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Trump Citing Weak Jobs Data, Lashes Out at Powell to Cut Rates; Witness Says Combs Dangles Her Over a 17-Story Balcony; More Students Turning to ChatGPT to Complete Assignments. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired June 04, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: So we have to talk about the economy because President Trump is launching a fresh round of attacks at Fed Chair Jerome Powell

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: The president lashing out after some very weak jobs data that came earlier today.

Matt Egan joins us now. So Matt the president trying to direct blame toward Jerome Powell in terms of these latest payroll numbers that we have from ADP. First of all, what does that data actually show?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes, Erica this data shows that the jobs market hit a bit of an air pocket in May. Hiring slowed significantly. Much more than we were anticipating.

So this report from ADP shows that private sector payrolls were up by just 37,000 in May. That's nowhere even close to the 130,000 that had been forecasted. In fact, this is the weakest number in more than two years when it comes to private sector hiring.

And when you look at the trend, you can see a clear slowdown. This number had been around a 150 to 200,000 late last year. But now it's been consistently below 100,000.

[15:35:00]

So that does suggest that all of this uncertainty has caused some companies to think twice before hiring and that makes sense, right?

We're in this environment where we don't even really know where tariffs are going to be at the end of the day, let alone the end of the year. And there were a number of sectors that did lose jobs, and I'll call attention to one in particular, and that is manufacturing. Manufacturing losing 3,000 jobs in May. Of course, that is the exact opposite of what the White House is trying to do with these sky-high tariffs.

Now, I should also just note that this ADP report, it doesn't have a great track record in terms of predicting the much more important official number that gets reported by the government.

That's coming out on Friday. And yet, this report was weak enough to spark an almost immediate response from the president of the United States, who did go and attack his hand-picked Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell.

Exactly six minutes after the ADP report came out, the president tweeted, or posted on Truth Social, ADP number out. "Too Late" Powell must now lower the rate. He is unbelievable. Europe has lowered nine times.

Now, assuming he's talking about the European Central Bank, he's right, they have lowered a lot. It's actually seven times.

But still, directionally, a lot of central banks have lowered interest rates. The Fed, of course, has not. That's in part because they're worried about all of these tariffs driving up inflation.

And I did speak to a bank CEO who told me today that they believe that all of these attacks on Powell are counterproductive, right, because the more the president tries to jawbone the Fed chair, the more the Fed chair just kind of stiffens up and keeps interest rates where they are.

I think at the end of the day, all of this just kind of raises the stakes for Friday's much more important government jobs report. I think if we get a weak number, anything close to this one, it will renew concerns about the health of the jobs market -- Boris and Erica.

HILL: We will be watching for that. Matt, appreciate it. Thank you.

EGAN: Thanks.

HILL: Still ahead this hour, another accuser taking the stand in the Sean Diddy Combs trial. How she responded after the defense questioned whether she had a drug problem.

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HILL: More compelling testimony today in the Sean Diddy Combs trial. Bryana Bongolan, who's a friend of Combs' ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, is now being questioned by the defense.

SANCHEZ: And earlier under direct examination, Bongolan said that she witnessed violence between the former couple. She also said that Combs once dangled her over the balcony of Ventura's 17th floor apartment and then threw her onto the balcony's furniture.

CNN Entertainment correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister is outside the federal courthouse with more. So Elizabeth, what's the latest?

ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: So Bongolan is still on the stand as we speak. But as you said, her allegation is that Combs once dangled her over the 17th floor balcony from Cassie Ventura's Los Angeles apartment. Now, she also testified to some of the violence that she claims that she saw between Combs and Ventura. She said that on one occasion that Combs was banging on the door in middle of the night of Ventura's Los Angeles apartment and that he came inside and he threw a knife at her. That is the first time that we have heard that allegation. Now, she said that Cassie then threw the knife back at him and then he left. But she did say that there were numerous times that he would bang on her door in the middle of the night.

Now, a big theme of her testimony, which started when the prosecution was questioning her, was her drug habit, along with Ventura. Ms. Bongolan was testifying under an immunity deal, presumably because of all of this conversation about not just using illegal drugs but also selling illegal drugs.

Now, she was very honest about it. But when the defense questioned her, their line of questioning was essentially to make it seem like her and Cassie Ventura had a major drug problem, which again, Ms. Bongolan agreed with, and to also try to prove that Cassie Ventura had agency, that she was doing drugs outside of the presence of Mr. Combs.

Now, you may recall, though, that during Cassie Ventura's testimony at the beginning of the trial, she said that her drug habit got much worse when she was dating Combs. And this friendship with Ms. Bongolan started in 2014, 2015. So that's more than five years after she began to date Combs.

Now, the cross-examination, I've got to tell you, was very tense, very accusatory. They were asking her essentially, are you making this all up? And again, she's still on the stand. So more to come.

SANCHEZ: Elizabeth Wagmeister, live outside the courthouse in Manhattan. Thank you so much.

So you've heard the old adage, work smarter, not harder. Next, how teens are taking advantage of, or as some would call it, cheating with artificial intelligence, and how schools are adapting to teaching in the AI age.

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SANCHEZ: When ChatGPT debuted in 2022, it did not take long for students to figure out the ideal use -- ideal use for the new technology. A little bit of help, maybe some cheating on schoolwork. What started as a nuisance for teachers has turned into a crisis at some schools.

HILL: I was sort of surprised at these numbers and maybe not. 26 percent of teens now say they use ChatGPT. That's according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. That seemed low to me. I'm going to be honest. What struck me, though, is that number has doubled since 2023.

SANCHEZ: I also think they're self reporting, so maybe it's not, you know, an accurate figure. If there's one thing that ChatGPT excels at, it's that, you know, kind of assignment that's typical in classrooms across America. Five pages on, say, for example, the themes in Romeo and Juliet. ChatGPT knocks that out very quickly.

HILL: Knocks it out very quickly, may have some inaccuracies, inaccuracies. Easy for me to say, right? Some mistakes in there.

But it does also bring up the question of whether there is a way to maybe use the technology well. In our series this week, OUR FUTURE WITH AI, we wanted to discuss the profound, frankly, impact that AI is having on education.

Joining us is Stephen Cicirelli, a lecturer at Saint Peter's University, and Rebecca Winthrop, who's the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and also the co author of "The Disengaged Teen, Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better and Live Better."

It's nice to have both of you with us. So, Stephen, I know you posted about you actually failed a student who submitted an AI written research paper and then sent you an apology e-mail that was also written by AI, which is I mean, that is a whole lot of gumption right there.

In all seriousness, give us a sense. How common is that in 2025?

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STEPHEN CICIRELLI, LECTURER, ST. PETER'S UNIVERSITY: Hey Erica. Hey, Boris. Thanks for having me.

How common is it? I mean, like you, I think those those numbers seem low to me. If I had to put a number on it, I would say probably one out of every two students is using it in some in some way, shape or form. As far as how many I've caught in my classes, I mean, I would say it's between five and 10 every semester.

SANCHEZ: Rebecca, you write that allowing companies to roll out AI tools with unfettered access by young people will most likely end badly. Walk us through the consequences of having a generation plus of students that rely on this kind of technology to develop.

REBECCA WINTHROP, DIRECTOR OF CENTER FOR UNIVERSAL EDUCATION, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: So it's great to be here. One of the things I am most worried about is something we call cognitive atrophy, which is basically that young people come to rely on the commercial technology products that are large language models that are not designed for learning and are not optimized for kids. And what they end up doing is what we call in the book passenger mode.

And we already know that kids in middle school and high school, 50 percent of them are coasting in passenger mode, which means they're not really digging and they don't find the relevance. And I'm really worried that AI will make it worse.

I have an analogy that I like to use, which is if we had a wonderful technology that came along and said, Hey, babies don't need to crawl. We have magic shoes. Just put these shoes on little babies and they'll go straight to walking.

We would not want to do that because crawling wires left brain right brain. It gives them spatial awareness. They need to go through crawling to get to walking.

I feel the same way for learning. We need to radically transform what our teaching and learning processes look like and put guardrails on commercial technology so that as young people whose brains are being wired for learning and critical thinking and connection and analysis, actually go through those steps of learning, not just hack their way to the outcome at the end.

HILL: So it's that point in April, President Trump actually signed an executive order, right, which was to advance AI education.

That order reads in part: By fostering AI competency will equip our students with the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to adapt and thrive in an increasingly digital society.

Is there a way to both continue to develop those brains and a lot of important thinking and learning skills that you use throughout life, right? Figuring out how to write your own Shakespeare paper as painful as it may be. But also the education of how to use these tools in a responsible way. What does that look like?

WINTHROP: So I think I'd be very careful. And the thing I think is good is that there is potential for the executive order to -- if designed well, because it's quite vague at the moment, there's a task force. You have to get together. You have to design sort of what we're going to put the money towards.

But if designed well, there's good things in the executive order, teacher training, AI literacy, helping schools use technology appropriately.

Now, if we have the executive order support things where there's AI that is designed for teaching and learning, that would be great. And if the executive order supports ethical AI literacy because we do want young people to be fluent in the tools of the time. And AI literacy is really important.

It is not the same as using AI for your schoolwork. And there's lots of people working on AI literacy. There's a group teach AI who's who's doing a great job.

SANCHEZ: And Stephen, what were your thoughts?

CICIRELLI: Just, you know, I'm very much with Rebecca on this. I think there's a prevailing idea among lots of educators and even lots of parents to that because society at large seems to be adapt -- adopting artificial intelligence for different things that the classroom needs to also look the same way. And I'm just not sure this is true.

I think, for in some ways, the classroom as a countervailing force is when it's at its best often. This doesn't mean we teach students things that are not useful in the real world. But as Dr. Winthrop said that we're we're not just teaching them to

get to the end. It's not just -- it's not important that we just get them to understand what Shakespeare is about, but that they actually wrestle with the text themselves and learn about themselves in the process. And we call this like metacognition or learning -- learning how to learn. I mean, I think is what's really important.

SANCHEZ: I totally get that. And now, as an adult, I look back and I think, yes, absolutely.

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I wish I had learned math myself instead of relying on a calculator because now I can only rely on a calculator.

Yet, looking back to when I was a kid, dealing with all the pressures that you're dealing with and growing up and finding schoolwork that was uninspiring to say the least, I wonder -- last word to Rebecca quickly. How do you inspire students to actually get their hands dirty and do the work, when at least for me, that was the last thing I wanted to do.

WINTHROP: Well, I think you bring up a point. Kids are rational beings. Our children, our students are not broken. There's no problems with them. They look at the homework, they look that ChatGPT can do it. And I would say there's a Gallup and Walton Family Foundation survey that found that kids themselves are worried.

40 percent of kids said they're worried about ChatGPT making them not be able to think critically. So what we need to do is really transform education so that kids are using the knowledge that they gain to actually go out in the real world, work in teams and try to solve problems, small or big. That will really inspire kids.

HILL: Rebecca Winthrop, Stephen Cicirelli, thank you. Really interesting conversation this afternoon.

WINTHROP: Thank you.

CICIRELLI: Thank you.

HILL: And we'll be right back.

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HILL: All right, it's time to address the elephant in the room, or actually the bodega. Take a look at the security camera footage. This is a wild elephant lumbering into a convenience store in Thailand on Monday and just making himself at home.

The owner says he went straight for the candy shelf, apparently knew exactly what he wanted and just started snacking away. On the menu for this guy, 10 bags of sweets, a little dried banana, oh, and some peanut snacks.

SANCHEZ: Oh, this guy gets it. The elephant, a 27-year-old male, well- known in the area.

[16:00:00]

A wildlife protection group stopped by and offered to pay the bill for everything the elephant took. Free snacks, you know, maybe he should come back soon.

Tell me you've never walked by a bodega and just walked in feeling hungry, maybe late at night, just raid it.

HILL: Not in that way. No.

SANCHEZ: I mean, you pay for things to be clear.

HILL: Yes, number one.

SANCHEZ: But you just kind of, you know.

HILL: Yes, I mean, that's the beauty of the all night convenience store.

SANCHEZ: Some glizzies, you know --

HILL: I just learned what a glizzy is.

SANCHEZ: It's been sitting there a few days.

HILL: Yes, a hot dog that's been on that rack for like three weeks.

SANCHEZ: Extra flavor.

HILL: Oh, we b-line for that.

SANCHEZ: Extra flavor.

HILL: Yes. Good stuff.

SANCHEZ: Thanks for joining us. Great to be with you Erica.

HILL: Always a pleasure.

SANCHEZ: "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

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