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Instagram Video Appears to Show Escaped Louisiana Inmate; Ukraine Strikes Russia-Crimea Bridge with Underwater Explosives; Canadian Wildfires Creating Poor Air Quality in U.S. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired June 03, 2025 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

RICK NEWMAN, SENIOR COLUMNIST, YAHOO FINANCE: ... after he hears from countries, maybe he will go back and reimpose those reciprocal tariffs. Maybe he won't. Maybe he will create a new deadline.

So that July 9 is the day we're all looking forward to see what do these countries come up with, but really what does Trump do in return? Are we going to get back to those, you know, much higher tariffs than we have now? Is it going to be country by country?

Is it going to be product by product? Is anybody ever going to be able to figure out exactly what's going on here? So Trump may like uncertainty, as you mentioned, Erica, businesses hate it.

And the longer this goes on, I mean, you know, we've had a let's not knowing what's going to happen. If this goes on for six months, 12 months, without a doubt, you're going to see a big slowdown in the economy. And that's the recession scenario that us economists are worried about, where businesses just stop investing because they don't know what's going to happen in six or 12 months.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Rick Newman, good to see you. Thank you.

NEWMAN: Thanks, guys.

HILL: Just ahead here, a video surfaces online of a man claiming to be one of the fugitives from that New Orleans jailbreak. What he is now revealing about the escape and why he's pleading for help from some very well-known figures.

[13:35:00]

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HILL: Right now, law enforcement officials are looking into an Instagram post that appears to show one of the fugitives who broke out of that New Orleans jail last month. So in the video, the man identifies himself as Antoine Massey, declares his innocence, and is pleading for help.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: This video has since been taken down, but it could provide clues about Massey's whereabouts. He and another inmate have eluded police since the May 16th jail break. All the other escapees have been captured.

CNN's Ryan Young joins us now with the latest. So Ryan, what are you learning about this video that got uploaded?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris and Erica, I never thought 18 days later, we'd still be talking about this story and the fact that they were able to make this run. In the video, he says someone let them out of jail, that they didn't escape. Someone let them out.

But look, he goes on to say that he's innocent of some of the crimes. But before I go too far, let's take a listen to the rantings that were put online.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTOINE MASSIE, ESCAPED PRISONER: What I'm saying, when I get back in custody, I'm asking y'all please to come and help me. You know what I'm saying? I'm asking the world to let y'all know I'm not a raper, man. I'm not none of that. None of that. I'm a good person.

My name is Antoine Massey. I'm asking for help. I was one of the ones that was let out of Orleans Parish jail on May the 16th or May the 15th, 2025. So, please, Meek Mills, Donald Trump, Lil' Wayne, please help me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: He's asking for Donald Trump for help. And one of the things that stood out to me is not being a street person. That's something he he wanted to make clear.

And then on top of that, he says he's not guilty of the rape that he's being accused of. But all this to say, you have to understand there's two men who are on the run. It's $50,000 reward right now if someone turns them in.

So obviously, the heat's getting turned up. But when you have an image like this appear online, you know that they're able to do digital forensics. They're able to look at what kind of phone it was, where he may have posted it from.

So that may give them a clue to what state he is in while he's having this conversation. He's obviously getting some sort of help. So that is the big part of this.

And you think about the crimes they've been charged with and the idea that their faces have been plastered all over the media for four or five different states and across this country. They know the Marshal Service are trying to get them. And at the same time, this story continues to take twists and turns, ones that you almost can't believe.

Now he's back on social media. One thing an investigator told us before is they knew the older ones were going to be the hardest ones to catch. And so far, that is playing out. HILL: Well, speaking of, he is one of two, right, escapees who have not yet been recovered. What about the other one who's out there?

YOUNG: Yes, Derek Groves is the one that a lot of folks have described as a bad dude. He was convicted of a double murder. There are people who have high interest in trying to find him.

We know the U.S. Marshal Service has put in extra resources into that area. And they have other people who are trying to search for him because you do have bounty hunters in that area as well. So this is a very intense manhunt at this point.

SANCHEZ: Brian Young, thanks so much for the latest.

Still to come, Ukraine hitting a vital bridge that connects Russia to Crimea with underwater explosives just days after it launched a drone attack on Moscow's fleet of nuclear-capable bombers. This story next.

[13:40:00]

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SANCHEZ: Today, Ukrainian officials are saying that they have hit another significant Russian asset, releasing this video of an explosion targeting the $3.7 billion Kerch Bridge, which connects occupied Crimea to Russia. Ukraine's security service says its agents planted more than 2,400 pounds of explosives underwater in an operation that lasted several months. This is the third time that Ukraine has attacked the bridge since the war began.

And it comes just two days after Ukraine's remarkable Spiderweb operation. Remember, Ukraine says that drone attack mission hit 41 long-range bomber jets at multiple airbases, some of them thousands of miles inside of Russia.

Joining us now to discuss is retired U.S. Army Major Mike Lyons. Major Lyons, thanks so much for sharing your afternoon with us. So why has this bridge linking Russia and Crimea become such a key target?

MAJ. MIKE LYONS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, it's a major logistical supply chain for the Russians bringing troops and material inside of Crimea. Crimea is really the reason why this whole invasion started. It's the must-have part of land that is in Ukraine that houses the Black Sea Fleet, the warm water port that the Russian Navy uses to try to project power throughout the world.

[13:45:00]

So Crimea was always the most important aspect there. And this bridge attaches it to Russia proper. And so that's why, as Ukraine has tried to drop it in the past, Russia quickly rebuilds it because it's that important.

SANCHEZ: As Russian forces are pressing into portions of Ukraine, negotiations are still happening behind the scenes. I wonder what you make of some of the ceasefire options that Russia put forward in its peace memorandum. There are really two options here. Neither of them seem tenable for Kyiv.

LYONS: No, none of them really are. They're the maximalist objectives that Russia had from the beginning of this war. And they're not acceptable on any level.

And as long as the Ukraine government can stay out in front with more creative military tactics like Operation Spiderweb, I mean, just incredible to think this is the first drone swarm we've seen to be effective now.

There's this principle of mass that describes warfare. And in the past, it's been tanks and infantry and aircraft doing certain things. And now Ukraine has brought this new aspect to the table, and that's drones. And what they've done is, from a cheap perspective, is to strike deep into Russia, go after strategic targets, have a psychological advantage over them right now. So if you're -- go back to the negotiations.

Right now, Ukraine thinks it's got more in the way of keeping this fight going, getting more allies on its side. I think Russia clearly is on its heels right now.

SANCHEZ: When you talk about the innovative and disruptive nature of that Operation Spiderweb, do you imagine that something like that could be carried out on air bases here in the United States, that someone could take these sort of relatively inexpensive drones and strap them with explosives and just send them in to destroy American planes?

LYONS: Absolutely, Boris, no question. I think military planners cleared their desks over the weekend as they saw this take place. And to come up with new and more creative air defense platforms to protect air assets that are on the ground here.

In the past, you used to hit a missile with a missile. It was like one-to-one. But I think you're going to see now -- you know, try to take out one-to-many is much more difficult.

But there's no question that we have to be thinking, for example, of Chinese containers that are off the shore of the United States. They could be carrying these kinds of weapons platforms. And I guarantee there'll be more than just 100 of them.

What if they deploy 10,000 of them or so? So that's the threat that exists right now, I think -- and this is maybe what the president was thinking about with Golden Dome, about trying to protect us.

But it's not going to be the one-off ICBM coming in. It's going to be the drone swarm that could come from our enemies that we've got to be more creative, more creative in this space of how we're going to defend.

SANCHEZ: Major Mike Lyons, great to get your perspective, as always.

LYONS: Thanks, Boris. SANCHEZ: Ahead, parts of the U.S. are about to get a one-two punch from dangerous wildfire smoke that could combine with another weather threat. We'll explain in just moments.

[13:50:00]

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HILL: Dangerous smoke from those out of control wildfires in Canada is putting millions of Americans at risk. Minneapolis, for example, briefly held the title today of having the second worst air quality in the world.

That's not the only threat, though, headed into the U.S. A plume of dust from the Sahara Desert is now inching across the Atlantic and will soon reach parts of the southeast.

CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam is tracking all of this for us. So do we look at this, these two clouds, the smoke, the dust, how concerning is the fact that they could be converging in some ways?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Erica, it is. It's like a meeting of two worlds, right? We've got this Saharan dust, which has traveled over 4,000 miles already in the Caribbean.

And then we have the smoke from the wildfires in northern Canada that's entered the central and eastern parts of the United States already, traveling over 2,000 miles. Now, depending on where these fine particulates travel, whether it's in the upper levels of the atmosphere or near the surface, is variable on whether or not people with upper respiratory problems have issues with the smoke or the dust.

So here's a satellite imagery. It's kind of interesting seeing the two worlds combined. There it is. This kind of smoky, milky haze across the Caribbean. That is the Saharan dust that traveled from West Africa off of our map here.

But to the north, that smoky haze to the cloud cover there, not cloud, but it's actually the wildfire smoke from the fires in Manitoba, Saskatchewan that continued to burn out of control. And they say that everything's bigger in Texas. Well, certainly with the wildfire smoke and how much area this has covered, it's already covered nearly four times the equivalent to the state of Texas.

So we're talking about a large area encompassed by smoke, including here in St. Paul, Minnesota, right? So you can see the haze in the background. But what's interesting to note about this live camera is that there's raindrops on the screen.

So something's changing and it's a cold front. So that's going to help sweep out the low quality of the air, Erica was talking about, having the second world's worst air quality report earlier this morning in Minneapolis.

Well, that's true, but it's now moving eastward. And you'll be able to see that because of this cold front that's going to help sweep the air through and clear things out for those locations. But of course, that air pools up in front of the cold front and it creates problems elsewhere, right?

So if you have respiratory illnesses, remember these fine particulate matters, they get deep in the lung cavity. And that can cause issues for people like me who have asthma.

So here is the smoke just pouring into the eastern half of the U.S. There's that smoky kind of hazy substance you can see just across the southeast. Here is the smoke just pouring into the eastern half of the U.S. There's that smoky kind of hazy substance you can see just across the southeast.

Where will it go from here? Well, the cold front advances it eastward, pools it up across the Great Lakes. Look at the southeast. You can see some of the minor smoke. Even New York and the nation's capital could see that haze over the skies.

Really the biggest implications there along the eastern seaboard, Erica, will be beautiful sunrises and beautiful sunsets the next couple of days. So get out and enjoy.

HILL: We'll take that positive part of it. Derek, appreciate it. Thank you.

Still ahead here, we're learning new details in the Colorado firebombing attack, including how the ambush itself could have been much worse. That's next.

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