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Search and Rescue Efforts in Flood-Ravaged Texas Enter Day 5; Trump Addresses Texas Floods at Cabinet Meeting; Trump Says, No Extensions Will Be Granted on Tariffs. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired July 08, 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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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you so much for sharing your afternoon with us. I'm Boris Sanchez coming to you live from Kerrville, Texas, alongside Jessica Dean and the nation's capital.

We begin this hour with breaking news. The grueling around-the-clock surge for victims of a historic, devastating flood in Central Texas now enters a fifth day as the hope of finding any remaining survivors is dwindling.

We're also getting new perspectives of the devastation. We want you to watch this video obtained by CNN. You're watching the terrifying moments the waters ripped a cabin off of its foundation at Camp La Junta. You can actually see people trapped inside as this structure floats downstream. Fortunately, we've learned that everyone inside was able to escape to safety, but, tragically, that has not been the case for so many others. Officials now confirming at least 108 people have perished in these floods.

And right now, there are mounting questions about the timeline of flood warnings and what action was taken after they were issued. Earlier, reporters pressed officials for answers at a briefing that became contentious. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: With all due respect, sir, I think that the community here is asking these questions. What happened? When did it happen? Was the emergency manager awake at the time? Did they push the button to assure an emergency alert?

SHERIFF LARRY LEITHA, KERR COUNTY, TEXAS: Sir, it's not that easy, and you just push a button, okay? There's a lot more to that, and we've told you several times.

REPORTER: So, did it happen, sir?

LEITHA: I can't tell you at this time, okay?

REPORTER: You can't tell me if the emergency manager of the counter actually issued an emergency alert?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: We're expecting to get another update from Texas Governor Greg Abbott later today.

For the latest on this recovery effort, let's go to CNN's Isabel Rosales, who is here in Kerrville. Talk to us about what you saw at that briefing. You were there earlier today.

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Boris, I was inside of that room. And the reality of the thing is that we are days into this incident. It is still very much an active search and rescue effort, but you have over a hundred people that have been killed. And there is this crucial in information gap that is going on in these critical hours before the Guadalupe River started to flood into homes.

We need to know what it is that officials knew. We need to know, and community members are asking us these same questions, locals here, what is it that they knew, when did they realize that this was a deadly threat, and what did they decide to do about that.

So, we gave them an opportunity to respond to those questions, but as you're about to see, they repeatedly dodged and skirted our questioning. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROSALES: If you could outline please what the specific actions and discussions that local officials took between 1:14 A.M., that's when the first flood emergency alert came out, and hours later when the river first started flooding, what happened in those hours?

LEITHA: What I can tell you, when I was first notified, it was around the 4:00 to 5:00 area. One of my sergeants was in dispatch when the first calls started coming in, the actual 911 calls come in.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) 4:00 in the morning?

LEITHA: It was between four and five when I got notified. Okay. But prior to that, in that 3:00 to 4:00 area, my understanding is, and we're in the process of trying to put a timeline. You know, that's going to take a little bit of time.

REPORTER: Who runs the Emergency Operations Center?

LEITHA: We have a communication center, a dispatch, okay? We have a communication center. That's where the calls actually go to the police department, then they're forwarded to us.

REPORTER: But leading up to this, in monitoring the weather, there is -- in any large city, in any state, there's an office of emergency management that is monitoring the weather that is watching and listening and getting briefings.

[13:05:04] Who was getting those briefings in this city, in this county? Who was receiving that information? And who would've ultimately made the decision to evacuate? Hearing what was coming in from the Weather Service order?

LEITHA: Okay. What we would've done when we get notified, okay? I'm going to tell you.

REPORTER: You're not emergency manager though, right? The sheriff's not EOC.

LEITHA: No, there is no -- I meant that the city -- yes. Okay.

LT. COL. BEN BAKER, TEXAS GAME WARDENS: So, we understand you have many questions, hang on.

REPORTER: No, I understand, but you're going to go -- you're not going to answer the question because that's up to the city manager and the mayor to answer.

BAKER: Correct.

REPORTER: It's the county emergency --

BAKER: We understand you have many questions. We understand that, but right now, this team up here is focused on bringing people home. That's our focus. All those questions will be answered. But the priority right now is bringing people home.

REPORTER: You should be able to answer who was in charge of the Emergency Operation Center at the time that was getting any --

BAKER: Do we have another question?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROSALES: Yes. And you just heard there Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha saying that he was not notified about this flooding threat until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. So, that would have been several hours, three hours after that first emergency alert went out, that there was a major flooding threat. We knew something bad was coming. The alert would have said, at this point, hazard, life threatening flash flooding, flashflood damage threat considerable, and he didn't find out until hours later.

We're trying to nail down the specific timeline of who the decision- makers were, who decided whether to evacuate or not. We're trying to pin that down.

Now, we know from CNN reporting that residents were forced to largely rely on cell phone alerts and door knocks from their neighbors that this threat was imminent. And it's also important to note that this is a rural area, so cell phone coverage can be rather spotty. And as you heard there in that interaction, officials not ready to commit to a timeline, repeatedly refusing to answer questions there as to when they knew that this was a major threat to their community and what they did about it. Guys?

SANCHEZ: Isabel Rosales, thank you so much for that reporting.

Today, we're also hearing some incredible stories of survival, including from Erin Burgess who credits her son's height for helping her escape the floodwaters as the two clung to a tree. She actually lives in Hunt, Texas just upriver from where we are right now and she sent this photo to us to show just how high the water got in her kitchen.

Erin joins us now live. We're so grateful that you're okay. I do want to start with you at the very beginning. I understand that at about 3:30 A.M. on Friday, you were woken up by thunder. When did you realize that something was wrong?

ERIN BURGESS, SURVIVED FLOOD CLINGING TO A TREE: Probably around 4:30.

SANCHEZ: And what was going through your mind at the time?

BURGESS: Well, I had actually gone outside and seen it was raining heavy, but it really wasn't very concerning. I went back to bed. I got on Facebook. I was checking the weather. There was nothing. There was no warnings, nobody was saying anything. And then I heard water rushing into my bedroom.

SANCHEZ: And we're watching some of the video that you shared with us of those moments when there was water going into your home. Just to be clear, you didn't get any kind of emergency alert on your phone. It didn't start, you know, blowing up the way that it often does when there's an emergency?

BURGESS: Not at all.

SANCHEZ: Got it. So, walk us through what happened next. How did you manage to get out? How did your son help and what was going through his mind? I imagine he was concerned for your safety.

BURGESS: Well, I ran down the hall and screaming that we were flooding. He got out of bed. It was ankle-deep at that time. I realized we needed to get out of the house. So, I ran into my room to get my Chihuahua, who was on my bed, and my cat was on my bed. I grabbed the dog and my bed shot up in the air. The water was knee-high by that time, my refrigerator blocked me into my bedroom where I was trapped for a while. The floodwater pushed the refrigerator away, thank God.

And then when it burst through my backdoor, it was waist-deep within seconds.

[13:10:03]

By the time I got out the back door, since it was broken, it was up to my neck in my backyard. And it was my son's height that held me up. My boyfriend was outside trying to break the window of my bedroom to get me out because he didn't know I had gotten out yet. Then we tried to get to high ground, but we floated. My boyfriend and my dog went one direction. My son and I went another direction where we got stuck on a tree and my boyfriend and my dog floated almost a mile to the back of my neighborhood.

SANCHEZ: Wow. What was that moment like before you knew that they were okay, before you were eventually reunited?

BURGESS: I thought that I was never going to see my boyfriend again. I didn't know where he was. It was -- by the time the water receded and I got to a safe location, it was more than an hour before he came walking up. I didn't know where he was. I didn't know if he was safe. I didn't know if the dog was safe. And he came walking up with my dog soaking wet and they were alive and I couldn't believe it. And he didn't know if we were alive.

SANCHEZ: And what did you say to him?

BURGESS: I just hugged him. I screamed, I hugged them. It's kind of a blur now. I just remember a great sense of relief.

SANCHEZ: Yes, I can imagine. And take us through what things are like right now, what you're dealing with, what your plans are, how the effort to return things to normal is going.

BURGESS: I really don't know what to do in a situation like this. We are just moving things out of the house. We're on the phone with FEMA, disaster relief, with my homeowner's insurance, with. amaritan's Purse. We've had so many volunteers come out and clean the house. I showed up the first morning the next day and there were strangers in my home cleaning it because, well, I don't have doors. So, they're in there cleaning it and moving stuff out and removing mud for me.

It was so overwhelming, the support that we've had, and just trying to find anything that we can save, and there hasn't been much.

SANCHEZ: Yes, I can imagine it must feel good though to see neighbors lending a hand when you need one.

I do want to ask you, Erin, if you have any questions for local officials about not having been more aware that something like this could happen, about that effort to broadcast an emergency signal. What do you want to hear from them in terms of making sure that something like this doesn't happen again?

BURGESS: I don't have a lot of knowledge on how these things work, but it is from my understanding that there are sensors in the PVC pipes that come out of the ground near the river. That should have alerted that the water was rising so much. Why didn't that happen? Was that not working? I want to know why. Why wasn't it fixed?

SANCHEZ: Erin Burgess, again, we're so glad that you're okay, and we're so grateful to you for sharing your story with us. Thank you so much for joining us.

BURGESS: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Erin Burgess, thank you so much.

And just like Erin, there are so many people here in Texas that need assistance right now, and you can lend them a helping hand. We have information at cnn.com/impact. You can also text FLOOD to 707070. We've vetted a number of organizations to make sure that any contribution that you make goes exactly where it is needed. So, if you can help, that's one way to do it.

As we go to break, we want to remember those who have been lost here in Central Texas. Chloe Childress was a counselor at Camp Mystic, that all-girls camp. She only recently had graduated high school. Chloe's family tells CNN, or rather tells our affiliate KHOU, that while we know that her joy is now eternal and her faith has become sight, our hearts are shattered by this loss and by the heartbreak of other families like ours.

Chloe Childress was just 19 years old.

Stay with CNN. We'll be right back.

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JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: Just in the past hour, President Trump holding his sixth cabinet meeting of the term. He started off by focusing on the tragedy unfolding in Texas before addressing his tariff agenda and that revised August 1st deadline.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is joining us now from the White House. And, Kristen, the president once again moving around these dates, these deadlines when it comes to tariffs. Did we get any more clarity today?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: A little bit, but I wouldn't go 100 percent on that clarity just because of what we've seen in the past. I mean, just a reminder of how we got here, the first deadline was April 9th. Then they gave that 90-day pause and it ended on July 9th. That's supposed to be tomorrow. Yesterday, he signed an executive order saying the actual deadline was going to be on August 1st.

[13:20:02]

Last night, President Trump was asked about this August 1st deadline, and he said it's kind of firm, but not 100 percent firm. So, he was asked to follow up again on what incentive countries have to negotiate with the United States. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Mr. President, August 1st, you said it is the deadline. What incentives do countries have to negotiate? It seems that deadline keeps moving. April 2nd, now it's --

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: We didn't move. No. It's always been August 1st. That's what we put out there. A statement was put out today, and I put it out just to make it clear. It wasn't a change. It was August 1st. We don't change very much. You know, every time we put out a statement, they say, he made a change. I didn't make a change, clarification maybe. No. August 1st, they pay and everybody pays. Everybody has to pay. And the incentive is that they have the right to deal in the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now, that wasn't the only thing he said about tariffs. Of course, as we know yesterday, the deadline became August 1st. That hasn't always been the deadline. It was supposed to be tomorrow. But he also talked about the European Union. He said that they're harder to deal with than China in some ways when it comes to tariffs.

He also, at one point, had Scott Bessent, the secretary of treasury, talking, asking how much money the United States was getting in tariffs. He wanted to flout that number, which he said was a hundred billion dollars in tariffs since then. And then he got kind of angry at times saying that these countries had been ripping us off for years and that this was just a way to get a low and fair rate. Jessica?

DEAN: And, Kristen, I'm also curious the president was asked about Jeffrey Epstein. What did he say about that?

HOLMES: Yes. He kind of got incensed. And it goes to show you just what's happening behind the scenes here. We know that we have heard from a number of people that there's a lot of anger as to how this Epstein situation rolled out yesterday. We saw it from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and you can see it all over social media. I mean, these right MAGA group members are out there kind of slamming the attorney general, saying, you said that you had this file on your desk. Now you say this file doesn't exist, this being the Epstein client list, which she says now said doesn't actually exist.

This is how President Trump reacted when he was asked about Epstein.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking -- we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time on it? Do you feel like answering?

PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I don't mind answering it.

TRUMP: I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we're having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: So, a couple of things to keep in mind here. The reason why Jeffrey Epstein keeps coming up is because of President Trump and his allies, because of what we heard on the campaign trail from some of his closest allies who are now in the cabinet or are now leading organizations within the administration, saying that the first thing they were going to do with get to the bottom of what happened with Jeffrey Epstein.

And the other reason why journalists are asking these questions is because it's all over social media, where some of his staunchest allies are criticizing both President Trump and the attorney general for the rollout of this. Obviously, we know there's been a lot of far right conspiracies around Jeffrey Epstein. It was something that people close to Donald Trump said they were going to get to the bottom of if he was reelected.

Now, of course, they say there was no client list. We saw the attorney general try to clean up what she had said on Fox News when she said there was a client list sitting on her desk. She said she meant the file as a whole, not that there was a specific client list, so she's trying to clean that up as well. But, clearly, it's angering some of his base.

DEAN: Yes, no doubt about that.

All right, Kristen Holmes at the White House, thank you so much.

The president also talking about the war in Ukraine and CNN's Kevin Liptak is joining us now to talk more about this. What's interesting, Kevin, is that yesterday the president announced these plans to send new defensive weapons to Ukraine. And in that same cabinet meeting that Kristen was just talking about, he talked about his displeasure with Russian President Vladimir Putin, again, kind of moving away from where his base is on a lot of this stuff.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. And moving away from where he has been really for the last ten years, when you think about Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin, it is one of the most fascinating relationships in the world. And for so long, Trump has taken this conciliatory approach to the Russian leader, that is changing very, very quickly.

And you can hear President Trump growing more and more upset with Putin as he rejects his overtures to try and bring the war in Ukraine to an end. But also as he ramps up his attacks on Ukraine, he's also massing troops in the north of that country, really sort of putting back into Trump's efforts to bring about peace.

Today, I think, were his strongest comments ever about Putin. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're not happy with Putin.

[13:25:00]

I'm not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now, because he's killing a lot of people. And a lot of them are his soldiers, his soldiers and their soldiers mostly. And it's now up to 7,000 a week. And I'm not happy with Putin.

We get a lot of (BLEEP) thrown at us by Putin for, you want to know the truth? He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

REPORTER: Do you want to sanction him? Lindsey Graham has a sanctions bill on Russia. Do you want him to move ahead of that?

TRUMP: I'm looking at it, yes. No, I'm looking. The Senate is passing and passed a very tough sanction. But, yes, I'm looking at it.

REPORTER: And you'd sign that?

TRUMP: It's an optional bill. It's totally at my option. They pass it totally at my option.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIPTAK: So you hear him there stopping short of saying that he would approve of these new sanctions on Russia, which I do think leaves open the question is where he will channel this anger towards Putin. He's not saying that he's going to put sanctions on. What he is saying is that he will send new defensive weapons to Ukraine, which is significant. Because remember, just last week, the administration said that it would put a pause on those weapons as it did this assessment of U.S. stockpiles.

President Trump, after talking to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader last week, seemed open to helping Ukraine with its air defenses. Now, he's saying he's approved of these new weapons. And actually, when our colleague, Kaitlan Collins, asked him in that cabinet meeting who actually approved of this pause, he said he didn't know.

DEAN: That's really interesting. And it also too, because out of the Pentagon and the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, they've also been on the other side of this in addition to Trump's evolving, you know, take on this as well.

LIPTAK: Yes. I mean, and Trump actually made an interesting point in there. Whether you think that the U.S. has supplied too much to the Ukrainians, whether you think the U.S. has spent too much money on the war there, which is his position. That was position he took on the campaign trail. That's the position that a lot of the people around him in the cabinet took.

He said, whether you believe that or not, you have to think that the Ukrainians are brave. They have held out this long in this conflict. They've been willing to operate these weapons systems that are dangerous to operate. And he seems to be adopting the viewpoint that the U.S. does need to actually support Ukraine in this conflict. They've held out this long, they have pushed back Russia in some ways, in ways that many people did not expect at the start of this war.

Clearly, I think his relationship with Zelenskyy is developing. And actually he said in that call last week that it was good, and Zelenskyy actually said it was their best conversation that they had to date. I think it's very evident that the president is sort of evolving in his view of this war. He wants to do what he can to help Ukraine defend itself.

DEAN: Yes. We've come a long way from that Oval Office meeting.

LIPTAK: Yes.

DEAN: Kevin Liptak, thank you so much.

And still to come, we're going to go back to the deadly flooding in Texas and a CNN review of the real time messages between the National Weather Service and local officials are actually raising questions about the response.

We go back to Texas when we come back.

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