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Trump Says Deputy AG Blanche has Not Briefed Him on Maxwell Meetings; Trump Marks 200th Day Since Returning to White House; "Ecuador: The Narco Superhighway" Airs Sunday at 9PM ET. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired August 07, 2025 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: So you think all relevant documents are out there, so as the White House is weighing whether DOJ should release a transcript of Deputy AG Todd Blanche's interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, who is a convicted accomplice of Epstein's, and her attorney has said that she discussed more than 100 different people with him, what do you think we might learn from her and do you think it would be anything than what's already out there?

DAVID SCHOEN, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR JEFFREY EPSTEIN: I don't think so, I personally didn't agree with the idea, I wasn't consulted, but I didn't agree with the idea of, you know, bringing her into this thing. Congress has of course subpoenaed her. If I were her lawyer, unless she had a deal, I wouldn't let her testify before Congress. I just think it adds a whole new chapter to the story now that's going to make it more a never ending story.

I think that probably what happened is Blanche asked her a bunch of names, she mentioned about those names, I think everybody knows now about famous and wealthy people who had some association with Jeffrey Epstein, came up in his book, came up in the little black book, it was disclosed, came up in the 5,000 documents, been disclosed by Judge Preska, but it doesn't mean that they did illegal activities. I think the ones who are alleged to have done illegal activities have been sued by the accusers already.

KEILAR: I mean to that point, why is asking Maxwell for this information, rather than the victims? Not just the perpetuation of what we saw was special treatment for the perpetrators that allowed Epstein the sweetheart deal in the first place.

SCHOEN: I don't know that just asking her reflects special treatment, I think though that if she gets any kind of special treatment, those who have been most suspicious about this.

KEILAR: Well then talk to this David, she's been moved as you're well aware to a, I mean if prison can be cushy, this one is, it's a prison camp in Texas, certainly more cushy, right, it has white collar criminals there, this is a much more comfortable facility that she's in now.

SCHOEN: Yes, and I don't know the nature, I mean why she was transferred there. I understood she had a lot of problems at the prison where she was, I think she's going to have problems wherever she goes, because she's a high profile inmate. But I really don't know if there's any quid pro quo there, I would think not, but maybe her lawyer made some kind of deal. But you know, being in any kind of prison is not a picnic for anybody.

But as I say, if she were to get a deal, some kind of immunity or something like that, that certainly won't quell those on, certainly on the left, but on the right also, who, you know, raised their suspicions here, that's why I just don't think this is, you know, a step that was, really adds anything to it.

I understand for transparency purposes, you want to say we've exhausted all avenues, but her credibility will be subjected to some measure of impeachment, one can be sure.

KEILAR: So David, a few years ago, a few years, I should say after Epstein's death, you represented Steve Bannon in an unrelated criminal fraud case that you ultimately withdrew from as counsel over irreconcilable differences -- I really got hung up on that one. And as you're aware, Bannon says that he has 15 hours of interviews that he did with Epstein in his Manhattan home in 2019, and he's talked about possibly releasing it publicly.

Who has possession of that footage? Do you know?

SCHOEN: Well, I would assume Bannon has it, if anyone has it and if they exist. I've also heard the same story that you were reporting.

KEILAR: And do you believe it to be true?

SCHOEN: I believe it to be true.

KEILAR: Should the public be able to see it?

SCHOEN: I don't know. I don't know who owns the videos. I don't really know the circumstances of the interviews. It was well before I knew Jeffrey Epstein, I think. But yes, I don't know. I mean, I don't know what Bannon's interest is in those videos.

I know that --

KEILAR: Have you seen it?

SCHOEN: -- Mr. Epstein's brother would like to know what's in them. I didn't hear what you said. I'm sorry.

KEILAR: Have you seen them? Any of them?

SCHOEN: No, no, I haven't seen them. I've just heard about them. I've just heard about them.

KEILAR: All right, David, great to speak with you. Thank you so much for being with us.

SCHOEN: Thank you for having me on. KEILAR: Fred.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: All right, Brianna, now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour. This morning, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll awarded medals to the soldiers who jumped into action during the shooting at Fort Stewart yesterday, subduing the suspect and helping the wounded. Driscoll said these soldiers, I'm quoting now, absolutely saved lives from being lost, end quote.

An active duty sergeant is accused of shooting five of his fellow service members. Officials say two of those wounded remain hospitalized.

Also, President Trump's former Surgeon General is slamming the move to slash funding for mRNA vaccine development.

[14:35:00]

Writing on X, Jerome Adams said, quote, I tried to be objective and non-alarmist in response to current HHS actions, but quite frankly, this move is going to cost lives, end quote.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in his announcement, suggested vaccines, quote, fail to protect against upper respiratory infections like COVID or flu, which is contrary to scientific evidence.

And NASA says astronaut Butch Wilmore is retiring. The announcement comes less than five months since he returned from space after a far longer than expected stay on the International Space Station.

Wilmore and NASA astronaut Suni Williams piloted the first crewed flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. But after the Starliner experienced several serious issues, it was decided the pair would wait to return on a different spacecraft, turning their eight day mission into nine months.

Republicans are back in their districts for August recess, and they didn't get home -- come home empty handed. They're selling President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, but some of their voters, they're not buying it.

[14:40:00]

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WHITFIELD: All right, today marks President Donald Trump's 200th day in office. So what has he accomplished in the second 100 days of his second presidency?

Internationally, his military strikes on Iran have been widely praised. And while the extent of their success has been debated, the fact that they were a success was not. The strikes brought an end to the fighting between Israel and Iran and set back Iran's nuclear program.

Solutions in Gaza and Ukraine continue to evade him. However, those wars growing more grim despite Trump's promise to end them within 24 hours, something he has admitted has been a lot harder to do.

And domestically, we saw the end of the president's relationship with his former advisor and top donor Elon Musk. It ended rather dramatically with bitter online posts, fundraising threats and a lurid accusation that, looking back, may have been the start of the president's latest headache, his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

KEILAR: That's right. And the administration has not followed through with its promise, repeated promises to release all of its files relating to the late pedophile and child sex trafficker. Instead, the Justice Department has held secretive talks with Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. And the president has since seemed to suggest that a pardon for Maxwell is not off the table.

The president's controversial immigration policy saw the National Guard deploying in Los Angeles and a new detention center nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz opening in the Florida Everglades. Both of those moves have been criticized as inhumane, but June saw the lowest number of border arrests on record. According to Customs and Border Patrol, there were just over 6,000 apprehensions at the southern border in that month. And the same month last year, there were 83,000.

Arguably, the president's biggest win so far was wrangling Republicans into backing his sweeping tax cut and spending bill and signing it into law by his July 4th deadline. But Republicans are finding their agenda might be harder to sell than originally thought.

Trump's approval now at a second term low of just 37 percent. And Republicans who have headed home for Labor Day are being met by fiery town hall crowds. Here's Mike Floods in Ruby Red, Nebraska.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE FLOOD (R-NE): The Republican Party, now more than ever, represents the heart and soul of the working class.

(BOOING)

FLOOD: Do you think that people who are 28 years old that can work and refuse to work should get free health care?

CROWD: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We're joined now by pollster and communications guru, Frank Luntz. Always interesting to talk to you, Frank, about how voters are seeing this because you just did an interview with the Times of London and you say that no U.S. president has accomplished as much as Trump in so short a time since FDR almost a century ago, and that Americans are getting what they voted for. The question, Frank, is do Americans like what they're getting?

FRANK LUNTZ, POLLSTER AND COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGIST: Well, it depends on your perspective. If you voted for Donald Trump, this is exactly, almost to the letter, what you wanted. You didn't mind about the anger. You didn't mind the conflict between

the Republicans and the Democrats. What you wanted was to make a border safe and secure, which they've done. What you wanted were tax cuts, which he's done. What you wanted was cuts to spending, which he's done.

Element after element, he delivered exactly what he said he was going to do, and that's why his own voters believe that this has been an incredibly successful presidency.

[14:45:00]

Now, on the other side, the Democrats hoped that Trump would be more talk than action, and it is of tremendous fear to them that the country seems to be slipping away because the things that they hold dear, the federal spending, higher taxes, an immigration policy that is more about compassion than about enforcement. To them, this has been a nightmare, and it's why you saw briefly in that town hall meeting.

The issue that I warned people who are watching this broadcast right now is that there's a lot of manufactured anger out there, but it is felt by those who voted against him. So the best way to analyze this is it's Charles Dickens, a tale of two cities, a tale of two presidencies, whether you voted for him or voted against him.

WHITFIELD: And, you know, Frank, Congress is out, you know, they're out in their home districts right now. We just heard that spirited town hall with Nebraska Republican Congressman Mike Flood. So what is top of mind for constituents?

I mean, they are letting it all hang out. They're letting them know, however, that tale of two cities you just talked about, they're letting folks know that they're not necessarily happy, even though you summarized the many accomplishments of the administration.

LUNTZ: Well, I don't see us coming together over the next 18 months or 12 months. I don't see any change to this environment. In fact, I think it's going to get worse before it gets better, that there'll be more screaming, more hollering.

There'll be less town halls as politicians, that it's impossible to have this dialogue with the voters when you have people who come to the town halls simply to disrupt. This happened against Barack Obama. It happened against the Republicans in the election in 2009 and 2010, which led to a GOP landslide.

And it's happened against Democrats. We have ceased to be civil. We've ceased to be respectful.

And in fact, we simply want to be heard, and we're not really listening right now. So you asked what the priorities are. It's still immigration. It's still cutting wasteful spending. But the number one priority today is affordability. And that is where the Republicans must demonstrate to the public that they've been successful in bringing prices down on gas and groceries, on health care and housing. If they can do that, they will keep control of Congress. At this point, they haven't done enough. At this point, Democrats are seen as unable to make the country more affordable, and Republicans are having the same challenge.

So basically, it's why Congress is at or near all-time negative ratings among the American people.

KEILAR: And as we're watching this redistricting fight in Texas, Frank, how are voters perceiving that?

LUNTZ: We've had the chance to ask them, and it's pretty negative. That they see redistricting as something that happens every 10 years. They don't want to be fighting over this every two years. And if Texas does what it's likely to do and then California jumps in, the public believes that it's simply the politicians making their own situation better at the expense of the voters.

Now, I recognize that this is important for the Republicans in their attempts to keep the majority. That said, the American people really do want this slogan, people over politics or people over partisanship. And they believe that this redistricting is simply about partisanship, helping elected officials keep their jobs rather than doing their jobs.

KEILAR: That's really interesting. Frank, great to speak with you. Thanks for being with us.

LUNTZ: Thank you. It's a privilege.

KEILAR: So we are following some breaking news out of Illinois, where two people have died after their helicopter crashed into a barge in the Mississippi River. This is north of St. Louis. No injuries on the barge, we should mention here, reported. Initial reports were that the helicopter crashed into power lines before hitting that barge.

WHITFIELD: Investigators say they believe the helicopter was working on the power lines before crashing. Civilian boats helped put out the fire before firefighters were able to arrive. The NTSB and FAA will investigate the crash. We'll be right back.

[14:50:00]

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KEILAR: A war is raging in Ecuador and it's being fueled by cocaine.

WHITFIELD: CNN's David Culver is getting rare access inside this nation in crisis, and his report is featured in the latest episode of "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ecuador is not a cocaine producer, and yet the blood spills here. Cocaine is flooding into these streets, and with it, an explosion of brutality. You might think you know this story, gangs, drugs, corruption, but what we find here may surprise you, because this isn't just about cocaine.

It's about a system, one that pulls in the poor, empowers the brutal, and protects the powerful.

CULVER: Oh my gosh, there's blood on the ground. Careful with your step here.

CULVER (voice-over): To understand Ecuador's unraveling, we follow the chain to see who moves, who profits, and who pays.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Wow, David joins us right now. David, great to see you. You spent more than two weeks on the ground there in Ecuador, so of all that you saw, you know, which best explains the kind of crisis that's at hand?

CULVER (on camera): You know, I think the one word that comes to mind right now, Fred, is desperation, and that's what we saw playing out there. And we've covered, in recent months, the collapse of this country. I mean, it's gone from a so-called island of peace -- that's how it was seen in Latin America -- to what is one of the deadliest hotspots in the Americas.

It has the highest murder rate at this point. But we wanted to go deeper, and so for that reason, we, as you saw in that clip, embed with Ecuador's military and police, very rare access going from major cities to coastal towns, even the Galapagos Islands.

[14:55:00]

And what we find lurking off the coast there may surprise you, definitely surprised us.

We go inside fishing villages, and we go out on navy patrols, and we go into communities that are still searching for loved ones. And it's rather heartbreaking at times because you realize these folks have vanished. They've been swept up into a system that is relentless.

And sure, the U.S. and Ecuador just signed this new security agreement. A lot of folks really weren't quite sure why that might have taken place, but it happened last week between Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the president of Ecuador, Noboa, and that was essentially to try to combat some of the crime that we're seeing.

And recently, Ecuador's most feared gang leader, known as Fito, well, he was extradited to the U.S. on charges of drug and arms trafficking. So you begin to see that there are so many interconnected aspects of this between the U.S. and Ecuador. And the violence, it's only getting worse. And so that's why we're hearing now Ecuador's president saying he wants U.S. troops to come. And officials are warning that 2025 could be Ecuador's deadliest year yet.

So I think when you take a step back, you begin to see what's unraveling there in this country that's collapsing. And folks from this perspective may say, well, that's happening way down south. It really doesn't impact us, but it does.

And we are able to trace some of the routes that bring it right to the U.S. that show just how involved the U.S. is increasingly getting. And at one point, there were even U.S. troops on the ground in Ecuador. Up until about 2009, there was a military base there. And since they've left, we've seen just the crime skyrocket, and now there's talk that potentially they're preparing for U.S. troops once again. So there's a lot that moves in through this, and it's very emotional and heavy at times.

But the team and I, we hope that this brings folks a bit of just an enlightened look at what's happening south of us.

KEILAR: Yes, it always impacts the U.S. These are the drivers of immigration. David, thank you so much for talking to us about this really important look here.

It's in an all-new episode of "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER, ECUADOR, THE NARCO SUPERHIGHWAY." One whole hour, one whole story that will air Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern only on CNN. And it looks really good.

WHITFIELD: It does look incredible. He always brings phenomenal, phenomenal reports. Thank you so much, David.

KEILAR: He sure does.

Coming up, two presidents, one pivotal meeting for Russia's war in Ukraine, what we're learning about a high-stakes sit-down.

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