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Putin-Trump Meeting to Take Place in Anchorage, Alaska; Fed Takeover of D.C. Police Will Be Reevaluated in 30 Days; Inflation Holds Steady but Trump Tariffs Driving Some Costs Up; Day Two of Trial for California Lawsuit Against Trump's Deployment of National Guard; Nvidia, AMD to Give U.S. 15 Percent of Their Sales to China. Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired August 12, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:45]

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Summit's in Anchorage. We are learning more details about President Donald Trump's upcoming meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The White House now calling Friday's talks a listening exercise for the president, despite hopes of moving the Kremlin closer to a ceasefire with Ukraine.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Plus, prices inching up. The impact of the trade war clear in the latest inflation report. Economists warning the tariffs could keep pushing prices higher, but there is some silver lining in the data, we'll discuss. And a silver bullet for stopping a drone attack. With more of these devices in the sky, experts are looking for a solution to keep people safe from the threat in the future. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

FREEMAN: We're following several big developments from the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt moments ago, taking questions on a range of key issues, including the president's meeting later this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin on U.S. soil. We now know that the meeting will take place in Anchorage, Alaska. Leavitt was asked why Ukraine's Zelenskyy won't be there.

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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He hopes in the future, there can be a trilateral meeting with these three leaders to finally bring this conflict to an end. But this administration has really used every lever, has taken every measure to achieve peace through a diplomatic solution. And I think the president of the United States getting in the room with the president of Russia, sitting face to face rather than speaking over the telephone will give this president the best indication of how to end this war and where this is headed.

(END VIDEO CLIP) FREEMAN: CNN's Kristen Holmes is live for us at the White House. Kristen, what more was said in this briefing?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I mean, Danny, I think the really interesting part of what you just heard there was this idea that President Trump wants to sit down with President Putin face to face. One reminder is the last several phone calls that the two leaders have had have not gone well. President Trump went from putting out the readouts about the call to really not wanting to talk about them at all. At one point, saying that Putin had been difficult to work with, saying he made absolutely no progress at all when he spoke to him on the phone for roughly an hour recently.

This is now an opportunity, President Trump sees it and the White House sees it, for him to get an actual read on President Vladimir Putin. And President Trump believes that he is the best person to do that. There was no word in which we heard this from White House officials that President Trump was going to sit down for the first meeting with both President Putin and President Zelenskyy. He wanted first to get an assessment, to get a read on where Putin stood. We also know that this meeting came about because of a conversation that Putin had with the Middle Eastern envoy, Steve Witkoff.

So, it's likely why the White House agreed to have this meeting and rushed to have this meeting. One thing that's interesting, they keeps stressing that there's no deal that President Trump is going to make coming out of it, that this is really what they're calling a "listening exercise."

FREEMAN: Kristen, I want to switch gears for a moment and talk about the other big news that was very important to the nation's Capitol. the White House already taking a victory lap after one night with the D.C. Police now under federal control, the White House saying 23 arrests were made overnight. What more did Karoline say about this?

HOLMES: Yeah, I think a couple of things were notable about this. We know what we saw from the mayor and from the police chief earlier today. They were trying to be deferential to the federal government. They are trying to not make an issue out of this. And they know that there is not much they can do legally. So what we heard here, from Karoline Leavitt was one, somewhat of a timeline. She did say that they were going to go through the 30 days, which is part of the Home Rule Act, and then they were going to reassess. That would mean that President Trump would have to bring it to Congress, unclear what they're going to do from there.

The other part of this was interesting is that there seems to be some kind of discrepancy right now between Washington, D.C. and the federal government as to who is actually in control when it comes to the police department. We heard Kaitlan Collins asking a question about the structure there, Karoline Leavitt saying that it was federally structured basically with the president at the top in terms of the Metropolitan Police Department. That is not what we heard from Washington officials earlier today, who essentially said that they were still in control of the Police Department, and these were their federal partners. [14:05:00]

They're looking at this very differently here. One other part that was interesting here is that there had been some talk about moving, and this was something President Trump had said, homeless people, homeless encampments out of Washington, D.C. That was kind of walked back by the Press Secretary, where they essentially said that they would be reinforcing district law that said that Metropolitan Police could go up and dismantle any kind of homeless encampment and offer the people that are there, either to go to a homeless shelter or to get some kind of mental health help, before turning to jail or prison or fines. She was really just talking about this and carefully talking about this within the law that already exists, despite what the president had said about shipping people outside of the district.

FREEMAN: Kristen Holmes, thank you for so much for breaking both of those very important stories down. For more on this D.C. issue, let's discuss this with former D.C. Chief of Homeland Security and Intelligence, Donell Harvin, and former Federal Prosecutor, Alyse Adamson. Thank you both so much for being here.

Donell, the White House, again, taking that victory lap saying that they have 23 arrests made overnight. Can you just set the stage here? How many arrests are normally made by the D.C. Police on any given evening or day?

DONELL HARVIN, FORMER D.C. CHIEF OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE: I don't have the statistics for that in my fingertips, but that doesn't seem like a whole lot. And once again, it's probably D.C. Metropolitan Police making those arrests. Certainly, the National Guard isn't postured to make arrests. They can't go to court; they can't testify; they can't do a lot of those things. And I'm not quite sure if our federal partners are out there doing that. So it doesn't seem like a whole lot. We'd have to get the statistics from the D.C. Police to get some context to that.

SANCHEZ: Alyse, this has never happened before and it's striking the way that local officials are responding to it. I wonder how you anticipate this is going to work between the federal oversight, the operational tree of local officials here, including the Chief of Police, the federal agents on the streets, and whether there's anything Mayor Bowser can do to pursue more control over what execution looks like?

ALYSE ADAMSON, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, I think, as you just stated, this has never happened before. We're in an unprecedented situation, so it is difficult to kind of predict how this is going to go. I mean, what we've seen so far from the Chief of Police and Mayor Bowser is a tone of partnership with the federal government. And I think that's in recognition that at the end of the day, the federal government does have a lot of power over the district. The district is essentially a federal zone, and the president is operating under Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule.

So far, it seems as though, the D.C. Police has been cooperating with their federal partners. Things seem to be going smoothly, and the mayor has been signaling that she is going to be working collaboratively with the White House. I think beyond that, it's hard to predict. I mean, what I can also say -- what I'd also like to say is that the Metropolitan Police Department is a great police department. I worked with them on an everyday basis when I was a prosecutor here. And while I think they appreciate the support, they do need more resources. I don't think flooding the streets with their federal partners is ultimately going to cure the ills of the D.C. crime that the president ultimately wishes to do.

SANCHEZ: Donell, I wonder from your perspective, what the impact on crime is ultimately going to be, especially as we hear the White House saying that after 30 days, they're going to reevaluate what this looks like and potentially seek an extended period of control over local law enforcement.

HARVIN: Boris, I wish I can answer that question, but I don't know why we're here. I'll be honest with you. As the D.C. Police and as Mayor Bowser pointed out, recently, crime is at a 30-year all time low. And so, whether you are doing crime initiatives or balancing your budget in your home, you have to have some type of endpoint in terms of what success looks like. We haven't heard that from the White House. And I'll be honest with you, I was a little worried when I heard the Attorney General talk about, starting today, there'll be no more crime in D.C.

And so, if you kind of deconstruct that statement, what does success look like? It's certainly not going to take 30 days to get to zero crime. You'll never get to zero crime in any city in any country. And so, is this some type of prolonged siege of D.C. are we seeing? So I don't know what the metrics of success are. All police departments, all governments have metrics of success. They haven't fed that to the public. And so I really don't know the answer to that, unfortunately.

FREEMAN: Yeah. To that point, I'm sure there's not a city on the planet that wouldn't want zero crime if they could have it, if it were that simple.

[14:10:00]

Alyse, beyond policing though, city council members, they've said that the many vacancies in the D.C. Court of Appeals and Superior Court have actually had a big impact on crime. I was curious, what was your experience with that when you yourself was a prosecutor?

ADAMSON: Yeah, thank you. That's a great question. So clearly, having vacancies have an impact on crime because the dockets are completely out of control. These poor superior court judges have hundreds of cases on their dockets and it's hard to move them. That being said though, I think there's another issue here and this is just my anecdotal experience trying as a prosecutor cases in the Superior Court, which is lenient sentences for the most violent offenders, and I'm talking about shooting, stabbings, everything kind of below a homicide. I experienced a lot of instances where I was advocating for incarcerated sentences for very serious offenses, and the judges declined to do so or gave the defendants perhaps a year, suspended the rest and put them on probation. I think furthermore, there is a law in D.C. known as a Youth Rehabilitation Act, which affords judges wide discretion in sentencing youthful offenders 24 and under. And I think there is a need for this act. It recognizes that young people are impulsive, that they need a second chance in society. It allows them to expunge their conviction, so they can be successful in the future. But it also allows judges to put folks on probation for the most serious offenses. We just had an instance where a judge sentenced an individual who had shot somebody in the chest on a metro bus to straight probation. I think sentences like that are outrageous.

I think even if the particular individual sentenced doesn't re-offend, it's sends a message to the community at large that conduct such as that would be met with a slap on the wrist and might embolden these young people to commit crimes if they think there are no consequences. So I think that this is a very complicated, nuanced issue, vacancies being a problem, but I also think that D.C. needs to be honest with itself and strike a better balance between compassion and the commitment to protect innocent residents and maybe amend the YRA to only impose conservative (ph) sentences on the most violent criminal acts.

SANCHEZ: Alyse Adamson, Donell Harvin, great to get your perspective. Appreciate you both.

Still to come, we have new details about Russia's ongoing push into Ukraine, literally happening just days ahead of talks between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

FREEMAN: Plus, the tariff hikes between China and the U.S. get delayed once again. We're going to check on the chances for a trade deal. And later, what we're now learning about that meteorite that lit up the skies this summer. That and much, much more coming up on "CNN News Central."

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[14:17:29]

FREEMAN: The White house is hailing today's inflation report, which beat market expectations and showed consumer prices ticked up just two-tenths of a percent from June to July. Now, the annual rate holds at 2.7 percent. However, the latest data also show that the Trump tariffs are driving the costs of some goods up. CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich is here to dig into the numbers. Vanessa, break it down for us. What do these numbers show?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, the good news is that inflation did not heat up. It held steady at 2.7 percent on an annual basis and was up 0.2 percent in the month of July. The bad news is it's not quite close enough to the 2 percent target rate that the Fed likes when it looks at inflation. When we look at the key categories here, things like energy, food, and shelter, these make up big, big parts of this report. And we saw that energy actually fell by 1.1 percent and that was largely driven because of falling gas prices. You also had food, 0 percent, unchanged, and people at the grocery store were facing lower prices. Prices at the grocery store falling by 0.1 percent.

Shelter there up 0.2 percent, but that has been around average. But when we look at something called core inflation, that takes away the volatility of energy prices and food prices, it actually heated up more than expected. So, up 0.3 percent on the month and up 3.1 percent on an annual basis. That is the highest level in five months. And that really shows that there may be some of those price pressures from tariffs on things that people buy, discretionary spending on things like toys or apparel or shoes or appliances. Look at that on your screen.

You can see that there were a lot of increases, toys, furniture, apparel, all up. Appliances did fall. That could be because, Danny, some people were front loading on those bigger expenditures. So they held off in the month of July, driving prices lower, but then ground beef is on there. And we added that because if you're going to the grocery store, you may notice that the price of beef, ground beef, steaks, and even coffee are really high right now. Beef prices hitting record prices, that is because of weather conditions, herd size.

But the price pressures of tariffs on foreign imported beef and now foreign imports of coffee certainly do not help the inflation picture for people as they're shopping at the grocery store, Danny.

FREEMAN: All right, Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you for breaking down a complex day, but important, things that impact all of us. Appreciate it. Boris?

[14:20:00]

SANCHEZ: New today, the mayor of Chicago is pushing back at a recent threat by President Trump. The president while announcing that he was taking over the Washington, D.C. Police Department yesterday, warned that he could do something similar in Chicago to deal with crime. Here's part of Mayor Brandon Johnson's response.

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MAYOR BRANDON JOHNSON, (D) CHICAGO: It's clear that the president of the United States of America is very much interested in insurrections. He led one, and I remember a time in which we had presidents who declared war on poverty. Though we take these threats seriously, we will not bow down or succumb to his tyrant rage.

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SANCHEZ: Let's discuss this and more with Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois. Part of his district includes the 41st Ward of Chicago and the city's west and northwest suburbs. Congressman, thank you so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us. So with the administration taking over D.C. Police and deploying the National Guard, you've argued that this is a distraction. I want to present what residents of Washington, D.C. told The Washington Post in spring. About half of the district's residents that were polled say they believe crime is an extremely or very serious problem. If residents don't feel safe, is that not a reason to intervene? REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI, (D-IL) INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well, I think that law enforcement should do everything in its power to address people's concerns about their safety, no doubt. However, let's just be clear about what's going on right now. President Trump appears to be trying to distract attention away from his mismanagement of the economy, as well as focus on the Epstein trials, with regard to this particular issue. And if he were to try to deploy troops on American soil against American citizens, for instance, in Chicago or elsewhere, it would be blatantly unconstitutional and deeply dangerous. It's absolutely outrageous that he would even consider that.

SANCHEZ: The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about that this afternoon. She said that the president was describing what he would like to see. She says that cleaning up crime in the United States starts with cleaning up the nation's Capitol. I'm sort of paraphrasing what she said. She said that once we get to other cities, effectively, they would cross whatever legal threshold would be in the way to clean up crime. How would you respond to the president's threat to send the military into Chicago to clean up crime? Do you think that would make residents and your constituents feel safer?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: No, it would not. It would -- actually, it would be provocative and it would be blatantly unconstitutional. It would be violation of Posse Comitatus, the use of federal troops for domestic law enforcement. I actually have a bill, a piece of legislation to prevent an American president from deploying American troops on American soil against American citizens without consent of local executives or officials. And I think that, again, we should remember why he's doing this. He's trying to change the subject, change the conversation, but it's deeply dangerous and it's wrong.

SANCHEZ: The question of deploying the National Guard in Southern California after protests in June is now the subject of a lawsuit filed by California Governor Gavin Newsom. He's challenging Trump's authority to call in the National Guard against his wishes. Trump allies that I've spoken to are very bullish on this case. They say that even though, this judge appears ready -- who's overseeing this case appears ready to back Newsom's legal argument, they believe that an Appeals Court will side with the president and his ability to send in military forces or national forces into states.

Is there anything from state leaders or Congress that would stop him from deploying the military to other U.S. cities if the courts side with him in this California case?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, I think that we would be able to still formulate legislation to prevent him from being able to do this. That's the type of legislation that I just introduced. But again, I think that he is trying to provoke kind of the outrage of the day in making these pronouncements. And again, for my constituents who feel the pinch of the economy, who feel the pinch of the blanket tariff chaos that's rocking businesses and leading to layoffs in our area, they can see through what's happening. And again, they don't want any part of this nonsense with regard to federalizing the National Guard in other places. [14:25:00]

SANCHEZ: Congressman, I have two more questions for you. One on something that you mentioned in relation to tariffs, conversations with China, specifically on a trade deal, have been extended so that tariffs do not kick in immediately. I want to ask you about Nvidia and AMD announcing that they're going to pay some 15 percent of their China revenues directly to the U.S. government in exchange for export licenses for some of these older model, H20 A.I. chips. Trump has made the argument that China already has access to a version of these chips. You've argued, in interviews that I've watched, that the president is putting U.S. national security up for sale.

You don't see any benefit to this deal and to the U.S. potentially having control over -- or at least purview over the kinds of chips that China has access to? Because I guess, the counterargument would be that if China doesn't have access through a deal like this, they would try to manufacture their own chips and that could prove consequential to national defense as well.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: They're already doing that. That's the thing. They're already trying to replace our chips with their own. The problem is they don't have the ability to achieve the types of performance levels achieved by our top performance chips. Look, we should not ever put our national security up for sale. And what we're doing right here is basically, handing to the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, our highest-end semiconductor chips which are then going to be used to train their artificial intelligence models, in their military modernization as well as in the perpetration of human rights abuses against Uyghurs and others.

And so, this is a complete dereliction of duty, what the president is doing right now. I'm going to introduce legislation to require congressional approval for the sale of these types of chips to the CCP and adversaries. The other thing your audience should know is that he's not only talking about these H20 chips, he's also talking about the Blackwell series of chips, which are the highest-end chips made by Nvidia. And so, I just ask the question, what's next? Is he going to sell aircraft carriers to them for a 15 percent tip? Is he going to sell our nuclear powered submarines? I mean, this is completely outrageous.

SANCHEZ: Now, the president says he would anticipate those higher-end chips being part of a future negotiation. Lastly, Congressman, only because you mentioned the Epstein files, on that discharge petition from your colleagues, Congressman Massie and Khanna, it would force a vote to compel the administration to release the Epstein files. It needs a majority. Would it have your backing?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: A hundred percent. And I think it would have the backing of the majority of Republicans that vote on it as well. And it will have all Democrats. Look, I think that this is something that he is desperately trying to change the subject from. He does not want those files to be released for some reason. And on top of that, it's now bringing legislative business to a standstill on Capitol Hill. We are about to go back in September to try to fund the government before the September 30th deadline. And I'm concerned that this particular issue is going to prevent the Republican majority from moving on any business, including funding the government.

SANCHEZ: Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, we appreciate the time and perspective. Thanks for joining us.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, questions about what the best outcome of this week's Trump-Putin meeting could be if Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not going to be there. We're going to be joined by a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander in just moments. Don't go anywhere

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