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Urgent Search For At Least 160 Still Missing After Texas Floods; Soon: Trump Speaks After Surveying Texas Flood Damage; Sources: Deputy FBI Director Bongino Has Told People He is Considering Resigning Amid Epstein Files Fallout. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired July 11, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:32]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: President Trump in Texas. He is meeting with first responders and victims of the devastating flooding that swept through Texas Hill Country a week ago. His visit comes as CNN learns new details about the White House's shifting tone on FEMA's future.

We're also following some breaking news as sources tell CNN Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino has told people he's considering resigning, all of it coming amid a major clash between the FBI and DOJ over the continued fallout from the release of the Jeffrey Epstein memo.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: And tacking on the tariffs, the President says countries facing the threat of tariffs should just keep working because, quote, "It's all going to work out," end quote. But those comments come as he continues to dole out new threats, this time targeting one of the United States' top trading partners.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to the CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

DEAN: And we do start with breaking news, just moments from now President Trump and the First Lady will hold a roundtable discussion with first responders and local officials in Kerrville, Texas. The President arriving there earlier today to witness the devastation from last week's catastrophic flooding.

And as we wait for the President to speak, here's what we know right now, crews are now on their eighth day of searching for those swept away in the raging floodwaters. Officials saying at least 160 people are still unaccounted for. The number of dead has risen now to 121. CNN's Ed Lavandera is there in Kerrville.

And Ed, we now enter a week since all of this and yet the search continues for so many people.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there's no question even as the President is getting ready to meet with local first responders, and state and local officials, that search in -- continues all along the Guadalupe River from about 25 miles upstream from where we are, just a couple miles downstream where the President is meeting in the local emergency office with all of those officials.

Within the last hour, the President's group went down close to that emergency operations center, just down river from where we are, Jessica, and was taken down to the river with the piles of debris. There had been a Kerrville fire truck that was brought out there and local officials went over some of the maps of the river, presumably showing them where the most -- the destruction had taken place here through this part of the Texas Hill Country.

But this visit comes as there have been lots of questions about the federal response and FEMA's role in all of this. And we're -- just a little while ago, we spoke with a local resident who's cleaning out his house from the floodwaters. He's right on the Guadalupe River, and he's concerned about what's going to happen here after all of the volunteers who have been so gracious in the last week. What happens when all of these volunteers have to leave?

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DANIEL OLIVAS, LIVES IN KERRVILLE, TEXAS: They're temporary and, like everybody, we're exhausted. And so, we need a break and we need the resources from our government to step in and come in behind a wave of volunteers and provide resources such as debris cleanup. That's a big one. Because if it wasn't for these guys, that debris would have been there probably for months.

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LAVANDERA: You know, Jessica, what has been driving so many people to keep coming back day after day since the horrific flooding, now eight days ago, is the fact that officials here are saying that there could be as many as -- more than 160 people. That number could be more. It could be less. It's just so chaotic in terms of being able to nail down exactly how many people are missing. And that number hasn't been updated now for several days. But that number has also been what has driven so many people to continue coming out here day after day, spending hour after hour in that search for the missing so that those loved ones could be brought back to their families.

But, you know, as we've spent so many days here now, Jessica, it's also the realization and the troubling part. And I think this gentleman kind of referred to that is that people here realizing that this is not going to be a quick process. This will take weeks, if not months to complete.

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DEAN: Yes. All right. Ed Lavandera there on the ground. Thank you so much.

I do want to go to the White House now back here in Washington, D.C. where Alayna Treene is standing by.

Alayna, as we mentioned, President Trump is expected to speak any moment. What is the White House saying about all of this, about the response efforts as well? ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. I mean, I think, Jessica, the real purpose of this trip is, of course, for the President, several members of his team, as you saw when they were first -- meeting with some of those first respondents in Kerrville -- is to really show how much the federal government is involved in this. They want to show that the White House is coordinating closely with Texas officials closely with Governor Greg Abbott. Closely you've seen Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. John Cornyn among other Texas lawmakers all there with him, really trying to show a united front in this effort and highlight some of the rescue and recovery efforts and the federal resources that they have poured into these communities to really help in light of this disaster.

But part of that, of course, is because there's been a lot of criticism of this administration, particularly in the lead up to this flood in Texas, and questions and a lot of, you know, scrutiny over whether some of the changes that had been made, specifically some of the budget cuts and staffing changes we've seen at different federal agencies like the National Weather Service, for example, like the National Oceanic Agency, all of those raising questions of whether or not that perhaps had affected the warning and preparation ahead of this flood.

Now, I will say it's very unclear still at this point whether any of the budget or staffing cuts that we saw had really contributed to this, but still it's been a key question and one I think we're really not going to get a lot of answers for moving forward, but one as well that we know that this White House and this administration is really working hard to try and combat.

Now, another key question, of course, is what would happen with FEMA. That has been something we've kind of really seen as a backdrop to this visit today, particularly because the President has said in the past that he wants to phase FEMA out. Of course, FEMA has been really crucial and critical to these different communities and getting them these federal resources.

So far, though, we've really heard the President himself, but also many of his top officials, kind of sidestep those questions about whether or not that's still going to happen in light of what has happened in Texas. Something to keep a close eye on today, Jessica.

DEAN: All right. Alayna Treene at the White House, all good notes. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Fredricka?

WHITFIELD: All right, Jessica. As we wait for the President to speak in Texas, I want to go now to someone who has worked closely with the President on responding to natural disasters. Pete Gaynor was the FEMA Administrator in the first Trump administration. He is now the President of Bright Harbor.

Great to see you.

So, do you see this as important ...

PETE GAYNOR, FORMER FEMA ADMINISTRATOR, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: Hi, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: ... for the President and First Lady to be visiting right now?

GAYNOR: Yes, I think it's critically important, whether it's the President, the Vice President or Cabinet members to include the FEMA Administrator. Part of this mission, to make sure that you deliver disaster resources at the critical time and moment to those that most need it. It's all about presence. Waving the American flag. Showing that your nation, your state, your local communities behind you, because that's what these disaster victims need right now. They need a little hope about what's going to happen, not just today, but in the months to follow.

WHITFIELD: But it has to be about more than hope, right? Because people -- we've heard from a number of survivors who just need everything. You know, they don't have a decent place to stay right now. They need resources on cleaning up. We heard from the one gentleman who talked about debris pile-up. I mean, that's huge. So, how might this up-close and personal viewing help in added resources for the hard-hit areas?

GAYNOR: Well, the President's going to hear from disaster survivors firsthand, without any filter from officials, and he's going to get it without any, again, any filters. And that will be valuable to him to make sure that, you know, have we applied the power of the federal government on this disaster and that's what it's about, bringing the team together. And it's just not the federal government. It's the federal government to include FEMA and our partners like NOAA and the National Weather Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, and then our state and local partners together, working to solve these really wicked problems.

WHITFIELD: Why do you think Trump has had an about face on eliminating FEMA? White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson suggested today that the agency will be reformed following an official review, a shift in rhetoric, you know, from doing away with the agency completely. In what areas do you think FEMA needs improvement? Or, you know, if it's rebranding, that will take place as well?

GAYNOR: Yes, I think the thing that -- if you can't miss every FEMA administrator, no matter what party they work for or what administration, I think we would all agree that the recovery system in America, the way we do recovery is broken.

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It's too long. It's too expensive. And the outcomes are really not what we want. So, I applaud the President's desire to reform FEMA. But the nation needs FEMA. FEMA is not going away. There's no one else that does what we do. And our partners, together, we bring resources, critical resources from across the country, things that states cannot -- do not have or do not have access to. One of the one of the powers of FEMA is to bring resources from all over the United States from every single agency and department to solve that problem. And today, there's a number of federal resources like the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Patrol right -- down there right now, trying to help search or start the recovery process.

WHITFIELD: Yes, there's been a lot of reorganizing, if not thinning of agencies in the last few months. Will it be important in your view to bring back any personnel with institutional knowledge, whether it FEMA or other federal agencies? And if so, do you see that potentially happening?

GAYNOR: Yes, it's a problem. Again, I think most Americans don't know how big FEMA is. Five-thousand full-time employees. That's it. We have some reservists that help us that get our numbers up to 20,000, but they're part time employees and a number of really highly talented, very dedicated FEMA employees have left FEMA. And as former administrator, knowing that some of that talent has left makes me really worried about what's going to happen next. So, no more cuts. If anything else, you got to start hiring people back.

And, again, not just FEMA, it's really the system. So, National Weather Service, NOAA, those cuts there affect the performance of the U. S. Government when it comes to disaster response.

WHITFIELD: All right. Pete Gaynor, thank you so much. And as you and I are talking, we're looking at live pictures right now. They're in Kerrville, Texas. The First Lady, the President are there meeting with first responders and others. And momentarily, we will be hearing from either the President or the governor or any and all other supportive figures that are there. We'll take that live.

All right. Still to come, violent clashes between protesters and federal agents during a raid in California. And now, the FBI is searching for someone who they say shot at agents during the scuffles.

Plus, President Trump is again threatening a dramatic escalation in his trade wars with America's biggest trading partners. Why he is once again targeting our neighbor to the north.

But first, CNN has brand new reporting about the number two at the FBI and why he might quit over the fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein files. All that and more ahead on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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WHITFIELD: All right, breaking news. Sources tell CNN that Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino has told people he's considering resigning amid a major clash between the FBI and Justice Department over the continued fallout from the release or lack thereof of the Jeffrey Epstein memo and files.

DEAN: CNN Senior Justice Correspondent Evan Perez is with us along with CNN Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter.

Good to have both of you. Evan, I do want to start with you. Give us the kind of nuts and bolts of what you're learning about this.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And I think, you're right, it's the it's the lack thereof of the release of these files that is really now having recriminations inside the Justice Department where you have the leadership of the Justice Department and the leadership at the FBI sort of at odds over the handling of this.

And, you know, some of that came to a head this week. We're told there was a meeting at the White House where Kash Patel, the FBI director and Dan Bongino, who's the deputy FBI director, along with Pam Bondi and Susie Wiles, who is the White House Chief of Staff, where there was a confrontation about a news story that indicated there was some daylight. There was some certainly this internal disagreement, which is certainly true inside the FBI and Bongino was accused of leaking this this story, and he denied it.

And so, today, what we have is Bongino did not come to work today. And that led to a lot of concern inside the FBI. I'm sorry inside the FBI and the Justice Department that he was preparing to quit. And that's certainly what Kaitlan Collins' sources have told her that Bongino has told people he is considering resigning.

And there's a larger issue here. He's clearly not really loving this job anymore. But it also is an issue about this, the handling of the Epstein investigation and the review of these documents, which certainly by March of this year, they knew, certainly the Justice Department knew that they could not release more of these documents. And what you see play out over the last few weeks is a bit of a disagreement.

You see Bongino on Fox News just a few weeks ago, where he indicates that he believed more files were forthcoming. And then, of course, on Monday, where the Justice Department released that statement that was unsigned, and it simply said that the case is closed, there is no more documents to be released. Epstein committed suicide, as we've known, and also that there was no indication that anyone was being blackmailed, and that there was no client list.

And, of course, that has now led to an upheaval, certainly in MAGA world where people are very upset because they believe more should be released, guys.

WHITFIELD: And in fact, Brian, that members of the MAGA movement are very upset seems to be an understatement right now.

[15:20:06]

How influential is that in perhaps the DOJ being, you know, handling this differently or even a response from the White House?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Right, if we take a step back here and think about the context, we're talking about the death of a disgraced pedophile from six years ago, something that happened during the first Trump administration. Now, here we are six years later, and the conspiracy theories about Epstein have become so intense, so loud, so obsessive among some media influencers on the right, that even Bongino is caught up in this and wondering what to do.

Well, Bongino was one of the guys who was promoting these conspiracy theories. During the four years when Trump was out of office and Biden was in office, Bongino was on the radio, was on his podcast, yelling about Epstein. At one point in 2023, Epstein's -- in 2023, let me get this quote right, here's Dan Bongino on his podcast saying, quote, "What the hell are they hiding with Jeffrey Epstein?" So, that was Bongino as a podcaster, stoking the conspiracy theory flames.

Now, two years later, 2025, Bongino is one of the guys who was out there saying in public, I reviewed the evidence, Epstein killed himself.

But the pressure from Bongino's fans, from his former listeners, from his Twitter repliers, from all of his fans has been so intense this week. If you go look at the White House Instagram page, go look at the White House TikTok, go look at Bongino's X feed, you will see the replies are just absolutely venomous from people on the far right who believe there is a government plot here.

And frankly, the lack of a follow up from the DOJ and the FBI this week has created even more concern about whether the government is hiding something. So, Bongino is stuck in the middle here, having helped contribute to these theories. And now, well, we'll see what he does next.

DEAN: Right. And so, giving us that context around how he came into this job, now he's there. And Evan, you're part of the team that reported on this. There's this increased frustration among Trump's close advisers toward Pam Bondi. There's also the relationship between Pam Bondi, and DOJ, and the FBI and how they might be at odds. What have you -- what do you know about all -- how all of that is playing out?

PEREZ: Well, I -- look, and I think that is definitely something worth watching. I can say at this point, it does appear that Pam Bondi has the support and the confidence of the President. And that's really the only person that matters. But it's definitely true that people inside the White House are extremely frustrated with the way she's handled this.

And really, we have to go back to February where she helped orchestrate an event at the White House where these social media influencers from MAGA world were brought there and they were given these binders that were supposed to include these bombshells or at least certainly these documents from the Epstein files. It turns out all of these documents or most of the documents that were in that binder were public years ago. And so, there was a lot of embarrassment. A lot of the influencers went on social media and certainly were -- expressed their anger at the Justice Department.

And so, that's where a lot of this frustration against Bondi has built up. The FBI folks are very upset because they believe that they didn't really play a role in this and instead have had to sort of own this mistake that was really Pam Bondi's mistake in their view.

But I will say this, you know, during this week there was a discussion inside the Justice Department about how to move forward on this or rather in the last couple of weeks. And Bongino and Kash Patel, everyone signed on to that statement that was issued on Monday, so that much we know.

And we know that if this ends up being a bigger deal, you will find out that there are emails, that there's certainly a lot of proof that everybody was on board. I will tell you this, one quick thing I will point out inside the FBI, you know, I've talked to people close to Bongino and Patel and one of the things that they are confronting is what Brian said, which is, you know, on social media over the last few years, you know, they've been able to just say things very freewheeling because they didn't have any documents, they didn't have access to anything and they made some of these accusations.

And I talked to someone who said, you know, look, there's the world of social media and then there's the real world and they know and they understand that they're going to get hit now because social media doesn't understand what they now do now that they're on the inside. It's been a very, very, very rude awakening for all of these people involved.

WHITFIELD: Right. So, what kind of position, Brian, does this put the President in because, you know, he's tried to shrug off a question or two on the Epstein, you know, file, the non-release of it, but it's not enough, is it? It's not going to quiet the storm here.

STELTER: Rarely, rarely has the President sounded so out of touch with his own base as he did earlier this week with his comment about asking why are people still talking about Epstein.

[15:25:04]

President Trump knows why people are still talking about Epstein. He used to be Epstein's pal, right? They were friends decades ago. Of course, that friendship ended many, many years ago and Trump denounced Epstein very loudly and clearly. But Trump knows exactly why his base is energized by this. He consumes the same conspiracy theory content from Fox and other outlets that his base consumes.

And, you know, this is a situation where the people who attacked the so-called deep state are now the so-called deep state, right? The they and the them that Bongino was railing against. He is now the they, he is now the them. And it's all predicated on this being a sinister plot about a government covering up something really terrible, maybe even evil, about the abuse of children.

Well, in this case with Epstein, the truth is horrible enough. But the truth of what we know, the files that have come out over the course of years, the reporting from Miami Herald, the investigations, Epstein's crimes are bad enough. And yet there was an attempt and there continues to be an attempt on the right to imagine a much more sinister plot. And frankly, I don't see that energy going away. From what I'm seeing from MAGA media this week, that energy is not going away. It's only getting more intense because of what the DOJ and the FBI said this week.

WHITFIELD: All right. Brian Stelter, Evan Perez, we'll leave it there for now. Thanks so much, guys.

STELTER: Thanks.

WHITFIELD: All right. Coming up, tensions are rising in Southern California. We have details on an intense standoff between federal agents and protesters during a raid at a California farm.

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