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Florida Opening New Immigration Detention Center; Federal Crackdown in D.C. Continues; Interview With Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer; Trump Set to Meet With Putin. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 14, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We begin this afternoon with breaking news. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Boris Sanchez, alongside Danny Freeman, who's in for Brianna Keilar today, from the nation's capital.

We are standing by this hour to hear from President Trump live at the White House just one day before his critical meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin. And just hours ago, Trump raised expectations, lifting the bar on this high-stakes summit.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Because of a certain relationship that he has with me running this country, he's -- he really -- I believe now he's convinced that he's going to make a deal.

He's going to make a deal.

BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Right.

TRUMP: I think he's going to. And we're going to find out.

The second meeting is going to be very, very important.

KILMEADE: Right.

TRUMP: This meeting sets up -- it's like a chess game. This meeting sets up the second meeting.

But there is a 25 percent chance that this meeting will not be a successful meeting.

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DANNY FREEMAN, CNN HOST: CNN's Alayna Treene is standing by at the White House, and CNN's Matthew Chance is in Anchorage, where that summit will be taking place.

Alayna, I want to start with you.

Just a few days ago, the White House was calling this meeting a listening exercise. You heard the president right there perhaps changing his tune. Has the White House given any more details about what that deal might look like?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: They haven't. And you're exactly right.

I think that conversation the president had with Brian Kilmeade this morning was very interesting, because it is very different from the rhetoric we have heard, not only from a series of White House officials, but also the president himself, who earlier this week said it's not up to him to make a deal and that that wasn't the purpose of the meeting.

Now, of course, he's saying he believes that Vladimir Putin is convinced he's going to make a deal. Another big point I think that adds to this idea of raising expectations is, he said that he doesn't know if they're going to get an immediate cease-fire, but still believes that the discussion will involve this idea of he said a give- and-take as to boundaries and lands, that whole idea of land swapping that the president has floated a couple days now throughout this week.

But, look, I think we are getting a better sense of what the parameters of this are for, despite not really knowing exactly what the expectations are to come out of this. And that's because we know that the White House and also the Russians don't really know what could come out of this.

And that's really what's kind of leading all of these -- the preparation and the talks as we head into the summit tomorrow. But just to give you a sense of the schedule, we know, of course, that this meeting is going to be taking place at the Joint Base Elmendorf- Richardson 11:30 a.m. Alaska time, 3:30 am. Eastern time.

It's going to start with that one-on-one meeting between the president and Vladimir Putin. Of course, there will be interpreters as well, given the language barriers. Then there's going to be a bilateral lunch with the two leaders and also their respective delegations. And then we heard the president confirm today, as did his White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, that they are expected to have a joint press conference.

That in itself is so remarkable to have not only, of course, Putin on American soil, but then standing alongside right next to Donald Trump to address the media after this meeting will be a very big deal.

Some other things as well. He did say there is a 25 percent chance that this meeting ends in failure. He said he expects, the president, to know whether or not that's going to happen within the first few minutes of meeting with Putin.

But, by and large, it does seem like the president is raising expectations for this and expecting there to be some sort of progress that could quickly lead to another meeting. That second meeting, Trump said, must include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

SANCHEZ: Alayna Treene live for us at the White House, thank you so much.

Let's go to Matthew Chance now.

Matthew, you have heard the range of possibilities here from President Trump. The White House just a few days ago saying that this was a listening exercise. Now Trump is saying that Putin wants to make a deal, but there is a 25 percent chance of failure. What are some realistic expectations we should have going into this summit?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think that's very optimistic to say that there's a 25 percent chance of failure, which means there's a 75 percent chance of it being successful, because the idea that Vladimir Putin is going to make sufficient compromises that would satisfy the Ukrainians, satisfy the Europeans, I mean, really, it's certainly not a given.

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The Kremlin running up to this summit, and it has been very positive about the fact that this is taking place, has given no indication whatsoever that it's prepared to back down from any of its key objectives, their territorial objectives, and things like making sure that Russia takes control of all the territory it has annexed inside Ukraine, even territory it hasn't been able to capture by military means, other political issues as well resulting in effectively the subjugation of the next-door country of Ukraine.

So, look, no compromises so far that have been indicated by the Kremlin. Let's see what comes out of this meeting. Maybe the threat of U.S. tariffs and secondary sanctions on countries that do trade with Russia may alter the Kremlin's mind-set. But, again, there's been no suggestion of that.

I think the main thing for the Russians is very much twofold. First of all, the fact that the summit is taking place at all is a huge win for the Kremlin. It means that Vladimir Putin, who has been essentially isolated since his invasion of Ukraine internationally, can say to his own people, can say to the world, look, I'm back at the top table of international diplomacy.

The other thing the Russians want very much is -- to do is to broaden out the agenda. Yes, certainly, the focus is on the Ukraine war and what can be done to end that. But the Russians are also talking about other issues like space exploration, like nuclear weapons limitation, treaties like economic cooperation, the exploration of oil in the Arctic region, for example.

And so the Russians very much see the Ukraine question as just a small issue in a much broader relationship between the two countries. And so one of the objectives of the Kremlin and of Vladimir Putin is to broaden out that conversation, to get away from the narrow focus on Ukraine and move it onto a broader bilateral relationship.

And so we will see what comes out of this extraordinary joint news conference that's being promised.

SANCHEZ: Yes, extraordinary it shall be.

Matthew Chance live for us in Anchorage, thank you so much.

Joining us now to discuss, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer. He's also with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford. Also with us, CNN chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny.

Jeff, zooming back and looking at the Trump presidency overall, when the history is written of Trump in the White House and foreign relations, his relationship with Vladimir Putin, I mean, it is arguably the most influential, the most consequential.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It is and the most mysterious.

I mean, one of the most interesting relationships in the world, certainly with world leaders, is Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, even back before Donald Trump was elected. I'm thinking back to when he said on "60 Minutes" back in 2016, he said, we were stablemates, suggested that he's long had an appreciation for Vladimir Putin.

But then during the rise of the Trump presidency, which we covered obviously the first term very well, there was no one who was sort of hanging over everything as much as Vladimir Putin. And I'm thinking back to that Helsinki summit.

And when the announcement was made this morning about a joint news conference, that was something that caused alarm among some White House officials and some Republicans who were watching this with some trepidation, because they believe that that is sort of when things went south in 2018, some seven years ago this summer, when the American president stood next to the Russian president.

And he basically accepted his word for the fact that there was no Russian meddling. That was something that President Trump had to walk back. And it really -- he's never escaped that. But, all that said, this is a different moment for President Trump. And officials around him say that he has perhaps soured on Vladimir Putin, but also is a bit more wiser.

And they point to the Iranian strikes. They point to other acts and more comfort levels that Donald Trump is now in the presidency. So they don't believe that he will be as wowed perhaps by Vladimir Putin. But we shall see. Vladimir Putin has stood the test of time with American presidents from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden back to Trump.

And he is a master at this. So that's why going into this summit with very little preparation, I think Matthew was correct in the sense that a 25 percent failure rate means 75 percent success rate. That is very hard to imagine.

FREEMAN: Yes, and your point is well-taken that the question is, will President Trump bring some of that skepticism that's fairly recent about Vladimir Putin into this meeting?

Ambassador, I want to bring you into this conversation.

A lot of mixed messages, frankly, from both sides we're seeing here. First, there was the listening exercise comment from the White House, now the hopes of a deal. Meanwhile, the Kremlin saying that they think of this as an opportunity to reset U.S.-Russia relations.

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What's your take on what the goal of this summit will be?

STEVEN PIFER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UKRAINE: Yes, well, we have seen President Trump take various stances about the meeting of Alaska.

He's talked about a listening exercise, land swaps, severe consequences. So I think the first question is, what -- which Donald Trump shows up in an Anchorage tomorrow to meet with Vladimir Putin? I think Putin is very clear about what he wants to do.

First of all, just the fact that this meeting is a victory for Putin, in that it's beginning to break down the boycott that Western leaders applied on Putin and applied on meeting with Putin back in 2022. So that's a win to begin with.

But I think Putin sees an opportunity here, particularly in a one-on- one meeting, where Putin, who's been dealing with American presidents now for 25 years, masters the details of issues. And, as you have heard, unfortunately, Mr. Trump does not spend a lot of time preparing.

And I think Putin sees an opportunity to use that mastery of the detail and to spin, charm, cajole Mr. Trump in a way that could have the American president agreeing on significant elements of the Russian approach. And so I worry a little bit that, if you talk about success tomorrow, success could be President Trump agreeing, for example, to major elements of the Russian position on ending the Russian-Ukraine war in a way that simply would not fly either with the Ukrainians or with the Europeans.

SANCHEZ: President Trump has said that Ukrainian territory is not his to negotiate, Ambassador.

And so I wonder if we come out of the meeting tomorrow perhaps not having a framework for an agreement toward peace on Ukraine, but some of these other aspects in the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Russia, perhaps the restarting of direct flights between the two countries or some kind of broader agreement on nuclear weapons or things that would alleviate the economic tensions between the two countries, would you consider that a loss for Ukraine and its European allies? PIFER: Well, we will have to see.

I mean, I would think, for example, that if the two presidents could agree on beginning a dialogue on strategic relations, in the sense of strategic offensive arms, because, right now, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which was signed back in 2010, it expires in the year 2026.

But that treaty has been suspended, at least in terms of observance of the verification measures, first by Russia. And then when Russia did not restore observance of those measures, then the United States also ended it. So I think that could be a positive step, although, when Mr. Putin talks about this dialogue, he always sort of says, this has to happen after there's been some progress on either ending the Russia- Ukraine war or adjusting America's position of support for Ukraine.

On the economic side, I tend to be skeptical about the economic prospects. I mean, I worked both in the Clinton administration and also in the first term of the George W. Bush administration. And both President Clinton and President Bush wanted to develop economic relations with Russia.

Part of the idea was that, if you had a strong economic relationship, that could underpin and stabilize political relations. But in both cases, the presidents were disappointed. It turned out that there wasn't a lot of ground for economic interaction between the two countries.

And when American investors looked at the investment climate in Russia, they saw complicated taxes, impossible regulations. They saw court systems that would not render fair judgments. And a lot of American investors just said, it's not worth it going there.

So, again, there may be talk about economic possibilities. And I fear that, over the last five or six months, the Russians have been talking that up to try to appeal to President Trump, but, in fact, I think the history of the last 30 years shows that those prospects are really quite limited.

FREEMAN: Jeff, can I just ask you, the one, I guess, goalpost that we have heard definitively from President Trump, if any, really over the past week is, if it's a good meeting, then he's going to call President Zelenskyy and the E.U. partners.

Do we have any sense of what a good meeting will look like in the eyes of Trump?

ZELENY: Certainly not. And, I mean, it's difficult to imagine that any outcome would be considered a good meeting to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

I mean, the reality is, Ukraine is not present.

FREEMAN: Right.

ZELENY: And President Zelenskyy cannot suddenly give up the Donetsk or other regions without a change in the Constitution. So it's hard to imagine what would be a good meeting in Zelenskyy's eyes.

In President Trump's eyes, it is pretty easy to imagine what a good meeting would be. He wants to see an end of the war. He's not focused on the details as much. The regions do not mean that much to him. He is being prepped on this, I'm told, on his long flight tomorrow. Obviously, he will be prepped on this.

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But the biggest point of all, that they're having this meeting, he is elevating President Putin back to the world stage. He's been a pariah really since 2022. So it's a win for Putin, I think regardless. Less clear what a win for Trump or even Ukraine would be.

SANCHEZ: Jeff Zeleny, Ambassador Steven Pifer, thank you both.

Still to come: pulled off their cases to perform a job they are not trained for. Growing concerns about the decision to send FBI agents to D.C. to help patrol crime.

Plus, a vacant prison about to become Florida's newest immigration facility. What we know about this site.

FREEMAN: And, later, you will hear why first lady Melania Trump is threatening to sue Hunter Biden for $1 billion.

Stay with us.

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FREEMAN: Today the White House is touting dozens of new arrests across the nation's capital as President Trump's crime crackdown intensifies there.

The administration says 45 people were taken into custody overnight, as well as 29 others accused of being undocumented.

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SANCHEZ: There were tense moments playing out as protesters were booing and shouting at D.C. police and federal agents at this checkpoint.

Meantime, a wave of new National Guard troops are expected to join the effort, as questions arise about just how prepared many FBI agents are for their new role.

CNN's Gabe Cohen and Evan Perez join us now.

First, Gabe, to you.

There was an anticipation that we were going to see more National Guard swarming the area last night. Do we know what they're up to today?

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so I was just outside Union Station, which is the biggest train station in D.C., where there were probably a little more than a dozen National Guard troops, a few Humvees that were sitting right outside on the park property outside of the station.

But, really, they seem to be there mostly for visibility and for show. They have zip ties, but they're not making arrests. They're just sort of interacting with the public. We saw at one point an official in camouflage seemed like part of the National Guard come over with a camera and start encouraging the soldiers to get out of their vehicles to take some photos.

So more than anything today, it really felt like a photo-op.

FREEMAN: Evan, you have new reporting, though, on some of the FBI agents, because it's twofold. It's the National Guard activated, but also federal agents also being on the streets.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right.

FREEMAN: Many of them don't have the training, though, to be doing this kind of work?

PEREZ: Right.

I mean, one of the things that Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, has come in saying, he's like, you want to make cops -- let cops be cops. And sort of -- that sort of misunderstands what FBI agents really are, right? They're not supposed to be that. That's not what they're trained to do.

Most of them, a lot of these FBI agents go through their entire careers without ever putting handcuffs on anyone, right? That's not the job. We're so long away, far away from where the FBI was chasing down bank robbers and kidnappers, right?

Now a lot of robberies of banks are happening behind keystrokes. And so that's the kind of skill set you have for the FBI. One metric that you saw from the "Inside the FBI," in the newsletter, they said that 44 percent of the new class of agents in 2024 had advanced degrees. And so that's the sense of what you're getting of these agents on the streets.

These are people who typically don't carry pepper spray and Tasers, right? That's not equipment that they're given. And so they're not really like Metropolitan Police, who have a lot of de-escalation training. There's a lot of different training that goes into being a beat cop that you don't get when you're at the FBI.

And, this year, instead of doing things like national security jobs, they're being detailed to do -- spend the weekends going through Epstein files, for instance. So the job of the FBI agent this year is certainly taking a different turn.

SANCHEZ: What does that mean for safety? Is there an opportunity cost to this? In other words, if they're not doing the national security work, who is? PEREZ: That's the thing. That's what you hear definitely from the

agents, that they're very concerned that their regular jobs are certainly not being done and that something six months from now will go bad and we will look back and say, well, they were here doing illegal immigration duty with DHS or they were doing Epstein files, instead of doing their regular jobs, right?

And what I'm hearing is kind of a chaotic scene right now. As Gabe, I think, can attest, a lot of this was done spur of the moment by the president. He kind of threw this on to the agencies. And so they're still trying to figure out what exactly useful they can do for the Metropolitan Police here in Washington.

It's not normal for you to do it this way. Usually, you go in and you have a specific set of goals, different people you are trying to target. They didn't do any of that preparation.

FREEMAN: Well, and, meanwhile, last night, it seems like we saw kind of the first sort of tensions build up.

It's funny.We were talking about this. There was some protesting last night as there was, I guess, a checkpoint of sorts. I was eating a block or two away and it was intense out there.

COHEN: Yes, and you're definitely seeing those tense moments because there are plenty of D.C. residents who don't feel like this level of federal law enforcement in the city is necessary, warranted or something that they want to see on a daily basis.

But just to go back to something Evan brought up a moment ago, I think it's really important to note that this is, what, day four of how this is playing out.

PEREZ: Day four.

COHEN: So it's hard to make predictions of how this power dynamic is going to play out.

And, as Evan said, there's been all of this confusion. We got that sense just talking to some of the National Guard members about what exactly they're doing out there. There are questions about who exactly is in charge when it comes to local law enforcement, who at the end of the day is calling the shots, because the White House says that it's Pam Bondi and Terry Cole, the head of the DEA.

And yet you still have City Hall here saying that the police chief is still ultimately the ones -- the one who is making the final call and they're just collaborating with the feds. So is that going to change in the days ahead? We don't know how that power dynamic...

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PEREZ: Going to the show aspect of this...

FREEMAN: Right.

PEREZ: ... where you were eating, it's one of the gentrified neighborhoods of the city.

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FREEMAN: Right.

PEREZ: It's not exactly where a lot of the -- the high-crime areas.

FREEMAN: Right.

PEREZ: What we're not seeing is any of this presence in National Guard over across the river in Anacostia, Ward 7 and Ward 8, which have a real problem with safety.

FREEMAN: Right.

COHEN: Although Pam Bondi has said that they are going to start moving some of their efforts into high-crime areas, but, to your point, we don't know what areas we're talking about at this point.

FREEMAN: So, and I think you both put that on the head, that we're holding on what, day four, right? Twenty-six more days to come of this, at least for now.

PEREZ: At least, right.

FREEMAN: Thank you both, Gabe Cohen, Evan Perez. Appreciate your time, as always.

And to this now. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says his state plans to open a new immigration detention center, the second since that makeshift detention center that opened last month in the Everglades.

SANCHEZ: And CNN's Isabel Rosales is following this story for us.

Isabel, what are we learning about this facility?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Boris, and state officials say that the plan here is to hold 1,300 detainees, with the ability to expand capacity to 2,000.

Now, Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis said that there is demand for this and claims that Florida needs additional capacity beyond that makeshift detention camp that they have got in South Florida located in the Everglades. It's been dubbed Alligator Alcatraz. We have been talking about this for a month now since it's been built out.

Now, this new facility that they're dubbing Deportation Depot would be located at Baker Correctional Institution. This is in a rural area between Tallahassee and Jacksonville. And it would be put in essentially a state prison that has been vacant for years.

According to the Associated Press, the Department of Corrections shut it down, closed it in 2021 due to severe staffing shortages. Now, I just got off the phone with Thomas Kennedy. He is the spokesperson for FLIC, the Florida Immigrant Coalition. Here was his response and his reaction to this news. He says: "It's a solution in search of a problem. They have created

this capacity issue at detention camps by indiscriminate witch-hunting against immigrants."

Now, Governor DeSantis touted the ease of using an already existing prison and moving this new detention facility there and how cost- effective it would be. He says that it would cost $6 million to build out this facility and get it ready for detainees, also saying that the federal government will reimburse the state of Florida. The same goes for the facility in the Everglades.

Here's the governor.

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GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL); We are calling this the Deportation Depot. It is going to be named -- it is going to be located here at Baker Correctional Institute.

And, again, the process -- the reason of this is not to just house people indefinitely. We want to process, stage, and then return illegal aliens to their home country. That is the name of the game.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This facility is a permanent, preexisting structure, meaning that our teams can get in here, get it operational quickly, officially, and without delay.

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ROSALES: And all of this comes on the heels of a federal judge in Miami issuing a 14-day pause on new construction at the Everglades facility as she decides the future of this site that's under fire by a lawsuit from environmental groups, alleging they broke state environmental laws -- guys.

SANCHEZ: Isabel Rosales, thank you so much for the update there.

Just days after President Trump touted the latest inflation numbers, a new report shows there are reasons to be worried about them, the evidence pointing to higher prices -- when we come back.

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