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Halloween Candy Gets Pricier and Less Chocolatey; Melissa is Now Earth's Strongest Storm of 2025, Jamaica Braces for Worst Hurricane to Ever Hit Island; Trump Meets With Japan's New Prime Minister Tonight; Trump, Xi Prep for Talks After Trade Deal Framework Reached; Trump Says He Received MRI During Trip to Walter Reed. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 27, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": -- Tootsie there. Why are things so less chocolatey? What's going on?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah. So when companies are facing higher costs, they have a few different options, right? So one thing they could do is raise prices. We already discussed how they're doing that. Another thing that they can do is they can actually cut down how much cocoa content is in some of the chocolate candies. Some of the companies are adding more sugar and they're having less cocoa.

So that does mean less-chocolatey chocolate, which as a parent of two boys, I don't see how that could possibly go wrong, adding more sugar (ph) and of course, inflation where they have less content in some of these packages so people don't feel like they're spending more and they're paying more even though they are. And again, this is happening in part because of tariffs and also because cocoa prices have gone significantly higher over the last few years. Omar and Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": That is a huge jump.

JIMENEZ: Yeah.

EGAN: Yes.

KEILAR: Matt Egan, thank you so much.

EGAN: Thanks.

KEILAR: We'll see how this affects Halloween. We have a new hour of "CNN News Central" starting right now.

JIMENEZ: A dangerous storm draws closer to Jamaica. Hurricane Melissa forecast to be the worst hurricane to hit the island in recorded history and an official warns, the time for preparation is all but over. We're going to have a new update from forecasters.

KEILAR: President Trump abroad, but while trying to close new trade deals, he's facing new questions about his health and why he received an MRI during his most recent physical. And sober October, it's almost over, but it's not too late to get on the bandwagon. We're going to talk to someone pursuing a mission to help people live better without alcohol. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

JIMENEZ: Top of the hour folks, I'm Omar Jimenez alongside Brianna Keilar in Washington. Always good to see you.

KEILAR: Great to have you.

JIMENEZ: We got a busy news day today. Moments ago, the National Hurricane Center issued the latest update on Hurricane Melissa, and it is now the earth's strongest storm of this year with sustained winds of 175 miles per hour with even stronger gusts. It is a Category 5 Storm and on track to make a direct hit on Jamaica's southern coast tomorrow morning.

Melissa is so turbulent, a hurricane hunter flight, again, the flights that make their living flying in hurricanes that are powerful, had to abort its mission. Those flights involved researchers flying into storm systems to help determine the forecast. And in a rare instance today, the research crew could not continue.

KEILAR: Forecasters are predicting as much as 40 inches, 4-0 inches of rain and a 13-foot storm surge that could overwhelm a country where officials say 70 percent of the population lives within about three miles of the coast. Mandatory evacuations are underway as Jamaica's climate change minister says, "The time to prepare is all but over and Jamaican should now listen to emergency instructions." CNN Meteorologist Derek Van Dam is with us now from Kingston, Jamaica. Derek, give us the details on this new update from the Hurricane Center.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah, I think, Brianna, the most important information to get to our viewers watching domestically and internationally, is that this is the strongest storm this year. And it is going to break records and become a historic landfall in the island nation of Jamaica, a highly vulnerable nation to hurricanes, especially of this magnitude. There's just this triple threat of storm surge, catastrophic flooding, landslides, mudslides, and of course, the catastrophic winds that are forecast.

Right now, the latest update at 2:00 p.m., coming in at a whopping 175 mile per hour sustained winds. That's near the core of the storm. It's drifting so slowly and that's part of why this will be a slow-motion disaster that will unfold in the days ahead. Now, we have a unique opportunity to get some hands-on information from government officials on the ground here in Jamaica. And I want to bring in Pearnel Charles. He is the Minister of Labor and Social Security. Thank you so much for joining us.

PEARNEL CHARLES JR., JAMAICAN MINISTER OF LABOR & SOCIAL SECURITY: Thank you for the opportunity.

VAN DAM: I want to know, what kind of preparations is the country of Jamaica doing to prepare for this storm, especially of this magnitude??

CHARLES JR.: That's right. So led by our prime minister, we have fully activated all of our emergency operations. We are in high alert. The municipal cooperation, the ministry of local government, my ministry, the ministry of labor, and across government, with our partners, all of us together are working, collaborating to inform the people, firstly. Information and the passage of that information in an accurate way is critical.

So, where are the shelters? What do you do? What should you look out for? And most importantly, to get them to understand the intensity and the danger that comes with this particular storm. It is very slow.

[14:05:00]

It is very, very, very intense. And that means the outcome may potentially be extreme devastation and danger. Another thing is that we are preparing all of our shelters. So, we have 881 shelters in the country. About under 700 have been activated in my own constituency, which is one of the most risk averse. We have more than 300 persons in only one shelter so far, and we have other shelters in the constituency. So that gives you an idea that we are moving persons out of the communities where there have been evacuation orders, such as Portland Cottage.

And I want to tell everyone who's listening, who's watching, the evacuation order is not a suggestion. It is a directive and a directive to save your life. We have, in addition to having the evacuation order, provided assistance, transportation, food, shelter management, and whatever else that is required to ensure that those persons that are being displaced are supported in doing what is necessary now to protect themselves.

I'd say lastly, is that we are pulling together to make sure that we do whatever infrastructure work can be done in the short time, to mitigate against what is short to come in terms of the level of flooding that we can expect with the rain that will be dumped on the surface, particularly knowing that it was already saturated surface with the October rain.

VAN DAM: I want to ask, one final question. What do you need, what kind of aid do you need going forward to actually ride through this storm?

CHARLES JR.: Well, to get through the storm, individuals and families, of course, will need food. Water is essential, generators and whatever else in terms of equipment to allow them to be able to operate their devices, to be able to inform themselves, and look and check on family members and community members. But most importantly is the post-disaster relief, which is led by the Humanitarian Assistance Committee by my ministry. So, that's when we will collaborate to make sure that we provide whatever resources are necessary to help the people across the country.

VAN DAM: And hoping that foreign aid comes quickly after this storm passes as well. Pearnel Charles Jr., the Minister of Labor and Social Security, we appreciate your time. We are batting down the hatches here in Kingston, Jamaica. We know that the storm is coming and you heard it directly from the government officials here, that they're doing everything they can to prepare for the storm.

JIMENEZ: And Derek, just before we go, I mean, for any of us who have covered hurricanes, I know you're balancing the work that you have to do, but also your personal safety as well. I mean, just can you give us a sense of how you all are preparing? And I mean, are you nervous? How are you feeling, I mean, staring down this Cat 5 Hurricane headed toward Jamaica?

VAN DAM: Fair question, Omar. I've been through a lot of these, as you have, and this one is different and it kind of strikes a chord when you see the satellite presentation of this monster and that pinhole eyewall. We all know what that represents, the strongest storm on the planet in 2025, and it's coming this way. So yes, I'm nervous, but we have all kinds of safeguards in place for not only our team, the residents here at the hotel that we're staying at, but also, looking after the local community here according to the minister here.

KEILAR: All right. Listen, stay safe, Derek. We know that you will and we will certainly be watching with a lot of prayers for Jamaica as it is staring this down.

Now to the high-stakes trade talks happening with President Trump, who is now in Japan. We are learning more about the framework agreement on trade that U.S. and Chinese officials say they've reached. This, of course, leading up to President Trump's face-to-face meeting with China's Leader, Xi Jinping later this week.

JIMENEZ: But before that sit down takes place, to give you an idea of his schedule here, the president has a historic meeting tonight with Japan's first ever female prime minister. I want to bring in CNN White House Reporter Alayna Treene, who is following the President's trip. So Alayna, what more do we know about this? Let's talk about the tentative trade truce here.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah. So that I think really this meeting, building up between -- building up to the meeting between the president, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping is going to be the highlight of this trip. That's what everyone is looking forward to. And now, we know that there is at least a framework in place. I would caution that the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent is far more bullish, I'd argue, than we are hearing from his Chinese counterpart. We'll see what can actually be agreed to during that meeting.

But there's a few things we're learning about, even though there's no official paperwork on this yet. One is fentanyl. We know that that is a huge priority of the Trump administrations, trying to put pressure on the Chinese government to stop the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. That's going to be a part of this. Soybeans, this has been a huge issue for farmers across the country, particularly because China has essentially stopped buying soybeans from the United States.

[14:10:00] A massive dilemma for a lot of farmers who are struggling right now across the country. Rare earths, China could potentially delay export control on rare earth minerals, something that the president actually, that was what prompted him to threaten a much higher percentage of tariff just a couple weeks ago. So that's a big focus of this as well. And then the last one is of course, TikTok. We know that when Bessent was meeting with his Chinese counterparts a couple weeks ago, they hammered out this TikTok framework.

We really need to see if Xi and Trump can finalize this deal on Thursday. A lot of people are telling me in the White House that they expect it to potentially be signed on Thursday. It would of course allow for TikTok to operate in the U.S. It'd be divesting a lot from ByteDance, its Chinese owner. So, that's another part of this.

And then just one other quick thing that isn't a part of this framework, but is going to be a huge priority on Thursday is the president wants to talk to Xi about getting him to help in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and really trying to get Russia to the table in a more substantial way than they've been.

KEILAR: That'll be really interesting. And the president also made news because he revealed that he's had an MRI.

TREENE: Yeah. So this was the first time we've heard about anything like that. And it comes as we know that he visited Walter Reed Hospital for the second time this year, which is not usual at all. But overnight, talking to reporters, he said that he had had an MRI scan. He also claimed that it was perfect. Listen to how he put it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We had an MRI and -- in the machine, you know, the whole thing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

TRUMP: And it was perfect. The doctor said some of the best reports -- for the age, some of the best reports they've ever seen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: OK. So he's saying that the doctor is saying, one of the best reports we've ever seen. I will say we have not gotten any details further on why he needed that MRI scan. The president said to ask the doctors, or any results that came of this. I will note we do know that he was previously diagnosed with what they call, chronic venous insufficiency. You've seen the swelling in some of the photos of the president's legs. There's been frequent bruising on his hand that he has attempted to cover up with makeup at times, but there's a lot of questions, of course, over his health, why he might've needed this, why he needed a second visit at all, all of that which we're still trying to dig into.

JIMENEZ: And all of it within the background just of his age, I mean, any health concern at that age is something -- (CROSSTALK)

TREENE: 79.

JIMENEZ: Yeah. Yeah.

TREENE: Yeah. One of the oldest presidents in history.

JIMENEZ: Alayna Treene, appreciate the reporting as always. Good to see you.

All right, still coming up, concerns over the furloughs of workers who monitor the country's nuclear resources. New reporting on the urgent request to get hundreds of these employees back to their important jobs.

KEILAR: Plus, Russia test fires a new nuclear-powered cruise missile as it escalates its attacks on Ukraine. What President Trump had to say about the Kremlin's latest provocation. And then later, a top border patrol official is accused of tossing tear gas at anti-ICE protestors and potentially violating a judge's order in doing so. We're going to talk about the legal implications ahead on "CNN News Central."

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[14:17:38]

JIMENEZ: We're getting new details about a critical national security agency dealing with unprecedented furloughs during this government shutdown. The National Nuclear Security Administration sent home most of its full-time staff last week, about 1,400 people.

KEILAR: And now with no movement, on Capitol Hill, it's unclear when those workers who maintain the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile will be back on the job. We have CNN's Rene Marsh here with us now. You've been reporting on this all along, sort of with each twist and turn of this. You have some new reporting about an urgent push to prevent these furloughs.

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, it was just days before the furloughs were announced that the Department of Energy's chief financial officer made this urgent pitch to the White House's Office of Budget and Management for preventing the majority of the staff at this agency, tasked with overseeing the nation's nuclear stockpile. The ask was to allow money from previously passed spending bills to be used or reprogrammed to prevent these furloughs.

But that, to date, that request has not been fulfilled despite other similar funds being used to pay for U.S. troops, Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other federal law enforcement agents throughout the federal government. Now the agency, as a reminder, is responsible for manufacturing and maintaining the nation's nuclear stockpile. They were able to get money reprogrammed for the contractors. Those are the people in the field who are actually putting together these weapons, designing these weapons. But that work can only go but so far.

They secured money until the end of November. But it's the federal workers who actually oversee that work. They are the ones that have to approve all of that work before any weapons are actually delivered to the military. We reached out to the agency about this, again, them asking for these funds to prevent these workers from being furloughed. And we were told by a spokesperson that the administration was able to identify funds to keep the NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Administration's weapons laboratories and plants and sites operating for the contractors.

But they say legal and budgetary limitations required that the administration had to start furloughing these federal employees. So that's where we're at right now.

[14:20:00]

This agency, again, the work may be done in the field, but again, limitations as far as how far that can go. And certainly, no weapons can be delivered to the military without these staff.

JIMENEZ: And the president has pretty aggressive nuclear security goals at this point. Do we have any idea of how the government shutdown would impact some of those goals?

MARSH: Yeah, so President Donald Trump's administration has really ratcheted up the timeline to meet just stricter deadlines for refurbishing certain weapons that are in the stockpile or even design and producing specific weapons for the Pentagon. And even before the Trump administration, the leadership with this agency had told Congress that we're being asked to do much more than we ever have. But on top of this shutdown, you've also seen that this agency has been at the center of firing then rehiring employees. They've been under this issue of this prolonged hiring freeze.

So, all of these things together is really creating this fear within this agency that this shutdown will potentially, I mean we're several weeks in now, could potentially start to have an impact on delivering weapons to the military and sticking with the president's own deadline for producing these weapons.

KEILAR: Yeah. Serious. Rene, thank you so much for following this all along.

Still to come, President Trump now saying he did not support the ICE raid that sent workers from a Hyundai plant back to South Korea. What he wants to happen next.

JIMENEZ: And we're going to have an update on the preparations in countries that are in the path of Hurricane Melissa. We'll have a live report from Cuba straight ahead.

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[14:26:20] JIMENEZ: Back to our Breaking News, the Category 5 Hurricane Melissa, now the strongest storm on the planet this year, heading for a direct strike on Jamaica which has never in its history experienced a hit from a storm that powerful.

KEILAR: The worst so far, Gilbert in 1988, that was a Cat 4. And as you can see from its path, Melissa is also expected to devastate eastern Cuba after rolling over Jamaica. CNN Havana Bureau Chief, Patrick Oppmann is there in the city of Santiago de Cuba. Patrick, tell us how people are preparing for Melissa.

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN HAVANA BUREAU CHIEF: You know, on rooftops behind me, all day long I've been seeing people take off water tanks, take off lumber, and you go in the streets and it seems like all of Santiago is out while they can at the moment, trying to get cash, rare cash from bank machines, try to pick up whatever food they can. They know they're running out of time. This morning, we watched people get evacuated from islands off the coast.

The government is warning people who live in low lying coastal areas to leave. Thousands of people are doing that at this moment. Some are, as we always see in these kinds of storms, sticking it out and saying they don't want to leave their houses. Something that's going to be very, very dangerous because of course Cubans know all about hurricanes. When you live on an island, you really can't evacuate. You have to stay put, you have to bear it out. You have to just put up with sometimes days or weeks without electricity and dangerous, dangerous storm surge.

But, Cubans rarely have seen a storm as powerful as Melissa. It is going to hit a part of the island that has already been dealing with blackouts. We've been in a blackout all day here. That's our generator here over our shoulder. So people are already kind of been knocked down in recent weeks with some of the problems on this island, and this is just going to add to the misery. Nothing they can do though at this point rather -- but just hope that it doesn't cause as much devastation as we expect it might and that it goes by quickly.

But at this point, you're really not going to get out of the way of it. It's coming here in the next day or so, and it's going to just be a knockout punch. A storm this powerful is something that few people here have seen in their lifetimes.

KEILAR: My goodness. All right, Patrick, we know you'll be keeping an eye on things for us there in Cuba.

Still to come, tear gas allegedly being used to push back anti-ICE protesters in Chicago. And now, a top official with border patrol will have to respond in person to that allegation in court.

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