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Trump: Putin "Playing with Fire" with Escalating Attacks on Ukraine; Kremlin Slams Decision by Ukraine's Allies to Lift Ban on Firing Long-Range Missiles at Russia; U.S. Consumer Confidence Improves for First Time Since November; Trump Says E.U. Moving "Quickly" on Trade Talks After He Delayed 50 Percent Tariff Threat on E.U.; Trump Admin to Face Off Against Harvard in Court this Week; Combs' Ex-Assistant Testifies About Incident at Kid Cudi's Home. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 27, 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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[15:01:45]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: A war of words, as President Donald Trump vents his frustration with Russia's president online, saying that Vladimir Putin is playing with fire.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And she says she was threatened on her first day of work. A former employee of Sean "Diddy" Combs testifies at his criminal trial. Her dramatic testimony, including details about how he forced her to take a lie detector test.

And then, there were two. Authorities in New Orleans searching for the last two inmates who escaped from a local jail. One of them has some experience staying one step ahead of police.

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

SANCHEZ: We start this hour with a major shift in tone from President Trump as he grows increasingly frustrated, even furious with Russian President Vladimir Putin's relentless attacks on Ukraine. Look at this social media post that Trump put out today. He lashes out at the Russian leader, warning Putin that he's, quote, "playing with fire." Sources tell CNN the President is now considering new sanctions on Moscow as the Kremlin unleashes multiple days of air attacks on Ukraine, unprecedented air attacks.

Overnight, Russian strikes pounding various parts of the country, killing at least two people, wounding some 16 others, according to Ukrainian officials. Meantime, the Kremlin is lashing out at a decision by Germany allowing Ukraine to fire long-range missiles inside Russian territory, a move backed by other Ukrainian allies, including the United States. The Kremlin calling this dangerous.

We're joined now by CNN's Kevin Liptak.

Kevin, walk us through your new reporting on how Trump is now changing his tune on Putin and the sanctions that he's considering.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. And it's clear that the President is very, very frustrated that his efforts to coax Putin to the negotiating table are so far not bearing any fruit. We're also learning there's a new degree of frustration that Putin and the Kremlin have not yet produced this memorandum of peace that Putin told Trump last week on the phone that he would provide as he works to kickstart these peace talks. So now, the real question, I think, is what Trump will do about all this, because there's really no evidence that Putin, you know, cares what Trump says or thinks about him. It's really all about action.

He did say over the weekend that, yes, absolutely he would be willing to consider new sanctions on Russia. We now understand that their options have been drawn up and that the President could potentially decide whether to take that step in the coming days. But we should note that the President previously has said that the sanctions are on the table, but it's not necessarily clear that he's going to do it. He stopped short of doing that up until this point.

I think the fear among President Trump and his aides is that applying new sanctions could potentially push Putin further away, potentially making it harder to reach a peace agreement.

SANCHEZ: I do wonder, Kevin, as we're hearing that there is this bipartisan bill over in the Senate that seeks to put a 500 percent tariff on any country that purchases Russian fuel, is the White House receptive to that, especially given some of the other tariff juggling that the administration is doing?

[15:05:08]

LIPTAK: They certainly haven't ruled it out, and I think part of what is going to help this effort is that a lot of the participants and sponsors of this bill are allies of President Trump. You have Lindsey Graham, you have Chuck Grassley, who has been encouraging the President to put new sanctions on Russia, obviously the Republican from Iowa.

It was interesting what the President wrote on Truth Social today, because he did sort of implicitly say that, yes, he could be doing more to put pressure on Putin. He says what Vladimir 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, sort of tacitly saying that, yes, he has stopped short of the harshest actions that he could potentially do thus far.

SANCHEZ: And some figures close to the Kremlin have posted in response suggesting that further escalation, even World War III, may be at stake.

We also are joined now by CNN's Alex Marquardt.

Alex, walk us through the significance of Ukrainian allies, specifically Germany, lifting a hold on how far Ukraine could strike into Russia. ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It's exactly what you just mentioned. It's the escalation question. And a lot of the criticism towards the Biden administration was that they wouldn't allow Ukraine to do what they wanted. They wouldn't unleash Ukraine and allow them to use the American weaponry, formidable American and Western weaponry that they had been given to basically do whatever they want.

Now, we're hearing from the German chancellor saying that it's not just the Germans who are going to give the Ukrainians that permission, but he says also the French, the Brits and the U.S. Now, the spokesperson for the State Department was Tammy Bruce, was just asked about this. She did not confirm. So as far as I know, we don't have any U.S. confirmation.

But the U.S. has a very impressive system called ATACMS, which we've talked about a lot for the past few years, that according to Merz is going to be allowed to fire anywhere into Russia. And so that basically just gives the Ukrainians a much longer reach and allows them to do far more damage.

And remember, you know, the Russians are doing a lot of staging, a lot of preparation, a lot of firing from deep inside Russia. And so essentially what it would allow to do - allow the Ukrainians to do is to hit a lot of those very sensitive areas. And that's why we're seeing this angry reaction from the Kremlin.

SANCHEZ: Alex Marquardt, Kevin Liptak, appreciate the reporting. Thank you both. Brianna.

KEILAR: Today, back to the trade war herky-jerky as Europe secures a tariff pause, but a good economic indicator, a key report on consumer confidence fueling some optimism on Wall Street. Stocks are surging on news that consumer confidence improved in May. It's the first monthly gain since November. Markets also rising after President Trump delayed his new 50 percent tariffs on the E.U. And after Europe said it will fast track trade talks with the U.S.

We have CNN Business Editor at Large, Richard Quest with us now.

And Richard, a lot of critical economic data coming out this week that's going to tell us about the impact of the Trump trade war. What are you paying attention to?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR-AT-LARGE: I think the consumer confidence numbers are interesting because it's sort of a soft number as such. It doesn't - it gives us an idea of how people are feeling. And as we saw the row back on China's tariffs, that's a very powerful number, 12.3 percent. You don't see it bounce around by that much.

Now, the other - the problem with this conference board number is it's often as thick as scotch mist and it can disappear quite as quickly. And it's - it tells us that people are feeling better, but they can always disappear at the whiff of the President deciding that he's going to go back to his tariff policy, which we saw, of course, with Europe now is taking the foot off the neck of Europe for the moment. But for how long? That depends, I guess, on what the Europeans come up with.

KEILAR: And, of course, it typically takes years to negotiate a trade deal. How likely is ...

QUEST: Well ...

KEILAR: Sorry, go on.

QUEST: That's - no, no, no, that - I was - I didn't want to be too mealy mouthed, Brianna. I always come on and I sort of say how awful or dreadful or how this is not particularly an encouraging piece of news. But the reality is that you just nailed it, it takes months, if not years, to nail these very complicated treaties. When you're talking about non-tariff barriers, market access, ownership rules, just specific amounts of this, that or the other.

And the big fear is that the administration will go for a headline win. They did that with the U.K. Yes, sure. They got a bit of beef and they got a bit of this and they got a bit of that. And it looks like a deal's been done. But underneath, it's all about we will agree in the future. We will negotiate about that. And that's the fear with the E.U. deal.

Sure, you can put enough baubles on the table to get a deal. But have you got a long lasting, sustainable deal that actually improves the U.S. terms of trade and makes it better for accessing Europe?

[15:10:09]

We won't know that till we see the deal that's done.

KEILAR: Yes, it's a very long engagement. Or maybe it's just one of those promise rings or like a piece of string around the finger in this case, you might say, Richard. All right, Richard ...

QUEST: Exactly. It takes ages.

KEILAR: Yes, it sure does. Great to have you, Richard. Thank you so much.

QUEST: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still to come, President Trump preparing to escalate his funding fight with Harvard University. New details on his latest plan as legal battles play out in court.

And the sex trafficking and racketeering trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs resumes, with a former employee of Combs taking the stand, testifying that he threatened to kill her and rapper Kid Cudi.

Plus, new developments in the search for two remaining escaped inmates from a New Orleans jail after three other escapees are recaptured, bringing the total to eight back now in prison. We'll have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: President Trump is going after Harvard University again today. He's planning to have all remaining federal contracts to Harvard worth about a hundred million dollars canceled, according to sources. And on Thursday, his administration will face off in federal district court with Harvard over his attempt to ban international students from the school. More than a quarter of Harvard students come from outside the U.S. And this week, Trump demanded Harvard turn over their names and countries.

Steven Levitsky is with us now. He's a professor of government at Harvard. He's also the co-author of the book "How Democracies Die."

Professor, thank you so much for being with us.

And I also want to mention you were one of the professors who helped spearhead a letter that hundreds of Harvard professors signed and urged school leaders to take a stand against the Trump administration. Why is that coordinated opposition, as you call it, so important in your view?

STEVEN LEVITSKY, PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, autocrats, and we should be clear, this is - as much as I hate to say it, an autocratic government that we've got in our hands. Autocrats very, very frequently play divide and conquer. They will try to pick off one law firm and depend on the fact that other law firms won't rally in support or go after one CEO or one business or one media entity and rely on the fact that other media entities won't show support for them. And he's done the same thing with universities. The first target of the administration was Columbia University.

And sadly, very few of the universities spoke out in defense of Columbia. And so, it got away with bullying Columbia and turned next to Harvard.

KEILAR: So, I mean, are you seeing then Harvard as the tip of the spear then when it comes to colleges all across the country, of course, many who don't have clout or an endowment like Harvard?

LEVITSKY: Sure. Harvard has got, as you said, it's got more clout and more endowment than any other university in the United States. So, if the Trump administration can successfully bully Harvard, can either get Harvard to surrender or weaken it, then it's demonstrated that it can take on and impose itself on any university in the country.

KEILAR: Your view is that the attack on universities is a very important data point in an attack on America's democratic system. You told the L.A. Times, quote, "We are currently witnessing the collapse of our democracy." Why do you believe that?

LEVITSKY: Well, put it this way, in a democracy, it shouldn't cost you anything to peacefully and legally criticize the government. That's what you do in a democracy. It's only in an authoritarian regime that citizens or leaders of institutions or leaders of organizations or businesses think twice or think three times before speaking out against the government, writing an op-ed or organizing a protest or maybe giving money to an opposition candidate.

When people have to think twice about opposing the government because they fear government retribution against them, then you're living in an environment that's less than fully democratic. This is not to say that we've slid into fascism or anything like that, but the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans, that university presidents, CEOs, editors, journalists, politicians on both sides of the aisle, have to think twice and three times before they criticize or oppose the Trump administration, that means that we've slid out of a fully democratic system.

KEILAR: So, if you see this as a collapse, do you think it's reversible?

LEVITSKY: Oh, yes. One thing, you shouldn't take my - the title of my book, "How Democracies Die," too seriously. Democracies never die entirely. Democracies can be revived. They can be restored.

The United States' slide into authoritarianism is tragic. It's real, but it's pretty modest and it's very much reversible. In fact, I think U.S. society has got more than enough muscle, financial muscle, organizational muscle, skills, talent, to push back successfully and restore our democracy. I think we will.

[15:20:01]

KEILAR: Of course, the Trump - you think we will, that's really interesting.

The Trump administration, of course, looking at Harvard, is saying that this is about anti-Semitism at Harvard, which I should note that Harvard did form a task force to look at, put out a report on findings that there were significant effects to Jewish students after October 7th. Also looked at the effect of - on Muslim students as well, found that both felt very uncomfortable and alienated a lot more detail in the actual report. With that accusation ...

LEVITSKY: And with that, Muslim students felt much more threatened. Muslim - the Trump administration won't say this, but our Muslim students felt much more threatened and less protected than our Jewish students.

KEILAR: With the focus of that by the Trump administration, how do you see that focus? Do you take that as the real focus?

LEVITSKY: No, no. It is obviously a pretext. Look, one thing about authoritarian governments, they always go after universities, always. Left-wing authoritarian governments, centrist authoritarian governments, right-wing authoritarian governments, one thing they all have in common is they don't like universities because universities are centers of dissent. And nobody gets up in the morning and says, I'm going to go after universities and tell the public it's just because I want to, they always come up with a pretext. Sometimes it's anti-terrorism. Sometimes it is anti-communism in many right-wing cases. In this case, the pretext is primarily anti-Semitism. If they didn't use this, then they would find something else. But the idea that the Trump administration, which has within it a number of figures who made openly anti-Semitic statements, worse than anything that I've heard reported at Harvard, the idea that they are doing this to fight anti- Semitism, frankly, it's a joke.

KEILAR: Professor Steven Levitsky, thank you so much. We really appreciate you joining us.

LEVITSKY: Thanks very much for having me.

KEILAR: And still to come, hear why President Trump is threatening to withhold federal funding from California.

Also, some new testimony in the Sean "Diddy" Combs trial, what he allegedly threatened to do to his former assistant, his ex-girlfriend, and another rapper. We have new details coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[15:27:12]

SANCHEZ: We are now in week three of testimony in the Sean "Diddy" Combs' racketeering and sex trafficking trial. And moments ago, the defense questioned Combs' former personal assistant, Capricorn Clark, about accompanying him to the home of rapper Kid Cudi. This is when Combs had recently learned about the rapper dating his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.

KEILAR: That's right. And Clark testified that she doesn't know how Combs and his security guards got into Kid Cudi's home, and that she was praying that Cudi was not inside.

Let's get more now from CNN Anchor and Chief Legal Analyst, Laura Coates, who's with us now from outside of the courthouse. What stood out to you from Clark's testimony so far, Laura?

LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Capricorn Clark's testimony is absolutely riveting. She is going into detail about reminiscing on what happened on the date you just described. Although the cross-examination is trying to undercut her, talking about how some of the statements that she made either to the government or in court were inconsistent.

One real moment here, when she talked about being so afraid for Kid Cudi and Cassie's life when they went to his home, she said her first call was not actually to Cassie Ventura or Kid Cudi, it was to actress Lauren London. The cross was astonished by that. Also, by the notion that she says, she told Kid Cudi and Cassie that Sean "Diddy" Combs had a gun. They locked her into that testimony in order to try to counter what was testified to by Kid Cudi on the stand, and of course, Cassie Ventura to suggest that what she's saying now was somehow distinct or someone got their stories mixed up.

But there's one big moment here. The overall theme of her testimony during the cross-examination was to reveal that she believed that Bad Boy Entertainment and Sean "Diddy" Combs gave what she called the lion's share of attention to Cassie Ventura through her career, and that he had a lot of attention towards her, a lot of resources, but her own drug addiction was what was essentially doing her in and leaving her unable to sustain the momentum.

They also talked about how she essentially changed her ways from being a sweet model to a feisty girlfriend, and that she was not very talented, although quite beautiful. They talked about her nerves being an issue on her live performances.

Why it's all important? Because her testimony talked about that it was Sean "Diddy" Combs that was holding her back with an eye towards keeping her as a sex slave and traffic victim. They also spoke about during the testimony, and this is a really important point, throughout the entirety of it, it seemed as though the witness would have to say what she did not say, although it was contained in the government's notes. The defense is trying to show this jury that what the defense says - that what the prosecution says happened is not actually what she testified to or said to them in over a dozen meetings with the prosecution.

[15:30:03]

There was a lot of moments of having Diddy pass notes over to her, and this was emotional testimony. She could not get ...