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YouTube to Use A.I. to Identify Youth; McDonald's Japan Cases Food Waste Frenzy; Wholesale Inflation Rose More than Expected; Madison Mills is Interviewed about U.S. Inflation; FBI Agents Pulled to Patrol D.C. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired August 14, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

CHRISTINE QUINN, EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CHAIR, NY STATE DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE: With localities, not this where things are just forced on a jurisdiction without even giving the real support, like budget increases, like judicial appointments that would get crime, not just to stay down for one news cycle when you're trying to distract from other things, but would really stay down long term. The Democrats need to send that message clearly that, yes, we are against crime, but we're not for political stunts that are not really going to help our cities.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Governor Tim Pawlenty and Christine Quinn, our thanks to both of you. Thanks for being here.

Authorities in Texas are investigating after a school bus full of students rolled over on the first day of school. What we're learning about those students' injuries.

Also, a McDonalds Happy Meal promotion leads to chaos and tons of wasted food. More on this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: YouTube is now testing out using artificial intelligence to determine a viewer's age based on watch history and not the age you enter when prompted and signing in. It's part of an effort by the company now to better prevent younger users from accessing age restricted content.

CNN's Clare Duffy has much more on this.

[08:35:01]

It's getting a lot of attention. How is this new age verification system working and why is YouTube jumping at this now?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Yes, so these tech platforms, including YouTube, have faced a ton of criticism when they roll out these youth safety features that young people could just pretty easily get around them by signing up for an account with an incorrect birth date. BOLDUAN: Right.

DUFFY: They don't necessarily check. So, this is YouTube's effort to address that.

How this is going to work is the A.I. is basically going to be guessing users ages based on the types of videos they're searching and watching, and the length of time that their accounts have been around for.

If your account is flagged as a minor account, you're going to be automatically input into these sort of restricted teen safety features. That means you won't be able to watch certain kinds of videos, graphic, violent, sexually suggestive content. Your content recommendations will be adjusted. You might get these take a break reminders if you spent too much time on the platform, and you also won't get personalized ads.

But if you're an adult user who gets incorrectly flagged as a minor, you're going to have to put in either your credit card, your government I.D., or a live selfie to prove your age if you want to continue accessing that adult experience on YouTube.

BOLDUAN: I mean this is taking the horrible game of, like, guess my age to like a whole new level.

DUFFY: Totally.

BOLDUAN: So, that is mean. But, beyond that, you know that many parents have been begging for more help to keep their kids safe online. So, on one side of this, you've definitely -- you will have parents saying, bravo, thank you for doing something. But it is facing some criticism with regard to privacy. What -- what are you seeing?

DUFFY: Yes, it's really complicated, right, because parents have been asking these tech platforms to do more. This does avoid everyone having to input their personal I.D. or information when they sign up to verify their age, but adults are worried about having to put in their I.D., their credit card information, just to access the same adult experiencing -- experience they've been accessing on the platform. And privacy experts have also raised concerns about how Google, the parent company of YouTube, is going to be handling this sensitive information.

I will say, I talked to YouTube about this. They say that Google has world class safety systems, and that they also won't be using that personal information for advertising purposes. But it does sound like they might be hanging on to some of it.

BOLDUAN: Yes, which, again, that is going to get a lot of backlash, that element of it.

Great reporting Clare. Thank you so much.

DUFFY: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: And you can listen to "Terms of Service" with the one and only Clare Duffy wherever you get your podcasts.

Jessica.

DEAN: Pokemon fans in Japan are dumping piles of uneaten burgers and fries on the streets outside McDonalds, all for a chance to swipe limited edition card sets. And today's McDonalds is -- and today McDonalds is weighing in on all of this.

CNN's Hanako Montgomery has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HANAKO MONTGOMERY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For a limited time, McDonald's Japan was collaborating with Pokemon and was selling Pokemon cards inside these Happy Meal sets. This collaboration was so popular that hundreds of people were lining up outside McDonald's restaurants just to get their hands on a Happy Meal set.

Now, some of these people were buying multiple sets, taking the cards, but dumping the food, often uneaten. Videos of uneaten Happy Meal sets went viral on Japanese social media and caused a lot of discussion and debate around the issues of food waste and consumer ethics.

Also, some of the people buying these Happy Meal sets would resell the Pokemon cards at a much, much higher price online, sometimes ten times the cost of an original Happy Meal, which costs about three and a half U.S. dollars. McDonald's Japan also responded with a statement saying that it does not, quote, "tolerate the purchase of Happy Meals for resale or the abandonment or disposal of food."

Now, this collaboration was so popular that McDonald's actually ran out of cards to sell, and they had to end the promotion early.

Hanako Montgomery CNN, Tokyo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DEAN: We do have breaking news as brand new inflation numbers are out. What they say about President Trump's trade war and how the markets may respond.

Also, a skateboard wielding passenger forced a cross-country flight to make an emergency landing. We're learning new details about this midair meltdown.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:43:12]

DEAN: Breaking just a few moments ago, key new data showing wholesale inflation heated up last month. That's a potential sign for the prices consumers may see on store shelves in the months ahead.

Let's bring in CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich, who has been tracking all of this. What are the headlines here, Vanessa? VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this

report just out showing that the prices that businesses pay has heated up. So, you're looking at a year-over-year change of 3.3 percent. The estimate was an acceleration to 2.9 percent. So, obviously, above that.

And then, on the monthly basis, the estimate, what people expected, was 0.2 percent. That's coming in at 0.9 percent.

DEAN: Wow.

YURKEVICH: So, quite a bit higher than what was expected. We are seeing increases, both on the goods and services side. So, the products and then the services, like airfares or hotels, both -- all of those categories on the rise.

And you can see that uptick just right there in the month of July, spiking up after kind of a volatile recovery after those pandemic highs.

Key things to look at in goods. We saw the price of food, the price that businesses are paying for food, up 1.4 percent. And look at this. This is interesting. Fresh and dry fruits and vegetables. Kind of a category that is interesting to look at because we import a lot of vegetables, but not from countries that are heavily tariffs.

DEAN: Yes.

YURKEVICH: So, there's something else going on. But this accounted for a quarter of the increase of all goods. This could be because of labor issues with immigration. It could be weather. It could be transportation costs, which also rose in the month of July.

And then on the services category, you saw transportation and warehousing really increasing their trade services. These are the margins that businesses take in. Those actually grew. And that is because maybe they're passing more of their costs down to the consumer.

[08:45:01]

And then finally, in terms of travel and accommodations, on the rise again. So, you're seeing hotels up 3.1 percent.

But if you see there, look at that dramatic increase from the month of June --

DEAN: Yes.

YURKEVICH: When we saw levels that really we haven't seen in a while. And July now indicating a huge spike.

The reason we look at this report in particular, Jessica, is because ultimately businesses will have to make a decision, do they pass this down to the consumer?

DEAN: Of course. Right.

YURKEVICH: Clearly they're paying more, and does that end up with all of us?

DEAN: And what do they do?

Also, the Port of Los Angeles moving more than a million containers in July.

YURKEVICH: Yes.

DEAN: That's a record month. What does all that mean? How does that factor in?

YURKEVICH: Well, it sort of makes sense, right, because you had a lot of businesses bringing in a lot of stuff to beat the reciprocal tariffs that were expiring on August 1st and then went into effect on August 7th. And then you were having a lot of people move a lot of stuff in from China, trying to beat those tariffs potentially going up. There's been a 90 day pause since then.

But a million containers, more than a million containers, moved in the month of July at the Port of Los Angeles. That's an 8 percent increase from the previous year. And really trending up 5 percent on the year in terms of imports that they're bringing into the port.

Gene Seroka, the head of the Port of Los Angeles, said, though, that he believes that the surge is behind us. He believes that surge was because people were trying to get stuff in before those tariffs rose. But likely the rest of the year will kind of resume back to normal levels.

But not surprising that we saw this increase in inflation for businesses, given that they were buying so much and bringing that in and at a higher rate.

DEAN: Right. And so as you note, the question now is, who pays -- does the consumer pay for that as well?

YURKEVICH: How much can they take on?

DEAN: Right. All right, Vanessa, thank you so much.

YURKEVICH: Thank you.

DEAN: Kate.

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now for some more important context on this is the senior markets reporter at "Axios," Madison Mills.

Thanks for coming back in, Madison.

OK, so Producer Price Index, important -- an important read. How surprising is this?

MADISON MILLS, SENIOR MARKETS REPORTER, "AXIOS": It's a huge upside surprise. It's the biggest monthly upside surprise that we've had in three years. We were expecting a 0.2 percent gain. It came in at 0.9 percent month over month here.

And this is really critical because this goes into another data point that the Federal Reserve is keenly looking at when determining whether or not to cut interest rates. And we had the Treasury secretary talking about a 50 basis point cut in the September meeting. A data point like this is going to make that very difficult for the Fed to justify.

BOLDUAN: Another data point that they're taking into account, and everyone has to, is, so after Tuesday's not as bad as it could be consumer prices, consumer prices reading, add it together with this, what is the picture that it's painting? What story is this telling?

MILLS: Well, it's telling a story of a market where we're going to continue to see prices going up. The CPI print that you mentioned, that's more backward looking than this data. This tells us how producers, how companies are thinking about pricing going forward. So, it's more of that forward looking data. And it's painting a picture of prices going up.

You were just talking about the Port of L.A. as well and how we did see companies pulling forward their inventory.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

MILLS: So, maybe they didn't have to raise prices so much previously because they had stuff bulked up. And now we're starting to see the impact of that.

BOLDUAN: They -- they pull it in and then you will then see the consumer prices, obviously, going up eventually when that slows down, which gets me to what we have heard from the White House and the president, because whenever we have the White House on, they are very adamant that prices are not going up. I mean they -- straight -- like, straight -- they believe that prices are not going up and that's what they see.

But -- and -- because of that, the president has been lashing out over and over again and to -- against anyone who says that they are. That includes, of course, last week Goldman Sachs, you know, he lashed -- he reached -- he reached out via social media to the Goldman Sachs CEO and said that he should fire his lead economist over a report on tariffs that he didn't like.

And yesterday, Goldman Sachs pushed back. Let me play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID MERICLE, GOLDMAN SACHS ECONOMIST: We stand by the -- the results of this study.

Our conclusion is that U.S. businesses have borne most of the tariff costs so far because it takes time to negotiate lower import prices or to pass price increases along to consumers. But if the most recent tariffs, like the April tariff, follow the same pattern that we've seen with those earliest February tariffs, then eventually, by the fall, we estimate that consumers would bear about two-thirds of the cost.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: And by the fall we're definitely going to have some answers to that.

But my question on this really is, the president -- the move of like, fire your economists because I don't like their read, or I'm going to fire the head of the BLS because I don't -- I don't -- I don't like the July jobs report. That level of doubt and uncertainty that it injects into the economy, are we seeing evidence of that?

MILLS: Well, what is difficult to parse at the moment is --

BOLDUAN: Yes.

MILLS: You talked about the CPI numbers this week. Those looked pretty good for the White House on the inflation front. But then today's numbers showing the opposite story. They're showing a story of prices going up.

[08:50:02]

So, it's difficult to suss out how the White House feels about the data when, depending on how good the data is, their messaging might shift. Going forward here, what I can tell you is that I like talking to people at these companies because they can tell me how they are viewing prices. And it seems like it's very company specific. You just heard in that sound bite, it's sector specific as well. In today's data it looks like wholesale manufacturers on things like machinery are really struggling with tariffs. And so it's going to be that kind of detail going forward that's going to help us determine where prices are getting higher at the most level.

BOLDUAN: But an important read today to add in some more facts and data to this picture.

It's great to see you. Thanks for coming in.

Still ahead for us, there's new comments from the White House this morning as more National Guard troops are heading to the streets of our nation's capital.

And also, this. Patience paid off for one woman who was bound, set and determined to dig up her own diamond for her engagement ring. Where she found a two carat stunner.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:55:26]

DEAN: On our radar this morning, a passenger aboard a Los Angeles bound Breeze Airways flight was allegedly so intoxicated the flight had to be diverted to Grand Junction, Colorado. The airline says the passenger started a physical fight with other customers and the flight attendants. We're told he was waving a skateboard around and also yelled racial slurs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why am I here after 7:45? I want to tell you why. This Tony Hawk wannabe from Outer Banks, North Carolina, with a skateboard, had too many Bloody Mary's this morning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: Ooh, I don't blame her. She's mad about that.

According to CNN affiliate KABC, the passenger even broke free from his restraints twice. He was arrested once that flight landed.

Several elementary school children were injured after the bus taking students home from their first day of school crashed and rolled over near Austin, Texas. At least 12 people were rushed to the hospital, including the bus driver. Authorities say one has life-threatening injuries. Forty-two children were on that bus, which did have seatbelts. The crash is now under investigation.

And they say diamonds are forever. That's how long this woman will remember the story of how she found her future engagement ring. She decided two years ago she wanted to find her own diamond for the ring. And after she finished grad school, she set off to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas -- it's an amazing place, my home state -- and it's the only place in the country you can dig and -- dig for and keep diamonds. And after three weeks of digging, she found this over two carat stunner. So, congrats to her.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: I mean, I know where I'm going to go spend my next vacation.

So, from the desk to the field, with little training in between, FBI agents are now patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., right alongside D.C. police. It is a major part of President Trump's federal takeover and the surge that he's putting in place. But is this surge putting agents into the field unprepared?

CNN's Holmes Lybrand has new reporting on all of this.

What are you -- what are you learning?

HOLMES LYBRAND, CNN REPORTER: So, that's right. The -- essentially what is happening is, the FBI is, once again, being used as sort of a hammer for all problems that might be nails. You're talking about agents that largely work from their desk, that mostly work on investigations, including on terrorism and -- and maybe even Chinese spying. And they're now being moved to patrol the streets of -- of D.C., with cops that are trained to do that and are trained very specifically in how to handle confrontation with locals, have had experience in the community. And now those agents are being paired with MPD to help in this new crime emergency that Trump has announced.

We're also seeing that this comes at a time when really the FBI has been used like this in other circumstances, like with ICE deportations. They were tasked to start helping with that. Some 30 percent of their time can go to that. Any individual agent, 30 percent of their time could go to deportation efforts. So, we're really talking about an agency that's being kind of thrown around to different problems.

Now, there you can see on the screen that we have DEA officers. There's also Secret Service. There's also U.S. Marshals. Some of those agencies are more familiar with community policing or arresting individuals or dealing with common D.C. street crime because D.C. is such a kind of federal city. So, those agents and those agencies have a lot more experience on the ground here as well, when compared to the FBI.

It's also bringing in a question of morale. We had recent firings of top FBI officials who had previously done some things that kind of potentially irritated certain people on the Trump administration and weren't really given a reason why they were being fired and -- and told their fellow FBI agents as -- as much. So, morale we know is down. We have -- one -- one law enforcement official told us that, "morale is the worst" that they have ever seen. "The bureau is becoming unrecognizable." And "lots of people are weighing really difficult decisions right now."

On the ground, really these FBI agents are paired with MPD officers, so they at least have that kind of community aspect with them as they go and patrol the streets of D.C.

BOLDUAN: That was one thing I was going to ask you, which is, not just on morale, but what is the sense that you and the team are getting of how FBI personnel are feeling about, not just this change in assignment, but everything that has been put on them since this administration has started?

[09:00:00]

I mean, like, going through -- going through Epstein files 24/7, working long weekends. I mean, what are you -- what are you seeing?

LYBRAND: Right.