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Trump Meeting With Zelensky At White House; Bolton Pleads Not Guilty To Mishandling Classified Info; Trump To Meet Putin In Hungary To Discuss Ukraine; Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) Discusses About Peace Deal Between Russia And Ukraine; Sources: Some Survivors After U.S. Strikes Another Alleged Drug Boat In Caribbean. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired October 17, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Authorities say the 1919 work, called "Still Life with Guitar," arrived at the CajaGranada Cultural Center the Friday before the exhibition. But the exhibit's curator discovered that the painting was just missing on Monday morning. The Cultural Center says surveillance video over the weekend showed no issues. The painting is owned by a private curator and insured for an estimated $700,000.

And a new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Happening right now inside the White House, President Trump holding talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Up for discussion whether the U.S. will provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles, a potential game changer in the war with Russia.

Plus, President Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton pleading not guilty today for allegedly mishandling classified information. How Bolton's troubles may be more serious than other high-profile critics of the President.

And the boom in artificial intelligence may be zapping your wallet. How A.I. could be pushing your electricity bills higher and higher.

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

We are closely watching the White House right now where President Donald Trump is meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The meeting is expected to wrap up just at any moment. President Trump was scheduled to depart the White House this hour for a weekend trip to Florida. We'll see if he says anything more about the talks when he departs the White House.

Leaders have been in the Cabinet Room for just over 40 minutes. And before cameras left the room, both presidents set the stage for where they feel the prospect of peace lies right now.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We'll be talking about what took place yesterday with my phone call with President Putin. And I think that things are coming along pretty well. It began with Alaska, where certain guidelines were discussed. And we want to see if we can get this done.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE: We understand that Putin is not ready. I think not ready. But I think that -- I'm confident that with your help, we can stop this war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: CNN's Kristen Holmes is live for us at the White House. Kristen, a lot more came after that. Walk us through the takeaways.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And we actually saw this kind of back and forth between Trump and Zelenskyy a number of times, in which President Trump would say that he believed now that Putin was ready to end the war, that he wanted peace. And then, you would hear a few moments later from Zelenskyy saying that Putin was not ready to end the war and that Putin did not want peace. They clearly seem to be on different pages. And it also seemed as though at the end of this, Zelenskyy was probably not going to get those long-range Tomahawk missiles that he had been hoping for.

Now, we know that in this phone call between Putin and Trump, Trump alluded to the fact that Putin talked to him about and essentially asked him not to send those missiles. And when asked today directly whether or not he was going to give those missiles to Ukraine, he danced around the issue. He said he hopes that they could end the war without the use of Tomahawks. The Tomahawks are an escalation.

Now, I will remind you that last Sunday, President Trump himself said that he would consider -- strongly consider giving Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine to strike inside of Russia if Putin did not end the war in Ukraine. But it certainly seems as though he's taken a step back from that.

Now, the big question, of course, is why another bilateral meeting between President Trump and President Putin when the last one in Alaska did not really yield any results? And so far, President Trump hasn't really been able to answer that question. He did answer a question today about whether or not he thought Putin was stringing him along. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Yes, I am. But, you know, I've been played all my life by the best of them. And I came out really well, so it's possible. Yes, a little time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) ...

TRUMP: It's all right. But I -- I think that I'm pretty good at this stuff. I think that he wants to make a deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now, on a couple of things, we heard Zelenskyy kind of offer a negotiation in terms of Tomahawks for Ukrainian drones, which Trump seemed mildly interested in. We also heard Zelenskyy say that security guarantees were the most important thing to Ukraine when asked a question about what he would be willing to give up in a negotiation with Russia.

But again, we still don't have quite an understanding of what exactly is meant to come out of this bilateral meeting, since we've already seen that the things that President Trump wanted out of the first one, a ceasefire, a sit down with Zelenskyy and Putin, never came to fruition.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Kristen Holmes at the White House. Thank you so much. Brianna.

[15:05:00]

KEILAR: Former National Security Adviser John Bolton made his first court appearance in Maryland this morning, pleading not guilty to 18 counts stemming from allegations that he mishandled national defense information. The judge says Bolton faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. Bolton's indictment marks President Trump's third political foe to face prosecution here in the last three weeks. We have CNN's Evan Perez who is at the federal courthouse this morning. He's with us now live.

Tell us about how this went and what's next.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know right now that Bolton is facing very serious charges. These are 18 counts he pleaded not guilty, and -- and the judge did not set a -- a trial yet. But we know that this is going to probably take some months to go through, especially because of the classified documents or classified information that is involved in this case, Brianna.

But one of the things that, you know, you mentioned, certainly the -- the -- the contrast between this case and the other cases that -- that have been brought against some of the President's critics, including James Comey and Letitia James, some of his perceived enemies.

This is a very serious case. It goes back to 2022 when Bolton was hacked, and the FBI found that the Iranians appeared to have obtained very sensitive information from his AOL accounts. He was sending these -- these diary entries essentially to himself, to his wife, to his daughter, and that's where this case began. And you could still see the involvement of the -- of the career lawyers, some of the career prosecutors and investigators in this case that have been involved from the start. That's in contrast to the Comey and the Letitia James case.

That is not to say, however, that the issue of -- of whether Bolton is being targeted selectively is not going to be a big part of this case, because you can see the defense is already raising that in -- in -- in defending him. And in this case itself, in the indictment, they mention Bolton's criticism of Pete Hegseth and the whole Signalgate controversy. They point out that he -- he brought that up and he mentioned how Hegseth should have known better.

Now, prosecutors are using that to try to hang Bolton with his own words, but I will point out one other thing, that we know the FBI and prosecutors in Justice -- in the Justice Department have found it very, very difficult to explain why they did not investigate Hegseth and the people involved in that very serious breach.

You know, they -- they -- they shared very sensitive information on an active operation on an unsecure platform, Signal, the -- the -- the messaging app, and that was never investigated by the Justice Department. And so, the question that will loom over this case is, why are you going after John Bolton? But you had no interest in investigating that incident. That's going to be something that we're going to hear a lot more about in the coming months.

KEILAR: Yes, sort of the UNO reverse card on the hanging him on their own words thing.

PEREZ: Right, exactly.

KEILAR: I learned that UNO reverse card thing from my kids. That's a kids thing.

PEREZ: Well, no, your kids are very, very much ...

KEILAR: Yes.

PEREZ: ... they're smarter than us sometimes.

KEILAR: They're -- they kind of are, yes.

PEREZ: Yes.

KEILAR: All right, Evan, that was great. Thank you so much for that report.

PEREZ: Thanks.

KEILAR: And still to come, the view from Kyiv and the Kremlin on President Trump's critical meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyyy.

Then, later we're told the U.S. Navy is holding two survivors after it carried out strikes on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, as the commander overseeing American forces in the region is retiring just one year into his tenure, which is highly unusual.

Well, that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:12:52]

KEILAR: Back to our breaking news, the meeting underway right now in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy sitting across the table from President Trump and pressing for new long-range weapons to fight Russia, including these Tomahawk missiles.

President Trump so far, not committing to providing the weapons. He repeatedly claimed today that Russian president Vladimir Putin wants the war to end. We have CNN Chief International Security Correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh in London on this story.

Nick, that is something that certainly Zelenskyy disagrees with the assessment on. How are Ukrainians viewing this latest meeting.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Look, you can't deny the radically transformed and improved relationship between Zelenskyy and Trump since that awful Oval Office blowout back in February. Yes, it's clear Zelenskyy is not going to today get the Tomahawk missiles that he clearly wants. He'll take frankly any improvement in Ukraine's firepower, but they are now the -- possibly, I think the first time that President Trump has held out real military force as a threat over Vladimir Putin. If he doesn't agree to a peace deal.

It's been in the background, but here we have an American capability, which the Kremlin have said would be a game changer. But remember, it's not easy to deliver. The U.S. hasn't got that many of them. They're incredibly expensive. The range they have isn't much more frankly than Ukraine's long-range drones that have been striking deep into Russia already have, but they are a psychological leap forwards because it's basically the Americans saying via the Europeans who buy these weapons to give them to Ukraine, that Ukraine is able to get the best of American technology.

That isn't what's going to happen just yet. And whilst threatening these weapons, accepting there'll be an escalation, saying a lot of bad things could happen and saying how dangerous the Tomahawks were, Trump kind of undermines himself at the same time as well by saying, maybe we don't have to get there. I hope we don't have to think about Tomahawks and suggesting again and again that he felt that what he called number nine, the ninth peace deal he could potentially broker was something that Vladimir Putin indeed wanted.

He said he didn't know why necessarily Putin might want that. But again and again, he came back to the same idea. Now, the relationship between Trump and Zelenskyy clearly improved. Compliments about Zelenskyy's clothing were back in February.

[15:15:06]

His military garb was very much mocked by those around Trump. And a sense too that maybe Zelenskyy came to the table hoping Ukraine could offer something back. They make a good drone, make a very good drone, said Trump, of the remarkable Ukrainian drone technology that has held back a superior in number Russian infantry. So, an improved dynamic between the two men.

And look, Brianna, one important thing to remember about what has happened over the summer. We went in to the summer months expecting a Russian offensive that could potentially take key towns in the east. Russia's taken quite a lot of ground, but it's not taken any of the key population centers they had their eyes upon.

That is so far a bit of a failure for Moscow, frankly. It'll put the pressure on Putin to wonder how much longer he's going to keep this intensity up. Things may change in the weeks ahead. But I think we saw Zelenskyy there buoyed by the fact that he'd managed to weather that summer offensive so far. He has the drone technology on his side. He has an improved relationship with President Trump, who is now finally threatening military force against Russia via the proxies of Europe and Ukraine. And maybe we see now a different dynamic heading into Budapest. Even indeed, if that meeting happens, no date set for it yet, that is again a chance for Putin to try and swing Trump again round to his world view, Brianna?

KEILAR: Yes. Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much for that. Boris?

SANCHEZ: All eyes, of course, will be watching what happens after today's meeting between Zelenskyy and President Trump. Meantime, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban says preparations are in full swing to host Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest. CNN Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Matthew Chance is live for us in Moscow.

Matthew, how is the Kremlin viewing today's meeting at the White House?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, I think -- I think they're watching it, Boris, very carefully. I mean, the whole reason that they essentially intervened with a phone call just last night, two and a half hours long, was essentially to get in President Trump's ear, to -- to spell out to him how Tomahawk missiles would not make an impact on the battlefield, but would cause a diplomatic rift between Washington and Moscow, and to essentially try and, you know, push him away from that decision to supply Ukraine with -- with that kind of, you know, high -- highly technological, highly effective weapon.

And I think they'll probably be looking at the words that President Trump spoke in that sort of media briefing, that press conference, with a degree of satisfaction, because it seems that Trump, who was already ambiguous about whether or not to supply those weapons, has now moved further away as a result of that prospect of a peace agreement, that prospect -- prospect of, you know, a face-to-face meeting with President Putin in Budapest.

The big question, I think, that needs to be answered in the coming weeks, or at least at the summit, is how will Budapest be any different to Alaska? I was in Alaska. I was in that room when President Trump laid out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin and got virtually nothing in return.

Since then, you know, as Nick was saying, there's been some slight changes on the battlefield. Russia hasn't achieved the territory that it perhaps wanted to. There's been some more economic pressures in terms of fuel shortages inside Russia. But Putin has publicly, at least, offered nothing in terms of, you know, compromises that he might be prepared to make in terms of his core military objectives. And so there is every chance that, just like in Alaska, a summit in Budapest, unless there's some sort of movement on one side or the other, could also end as a kind of flop, Boris. SANCHEZ: Matthew Chance, thank you so much for the reporting from

Moscow.

Still ahead, Republicans on Capitol Hill could be shifting strategy on the government shutdown as it drags on, what their next move to put pressure on Democrats might be.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:23:47]

SANCHEZ: A high stakes face-to-face meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy at the White House continues at this moment. Trump set up the bilateral meeting to help push for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. Earlier, Zelenskyy expressed skepticism about Putin's true desire to end the war, and he used the moment to propose trading Ukrainian drones for long range U.S. Tomahawk missiles.

We're joined now by Florida Republican Congressman Byron Donalds to discuss.

Congressman, thanks so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

President Trump at that meeting said that he hoped that the war could end without him having to send Tomahawk missiles through NATO to Kyiv. Do you believe that President Trump should do that, given that it was the threat of Tomahawk missiles that got Vladimir Putin to pick up the phone and talk to President Trump for the first time in two months?

REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): Well, first, let me just say that I have full faith that President Trump is going to do what is necessary to bring this war to an end, like he's brought so many other wars and conflicts around the globe to an end. I think he's definitely earned that credibility from the American people, and quite frankly, from leaders across the world.

[15:25:02]

If you're going to talk specifically to Tomahawks, I'm not going to really comment on that, because this is an ongoing situation. And I believe that all deference has to be given to the Commander-in-Chief, so he can negotiate in -- in a -- in -- in an open fashion with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to bring this war to an end. It's been going on far too long. You got to give the President -- the President a lot of room to operate, to get the best deal done, to bring the war, and frankly, the deaths and the killings, to bring all that to -- to a close.

SANCHEZ: How ...

DONALDS: I don't think it's appropriate to really comment on that at this time.

SANCHEZ: Sure, sure. And do you believe Vladimir Putin, Congressman, who has for years floated that there would be a nuclear escalation, global war, perhaps, if the U.S. supplied certain arms to Ukraine? The U.S., for example, provided these ATACMS, and Putin had warned against that and -- and didn't really escalate beyond using, I believe it was a -- a ballistic missile that ultimately did not cause much damage. But do you believe, Putin, that there will be further war, perhaps with the United States, if Tomahawks are provided?

DONALDS: Look, what I will tell you is there's been a lot of saber- rattling in this conflict, especially at the beginning of it. When this thing first really kicked off, when Russia was amassing troops on the Ukrainian border, there was a lot of tough talk coming from Vladimir Putin. What I would say today is that there's been a lot of Russian lives lost, a lot of Ukrainian lives lost. This is something where Vladimir Putin believed this war was going to be over in a matter of weeks, and quite frankly, so did most of the world, including former President Joe Biden.

And so, since that has not been the case, I think it's probably the time for more sober conversations about the end of this war to -- to actually happen. And I think Donald Trump is the president who can deliver real results in bringing this to a close.

SANCHEZ: How about if we don't see a peace deal come from these meetings and -- and another summit between Trump and Putin, would you then support a bipartisan sanctions package, along with 85 co- sponsors, the one that Majority Leader John Thune said that he would take up next month?

DONALDS: Possibly. I mean, I've got to see the entire package and what the depth is. I mean, one of the things we definitely do need to realize in today's world is that these sanctions from yesteryear are not always as functional as they used to be. Cryptocurrency, other issues like that, allow nations like Russia to dance around these sanctions. I mean, they sound good on TV, but they don't really pack the punch that I think people think that they do.

So, with where we are now, you got to let the President go walk into these talks with both countries and try to find a real solution. It could be sanctions, but I think especially with the success that the Trump administration has had on the world stage, you have to give him and his team, obviously Secretary Rubio, a real opportunity to negotiate this and bring a true ceasefire that will see an end to the war.

SANCHEZ: You've been outspoken, Congressman, against putting American troops on -- on the line in foreign conflicts needlessly and also dedicating taxpayer dollars where -- what you described as never- ending conflicts. So, I wonder, given the increased military activity we've seen in the waters around Venezuela and what we heard from President Trump earlier saying that Nicolas Maduro shouldn't eff with the United States.

Do you believe that the administration's goal for Venezuela is regime change?

DONALDS: I think the number one goal is to make sure that there isn't drugs and other product that's coming into the United States illegally that is either killing our people or harming our people. And so, this is a very different situation than other wars that are going on. The drug cartels, as far as I'm concerned, have a major influence in Venezuela and in other countries. President Trump means what he says when he is going to defend the American people. And this is one of the major ones where he's going to be very firm on this.

And so, I think, you know, something like this, where the American people are being directly harmed, you got to give the President a wide breath here. And I agree with him. They do not want to eff around. Other nations and other people have really tried to figure that out over time. And they found out the hard way that Donald Trump isn't playing games.

SANCHEZ: If the number one goal is to limit drugs entering the United States, why target vessels in the Caribbean? Venezuela itself doesn't actually produce fentanyl. Most of that comes in through China to Mexico. It's -- it's diluted and wrapped up there and then sent into the United States. And the DEA confirms that more drugs, far more drugs are trafficked through the waters of the Pacific, up from Colombia, through Mexico, into the U.S.

[15:30:00]

Why not go after those vessels instead of Venezuelan ones?

DONALDS: Well, let's also be very clear, drugs coming into our country, no matter where they come and how they come, none of that's going to be tolerated.