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Trump Fuels Uncertainty On Taiwan, Iran War After Talks With Xi; China Still Not Allowing Companies To Buy Nvidia Chips; Trump Health Official Questioned COVID Vaccine, Disputed 2020 Election; Judge Declares Mistrial In Harvey Weinstein's Rape Trial; Large Explosion, Fire At Maine Lumber Yard. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired May 15, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

ALDUAN TARTT, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST AND RELATIONSHIP EXPERT: I'd like for someone to do the work up front, but allow me to do the chemistry and allow me to be able to connect.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Alduan, I couldn't tell if you were wearing a ring or not, but did you just sort of shoot your shot on CNN and put it out there that you wanted to connect? That's how I took what you just said.

TARTT: Let me be clear --

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: I do.

TARTT: -- I am married. I am talking to my brothers and sisters out there.

KEILAR: That's right.

TARTT: I am clear. I just -- I would just --

KEILAR: Speaking for the singles --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Yes.

TARTT: It would be great if you could bring my values to me. And then --

KEILAR: Yes.

TARTT: -- if she's cute --

SANCHEZ: Yes.

TARTT: -- and we have vibe and she likes me, that's great. That's a great day.

KEILAR: I was tracking --

TARTT: Theoretically, theoretically. KEILAR: I understood fully what you want to say.

SANCHEZ: Just trying to be clear. Just trying to be clear.

KEILAR: Don't let him get you in trouble.

SANCHEZ: I was just --

(CROSSTALK)

TARTT: Boys over there trying to get me in trouble.

SANCHEZ: That's false. That is -- that's fake news.

Alduan Tartt, thank you so much for the time, man. Appreciate it.

TARTT: God bless.

SANCHEZ: Same.

A new hour of CNN News Central starts right now.

A Taiwan tradeoff. President Trump touting his success at the summit in Beijing. But was China the real winner, as the President refuses to commit to weapons sales to Taiwan? And some of the biggest names in business traveled with the President to China. No major deals announced or at least confirmed on the Chinese side. So was their trip worth their time?

And a tempest in a taco shell. A Texas Senate candidate facing fallout because of his taco order. Of course, he's not the first politician to deal with a food fight. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

KEILAR: Heading home with some unresolved issues. Moments after leaving Beijing, President Trump spoke with reporters stoking even more uncertainty about the future of Taiwan and the Iran war.

After two days of talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, President Trump won't say whether or not he'll sign off on a critical arms deal with Taiwan. President Xi warning if the U.S. handles this poorly, it could lead to a clash. And as for Iran, there have been hopes that pressure from China could break the stalemate between Washington and Tehran.

And while it's unclear how President Xi might be willing to get involved, President Trump says Iran's latest counter proposal is a no- go for him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you rejected the latest proposal from Iran or where does that stand?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I looked at it and if I don't like the first sentence, I just throw it away. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was the first sentence?

TRUMP: An unacceptable sentence because they have fully agreed no nuclear. And if they have any nuclear of any form, I don't read the rest of their letter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN's Alayna Treene is live for us at the White House. Alayna?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, look, I think this was a very high stakes trip, Brianna, but it was very much unclear from the outset what the goals were, at least from the U.S. side. And we are leaving now without any major announcement. And that is not typical, I would argue, for these types of foreign trips.

Normally, the White House and the Trump administration does a lot of work on the front end to have these big kind of overarching deals set to be announced and a lot of different, you know, potential agreements to be hashed out.

But what we kind of saw with this trip was none of that, really. I mean, yes, we did hear that there were some economic deals that were made. We obviously saw roughly a dozen CEOs accompany the President to his trip to Beijing to meet with Xi and other leaders over there.

But by and large, there wasn't a lot of that from what you typically see on these types of trips. And on some of these key issues, specifically the ones you bring up, I think Iran, of course, one of the biggest really looming over this entire trip. But then also Taiwan, of course, that is a longstanding dispute between China and the U.S.

And it was interesting to hear what the President said about this, specifically when he was asked about, you know, arms sales to Taiwan, something the U.S. has done in the past. He was asked specifically about that by reporters. I want you to listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about the arms sales to Taiwan?

TRUMP: I'll make a determination over the next fairly short period of time.

You're not necessarily going to go ahead. It was your proposal.

TRUMP: I'm going to make a determination. I'm going to see. I have to speak to the person that right now is, you know, you know who he is that's running Taiwan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Not sure that does much to kind of ease some of the concerns people in Taiwan might have. I'd also know that he had also previously, when talking about Taiwan, said that President Xi did bring it up, talked about how in President Trump's words said that Xi said, you know, it's a very sensitive issue for him.

Trump going on to say, though, that he didn't make a commitment either way regarding the independence of Taiwan. I would be clear here that, of course, there's been this strategic ambiguity that the U.S. and several of the President's predecessors have had for years now as it relates to that, you know, showing support for Taiwan while also not going as so far to say that perhaps the U.S. would defend it against a potential Chinese attack.

[14:05:18]

So the President kind of doing that, but I think offering no real clarity on the arms deal, again, something I don't think goes far to raise the confidence of those in Taiwan who are watching this trip, we know very carefully.

KEILAR: All right, Alayna Treene, thank you.

Boris?

SANCHEZ: Let's dig deeper on this with Wall Street Journal Trade and Economic Policy Reporter Gavin Bade. Gavin, great to see you as always.

So we heard from Trump administration officials that there were agreements on the Chinese side to several trade deals, tech investments, large agriculture purpose -- purchases and some Boeing aircraft. China's not confirmed any of that. How significant is it that the Chinese haven't? And how significant are these deals?

GAVIN BADE, TRADE AND ECONOMIC POLICY REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: I do think we'll see some of these deals rolled out in the days and weeks to come. But really, that represented the baseline for just having a productive meeting with the Chinese. I think overall on the trade front, these meetings were really underwhelming.

We didn't see any action on tariffs or any extension of the truce on export controls that would expire in October. We also saw a little bit of lip service paid to this board of trade idea where we could talk with the Chinese about, you know, which kind of non-sensitive, non- national security products we could trade with them. But the scale of that initiative is so small.

It's only a small portion of U.S.-China trade. So I think there's going to be a lot of preparation and work the Trump administration needs to do before Xi Jinping comes back to meet with Trump in the United States if they want to have any big economic deliverables.

SANCHEZ: Speaking to trade of sensitive goods, perhaps with national security implications, China has yet to allow domestic firms to buy these H200 chips from NVIDIA. They're arguably the second most powerful of these AI processing chips that NVIDIA makes. Trump greenlit that in December. Do you think that that's a sign that China is becoming less reliant on U.S. goods?

BADE: I think so. I think China has been very successful at reverse engineering a lot of our technologies, not just semiconductors. And they've got a very vibrant indigenous microchip manufacturing sector there as well.

I think, you know, the fact that we didn't see any deal on this, that President Trump said this will be a sovereign decision by the Chinese and his team said that, I think that that kind of represents a win for the China hawks in the administration who did not like that Trump approved these chip sales.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

BADE: But it may be too little too late. I mean, the Chinese are very innovative in their own right. They don't just need to copy us anymore. They have -- they've got their own technology themselves.

SANCHEZ: How do you see the Taiwan piece of this specifically on economics? Because as President Trump was talking to Xi and he sort of maintained strategic ambivalence, not explicitly saying that the U.S. would defend Taiwan if China were to attack, but then also saying we don't need Taiwan. The United States doesn't need Taiwan. How do you read that relationship, because the U.S. does depend a lot on Taiwan specifically for things like chips?

BADE: Yes, like microchips. I think the strategic ambiguity that's supposed to define this relationship only gets more and more ambiguous, right?

SANCHEZ: Ambiguous.

BADE: I think what was really notable to me was just how assertive Xi Jinping was on the Taiwan issue with little to no rhetorical pushback from the President at all. That is not going to go over well in Taipei. And I think the fact that President Trump couldn't come out and say, well, Congress has approved arms sales and we're going to go ahead with that, whether that's just him smoothing things over at the meeting, or if that's an indication of a further split with Taipei, I think we'll just have to wait and see.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the President saying he'll deliberate on that in the next few weeks and come to some sort of decision soon.

Gavin Bade, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

BADE: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, as the CDC updates its hantavirus monitoring guidelines, a CNN investigation reveals one of the Trump administration's top public health officials is facing scrutiny over his past far-right remarks, his positions on COVID vaccines, on abortion at the 2020 election, and just his experience to begin with.

Plus, Cuba facing one of the worst food and energy crises it's had in decades. Will leaders accept $100 million in aid offered by the U.S.? We'll discuss in just moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [14:14:00]

KEILAR: The CDC today updated its guidance for the deadly hantavirus outbreak, saying those at high risk of infection can quarantine at home as long as they isolate, avoid travel, and wear a mask. And as the Trump administration seeks to reassure Americans that the risk of spread is low, one of its public faces leading the government response is facing some pretty serious scrutiny over his past far-right comments.

Many of them focused on abortion, COVID restrictions, transgender rights, religion, and what he described as wokeism in medicine and government. Admiral Brian Christine is now assistant secretary in the Health and Human Services Department and head of the Public Health Service Corps. He took the job right out of private practice as a urologist in Alabama who hosted a podcast.

CNN's KFILE went through the doctor's past shows, appearances, and online posts and found Christine push theories of a pandemic government plot, compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany, and denied the efficacy of the COVID vaccine despite evidence that it prevented millions of deaths.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. BRIAN CHRISTINE, UROLOGIST & PODCASTER: But the government and the left have used the pandemic to control people. We have been forced as a society to take a vaccination that ultimately was proved not to prevent the disease and not to prevent the spread of the disease.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:15:20]

KEILAR: Andrew Nixon, a spokesman at Health and Human Services, told CNN, quote, "Admiral Christine remains focused on executing President Trump and Secretary Kennedy's agenda to make America healthy again and deliver on President Trump's executive order to protect our children against chemical and surgical mutilation."

KFILE also uncovered Christine denying the defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTINE: All of this was done to scare people and to make them believe that voting in person was danger during the pandemic. And this allows ballot harvesting and the use of illegal ballots. And there's no question, this influenced the outcome of the 2020 election. Just watch "2000 Mules."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: "2000 Mules" is the debunked election fraud conspiracy film whose distributor later issued an apology and removed it from circulation. We're joined now by Dr. Deb Houry, who is a former chief medical officer at the CDC. Dr. Houry, what do you make of this, of, you know, hearing these past comments of this person who is now in this very important position, especially as we're watching an outbreak that a lot of people are paying attention to?

DR. DEB HOURY, FORMER CDC CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: So, you know, as an ER doc, I always say, I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, I'm going to take care of the patient in front of me. And my hope is certainly that the Admiral would do the exact same thing when it comes to data and science.

His statements certainly are concerning. I think what I have more concern, though, about is his lack of experience to oversee a public health service corps of over 6,000 physicians and public health practitioners.

He came from private practice. And so this really, for him to lead a national response, when we now are hearing about Ebola today as well, plus hantavirus in the United States, I'm concerned about the bench.

KEILAR: Yes, why do you see his experience is not sufficient? What would you expect from someone to be ready to, I mean, oh my gosh, let's hope we don't have another kind of COVID size pandemic on our hands anytime soon, but we always have to be ready, right? What would you expect someone needs to bring to the table to be ready for that?

HOURY: So, you know, the prior assistant secretary of health in the Biden administration was a state health officer as well as a practicing physician and had a long history of responding to outbreaks. And then Admiral Giroir in the first Trump administration had also worked at DARPA and was an intensivist, so really understood how to respond to a lot of these complex issues.

I think what further complicates this, though, is there's not a CDC director, there's not a surgeon general, and the NIH director who is covering CDC as well didn't complete a medical residency. So there's really just a lack of medical expertise and public health expertise during a critical point in our ability to respond to outbreaks such as this.

KEILAR: And so if you have an emergency situation and people in those positions without that kind of expertise, what is your fear?

HOURY: Well, usually they would rely on somebody like me, but I'm no longer at CDC. You know, I left as did the center director and the division director that overhunt the virus. So you've lost a big bench of experts at these agencies.

And so the scientific and medical expertise was really wiped out under this past year. There are some really good technical experts still at CDC that are working on this, but they need the scientific leaders and career leaders throughout the agency as well to help with a lot of these policy discussions and with working with the World Health Organization. KEILAR: So you're seeing this doctor's level of expertise is sort of emblematic of a bigger problem. But I do want to take a look at considering what he said in the past compared to what we're hearing from him now. When we heard from him in Nebraska earlier this week, he talked about the CDC's work with local and international partners around this outbreak.

He said transparency has been and is the order of the day. He lauded this strong public health system. He said they'll continue to follow the science. So I don't know, when you hear that kind of thing, and then you hear what he said in the past, what kind of questions does that raise for you?

HOURY: Well, my hope is that he is going to do exactly what he's saying right now. We haven't seen that with the secretary, though, with following the data and the science. If people would follow the data and the science and not these ideologies, we'd all be in a better place. So that's my concern.

[14:20:03]

If he's able to truly listen to the experts around him and not promote conspiracy theories when it comes to hantavirus or Ebola, then we're OK. But again, there's not the bench that is needed to provide this support as well.

KEILAR: Yes, that raises very big questions.

Dr. Deb Houry, thanks for being with us.

HOURY: My pleasure.

KEILAR: Still to come, we're following a huge explosion at a lumber yard in Maine. You're seeing pictures of it here. We'll have the latest on what happened.

And then later, as we close in on the midterm elections, candidates' menu choices, really everything under the microscope. We'll have that and much more coming up on CNN News Central.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:25:24]

KEILAR: We do have breaking news. A judge has declared a mistrial in Harvey Weinstein's rape retrial after the jury says it's deadlocked. The majority male jury had been weighing whether Weinstein raped a hairstylist and actress back in 2013. Weinstein had been in a fraught relationship with a woman and his attorneys argued the encounter was consensual.

The disgraced Hollywood mogul has been convicted of other sex crimes on both the east and west coasts, and he remains behind bars. But this mistrial leaves the New York charge in limbo after three separate trials.

Boris?

SANCHEZ: We're following reports of a large explosion and fire at a lumberyard in Maine. This happened in Searsmont, which is a small town of just 1,400 people, roughly halfway between Portland and Bar Harbor.

CNN's Gloria Pazmino is following this story for us. So, Gloria, what have you learned?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Boris. And this is a pretty rural area of Maine and Searsport, as you said. But just to give you an idea of how significant it is, we were told by emergency officials that every single emergency unit in the county is responding to this incident.

You can see there the flames and the smoke billowing. This has been ongoing for over an hour now. We are told it happened at a local lumberyard. The place is called Robbins Lumber, and they are actually responsible for managing a pretty large area there.

We heard from one of the business owners who told reporters at the scene that thankfully all employees of the lumberyard had been accounted for. So that's very significant. Despite this major fire and explosion, all of the employees have been accounted for.

The one thing we do not know yet, Boris, and we're still waiting to learn more about, is how first responders are doing, given just the massive response this incident has required. And from the images that we have been able to look at and collect throughout the last hour or so, it does seem like it is a very significant fire.

So we are waiting to hear from local officials about how emergency first responders are doing. But again, this is happening in a pretty rural area of Maine. Employees at that local lumberyard all accounted for, and we're waiting to hear more from local officials.

Boris?

SANCHEZ: Gloria Pazmino, thank you so much for that update.

Still to come, Cuba sinking deeper into a food and energy crisis. But it could get a lifeline from the United States as oil shortages and blackouts intensify.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)