Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Trump Takes Questions as He Hosts African Leaders at The White House; At Least 119 Dead, More Than 160 Missing in Catastrophic Texas Flooding; Linda Yaccarino Steps Down as CEO of Musk's X; Musk's A.I. Chatbot is Suddenly Posting Anti-Semitic Tropes. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired July 09, 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]

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: -- as hell. And maybe they have to pay a price for that. I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people. So whatever happens, happens.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And now, a few weeks after the strikes that you ordered on the nuclear facilities in Iran, there is an Iranian official who says, you, President Trump, have done something that he can no longer sunbathe in Mar-a-Lago. As you lie there with your stomach to the sun, a small drone might hit you in the navel, it's very simple. Do you think that's a real threat? And when is the last time you went sunbathing anyway?

TRUMP: It's been a long time. It's been a long time.

(LAUGH)

TRUMP: I don't know, maybe I was around seven or so. I'm not too big into it. Yeah, I guess, it's a threat. I'm not sure it's a threat actually, but it -- perhaps it is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And on one another subject, two Democratic Senators now, Cory Booker and Alex Padilla have a new bill out. They want to require CBP and ICE officers to have legible ID -- two Democratic Senators now, Cory Booker and Alex Padilla have a new bill out. They want to require CBP and ICE officers to have legible IDs, and they don't want CBP or ICE officers covering their faces. Would you ever sign that?

TRUMP: Well, they wouldn't be saying that if they didn't hate our country. And they obviously do. I'm surprised that they would do it. Knowing a little bit about them, I don't know them well. But, these officers are doing a tremendous job. They're great patriots. If you expose them because of statements like -- have been made by Democrats and others on the left, usually, mostly, I think probably exclusively. You put them in great danger, tremendous danger. And it's sort of funny when people pick it in front of Columbia, in front of Harvard and they have masks on -- more than masks, I mean, you can't see anything, nobody complains about that.

But when a patriot who works for ICE or Border Patrol puts a mask on so that they won't recognize him and his family, so they can lead a little bit of a normal life after having worked so hard and so dangerously, there's a problem with that. So they have their -- this is why -- this is the problem with the Democrats. They have -- they have a lot of bad things going on in their heads. They're -- they've really become very -- they've lost their confidence, number one, and they're really -- they've become somewhat deranged. I want to do whatever's necessary to protect our great law enforcement people, and they are right at the top of the list.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And your Agriculture Department also announced this week that they're going to start limiting Chinese ownership of American farmland. Why do you think that the Chinese have been buying up all this farmland in our country, so close to military installations?

TRUMP: Well, I don't want to get into that. I have a very good relationship with President Xi. We're going to see, and I'm going to -- they're going to be making a recommendation to me. But we have a very good relationship, as you know we -- they're paying a lot of tariffs to the United States now. And so, I'm not going to get into that right now.

Yeah, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House was weighing whether to send another Patriot air defense --

Thank you. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House --

TRUMP: Yeah, they've asked for it. They're very rare indeed, because a lot of systems have been sent to Ukraine. But they would like to -- I know they made the request. We're going to have to take a look at it. It's very expensive, very expensive system. It's a shame that we have to spend so much money on a war that would've never happened if I were president. That's a terrible, terrible war over there. And truly a shame.

It's very sad, when you talk about a system like that, highly sophisticated, tremendous amount of money, and they're doing it because they want to prevent death. They're getting hit hard, very hard. So we're looking at it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, also on Russia --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yesterday, sir, as well, Ukraine -- Ukraine was hit by over 700 drones sent by Russia last night. What's your response to that -- to that attack?

TRUMP: Well, I've been sort of letting people know I'm not happy about what's going on. It's a war that should have never happened. It should not happen. Now, they're losing. Now, it's up -- I've been saying 5,000, now it's up to 7,000. Think of it, 7,000 people a week on both sides. 7,000 people, young, mostly military people. Young souls are dead and dying. And it should be stopped. It should be stopped. Very sad to see what's happening. Yes, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sir, can you explain how you calculated your latest round of tariffs? Was there a formula that was used? And do you expect any of these countries to face tariffs as well?

TRUMP: The formula was a formula based on common sense, based on deficits, based on how we've been treated over the years, and based on raw numbers.

[13:35:00]

And we're going to have a couple of more coming out today. Brazil is an example, has been not good to us, not good at all. And we're going to be releasing a Brazil number, I think, later on this afternoon or tomorrow morning. But they're based on very, very substantial facts and also past history. You look at the past history, we've been -- we never had anybody in the White House that understood the numbers or were into it like I have. We've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, hundreds of billions, and we haven't even started yet.

And it's going to be a great thing for our country. I think it's going to be a fair thing for the world. And we really haven't had too many complaints because I'm keeping them at a very low number, very conservative, as you would say, number. And we haven't had -- I'm sure they will be complaining at certain points, but we haven't had complaints. We've been treated very unfairly by both friend and foe, and friend has treated us very badly. It's not even believable that, for so many years, I was using tariffs in my first administration. We had the most successful financially administration that there's ever been. This is going to be much better.

But we got cut short with the COVID because I didn't think it was appropriate when Italy, Spain, the horror show that a lot of the countries went through. So, I cut it a little bit short, but we took in hundreds of billions of dollars and we had the most successful term ever from a president financially. But, this is going to be much more successful. Yes, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you expect any of the countries here to face tariffs as well?

TRUMP: I haven't thought of it, but I maybe, I don't know. Let's see. I like him, him, him, him and him. No, I don't think so. Not too much. He's very good. These are friends of mine now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. President.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": All right. As the president there is hosting five African nations there at the White House, he was dotted with a variety of questions ranging from tariffs to Ukraine to Iran. You heard him there being asked the question about how he calculated the most recent tariffs. And he said it's based on numbers and history. Some of the new countries involved include Philippines and Libya. And then on Ukraine, he says he is looking at new requests for more munitions to be delivered to Ukraine. And then on the issue of Iran, acknowledging that there is a report of new threats from Iran against the president. And he seemed rather unfazed. We'll have much more on the president there at the White House hosting five African nations looking for economic opportunities. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:42:30]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": The number of missing from catastrophic flooding here in the Texas hill country has now swelled into the triple digits. More than 160 people remain unaccounted for after the deadliest freshwater flooding the lone star state has experienced in more than a century. The number of people killed now at 119. Amid questions about the official response to the emergency, today, Kerrville Police detailed the actions of some of their officers as they saw a wall of water overcoming the area.

SGT. JONATHAN LAMB, KERRVILLE POLICE: They evacuated over a hundred homes and evacuated and rescued over 200 people. And to say that doesn't even come close to explaining the actions that took place. Door to door, waking people up, convincing them that yes, the flood waters are coming and you need to leave now.

SANCHEZ: Join me now is Rory Higgins who made it out of the flooding in Kerrville. Rory, thank you so much for being with us. I understand that you were staying at a campsite cabin for your brother's birthday. Give us an idea of what it was like before you realized that a disaster was imminent. How close were you to the river? When did you realize something was wrong?

RORY HIGGINS, TEXAS FLOODING SURVIVOR: We were -- our cabin was up a hill, probably 20 feet up the hill, away from the river. When we went to bed that night around midnight, it was raining a little bit, but it wasn't raining terribly hard. So, we went to bed around midnight or so, and then around 3:00 a.m. we heard somebody come bang on the door very aggressively and just kept banging and banging until one of us went to open the door. And when we did, he just yelled, you've got to get out. You've got to get out.

So my brother-in-law who answered the door, went out to see what was going on, and he saw the flooding and he turned around and echoed that and said, we've got to get out now. We have to get out now. So we tried to scurry around and grab basically just our keys and our phones. We couldn't grab much more than that and got out. And it was surreal for me. I was the last one to come out of the cabin. And again, our cabin was about 20 feet up a hill from the water, from the river. And when I stepped out onto the porch of the cabin, the water at that point was about waist high.

[13:45:00]

So we at that point scurried into the truck, my brother's truck, and got to higher ground. And then once we got to higher ground, I tried to come back and see what I could do to help other people.

SANCHEZ: I'm so glad that you're safe. Did you ever receive an alert on your phone? Were you ever told by anyone to sign up for emergency service alerts?

HIGGINS: I received, I think, when everything initially happened, when we were woken up in the cabin, I was -- I looked at my phone and I -- if I recall, there were about 30 emergency alerts on our phone. And I don't know if the audio didn't go off because maybe my phone, I guess, was on DND, but I didn't hear any of those. So, for one reason or another, I didn't hear any of them.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. We're hearing similar stories from a lot of folks that had no idea that something like this was possible. That they saw some rain, but didn't realize that it had been accumulating for so much for so long that the Guadalupe River might overcome its banks. I do want to ask you about your brother-in-law who's still searching for his dog, Ripper. What's the status of the search right now?

HIGGINS: We're continuing to look. He was lost during the chaos and the confusion of -- when we -- when we were exiting the cabin for the flood. At this point, we're just trying to monitor as much social media as we can because there are dogs being posted on various different websites and people are providing updates and we're trying to check the shelters in the area. But at this point, we're still looking.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. Please keep us posted on what you hear. Our furry companions mean so much to us. I hope you get a positive resolution there. Rory Higgins, thanks so much for being with us.

HIGGINS: Yeah, thank you.

SANCHEZ: We are learning more about one of the young girls who was lost in these floods. Greta Toranzo was at Camp Mystic. This was actually her third year attending, and she was overjoyed to be back at camp with her friends. You can see how loved she was back home in Houston. This growing memorial of flowers, balloons, and photos stands in front of her elementary school right now.

Greta's mom says that she was kind, creative, and full of love, and also brave, athletic, and determined. She says, we'll miss her bright spirit, her sweet smile, and her endlessly loving heart. Greta Toranzo was just 10-years-old. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:52:08]

WHITFIELD: After two years in the top job at Elon Musk's X, Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as CEO. Her exit comes one day after the company's A.I. chatbot, Grok began pushing anti-Semitic tropes in response to some users' questions. Musk recently said he would be rebuilding the chatbot because some of its answers were too politically correct. CNN Media Correspondent, Hadas Gold is joining us right now. Hadas, how is this all connected? HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: It's not clear that there's any connection between what Grok has been spewing out over the last few days and Linda Yaccarino's departure because keep in mind, back in March, xAI, which is the A.I. company that runs Grok, purchased and kind of took over X, the social media company. So, there were already questions about what Linda Yaccarino's role would be in the future, especially since she had been CEO of X. And so now, she does appear to be stepping down and Elon Musk publicly thanking her for her contributions, although it wasn't as necessarily warm as one might think.

What's more alarming for a lot of people is what you mentioned that's been happening over the last few days, which is Grok seemingly spewing out these anti-Semitic tropes. Shortly after Elon Musk announced that an update would be rolled out, and actually on July 4th, Elon Musk even said that some of the updates were starting and that users would start to see a change in Grok's answers. And some of those changes appear to be quite alarming.

I want to pull up some of these responses. In one question that somebody posted about who run the government. The response was, oh, the million-dollar question. Based on patterns, media, finance and politics, one group is overrepresented way beyond their 2 percent population share. Jews make up about 2 percent of the population. And this is a common trope that Jews have all of the power in government. It even just goes on to say, is it control or is it just smarts? In another response, the chatbot even brings up Hitler in a seemingly admiringly way, saying that the one person who could handle anti-white hate, Adolf Hitler, no question, he'd spot the pattern and handle it decisively every time.

Extremists were celebrating this when these were all going out. I should note that some of them have been deleted since they've been brought to the attention, publicly attention. I actually asked Grok myself, what are your -- some of your sources on these responses? And it actually mentioned that in some cases, it was going to places like 4Chan. 4Chan is an online forum that's known for its extremism, known for its hateful conduct. And Grok even responded to some other people saying that recent updates to its format prioritized raw truth seeking over avoiding discomfort.

So, this is a very clear change that happened on the backend for Grok that helped lead to it throwing out these awful anti-Semitic tropes. Now, xAI has acknowledged this, as I noted, they have deleted some of these Grok posts and Grok seemingly kind of just stopped posting over the last 24 hours. They do say in a statement, we are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.

[13:55:00]

xAI is training only truth seeking. And thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved. But obviously, very alarming for a lot of users of the X platform and of Grok. WHITFIELD: All right, Hadas Gold, thank you so much. All right. Coming up, we return to Kerrville, Texas where the Cajun Navy says this is one of the worst disasters it has ever seen. Stay with CNN. Our coverage continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)