has a great stake in Black Sea security, great relations with both countries. I think things could move faster that way.

DEAN: And how would you evaluate Putin at this moment in time? Do you think he's serious about trying to find an end to this war?

BOCIURKIW: No, absolutely not. The grand chess player dealing with the master of the art of the deal, and Putin wants to continue on grabbing more Ukrainian territory. He wants to continue destroying Ukraine with those massive drone and missile strikes, and he wants to get his way with Crimea, the four oblus that they only partially control. And also, they want -- they've also said they don't want to pay war reparations, which Ukraine is demanding and which could add up to add up to about $1 trillion.

DEAN: Yeah. And we know that Zelenskyy spoke with President Trump today. That conversation actually coming before the president spoke with Vladimir Putin. Knowing that, seeing what -- the readouts that we've gotten from Trump and also Putin and Russian State Media, what do you -- what does that suggest to you? How do you put all those pieces together?

BOCIURKIW: Yeah, I think that Trump spoke first to Zelenskyy was a good move. It was probably payback to Mr. Putin for making him wait one hour in their call in March. But I hope there was one thing that Mr. Zelenskyy pushed for, and that is unfreezing about $300 billion in frozen Russian assets by the G7. That is somewhere where the U.S. could really put forward its influence and leverage that. That could be put, for example, into a Ukraine compensation fund because, again, Russia does not want to pay reparations.

But then, Zelenskyy probably also said please continue the U.S. military aid, intelligent sharing, because without that, it's going to be game over for Ukraine. And again, we did not, as far as I can see, we do not see that in the Trump statement, could be a bit worrisome there.

DEAN: I do want to go back to something you mentioned, which is, was just Putin to continuing to say this idea that he wants to eliminate the causes of the conflict, examine and get to the bottom of the causes of the conflict. What -- help people understand what he's getting at there.

BOCIURKIW: Yeah. That is a Kremlin code or a narrative for, again, we want Ukraine -- they are basically saying Ukraine is a failed state. It should become a satellite state of Russia. And for that to happen, we need to take control. It's not a good thing that he's repeating that at this far along in the game. So again, I'm hoping that the Turks who have been involved in Ukraine negotiations way back to 2014, they ran the OSC Mission. I was a part of that. They can have a bit more influence on Putin.

Finally, I mean, I'm in Thailand right now and it's one of the countries along with the UAE and some African countries that are helping Russia circumvent sanctions. That noose needs to be tightened as quickly as possible. I think only then will Putin come to some sense and be more fair at the negotiating table.

DEAN: Listen, that's what everyone continues to say again and again, is that there need to be more consequences to push him to that negotiating table. Michael Bociurkiw, thank you so much for being here with us. We appreciate it. Boris?

SANCHEZ: President Trump says that Walmart and China should eat the cost of tariffs instead of passing them on to consumers. This was President Trump responding after Walmart announced that it would have to increase prices because of Trump's trade war. In a Truth Social post, the president writing, "Walmart should stop trying to blame tariffs as a reason for raising prices." He then suggests that Walmart and China eat the tariffs, and that he and consumers will be watching.

[14:10:00]

Let's discuss with Gerald Storch. He's a former CEO of Toys "R" Us and a former Vice Chairman of Target. Gerald, thanks so much for being with us. Is it realistic for retailers to simply eat the cost of tariffs without passing some of it off to consumers?

GERALD STORCH, FORMER CEO, TOYS "R" US AND FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN, TARGET: Well, I give President Trump credit for using the bully pulpit. I mean, that's normal thing to do. And maybe on the margin, it'll make people pause about how much they increase prices. But what we're really looking at here is a situation where costs are going to go up. So eventually, prices have to follow. If Mattel raises the price of Barbie to take into account the fact that they're made in China and tariffs are, there were triple digits a while ago. Now, there's still at least 30 percent or more. So, that's too much for a retailer not to pass some of it on. I think what bothered President Trump probably was all the headlines coming out of Walmart earnings release, where the headlines kind of didn't take into account the fact that it's not price going up on everything Walmart sells. In fact, I'd say three-quarters of what Walmart sells isn't even sourced by countries that have tariffs. Most of it is domestic, things like food and, et cetera.

But for certain products, there's absolutely no doubt that the costs are going to go up. And if Walmart doesn't pass the prices on, that means that it's trying to gain sort of market share, which Walmart does. Is that going to be a good thing? Because you have a few big retailers, Walmart, Costco, TJX and Amazon that are eating up all the market share in retail anyway. And if they use their market clout now not to take price increases, where does that put the mom-and-pop retailer down the street, puts them out of business.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, it would have a huge impact there. There is part of the public though that sides with Trump's view of this, in part because they feel that corporations have elevated prices for profit, especially during the pandemic or via other avenues, say like shrinkflation, where they offer less product for more money. What do you say to folks who are fearful of price gouging?

STORCH: Well, I don't think we're going to see that. I do believe that the free market works. I think that most people believe that the best thing government can do is set the rules, whatever those rules are, however strict they are, anti-trust rules, regulations, taxes, tariffs, and then get out of the way, keeping the same for a long period of time so there's not uncertainty and let people play the game.

If you do that, you're going to see prices as low as possible, and there can't be price gouging because other retailers would simply undercut their prices. So, that's not a viable long-term strategy to try to gouge consumers. And so, I think part of what's going on here is that, in the first Trump presidency, there were tariff increases on China and other places. And those, when you look at the history of it, were by and large eaten at the source by the manufacturers, a teeny bit by the retailers. But something like 87 percent of them were not passed along to consumers.

But that's because the terrorists were relatively small. When you're dealing with 15 percent to 20 percent, that's a reasonable possibility. When you're dealing with tariffs, we're talking about now these reciprocal tariffs, these very high numbers, there's no way that could happen without them being passed on to consumers. Certainly over the long term, it's got to happen. It will happen on the products that are affected. Again, it's not everything, but in the products with the heavy tariffs where there aren't substitutes, prices will go up.

SANCHEZ: Do you foresee the major retailers reconsidering their sourcing decisions for some of these products? Do you think that these tariffs might have some of the aspirational intent that the administration has put on them, that they will refocus manufacturing, resurge manufacturing domestically in the United States?

STORCH: Absolutely. I think that it will, but the issue is, it isn't -- I'm not going to get into like, was it a good idea or not to have tariffs? The issue is how it was executed. When you talk to people, even people who are big supporters of President Trump, on this one, they think even if they agree, the concept is OK, that we don't want everything made in China. We need to have domestic manufacturing. The magnitude of these tariffs is simply too high, and the execution was totally botched. Let's be honest here.

The timing of this, you couldn't possibly move all that manufacturing back to the U.S. instantly, just like that, and the breadth across every country in the world, and across all these product groups, you can't move that fast. The idea may have merit. The concept of doing it all at once has no merit at all. If I were doing this, I would've put together a much more comprehensive plan over a period of years and said, look, we want things to happen faster. We're going to tell you what we're going to do in advance.

We're going to raise taxes, not right now, but in six months, it'll start in a year. It'll be heavier. A year from now, it'll go up unless we see the kind of progress that we want to see. That would give people time to adapt. Right now, for a lot of these products, take the Barbie doll example, Mattel can't move that manufacturing to the U.S. There's nowhere to make the dolls. So, it can't happen for a number of years.

[14:15:00]

And with the kind of constantly shifting stands that are happening now, both within the current administration, the possibility you'd have a different administration a few years down the line, you'd be a fool to make that kind of investment at this stage. So, we're lacking the certainty that business needs to make proper decisions.

SANCHEZ: You mentioned Mattel and Barbie specifically a couple times, and it strikes me that the president has threatened specifically to put tariffs on Mattel for statements that, that company made about tariffs and the impact that it would have on consumers. Trump also recently made this comment about kids getting two dolls instead of 30. I had mentioned your experience leading Toys "R" Us. I wonder how you see the toy industry being impacted by all of this, in part, because right now is when retailers are getting ready to make those orders for Christmas time, right? For Christmas shopping. So I wonder, are kids going to see fewer toys? Are parents going to see fewer toys on the shelves?

STORCH: Well, it's inevitable at this stage you're going to see higher prices. It's also most likely that you're going to see shortages of the hottest products because retailers are being very careful and manufacturers about how much they bring in at a high tariff regimen. Why? Because it could change tomorrow and tariffs could be lower, so they aren't bringing in now with higher tariffs when it might be lower later. So that runs the risks at the supply chains, which are always difficult in terms of predicting the hot toy and getting the right one on the shelf at the right time.

That those are going to be a little snarled here and messed up by the fact that you're making decisions with more uncertainty than before and hence more variability and hence more out of stocks as well. So, there's no doubt there's going to be issues. It doesn't mean that parents won't buy children something for Christmas. We all know that they will. The issue is what's it going to be?

And you can get mad at specific manufacturers if you want to, but the reality is the toy industry moved to China a long time ago, before many other industries did and it's essentially headquartered in China right now. There are some products made in the U.S. and that's great, but there isn't enough manufacturing capacity to move all of that back to the U.S. in the short term. It could happen eventually if you have robotic factories. Lego makes a lot of their product in Denmark, which costs more to manufacturing as an environment than the U.S. does. But it's a heavily robotic factory. I've been there and I've seen it. We don't have those in the U.S. and they take years to build.

So, we have to know what the rules are going to be for the long term, if that's the way it's going to be, high tariff regimen on China, you can start to shift the manufacturing back and build these multi- hundred million dollar factories, highly robotic to manufacture the product in the U.S. That's just not here now. That's not real. It's not now. It's not today.

SANCHEZ: Yeah.

STORCH: So all these products are made overseas and they're going to continue to be made overseas in the near term.

SANCHEZ: Gerald Storch, fascinating to get your perspective. Thanks.

STORCH: My pleasure.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, the latest on former President Joe Biden after he revealed he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. What we're learning about potential treatment options. Plus, it's week two of the Sean "Diddy" Combs trial, and it begins with a witness testifying about alleged violence against his ex-girlfriend. And later, first responders' fast action in the aftermath of an explosion at an IVF clinic helped save many family's futures, the details when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:22:47]

DEAN: We're back now with the latest on former President Biden's cancer diagnosis. The 46th president's office saying an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bone was found just days ago. Biden, his family, his doctors are now said to be reviewing treatment options. Now this morning, Biden, who of course just left office about four months ago, addressed the diagnosis for the first time. He posted a photo alongside his wife writing in part, "We are the strongest in the broken places." And with this now, Dr. F. Perry Wilson, he's a Nephrologist and Associate Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Yale University. Thank you so much for being here with us, Dr. Wilson. I first just want to ask you, again, we kind of -- we have that statement from his personal office yesterday. That's about as much detail as we've got, but what questions do you have about the former president's diagnosis?

DR. F. PERRY WILSON, NEPHROLOGIST AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE & PUBLIC HEALTH, YALE UNIVERSITY: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on and certainly, my best wishes to President Biden and his family. This is a tough diagnosis. Metastatic prostate cancer is not the most common way it gets diagnosed, fortunately. About 3 million men right now in this country have prostate cancer, only about a hundred thousand of them have metastatic prostate cancer. But the good news is, there are quite a few treatments and that's really where my questions to his team would be. What is the treatment plan? It sounds to me like they're going to do some hormone based therapies at the very least, but will there be chemotherapy involved? Is there a potential for radiation therapy involved? I think hearing about those would be interesting.

DEAN: Yeah. And you mentioned, it is rare to be diagnosed with prostate cancer this advanced. Did the time -- did that surprise you that that was the diagnosis? That it was this far advanced?

WILSON: You do this enough, you don't get too surprised. There's always outliers like this and not everyone follows the traditional path. We've all seen cases of cancers that really do kind of spring up out of nowhere, particularly some aggressive cancers. One wonders if he was being screened for prostate cancer with PSA testing during his physicals, typically, but not always.

[14:25:00]

PSA levels are elevated in the case of prostate cancer. Even in metastatic disease, they aren't always abnormal. And some people would suggest that in older individuals, you don't even bother doing PSA testing. So, it's unclear to me right now whether there was a hint of this before or not. I mean, from everything we've heard, it seems like they were somewhat caught off guard by this.

DEAN: Yeah. And so, I did want to ask you about that because the screening, the screening guidance for prostate cancer in men over 70 is that, I believe, they should not be screened routinely. Why is that the guidance? What are the caveats to that? What's the nuance to that?

WILSON: There's a lot of nuance here, and it all boils down really to two things. One is the risk of false positives, which means you do the screening test and there's an elevated PSA and that leads to more testing like biopsies, which are invasive. And it turns out you didn't have cancer at all. And that gets more common as you get older. The other thing is that you may have prostate cancer, but most men with prostate cancer, these 3 million who are living with prostate cancer right now will not die of prostate cancer. They'll die of other things. And so, there's a very good argument to be made that if you're going to find this, but it's never going to cause you a problem because the odds are that you'll die from something else, whether it's heart disease or cancer or some other problem. There's an argument to be made that it's not worth going through all the invasive biopsies and treatments and things like that. Of course, whenever you have a case like this where you -- that's easy to look back with 20/20 hindsight and said, oh, if we had only been testing more frequently, maybe we would've seen this. We've all had that feeling. But of course, guidelines are designed for the population on average, not for each individual person.

DEAN: Right. And look, we do -- we did get this piece of news that the cancer has spread to his bones, that it has metastasized. What does that mean? And how can that -- what is -- what does that mean for how he'll be treated? And just kind of the long-term prognosis for him?

WILSON: The prognosis is clearly worse once prostate cancer has metastasized. Most people with local prostate cancer that hasn't spread anywhere have 85 percent five-year survival. I mean, it's very, very treatable. That does drop significantly once there is spread beyond the prostate to the bones, like it is here, with average survival time in the three- to five-year window. There's a caveat there though, there's two types of prostate cancer that can spread this way. We call one hormone sensitive and one hormone resistant. His is apparently hormone sensitive. That opens up treatment with hormone blockers to slow the spread or even halt the spread, which improves the prognosis.

So, clearly, we would rather not have disease that has spread to the bones, that's very clear, but there is some good news that it's hormone sensitive that gives one extra avenue of treatment that is typically well tolerated and quite effective.

DEAN: Yeah, and a nice silver line there for sure. Dr. Wilson, thank you so much. Really appreciate your expertise here.

WILSON: Sure.

DEAN: Still to come, leaders in Gaza say Israel has launched deadly airstrikes as part of a new invasion into the territory. And we will soon get new details into the deadly ship collision into the Brooklyn Bridge. All that and more coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)