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Trump's New Aim at China; Appeals Court Blocks Trump Tariffs; Lisa Bonner is Interviewed about the Combs Trial; NYPD Detectives Questions over Crypto Kidnapping. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired May 30, 2025 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Her true life's work.

SUZY WELCH, AUTHOR, "BECOMING YOU": And then there was this, you know, transformative event where I lost my husband, and he passed away in 2020. And I was like, OK, what's it going to be for me now?

SIDNER (voice over): Her husband, Jack Welch, an American business icon, died from kidney failure. As she grieved, she eventually got a spark, and Welch came up with the class she wished she had in her youth. She called it "Becoming You."

SIDNER: Can you give us a tool, something that people can take away from what you teach on a daily basis, and the book --

WELCH: Yes.

SIDNER: Something we can take away to help us down the path of the area of transcendence?

WELCH: Sometimes we have a lot of trouble admitting to ourselves what kind of life we want because we may have a little, like, oh, wait, I want to be famous. Oh, I'm not going to admit that. Or I want to be extremely rich. I'm not going to admit that either. And so we have a little bit of trouble. And so I have an exercise. I call it "whose life do you want anyway?" And I ask people to write down a list of five people that if I came into their house and I said, I'm the queen of the world, you must trade lives with somebody. Don't fight with me. Choose five people whose lives you would trade in a second. You don't have to know them. They can be living or dead. And write down their names, who they are, what it is that you like about their life, and you can leave one thing out. Look for the patterns.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump woke up this morning and immediately started lashing out at China, accusing Beijing of going back on their -- on their tariff deal. The Treasury secretary now admitting trade talks with China have stalled. The legal battle over those tariffs causing more whiplash for investors and uncertainty for American businesses. And one of those businesses, e.l.f. Beauty, just announced plans to

raise prices because of Trump's tariffs. This hour, the CEO of this global makeup brand will be our guest on the heels of their big acquisition of Hailey Bieber's beauty brand.

And the spelling champion. This year's National Spelling Bee winner is celebrating after a nail-biting comeback. And he will be joining us this morning.

Sara is out today. I'm Kate Bolduan, with John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, just a few minutes ago, President Trump taking new aim at China in his trade war. You'll remember under a deal struck earlier this month, the U.S. and China agreed to lower the sky-high tariffs they had hiked on each other. They agreed to lower them for 90 days while they talked, held negotiations. But now the administration says those talks have stalled.

And just moments ago, the president accused China of, quote, "totally violating" its agreement with the U.S. He added, quote, "so much for being Mr. Nice Guy."

The deal, or the agreement that he's talking about, the United States lowered its tariffs on China from 145 percent, you know, just absolutely sky high, to 30 percent, still very high. China dropped its levies on U.S. goods from 125 percent to 10 percent. But the markets largely like this as long as the U.S. and China were talking and tensions were defused. Is that all gone now?

Let's get to CNN's Alayna Treene at the White House.

You know, we're just about 30 minutes before the markets open. I think people want to know what's happening here.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: No, absolutely. And look, John, our colleagues here at CNN have some great reporting on some of the behind-the-scenes frustrations that have really been boiling up over the past several days as people in the Trump administration believe that China is not living up to the commitments that they made in those talk in Geneva just a couple weeks ago. Again, the first substantial talks really between the United States and China that led to that lowering of those tariffs.

I want to read to you, though, some of what President Donald Trump said directly, because clearly this is a key thing on his mind this morning. He wrote on Truth Social this morning -- well, it was a very lengthy post, so I'll just read some of it for you.

He said, quote, "I made a fast deal with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn't want to see that happen." He said, "because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy. That is the good news. The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, has totally violated its agreement with the United States. So much for being Mr. Nice Guy."

Now, as I mentioned, some of our colleagues have some reporting on the behind the scenes of why the president is posting this. Remember, the past couple days we've seen the Trump administration now take a series of punitive measures against China that includes revoking visas for Chinese students and suspending the sale of some critical technology to Chinese companies. All of that as many Trump administration officials are believing that China is not living up to its commitments.

Specifically, one of those commitments is that the United States had believed that China was going to ease export restrictions of rare earth minerals, an essential part of everything from iPhones and electric vehicles, to big ticket weapons like 535 fighter jets.

[09:05:13]

All to say, China is not doing that. We had -- we heard from Jamieson Greer this morning, the United States trade representative. He was on CNBC. He essentially said that the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance, which is completely unacceptable and has to be addressed. That comes after we heard from the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, as well. He said that he believes the talks are stalled and there could be potentially a call as high up as with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, himself in the coming days.

John.

BERMAN: Yes, I mean, I suppose a big question is, if he's saying no more Mr. Nice Guy, or so much for being Mr. Nice Guy, if he would think about rehiring those tariffs back to the levels they were.

TREENE: Right.

BERMAN: Alayna Treene, at the White House this morning, thank you very much.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: It's also -- joining us right now is CNN legal analyst and former U.S. attorney Michael Moore.

And all of this comes on the heels of a lot of whiplash with relation to Trump's tariffs. Appeals courts. Lower courts. Where are things headed? And that's where the questions begin. What do you think of this decision by the appeals court that just came in, Michael, reinstating Trump's tariffs for now?

MICHAEL MOORE, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, well I'm glad to be with you this morning.

This is just part of the ongoing tariff chaos that's out there. And what you saw was the trade court essentially saying that the tariffs were illegal and that the president had exceeded his authority. So, he couldn't impose these. He didn't have these emergency powers. And, frankly, that an emergency is not an emergency just because the executive says it is.

And so the federal circuit said, wait a minute, let's wait for a couple of weeks and give us time to look at it. There's a lot of hay being made by the administration that this is somehow a major reversal. But -- but, in fact, the court simply did an administrative action to give each side the chance to write their briefs and to make their arguments on whether or not the decision was proper out of the trade court.

So, you know, I -- it's not unexpected. And for people who do this, for lawyers around the world that do this, this is -- this is sort of normal course of business. For everybody else, and especially for the markets, I think you'll see this is the kind of thing that leads to the ongoing chaos that we've seen out of the administration based on these efforts to sort of, you know, namby-pamby (ph) randomly throw these tariffs back and forth in some kind of threat, then back off of them, throw them back in, back off. And that's --that's what leaves us where we are today.

BOLDUAN: Yes, namby-pamby is a -- is a technical legal term. I have heard you use it in court.

MOORE: Yes, that's right. That's right.

BOLDUAN: But President Trump is also in a -- Alayna Treene was talking about how -- what he was posting about this morning. He's also been posting about a previous -- last night, I believe it was, or overnight, calling on the Supreme Court essentially to step in and skip the appeals court. What do you think of that?

MOORE: You know, these cases are all going to ultimately find their way to the Supreme Court. You know, and I think that, you know, whether or not it's on an expedited basis that, frankly, becomes up to the court. That's a little bit like, you know, being able to predict when the fish are going to bite. It's a little bit of art, a little bit of science. And you can look at some past examples to see when it happens.

And so, you know, the court may very well take it up. The problem, frankly, is for the administration is that this court, even though it's made up of a lot of Trump appointees and they've tended to kind of be on the conservative side, the very arguments that Trump is asking and putting forward to the court to support his tariff actions, the court used to strike down some of Biden's actions. Essentially, that the president does not have this power if it's not explicitly given by Congress.

So, you know, he may be, you know, grabbing the dog by the tail, trying to get there too quickly. And -- and he probably should focus on this fight right now in the federal circuit.

BOLDUAN: Well, we -- we also heard from more than one top White House official yesterday that they were looking into other options now to impose tariffs and circumvent the courts. Let me play some of what we heard.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: There are three or four other ways to do it.

There are different approaches that would take a couple of months to -- to put these in place and -- and using procedures that have been approved in the past.

PETER NAVARRO, TRUMP SENIOR COUNSELOR FOR TRADE AND MANUFACTURING: Of course. No, there's no plan B. It's plan A, OK. Plan A encompasses all strategic options. And when we move forward, we had a full view of what the battlefield looks like.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: That leading many to wonder if there are other options, then why didn't they employ these options in the first place? I mean does that admission, especially when you hear that from Kevin Hassett, three or four options that we're already looking at, does that have legal implications?

MOORE: I think it does. You know, and frankly plan A has only been to -- to try to raise the power of the executive. That's been the plan A, just to go at it with full guns a blazing. And that has not worked in courts across the country, even by Trump appointed judges.

[09:10:03]

So, I think the administration is seeing that.

But to suggest and to now admit the administration is saying, look, there are other things we could have done and maybe we should have done. There are ways around this. And one of those, frankly, would be working with Congress. Congress, under the Constitution, has the power to levy tariffs and taxes. I mean that's what Congress does. They control the purse and the -- and the taxation powers.

You know, that's -- that's -- then they should go back to that place. But courts listening to this argument will say, well, wait a minute, how is the administration harmed by, you know, leaving this -- the -- the trade court order in place if, in fact, you've got a way around it. You know, so you may -- you can't abuse and -- and -- and extend your powers unlawfully and claim then that you're going to be hurt if, in fact, you didn't even have to extend those powers in the first place. And that's -- and that's where they're going to find themselves as they're -- as they're arguing either to the federal circuit or to the Supreme Court.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And why declare an emergency and lean on that if there are other avenues -- if there are other avenues to go around it?

MOORE: Exactly.

BOLDUAN: Michael, it's always great to see you. Thank you so much. Not a namby-pamby ever. Really appreciate it.

MOORE: It's great to be with you.

BOLDUAN: John.

BERMAN: Which is a legal term.

BOLDUAN: That's what I said.

BERMAN: Happening now, court has resumed in the federal racketeering and sex trafficking trial of Sean Combs. One of his alleged victims and former employees returns to the stand today. The woman known to the public as Mia is expected to testify for most of the day. She's already told the court and the jury that Combs sexually assaulted and raped her. She also backed up testimony by Combs' former girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, about alleged violence and abuse by Combs, and recalled one time when she feared for Ventura's life, saying, quote, "I just saw him pick her up, and I just thought he is actually going to kill her. And he slammed her head into the corner of the bed."

Now, it's not clear if Combs will take the stand in his own defense.

CNN spoke with his longtime rival, Suge Knight, from prison, who had this to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUGE KNIGHT: I feel if he do tell his truth, he really would walk. If Puffy go up there and say, hey, I might have did weirdo things, I did all the drugs. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't in control of my life at the time. And he can -- he can humanize his own self and the jury might give him a shot. But if they keep him sitting down, it's like he's scared to face the music.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: With us now is Lisa Bonner, attorney and former litigator.

We'll get to Suge Knight in just a second, but I want to talk about Mia first. That's how she is known to the public. A former assistant of Sean Combs who testified that she experienced violence at the hands of Combs and sexual assault at the hands of Combs.

How does her testimony get to the sex trafficking and racketeering parts of this case?

LISA BONNER, ATTORNEY AND FORMER LITIGATOR: Well, good morning.

That's a very good question. And Mia was a very effective witness in terms of corroborating a lot of what we've heard from Cassie Ventura about the control element. And that is key in the sex trafficking because it -- we have to make sure that the plaintiff -- that -- that Cassie was trafficked by force, fraud or coercion. She did not have, according to Mia, and according to a lot of the other people that we've heard testify this week, that she was not free to leave. When she did try to leave, that -- that they were sent -- he sent his security guards in and he tried to retrieve her. We talked a lot about that. We also heard Mia testify about the threats from failure to release

her music. That -- that she would not be getting her allowance. That she would not be -- that she would be kicked out of her apartment if she did not want to participate in these freak offs, for example. That all of these things would be held against her in terms of bribery, in terms of just not participating in this. And so, she was a very effective witness in terms of the control element. So, I thought that was very important.

And another thing that we heard from -- from Mia was the fact of the ketamine. That she was forced to do ketamine. And that is one of the elements of the RICO, in terms of the possession of narcotics with the intent to distribute. So, that was a very powerful testimony as well.

And so they fleshed out a lot of that narrative yesterday with Mia. So, I -- I thought that she was a very effective witness. She was very emotional. And I thought that she just really nailed it and -- and hit it home.

BERMAN: And we'll get more from her today.

I have to ask you about this really remarkable conversation that our Laura Coates had last night with Suge Knight, who -- who's had issues with Sean Combs in the past and is himself behind bars right now. So, you know, one needs to take with many grains of salt the advice you're getting from someone behind bars who may not like you to begin with.

But he said that he thinks that Combs needs to testify. Needs to show -- tell the jury himself, in the words that -- that -- that -- that Suge Knight used was, you know, I may be a weirdo, essentially, but this was not assault, or this was not sex trafficking.

[09:15:03]

What's the bar, do you think, for Combs to testify in his own defense, or any defendant for that matter?

BONNER: Well, I have two schools of thought on this. One, as a former litigator. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. The defendant does not have to present a case. And so, that is something that is very important to really establish that he does not need to take the stand. And when you are doing that, you open yourself up to cross- examination to prior bad acts. So, I do believe that they need to do everything that they can to keep him off the stand.

Now, as an entertainment lawyer who works in this industry and has had experience with these type of -- of people, if anyone would testify, it would be Sean Combs. But I think that is the most ridiculous thing that he could do in terms of trying to get up there and humanize himself because it just -- he doesn't gain anything from that. But knowing what we've known and seeing what we've seen from him and his conduct prior, I just -- it's just not a good idea. And the defense, like I said, needs to do everything that they can to keep him off of that stand. There's nothing good that can come of that. From the cross-examination will be brutal. The prior bad acts will be brought into play. And that is just not something that I think will flesh out well for Sean on the stand.

So, I think he needs to just let his -- his defense lawyers just do the case and stay seated.

BERMAN: Possible, possible bad advice from Suge Knight on that front.

BONNER: Very bad advice.

BERMAN: Lisa Bonner, we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you very much.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: A bizarre twist in the already bizarre case of the alleged kidnaping and torture of a man for his bitcoin password. Now, two NYPD detectives are being questioned about the plot.

And Hailey Bieber and e.l.f, cosmetics just inked $1 billion beauty deal. And we're going to speak to e.l.f. Beauty -- e.l.f. Beauty's CEO about that monster acquisition and the announcement that they just made about President Trump's tariffs.

And a hiker in Alaska escaped unscathed after being pinned under a 700 pound boulder for hours. The details on this incredible rescue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:21:23]

BERMAN: All right, new details into the investigation of the kidnaping and torture case in New York that targeted a cryptocurrency investor. Police allege that two men held this person captive for days, all trying to get his bitcoin password.

Now, law enforcement sources confirm that two NYPD detectives are being questioned in connection with this case. It's unclear what if they -- what they knew, if anything, about the crime.

Let's get much more on this. We are joined by CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller.

Why do they want to talk to these cops?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So, let's start with the headline. Mayor Eric Adams, the mayor of the city of New York's personal bodyguard, one of them, drove the victim after picking him up at the airport to the house of horrors, where he would be tortured for 17 days. That's the headline. Now you peel it back.

BERMAN: And what? I mean I -- I'm just -- I'm just confused. So, one of these guys provided security for someone involved here?

MILLER: So, John Waltz, the main defendant charged with orchestrating this plot to torture Mark, the victim, to get his password, to get what we are told was $10 million worth of crypto behind his account, hired a security firm. The security firm supplied two detectives who were working off duty, who have experience in executive protection. One of them from the mayor's detail.

Now, the mayor's detail is a pretty large affair in New York City. That's about 25 detectives.

BERMAN: Yes.

MILLER: This -- one of the two detectives was one of them. Their story, according to someone I spoke to last night who had a conversation with them, was, we worked for a private security company. They said this guy's a big CEO. He needs a driver and security. Be available with the car. If he has you pick somebody up, you pick them up. And that they don't know anything about it.

From NYPD internal affairs division standards, they're going to want to know, did you get into the house? What did you see? What did you hear? Did you witness any of this going on? Did you report it? Obviously not. They're going to want to dive deep into this story and find out, what did they know? When did they know? Did they know anything?

BERMAN: What are the holes right now that investigators see in this investigation? What more are they trying to find out in general?

MILLER: Well, you've got people swirling around it. Among them, these two detectives.

BERMAN: Yes.

MILLER: But you've also got the main defendant's personal assistant. She has been brought in, taken into custody, then released with a deferred prosecution. You have another female potential suspect involved who was in and out of the house. As I am told by sources, they played good cop, bad cop. Sometimes the two males who were charged were torturing him in the basement trying to get the password. And sometime the two females were saying, listen, we can work this all out, and other things were going on.

So, they've got to go through everybody's phones, everybody's computers, everybody's text messages to figure out who played what role, not just based on what they say, but how they were communicating. And that's going to be a lot of work.

BERMAN: A lot of work. A lot of twists in this case.

John Miller, great to see you. Thank you very much.

MILLER: Thanks.

BERMAN: So, the beauty brand e.l.f. says it is raising prices because of tariffs. What this means for the company and its future.

Young minds, big dreams, and a lot of pressure. The winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. How he managed to achieve victory.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:29:21]

BOLDUAN: New this morning, President Trump lashing out at China, accusing Beijing on social media this morning of, quote, "totally violating its agreement" with the U.S. and its pause of tariffs for 90 days to work out a deal. A broader deal. Also, yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted that trade talks with China are, in his words, quote, "a bit stalled."

Major retailers are watching all of this very closely. Stock futures right now, as you can see, pointing downward with minutes to go until the opening bell.

And also this, Gap, one of the world's largest clothing companies, just announced Trump's tariffs could cost the company, if they remain in place, up to $150 million this year.

[09:30:04]

Another company that's keeping a very close eye on all of this whiplash is budget