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Consumer Sentiment Improves; RFK Jr. Pulls COVID Vaccine Recommendation For Children, Pregnant Women; Trump Lashes Out at Putin; Trump Targets Harvard University. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired May 27, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Harvard won't bend, and now President Trump is preparing to direct the government not to pay. Sources say the administration is set to cancel $100 million in federal contracts with the school.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, Trump says that Vladimir Putin is playing with fire after Russia unleashes on Ukraine. Sources tell CNN the president is so frustrated with these latest attacks that he could move ahead with new sanctions on Russia. What does that mean for peace talks?

And a major change for COVID vaccinations, as HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says this shot will no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women.

We're following this new guidance and these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: President Trump is lashing out at Vladimir Putin again today while issuing new threats against the Kremlin.

Just moments ago, in a social media post, he wrote: "What Putin doesn't realize is that, if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean really bad. He's playing with fire."

Sources tell CNN the president is now considering new sanctions on Moscow as he grows more frustrated over the Kremlin's escalating attacks on Ukraine. This is happening after another wave of Russian strikes overnight. They pounded numerous parts of the country. And Ukrainian officials say at least two people were killed and 16 were wounded.

In the meantime, Moscow is blasting a decision by Germany and other Ukrainian allies, including the U.S., to lift a ban on firing long- range missiles into Russia. That's a move that allows Ukraine to strike military targets that are much deeper inside of Russia. It's a decision that the Kremlin is calling dangerous.

CNN's Alayna Treene is with us now from the White House.

Alayna, what are you learning about Trump's growing frustration with Putin?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, it's clear, Brianna, there really has been a shift in tone and rhetoric and also just private frustrations that the president is feeling when it relates to Russians, specifically Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Look, I think it's clear that the president so far has been hesitant to put any sort of sanctions and pressure of sanctions and economic pressure really on Russia through this entire process, because, privately, he's noted that he believes that doing so could actually push Russia farther away from the negotiating table.

Thus far, he's really been trying to do as much as he can to fulfill his campaign promise of bringing both Russia and Ukraine together to find some sort of off-ramp to this war and ultimately a cease-fire. But, increasingly, both he and his closest advisers are recognizing that perhaps Putin is not necessarily living up to what he's been telling Trump behind closed doors.

And people are growing increasingly unsure of whether or not he's actually ready to strike some real sort of deal to end this war with Ukraine. And, because of that, we're learning now behind the scenes that he is considering potentially wanting to place sanctions on Russia and try to kind of up the ante with them and show President Putin that he's very serious about this.

Of course, this comes as we know that many of the United States' European allies and even some people here in the United States, people like Senator Lindsey Graham, have really been pressuring and trying to influence this administration to do just that, to put sanctions on Russia and try to force their hand.

Now, I do think it's very interesting to see how the president has been talking about these most recent attacks from Russia on Ukraine, because the way that the president put it, particularly in that TRUTH Social post today when he said, "Putin doesn't realize that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia," he's saying that he thinks Putin has gone crazy -- he said that this weekend in a separate post.

I mean, it's clear that the president is starting to kind of lose patience with Russia. And I know from my conversations with several Trump administration officials that he really did believe that he would be able to make more progress at this point, just so many months now into his second term.

And so, really, I think the next few days are going to be pretty critical to learning whether or not the president is actually going to move forward and try to put this pressure of sanctions on Russia or if he will continue to kind of wait and see if he can still try to get any sort of deal with both of these countries to come together for an ultimate cease-fire -- Brianna.

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KEILAR: Alayna Treene, live for us at the White House, thank you -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Let's talk about these latest developments with retired General Wesley Clark. He's a former NATO supreme allied commander.

General Clark, great to see you, as always.

With these stepped-up attacks over recent days, what would you say is Russia's immediate objective on the battlefield?

WESLEY CLARK, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Russia's main objective is to continue to pressure, try to break the government of Ukraine, break the will of the people to continue to resist.

At the same time, it's pushing very hard in the north, in the center. And the ultimate objective, of course, is in the south to sweep across the coast of the Black Sea and take Odesa. And that's what their objective would be for, let's say, September, October, if they are successful in breaking through Ukrainian lines and drawing off the reserves into the north.

SANCHEZ: What would you say are the practical implications of having Germany and other Ukrainian allies lift these restrictions on Kyiv to fire long-range missiles into Russia for the first time? Could that slow down the Russian advance?

CLARK: I think the lifting of the restrictions is an important signal psychologically. I think it's also marginally important, provided the United States is providing the intelligence to accurately target these long-range strikes.

How many they are, what the inventory is, and what the impact remains to be seen. But the way to make greater impact is to surge more U.S. artillery in, small arms, and the other items that Ukraine desperately needs right now.

SANCHEZ: The administration so far has floated the idea of additional sanctions. And there is a bipartisan bill in the Senate proposing a 500 percent tariff on any country that is buying Russian energy right now.

Do you see that financial disincentive as enough to sway Vladimir Putin toward the negotiating table?

CLARK: Seems unlikely that that kind of a tariff can go in and go in effectively against countries like India and Gulf states who are involved in -- directly or indirectly in the Russian oil trade.

But it's an important step, and it's very important for the president at this point, after five to six weeks of expressing frustration and threatening sanctions, to move ahead and do something. So, whether it's that particular set of sanctions or something else, it's very important at this time that he take concrete action.

This is not going to harm the prospect of negotiations. It's going to incentivize them.

SANCHEZ: You mentioned bolstering Ukraine's ability to defend itself.

I wonder, when you hear that Ukraine's air defenses overnight intercepted 43 Russian drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles, what is Ukraine's current aerial defense capacity? How long can they sustain that kind of defense before needing extra ammunition?

CLARK: Well, they need it. They need it right now.

First of all, they need additional Patriot missiles, and they need a couple more Patriot batteries to go in to protect. But what's happening is, the Russian drones are getting more sophisticated. They're sending in decoy drones. The Shaheds are flying higher. They have different guidance systems, so they're not as easily jammed.

So all of this demands a response by Ukraine. Some of the response is of different artillery systems directed against the drones, using the F-16s and other aircraft more effectively against the drones. More Patriot, IRIS-T and other anti-aircraft missile systems from our allies can be sent in.

But the point is, it's a dynamic battlefield. And Mr. Putin hasn't slacked off. He's doing everything he can, I think, to intensify this, while at the same time posturing forces to be prepared to go into Belarus, through Belarus and into Lithuania or Northeast Poland by autumn. That's the threat.

SANCHEZ: Wow.

General Wesley Clark, always great to get your point of view. Thanks for joining us.

CLARK: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: We're also following breaking news this afternoon.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the COVID vaccine will no longer be among the recommended vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women.

KEILAR: Yes, he posted on X this morning that the move was common sense, that it is good science.

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CNN medical correspondent Meg Tirrell is following this story.

Walk us through the decision and the implications here, Meg.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, guys, there's a lot of disagreement from the scientific and public health community with those statements from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and this recommendation as a whole.

The implications, they say, could be confusion over who these are recommended for and how well they work and how safe they are as well, as insurance implications. So it may be that only people who can afford vaccines can actually end up getting them.

And this is a continuation of changes in approaches to vaccines from the U.S. federal government that we saw last week with the FDA changing its framework for approving updated COVID vaccines for the new season, essentially in a way that might make them only available to the elderly and to people with underlying conditions.

We should note they included pregnant people among folks with underlying conditions in that announcement last week, of course, this week now saying that pregnant women and healthy kids are no longer recommended to get COVID-19 vaccines.

Now, this is counter to data available from the CDC, which notes on its Web site that maternal vaccination, so getting a vaccine during pregnancy, has been shown to reduce the risk of COVID-related hospitalization by 54 percent among infants under 3 months old. So it protects newly born babies and it also protects pregnant mothers.

ACOG, which is the association -- the College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, say that they're concerned and extremely disappointed by this recommendation. And they note COVID vaccination is both safe during pregnancy and protects both patients and infants.

In terms of vaccination for children, experts are concerned about this as well. CDC data show that COVID vaccinations during 2023 and 2024 reduced the risk of kids going to urgent care or the E.R. by 50 to 70 percent in the two to six months after vaccination, guys.

So there's a lot of concerns about what this is going to mean for people's access and also just confusion and confidence in vaccines overall -- guys.

SANCHEZ: And, Meg, is this an unusual way for vaccine recommendations to be changed?

TIRRELL: Yes, that's another thing that experts are pointing out this morning. And this is a one-minute-long video posted on X by the HHS secretary.

We did not see a representative from the CDC in that video. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was flanked by the FDA commissioner and the director of the NIH. Typically, this is CDC's purview. And while we don't have an acting director of the CDC, usually, these recommendations go through their outside committee of advisers, the ACIP, where we're not seeing involvement here.

So there are a lot of questions, even potential legal questions, about the way that this was done as well.

KEILAR: All right, Meg, thank you for taking us through that. And happening now, U.S. stocks surging after President Trump said

today the E.U. has agreed to move faster on trade talks. Wall Street then -- you saw stocks tumble last Friday when the president reignited his trade war by threatening a 50 percent tariff on the E.U. Two days later, he delayed his E.U. tariff threat until July 9.

This week, brand-new data could give a clearer picture of the impact to President Trump's unpredictable trade war and policy changes. First out today, this closely watched survey that found consumer confidence in the U.S. improved for the first time since November, a much-needed boost coming after last month's survey showed consumer confidence falling to its lowest level since the early days of the COVID pandemic.

Tim Stenovec is with us now. He's the co-host of "Bloomberg Businessweek Daily."

Tim, thanks so much for being with us.

So we look at this number, that's a big boost, 12.3 points, consumer confidence in just a month. Can we put a lot of stock in this, or is this just a, whew, China tariffs averted kind of sentiment?

TIM STENOVEC, CO-HOST, "BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK": Well, the part about China tariffs averted is a really important point, Brianna, because the Conference Board actually came out and said exactly that.

This is a survey that half of the respondents actually answered before May 12, which was the day that the president came out and gave that 90-day pause to those China tariffs. And then the other half was after that. And what respondents actually said was, tariffs are still top of mind.

And the Conference Board actually said, we saw marked improvement in the way that people answered these questions after May 12 as a result of this pause. So, certainly, it's top of mind for consumers out there.

KEILAR: So, when we're talking -- consumers are obviously very concerned that prices are going to increase. They haven't felt the full effect of what we're expecting though, right?

But what we do know is that prices are going to increase. We're hearing this from Walmart, Mattel, Shein, Temu, Best Buy, all -- a bunch of retailers who have made this clear that they are not going to continue to eat the cost of what is still a pretty big China tariff or even these baseline tariffs with other trading partners.

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So, when that does kick in here kind of soon, then what is it going to mean for consumer confidence in the economy?

STENOVEC: Yes, that's a really good question.

I think the important point here is that we're already hearing from companies. You mentioned Walmart, for example, last week saying on its earnings call that it can only absorb so much of these tariffs. And when they do work through inventory that they have right now, those prices will indeed go up.

At the same time, you do have the average tariff rate, according to our team at Bloomberg economics, really around 13 percent right now. That's up from a year ago, where it was closer to just about 2.4 percent. So think about that from the perspective of a consumer.

The average rate on imports coming into the U.S. is up more than 10 percent -- 10 percentage points from last year. That's a very big difference. A lot of analysts say, yes, it takes months to work its way through the system. We saw an increase in imports ahead of these tariffs taking effect.

So companies are still working through that inventory. But other observers out there say, make no mistake, we will indeed see prices move higher when those goods come into the U.S. that have higher tariffs on them. Companies can only eat so much. And if the companies don't eat at all, consumers will eat some, and certainly shareholders will eat some as well.

KEILAR: And I know we're on the edge of our seats, Tim, for like every indicator that's coming out. We feel that way today.

STENOVEC: Yes.

KEILAR: We're going to continue that way at the end of the week here. There's more indicators coming out from the Commerce Department. You have got the second estimate of GDP, household spending, so important.

What are you looking for?

STENOVEC: Well, certainly, we will get this week PCE, which is the Fed's preferred measure of inflation. And, remember, the Fed has this dual mandate, stable prices and maximum employment. So that one's certainly important.

On the maximum employment side, we're just a little over a week away from hearing from the department about the latest payrolls report. That comes out next Friday. So that will give us a good idea. One little tidbit that we got in the consumer sentiment data earlier today was that, even though sentiment improved so much from last month, the way that people think about the job market actually got worse in this case.

So the concern that people have about actually finding a good job out there is still present. And if we start to see cracks in the labor market, that's certainly going to be an issue.

KEILAR: Wow. We will be looking for that.

All right, Tim Stenovec, great to have you. Thank you so much.

STENOVEC: Thank you. KEILAR: Still ahead: President Trump is upping the stakes in his

fight with Harvard. The president is planning to direct federal agencies to cancel all contracts with the prestigious university. We will take a closer look at the fallout.

SANCHEZ: Plus, a former assistant for Sean "Diddy" Combs takes the witness stand.

She could be a crucial witness in corroborating significant claims about the music mogul -- this and much more coming your way on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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SANCHEZ: Right now, every contract the federal government keeps with Harvard University is on the chopping block. Sources tell CNN that President Trump is set to direct government agencies to terminate all of them.

These are contracts worth roughly $100 million, marking the latest swipe for the administration in what's become a heated legal battle. Earlier, the judge who blocked Trump's efforts to ban international students from the Ivy League school held her first hearing since making that ruling, setting the stage for a key courtroom showdown on Thursday.

Today, Harvard's president suggested that Trump is not only hurting the university, but also all Americans.

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ALAN GARBER, PRESIDENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Why cut off research funding? Sure, it hurts Harvard, but it hurts the country. They are paying to have that work conducted. Shutting off that work does not help the country, even as it punishes Harvard. And it is hard to see the link between that and, say, antisemitism.

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SANCHEZ: Let's discuss with Alison Frank Johnson, a history professor at Harvard.

Professor, thanks so much for joining us.

I want to get your response to what the government is alleging here. They are accusing Harvard of harboring antisemitism, of lacking a diversity of viewpoints, and of protecting students who are hostile to American values. How do you respond to those accusations?

ALISON FRANK JOHNSON, HISTORIAN PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, I think the accusations are baseless.

To the extent that Harvard is an institution in the world that we live in, the world that we live in is full of bias. It's full of bigotry. It's full of discrimination of all kinds. Harvard is not immune to conflicts over a wide variety of ideas about what constitutes fair and decent disagreement and what constitutes unfair, rude, uncivil, or bigoted speech.

And we have to manage those disagreements just like any other complex institution. The idea that Harvard is harboring un-American values or that Harvard is unsafe for any particular body of students, Americans or international students, is simply untrue.

SANCHEZ: When it comes to managing those tensions, as you describe them, President Garber acknowledged to NPR that some students and faculty at the university are afraid to speak openly, especially when -- he says, when they have unpopular views.

There was a recent survey done of students at the university. More than 90 percent of Muslim students and more than 60 percent of Jewish students said they were afraid there would be consequences for simply expressing their views. I wonder if you have experienced that and whether you think the university needs some kind of structural change to address it.

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FRANK JOHNSON: Even when I was invited to come on this program, I have to confess that I have second thoughts about speaking publicly, not because I am afraid of my colleagues who might disagree with me -- and I certainly have colleagues who frequently do disagree with me, and they let me know that -- or that students won't take my classes, but because I'm afraid of being targeted by the administration of the government, the country that I live in, because they don't like my speech, right?

So I think it's important to distinguish between students who may disagree with one another in ways that they think are rude or that they think involve social shunning, and actual persecution of people who have ideas that the government doesn't like, right?

It's really critical that we protect our First Amendment free speech, free expression rights, and that includes the rights of people at Harvard to have opinions that the U.S. president doesn't like. That poses a much greater threat to us than our ability to manage our disagreements with one another, which I actually, honestly, think is fairly robust and really -- it's -- it works pretty well.

SANCHEZ: To the point about the federal government trying to have, I will say generously, a pulse of what the student body and what the faculty is experiencing and wishing to express at Harvard, the president has argued that, in his eyes, some of the harassment that students have reported has to do with the University of refusing to discipline students that he sees as hostile.

He describes them as radicalized lunatics, and that's part of the reason he's asking Harvard to audit its students and faculty for their ideological leanings. Given what you just shared, I wonder what you think is at stake for Harvard if they conduct that audit and hand over the results of what their students and faculty are thinking, what their political leanings are to the federal government.

FRANK JOHNSON: Well, I hope that it's absolutely out of the question that they do so, and I think that it's clearly illegal that they're being asked to divulge that sort of information.

Harvard is not a university, nor should any university be controlled by the federal government. I feel fairly confident that President Trump would label me a lunatic, just based on what I have said on this program, without reading a single word that I have written or any of my research.

All that one needs to do to garner that title from him is disagree with anything that he has said. So, it is absolutely essential that the university push back, as it is doing, against this incredible overreach from a government that wants to be able to determine who gets to attend our leading universities, who gets to teach at them, and what ideas they get to share.

And, to be clear, they're targeting Harvard right now, but this is not about Harvard. This is about independent universities, independent scholarship, and independent science in the United States.

SANCHEZ: Alison Frank Johnson, we have to leave the conversation there. We appreciate you sharing your perspective.

FRANK JOHNSON: Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Still to come: Three escapees from that jailbreak in New Orleans are back in police custody after a dramatic high-speed chase. Coming up, we have new details about their capture and those other two inmates that are still on the loose.

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