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Billy Joel Cancels Upcoming Tour Due To Neurological Disorder; Trump Broadens Smart Phone Tariff Threat, Says He Would Target Samsung And Other Companies As Well As Apple; Trump Says 25 Percent Apple Tariff Could Be Applied To Any Smartphone Maker Manufacturing Outside The U.S.; Open-Source Data: Jet Was Flying 700 Feet Too Low At Last Recorded Point. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 23, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:01:03]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Breaking news, music icon Billy Joel revealing he is battling a neurological disorder and is canceling his upcoming tour. Ahead, what more we're learning about his condition and what it could mean for his legendary music career.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: And it's back on after days of relative quiet in President Trump's trade war. He's issuing new threats from the Oval Office, vowing a 50 percent tariff on Europe, saying negotiations are at a standstill, and new threats against some tech companies and their popular products.

And it isn't easy being green, but it does teach you a lot about life. We're talking about our Sara Sidner got to talk to the one and only Kermit the Frog about his commencement speech to the 2025 grads at the University of Maryland.

We're following all of these major developing stories, Kermit included, and many more coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: Our breaking news, legendary performer Billy Joel canceling all upcoming concerts after revealing a very rare neurological disorder. The singer-songwriter announced he is undergoing treatment for normal pressure hydrocephalus, which is also known as NPH.

According to Yale Medicine, the condition, quote, "occurs when a person has too much fluid in the brain." Fewer than three percent of adults over the age of 65 are diagnosed with NPH, and it affects men and women equally.

A post on Joel's Instagram said he was, quote, sincerely sorry to disappoint his audience and that he looks forward to the day when he can once again take the stage.

Jem Aswad is with us now. He's the executive music editor for Variety. I guess that's good. We're hearing Joel say he's looking forward to taking the stage again at some point. What kind of reaction and concern are you hearing from people? JEM ASWAD, EXECUTIVE MUSIC EDITOR, VARIETY: Well, whenever you hear about something like this from someone who is 76 years old and an active performer, obviously there's going to be some concern. I reached out to his reps. There is no further comment beyond what they've said. And, you know, what this condition does is it affects balance, hearing, and speech, which are obviously, if you're a performer, like the three key things.

So, there was no further comment, but sources have said he's committed to following his doctor's orders. He plans to get better, and they stress that he is not retiring.

KEILAR: Which is great to hear. This is something that it sounds like he's been dealing with for a while, right? Back in March, his team announced he was postponing his tour for four months due to a medical condition.

ASWAD: Yes. It's not clear whether it's the same condition, because they'd - I think they had talked about therapists and things like that at the time. Maybe they hadn't diagnosed it, and they thought it was something physical. But the thing is, it's like, with - obviously, people like him, and he was supposed to tour this summer with Stevie Nicks, with Rod Stewart, and with Sting, all of whom are up there, like a couple of those people are in their 80s.

And what - with today's technology and medical advancements, it's like, you know, Elton John, for example, will cancel a run of shows, and then he's back, and he reschedules the shows, and everything's fine. You know, so I think it takes a super - almost superhuman amount of energy, and frankly, ego and self-confidence to do what they do. It is really hard to get on stage at a stadium and be interesting, and sing, and perform, and all those things, especially when you're at that age.

So, by all indications, he's, you know, he's seeing his doctors, he's expected to improve, and he expects to take the stage again.

KEILAR: What are the logistics and the financial impacts of sort of unwinding, postponing, canceling so many tour dates?

[15:05:00]

ASWAD: It gets complicated. Now, there is insurance, and, you know, the fact that these are canceled rather than postponed, puts some money at play. And I mean, when you're talking about a tour on that scale, it's more than a hundred people, usually, who are employed by it, and that - there's, of course, a financial ripple effect. So, it's never good news for anyone. Whatever expenses are being incurred by this are probably covered largely by insurance, and without sounding callous, whatever else there is, he can probably afford it.

KEILAR: Yes. Well, what a legacy he has, though, right? I mean, people are so excited to get a chance to see him.

ASWAD: Yes, he - it's not like he's been out of the spotlight, though, right? I mean, so many performers, again, because of the ego and confidence considerations I was talking about, they sort of can't accept that, like, their best creative work might be behind them. You know, most artists make their best work in their 20s and 30s. Of course, there are exceptions, but that's the case most of the time.

After you turn 40, you usually stop having hits. And your new albums, like, you know, if somebody's already got six great albums by you, how many more do they really think they need? So, it becomes a hits tour. And Billy accepted that a long time ago. I think in the early - I don't think he's released a new album since the '90s. I'm not positive, but it was around then. And he's just like, I'm not feeling it. I'm kind of done.

So, he just goes out and he plays the hits and everybody's happy. And he appears to be having a great time, and he's making millions of dollars. So, there's not a whole lot to complain about.

He did release one new song, I think it was last year, a collaboration with a friend of his son or something like that. And it was cool. I mean, it was no "Piano Man," but, you know, it was nice to hear a new song from him again. But that's the main thing. And it's like, that's what people want. They want to hear the hits.

KEILAR: Yes, I'm not mad about it. I want to hear the hits. And I hope that we get a chance to hear them again soon as he heals up. We'll look for more news on that.

Jem, thank you so much.

ASWAD: Thank you. Get to Kermit.

KEILAR: Yes, we will. Omar?

JIMENEZ: All right. We got a few things to get through before Kermit, including some less fun discussion, but President Trump's new tariff threats against Apple and its iPhones. The President, just a short time ago, widened his tariff ultimatum. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you have the power to tariff one single company?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, it would be more ...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And why would you want to put an American company in that way?

TRUMP: It would be more. It would be also Samsung and anybody that makes that product. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair. So, anybody that makes that product, and that'll start on, I guess, the end of June.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: But hours ago, Trump only called out Apple CEO Tim Cook with a post calling for iPhones to be made in America or face a 25 percent tariff. Now, analysts say that would triple an iPhone's cost. Now, the President also said he wants a 50 percent tariff to soon hit all imports from the European Union. Trump saying talks are, quote, "going nowhere." He also just said he is not necessarily looking for a deal.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny is at the White House.

Stocks continue to slide a little bit on this news, but we obviously just heard some of these comments from President Trump in the Oval Office. What sticks out to you from these comments, and do we have any development since then?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Omar, even though summer is soon to be beginning, this really feels like a repeat of much of the winter and spring months here at the White House when the president would threaten a country or a group of countries with a new tariff only to roll it back. But the markets clearly are reacting to this uncertainty. That has been really a through line throughout this presidency, one of the many challenges that business leaders have talked about.

But the President a short time ago in the Oval Office explained his thinking behind these new EU tariffs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I just said it's time that we play the game the way I know how to play the game. You know, nobody - they've taken advantage of other people representing this country, and they're not going to do that any longer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So, the President has long thought the European Union, you know, a collection of deep and longstanding U.S. allies have been treating the U.S. unfairly. Unfairly, and clearly he believes have not been negotiating enough or quickly enough on some of these tariffs before that self-imposed July deadline that was coming out of the April deadline when he put a 90-day pause on all the tariffs. So, certainly it has sent the EU scrambling, but that is one of the reasons for all of this. Threatening these tariffs often is the biggest part of President Trump's game. Omar?

JIMENEZ: Keeping track of all those deadlines, at least we're used to deadlines.

Jeff Zeleny, appreciate the reporting as always. Brianna.

ZELENY: You bet.

[15:10:00]

KEILAR: Economist Natasha Sarin is with us now. She was also a counselor to former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Natasha, thanks for being with us. You heard what Trump said. He said in the Oval Office, asked if he was looking for a deal. "I'm not looking for a deal. We've set the deal. It's at 50 percent." What do you make of that?

NATASHA SARIN, ECONOMIST: Well, you know, Brianna, it's kind of like another day, another chapter in the Trump trade chaos, because remember, we were supposed to be in the midst of a 90-day pause and then woke up to Truth Social this morning and 90-day pause no longer. You're in a situation where my colleagues and I at The Yale Budget Lab that I run were up early this morning trying to crunch the numbers about what this is going to mean for the American economy and American consumers.

You're in a situation where prices are going to go up. They were going to go up by about $2,800 per American household as a result of this new 50 percent reciprocal tariff on the EU. They're going to go up by closer to $3,600 per household. The economy is going to be smaller. You're going to have fewer jobs in this country.

And all of this, the question that we all are asking ourselves and what you heard the President there say is he's not looking for a deal. What exactly is he looking for? What is success as a result of this very chaotic environment that makes it impossible for consumers to plan, but also for businesses to plan?

And frankly, this morning for Apple to plan, what exactly it's supposed to be doing with respect to iPhone production in the years to come.

KEILAR: Yes. What is the message? I mean, when we think about the EU, what is the message to all the trading partners, to the markets, to consumers about what these 90-day pauses actually mean and don't mean?

SARIN: I think it's really complicated. And you're in a situation where over the course of the first several months of this administration, tariff policy has moved more than 50 times. And so, it would be one thing if these tariff rates as a result of today's upping of EU's rates are at the highest level that they've been since 1909. So, these are really high tariff rates.

The effective tariff rate is something like 19 percent. It was two and a half percent when Trump took office. And I disagree with tariffs of that size. But even if I didn't, even if I thought this is how we right size trade policy, the idea of doing it in this immensely chaotic way where one set of tariffs are on and then the next day they're off and the next day there's a pause and the next day the pause is broken. It doesn't really make it possible, frankly, for there to be a good faith effort to try and come up with right sizing trade policy in this country in a way that makes you think like you're negotiating with a partner who's stable in any way.

KEILAR: On the Apple threat, Trump insisted in the Oval that, you know, they should - could move manufacturing to the U.S. It's going to be computerized, he called it. I think he meant automated, as we'd heard earlier from one of his cabinet members. What are the barriers to Apple doing something like that?

SARIN: You know, I heard earlier in this segment, if Apple was to move iPhone production to the U.S., the iPhones would triple in cost. It's actually worse than that. Like, Trump is asking Apple to do something that is, frankly, impossible in today's economy. You've heard his Commerce Secretary say, oh, we want people to be screwing the screws in the iPhones here in the U.S.

There isn't a labor market to support people doing those jobs in this country. And there isn't infrastructure or technology to support people doing those jobs in this country. And building that out, if Apple wanted to move 10 percent of iPhone production to the U.S., it would take years and tens of billions of dollars. And by the way, it would require building factories with parts that are also now subject to tariffs that are higher than they've seen at any point in the last century.

So, it is not practical for them to even be considering going down the line of doing this type of investment to be able to build iPhones in this country. And again, why is that an effective use of their efforts? Why are we looking for more expensive iPhones and employing people who were in jobs in this country who, frankly, do not want to do those jobs and shouldn't be doing those jobs in a labor market that is as tight as ours is?

KEILAR: And Trump often ignores realities like that, Natasha. His Treasury Secretary doesn't so often ignore realities like that. Secretary Bessent was asked about those tariffs on Apple, on Fox, and he pivoted straight to talking about vulnerabilities of external production of semiconductors. And so, I wonder if you're looking - I mean, is that what he's - is that what this is really about? Are they asking Apple to do something else?

SARIN: You know, Brianna, it's impossible to try and sort of get into the psychology of what they might be asking them to do without asking them to do it.

[15:15:06]

But I will say that Apple has made moves as a result of concerns that I think are totally important about national security with respect to China, our adversary in the world, has made moves towards shifting production in meaningful ways to countries like India. And now, the sort of message from the administration this morning is actually that move for national security reasons, which you were contemplating, that isn't actually what we're looking for. We're actually looking for you to invest in bringing those jobs here to the U.S.

So, I think part of the market is puzzling over this. We are puzzling over this. Members of the Trump administration don't really seem to be aligned with respect to what exactly the endgame is here. And I think it makes things complicated for not just Tim Cook, but for business leaders around the country and large and small businesses alike.

KEILAR: Yes, it is a moving target for sure. Natasha Sarin, thanks for being with us.

SARIN: Thanks for having me.

KEILAR: Still to come, the latest on the investigation into the deadly private plane crash in a San Diego neighborhood. We're learning it was flying well below where it was supposed to be by hundreds of feet.

And then later, a look at the controversial facial recognition technology that investigators are using in Louisiana to catch those inmates that escaped from a New Orleans jail. We'll have that and much more ahead.

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[15:20:49]

JIMENEZ: Welcome back, everyone. We're learning new details about that deadly plane crash in San Diego, California. A new CNN analysis of the flight path shows the small business jet had been flying 700 feet below the minimum altitude required by FAA standards. Now, moments later, it barreled through some power lines before crashing into a neighborhood and bursting into flames around 4 A.M. Thursday.

Now, the weather and visibility at that time was not great either. Air traffic controllers told this to the pilot, but he didn't seem too concerned. Here's that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For 0955 Zulu with wind calm, visibility one half and indefinite ceiling 200.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, that doesn't sound great, but we'll give it a go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: Joining me now to discuss is CNN Aviation Analyst and former NTSB Managing Director Peter Goelz. Thanks for being here.

Based on what we know so far, even hearing a little bit of that exchange, what sticks out to you most about what we know so far from this crash?

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, his tragic last words were, "Well, we'll give it a go." That's not what you want to hear from your pilot, you know, at the end of a cross-country flight against three time zones at the worst time of decision-making in your circadian rhythm pattern, which is from two o'clock until six a.m. You know, that's not when you're making good decisions.

The right response should have been, I think we'll find an alternative. How can you help me? He was - he came in too low. He clipped power lines running across the ridge, probably two and a half miles out. I've talked to pilots who have flown at Montgomery. They said those power lines are well known and they're dangerous and you've got to stay above them.

I think in the end that this accident is going to be seen as kind of a tragically classic fatigue accident. You know, at this point, we don't even know if there were two pilots on board. We know that the owner had a pilot's license, but we don't know if there was a second one. If it was a single pilot operation through the middle of the night to an unknown destination with tough weather, boy, you're tempting the fates.

JIMENEZ: Yes. You know, we had our aviation correspondent earlier, Pete Muntean, who's a pilot as well. And he talked about this idea of ducking under for pilots. Can you just explain what that is? And do you think that could have been a factor here at all?

GOELZ: Well, you know, you really - if you're flying in the, you know, in the dead of night against time zones in a challenging situation, that's when you really want a copilot. You want someone else sitting next to you who's also skilled to give you - you know, to confirm your decision-making and to make sure that you're making the right decisions.

And oftentimes, pilots get focused in that they want to get there and get it done. This pilot, you know, was given enough information to bring into question whether this was the right choice to try and land at Montgomery. And he made the wrong choice.

JIMENEZ: And, you know, now we're on the other side of this accident, and, you know, the NTSB is looking for invoice - data recorders. But you see on the map that we've been showing that the recorded position of the plane, the crash site, and the airport are pretty much all in a straight line right there. So, yes, we're looking to see what we can learn from the data recorders. But are you able to learn a lot just from the path that we're able to observe this plane going prior to the crash?

GOELZ: Yes. As he started to go into final approach, he drifted lower.

[15:25:01]

And, you know, we don't know what was going on in the cockpit. He was below the minimum level, and we don't know what was going on. It may have a voice recorder; it may not. But clearly, you know, he was in a challenging situation. He was not aware that he was too low. He clipped those power lines, and that was it.

And it's really quite tragic. I mean, my heart goes out to all of the families that lost loved ones.

JIMENEZ: Yes. And went immediately crashing into that neighborhood below.

Peter Goelz ...

GOELZ: Yes.

JIMENEZ: ... really appreciate the time and insight. Thanks for being here.

GOELZ: My pleasure. Thank you.

JIMENEZ: All right. Still to come, as the manhunt continues for five of the 10 men who escaped a New Orleans jail, we're still learning new details about a controversial tool that's being used to find them. That's next.

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