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Erin Burnett Outfront
Markets Plunge Again As Trump Raises China Tariff To 145 Percent; Graphic Video Shows Moment Helicopter Crashes Into NYC River; Musk, Vance Seen As Icons In Movement That Wants More Babies. Aired 7- 8p ET
Aired April 10, 2025 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:22]
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next:
The breaking news, markets tanking again as Trump waits by the phone for a call from Xi Jinping. That call, though, has not happened yet. Instead, the Chinese overall, you're seeing it on social media, mocking Trump.
Plus, breaking news, terrifying new video showing the moment a helicopter fell from the sky in New York, crashing into the Hudson River. New details on what went wrong, what happened to those on board.
And a story tonight that you'll see first OUTFRONT. This is fascinating. We're going to take you inside a growing movement thanks to Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, to increase America's birth rate. The supporters say it's key to saving civilization.
Let's go OUTFRONT.
And good evening. I'm Erin Burnett.
OUTFRONT tonight, the breaking news, another plunge. The Dow down over 1,000 points as Trump says he's now slapping an additional 20 percent tariff on China, which now brings the grand total to an unheard of 145 percent, still excluding potential tariffs because they buy Venezuelan oil, but 145 percent tonight.
And Trump, a person who, of course, is obsessed with market movements when they go up today, claimed ignorance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Can you give us a reaction to today's stock market drop and also give us a sense of the next steps with China?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I haven't seen it because I've been here for 2-1/2 hours.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: Well, he said that exact quote at 1:30 in the afternoon, which was four hours after the Dow opened and fell nearly 1,000 points, it fell those 1,000 points by 9:43 a.m. So, well, before he even went in that meeting.
And especially hard to consider, you know, that he wouldn't know what was happening. I mean, it's kind of absurd, right? But think about yesterday, right, when the market went up so incredibly, he couldn't stop talking about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're having a good day in the stock market, as you can see, at all-time record day, the biggest increase in the history of the stock market. The markets right now are extremely good.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Okay, just the facts on that though. Yesterday's rally was not, in fact, the biggest increase in the history of the stock market. That is false. It was the sixth biggest percentage gain for the Dow since World War II. The third one day percentage gain for the S&P 500.
Obviously, very significant. You can't deny that, right? But facts are facts. What he said is wrong.
And much of the gains that we saw in that initial surge yesterday are gone after today. And overall, if Trump is going to call the markets extremely good, it is only fair to show their performance since inauguration day. The Dow down 4,400 points since Trump's inauguration.
And it's not the only thing to drop. The value of the U.S. dollar has gone down. Oil prices have also gone down sharply. And what's gone up is where people go in times of uncertainty and fear. And that is gold. Gold going to stratospheric records because that's the place people right now feel safest.
And then there's this -- the chaos on the ground. LPA Financial, you may not have heard of it, but it's one of the largest independent brokers in the United States, suspending its forecast for how earnings will be for the whole year while it awaits, quote, a little bit more clarity on where these tariffs might land.
More and more companies are following suit. I mean, even Delta Airlines pulled its guidance.
And tonight, our Kylie Atwood is reporting that President Trump does not understand why China hasn't called him asking for a deal. For months, of course, the Trump administration has been telling China to call. So far, that call hasn't come.
But is it any wonder that that hasn't happened? I mean, Trump has changed his tariffs every day here recently, right? 145 percent against China today. It was 125 percent last -- yesterday that he said was the ceiling. Twenty-four hours ago, he said that was the ceiling. (BEGIN VDIEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Would you have to increase tariffs on China even more before they come to the table or give you a phone call?
TRUMP: I can't imagine it. No, I can't imagine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Well, he did imagine it. Overnight, they went up.
And so far, China's response has been not flinching. And you just have to look to China's heavily censored social media sites to see the attitude, right, the nationalism there. We talk about it every day.
Here's what we saw today. Posts like this fight will fight to the end. They can fight as long as they want until China's victory is complete. China will fight to the end.
And again, it keeps coming back to Taiwan. One person posting, as long as the U.S. is willing to give up Taiwan, China can meet Trump's tariff demands. And there's a lot of this online.
More and more A.I. videos of Americans working factory jobs are popping up in China. Like this one we'll show you of Trump and Elon Musk and J.D. Vance making Nike sneakers. There are also viral videos of Trump sitting behind a sewing machine in a factory. So, all of this rife on -- on Chinese social media.
There's anger there. It's palpable. For now, they are united in their resolve. We'll see where it goes.
They're not just rallying around Xi Jinping, though.
[19:05:03]
While Trump is in the midst of a trade war with the economic superpower of China, he's dealing with a faltering economy. You certainly would not know any of this, right? You would -- you would literally think you were living in a totally different world if you didn't know anything that we just talked about. You didn't know the market and you actually just heard what Trump's cabinet said in the cabinet meeting today, because this is what Trump heard today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE WALTZ, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Under your leadership, we are going to revitalize and make shipbuilding and maritime great again.
LEE ZELDIN, EPA ADMINISTRATOR: At the Trump EPA, we're going to make you proud.
BROOKE ROLLINS, AGRICULTURE SECRETARY: With honor and respect we have for each other, is a reflection of you and your leadership.
SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: Thanks to your leadership. PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: You were overwhelmingly elected by the
biggest majority.
KRISTI NOEM, DHS SECRETARY: Mr. President, thank you for your leadership at the border.
ELON MUSK, TECH BILLIONAIRE: Thanks to your fantastic leadership.
KELLY LOEFFLER, ADMINISTRATOR, SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION: For the American worker is grateful. Main Street is grateful for you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Is there anyone that he will listen to who will actually tell him the truth? Certainly didn't hear any of them there.
Kylie Atwood is OUTFRONT in Washington to begin our coverage.
And, Kylie, it's your breaking news reporting here. Youve got more information about what's going on behind the scenes with the Trump White House and China. What are you learning?
KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, the Trump administration has been telling Beijing, has been telling Chinese officials repeatedly over the last two months that they should be requesting a phone call between President Trump and President Xi. According to senior White House officials who spoke with our colleague, Alayna Treene, President Trump believes that China needs to make the first move here, and that's because they have retaliated against his escalatory trade war that has occurred here.
And the problem being, however, China has not responded to the U.S. saying that you should be calling Trump here. The problem is that they believe that President Xi doesn't want to be seen as weak right now. He has an ego, as you said, domestically, he's received some support for standing up to the Trump administration in the face of this spiraling trade war between the two sides.
And then the other factor to consider here, Erin, is that fundamentally, the Chinese system is just at odds with how Trump likes to interact with other world leaders. The Chinese system likes to prepare at nauseum for any leader level phone call. They don't want to put president xi into an unpredictable situation. And so, therefore, they want to prepare for a potential phone call between the two sides.
The problem there is that the old back channel that the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, during the Biden administration had with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the Chinese have been saying that they are willing to get that channel up and running. But the White House does not want to engage with Wang Yi. They do not view him as someone who is trustworthy. They have been saying that there are other Chinese officials that we will deal with who are in President Xi's inner circle, but China hasn't been responding.
So, as you can see here, this is an incredibly challenging moment for the two sides because there's not high level dialogue happening to prepare for any sort of phone call between these two leaders to potentially steady the ship as this economic trade war only gets worse by the day, by the hour.
BURNETT: Yeah. Blitzkrieg trade war.
All right. Thank you very much, Kylie.
Dan Ives is here now, a longtime tech stocks analyst. Peter Tuchman, Wall Street trader. Tuchman, Einstein and Ives.
Alexis Glick, corporate board member, and Paul Hickey, investment expert.
All right. So, I'm so glad to have all of you. And we've all known each other a long time here. We are reunited.
Dan, today was obviously not a good day. You know, yesterday you had the surge. Today really rough for tech.
DAN IVES, TECH STOCKS ANALYST: I mean, because now, it's realization, what's going to happen to the real economy. I mean, tech companies have no idea what inputs, what outputs are. We think 10, 15 percent of capex is essentially halted.
So, what's happened here is that you've created now.
BURNETT: And that's money that they would be investing, right? Capital spending on new factories or equipment or whatever it might be.
IVES: Yeah.
And the reality is that U.S. tech was ahead of China for the first time in 30 years. So, now, this downhill spiral, its starting and we're going to see it through earnings season. You're starting to see reflect in stocks. And it speaks to our view.
I mean, this is a self-inflicted tariff Armageddon, China front and center. That's the courts, the hearts and lungs of the U.S. supply chain.
BURNETT: Snowball, starts small at the top of the mountain. And who knows where we are on the slope, right? Can you stop it and push it back up? I mean, how was it today?
PETER TUCHMAN, TRADER AT THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE: So, today was fascinating, you know, when -- when -- when a large events happen on the floor of the exchange, when the Federal Reserve has their Wednesday meeting, you know, it happens every six weeks. Youve got the release of the news, whether it's raising or lowering interest rates. And then you have the news conference and then the market initial reaction is quite -- it's like a heart attack.
And then the day -- the next day is the follow through. The next day is where people really say what they think about what Jay Powell would have said the day before. Yesterday -- BURNETT: That's what they said.
TUCHMAN: That's what -- well, that's what they -- that's what Wall Street said today. Yesterday was that knee jerk reaction. They were done. They did a little test run like a, you know, a dress rehearsal when they released that fake news the other day.
[19:10:03]
What Bill Ackman had said, and they saw the reaction that people were going to come in with abandon and buy the market. That's what yesterday was. It was a knee jerk reaction. People were dying to just get in there and buy stock. Today was what people really think about this.
We do not know anything more today than we did yesterday. So, the unknowns are there. The uncertainty is still there and that was reflected in the action. We were down 2,000 plus points and we were 0.75 away from a -- from a circuit breaker today. Right. And that's -- that's majorly significant.
BURNETT: And you sit on corporate boards, you've been covering Wall Street for your whole career. I mean, what are they -- what are you hearing?
ALEXIS GLICK, WALL STREET EXECUTIVE: Well, what this does is it causes analysis paralysis, right? This is the number one issue we have right now. You cannot operate in such a high degree of uncertainty.
And the erratic behavior with which things are coming out, that's not what -- you need predictability. But just think about it. In the past 80 days, if you're running any one of the companies in the world large, middle, small, you've had to dial back anything associated with sustainability in ESG. Youve had to dial back anything associated with the DNI platform. You have to look at your workforce and determine what percentage of your workforce is at risk of being deported.
Now, you have to look at your supply chain, your capex, your intent to hire, to expand, to solidify partnerships. And you have to put all of that on hold. Oh, by the way, there's this other thing out there called A.I. and what it's going to do to your business.
So, right now, folks are stuck. It is the worst type of paralysis. And what they need is clarity. Clarity to know I can spend, it will help grow the economy. Hiring will be okay.
But right now, all of that is seized up.
BURNETT: Everything. I mean, seized up. I mean, something that would happen in moments of an exogenous shock, which I suppose this is, except for it came from internal from one person.
I mean, what stands out to you when you look at this, Paul?
PAUL HICKEY, CO-FOUNDER, BESPOKE INVESTMENT GROUP: Well, I mean -- so, I mean, just the whole uncertainty. It's tax season coming up. Think about doing your taxes, right?
Okay, okay, Dan, you have a nice blazer 15 percent tax rate for you. Peter, I don't -- I'm not a big fan of black, 25 percent. Erin -- I mean and then --
BURNETT: Taxes aren't due until Monday. Alexis, you're at 70. I mean, you just do it.
HICKEY: They're all different.
IVES: Fifty percent.
HICKEY: That just shows the uncertainty that we're seeing. But -- as then, as far as the market, I mean, we've seen a major shock to the market. I mean, we've seen the volatility index, which measures market volatility, see one of its largest ever increases.
The declines we've seen off the highs from February is one of the most rapid declines we've ever seen in market history. So, this -- these kind of moves, you know, don't happen for nothing. You see them in crises. But again, so the market is down. It's partially reflecting what we've seen.
But the fact is, you know, you talked about LPL in the intro polling guidance, Delta guidance. You're going to see that every company.
BURNETT: I mean., right, I mean that --
(CROSSTALK)
TUCHMAN: -- was to join the club.
HICKEY: Yeah.
TUCHMAN: The last time guidance was pulled was COVID. Jamie Dimon did that, right, at the heart of COVID, 900 people dying a day on the streets of New York, and JPMorgan -- and Jamie Dimon came out and said, we are -- we're aborting all call for guidance going forward.
IVES: Who's going to give guidance in this earnings season? Nobody.
TUCHMAN: You guaranteed to be wrong, no matter what.
GLICK: Actually, I mean, if you're right now preparing for quarterly earnings, think about the preparation for those calls and the script that you were writing. You were changing those scripts on an hour by hour basis, right? So, not only do you not know, right. So, of course, you're going to pull your guidance at a moment like this.
The other thing is though, like this is the big thing. People are scared.
BURNETT: Yeah. People are scared. Who isn't scared? Yeah.
GLICK: I mean, my 78-year-old mother is sitting there saying like, will the Social Security check come in, right? Am I losing my 401k? You know, I'm 78 years old. This is when I should feel like I'm at the safest time in my life.
And now prices, prices are going to rise. So, people are scared.
BURNETT: So, you say, just wait. Okay, I'm pulling out the whiteboard.
Dan and I were talking about the whiteboard today.
IVES: The whiteboard is the best way to put it.
BURNETT: So I struggle with the whiteboard today because I couldn't -- I was like, how can I be definitive now? Well, now the whole point is you couldn't.
Okay, so let's go back to Jodey. Jodey, he's buying one of those pool things. You know, you can sit in and his is a beer -- beer holder on the side.
IVES: He had an umbrella yesterday.
BURNETT: He had an umbrella. So maybe he's going to put that over this. But he wants this for the summer.
Okay. So, this when I look today and I looked for a lot of sources. Sorry. It's a little hard to write this way. It's 1999 right now. No tariffs in there at all okay. So, if I'm going to put 145 percent tariff on this thing okay. So, 145 is what talking about, 145, because it's going to come from China on Amazon, 145 percent, okay. So, then I'm going to get $28.99. Thats just the tariff.
TUCHMAN: And the Modelo and the Heineken.
BURNETT: And then, right, I mean those are -- right. Exactly right.
(CROSSTALK)
[19:15:05]
BURNETT: They may not be letting those I know. Oh my gosh, you just are making my head spin.
Okay. So, then I'm going to go ahead and add these two numbers. And I'm going to get the total for Joe to buy this. Sorry, 48.98 okay, 48.98, 48.98.
Now, that's insane. Thats ridiculous. But here's the other problem. Let's say -- I was looking online. It's very hard to tell where everything is made. So maybe this gets pushed to be made in Vietnam or the Philippines or somewhere where -- where it isn't subject to this, right?
IVES: And there's still a baseline tariff.
BURNETT: Right. And there's a baseline tariff, but it's not this high. Right. Or maybe some of this gets passed through to a retailer and eaten there, but nobody knows. So, if -- even if I'm making this somewhere that isn't in China,
aren't I going to try to push the price up as high as I can? Isn't this what's going to happen?
HICKEY: At that level, ?
GLICK: It's the domino effect, right? And that's -- and that's the unknown. So, think about you not only consuming at those prices, which folks won't be able to, right?
BURNETT: No.
GLICK: But the -- but you're preparing your supply chains. And if you have to change and move your supply chains from one country to another, what we've essentially said is we're pausing on the rest of this for 90 days. But that's essentially -- that's effectively a quarter. You're preparing when you're in textiles or some of these businesses, you're buying supply chains for six months, 12 months in --
BURNETT: Some of that, you could stockpile to the point I'm making, but then when the tariff goes in, you bought it for whatever you bought it for, is the retailer 19.99. But now you can sell it for way more than that, right? Making a huge profit. That's inflationary.
HICKEY: You have incentive to cause higher prices. But the thing to take into account also is these products being imported, you know, there's businesses based on that. So maybe like you look at Europe, you know European wines come in, there's more revenues and jobs created from on the imported side than there is on the wine over there.
So, like the we talked about the snowball, you know, starting small and getting big, these kind of things grow and metastasize and get bigger. So that's the concern. And what people are worried about is how long is this all going to be in place? Nobody knows.
BURNETT: Can I ask you? I'm also curious because this is what we were talking about today. Apple is you said about 10 percent of U.S. imports from China.
IVES: That's conservative.
BURNETT: And that's conservative. That's $45 billion a year, okay? So, let's say Trump gives them a pardon or a pass which putting aside the merits of that and what that actually means, what does China do? I mean, are they going to start taking retribution on Apple or Apple -- I mean, is that where we're going?
IVES: The worry is retaliatory. When you look for Apple, and then you just push more and more Huawei phones, BYD over Tesla. And that's -- look, that's why once you start this, you unleash this Armageddon, especially with China. I mean, this is one where it's the companies and it's the investors that ultimately pay for it.
And you're talking about an icon in terms of American technology that you're cutting at the knees, essentially, when it comes to Apple.
TUCHMAN: We talked about the -- the bond, the bond auction the other day and how significant that was, and that if they had not stepped in and bought the bonds in the last moment, that the price would have gone to 5 percent and that would have -- it would have been an 8 percent selloff the next day in the stock market.
But I just want to talk about the disruption we're talking about. Think of -- go back to COVID. Remember what that was like when everybody decided we were going to turn the switch back on and come back to life and think about all the ships that had been on hold and all the, the, you know --
BURNETT: We're still recovering from that. Yeah.
TUCHMAN: We are still -- and but think about it. It took $3 trillion being put into the market over three months to be able to get us out of that, to even be able to start swimming again, to get us online, because it doesn't just automatically happen.
IVES: And governments doing the opposite this time.
TUCHMAN: We have no -- we have no stimulus game going on here. Theres nothing to help the situation.
GLICK: We are right now spending -- we're projected to spend over, I don't know, about $580 billion in interest on our debt.
BURNETT: Yep.
GLICK: Okay? On an annualized basis right now.
So, if we look right now at where the ten-year treasury is, we have to be watching this so closely. This is very dangerous. We have to be watching the U.S. dollar.
The fact of the matter is we've been spending like drunken sailors. We have to do some things to curtail spending.
The thing is, we have to do it in measured steps. You can't do everything all at once, and that's what we're trying to do.
HICKEY: And I think getting to interest rates, that's the worry. You saw a great CPI report today and interest rates went up. So that's -- that causes concerns on the part of investors. Why are rates going up when we're getting --
BURNETT: Inflation was not.
HICKEY: Yeah, exactly. For all intents and purposes, the economy has been doing just fine. I mean, employment -- initial claims every week have been coming in better than expected and are pretty low levels. So that's the good news. So, it's the fear of what's going to happen.
We don't know what's going to happen yet, which is and only time will tell what's going to happen. But again, I just want to sound a little bit more.
IVES: But, Paul, also, once that iPhone factory, once they put in New Jersey next month, think about what could happen there.
HICKEY: All the jobs.
BURENTT: I mean, hey, you could just 3D print it overnight.
[19:20:00]
What are you talking?
IVES: I mean, it's going to be amazing, right?
HICKEY: Automated screws, but, you know, like, I mean I think just -- the markets are down a lot. And so I think when you've seen these types of periods before, you know, outside of a few weeks or months, usually the market has more often than not has a lot has been thrown at it the last century. And we've made it through.
GLICK: And we were overpriced. I mean, let's be honest, we had a lot of bubbles.
BURNETT: Well, let's hope -- let's hope that people can. I mean, and of course, the thing that has been lost is something intangible. We don't know what the price of that will be.
IVES: And consumers will start to see over the coming weeks.
BURNETT: All right. Thank you all.
And next, Trump dodging questions tonight about whether he engaged in insider trading when he told people to buy stocks just hours before he paused tariffs, including his own company stock ticker.
Plus, the breaking news a helicopter carrying six people suddenly falling from the sky. It's a terrifying image crashing into the Hudson River here in New York. We have new details on what happened and what happened to those on board.
And wrong number, wait until you hear what happened when Trump mistakenly called an advisor that he had fired and insulted.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:25:25]
BURNETT: Breaking news, President Trump threatening even more tariffs against Mexico just moments ago. Just saying online in part, quote, we will keep escalating consequences, including tariffs and maybe even sanctions. He capitalizes the word tariff and the word sanctions.
This comes as Trump refuses to address allegations of insider trading, connected to a sudden pause on massive tariffs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REPORTER: Mr. President, Democrats were making allegations about market manipulation yesterday --
TRUMP: Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: It was, of course, Trump himself who less than four hours before he announced the 90-day pause on the upper level of tariffs, who posted online, quote, be cool. Everything is going to work out. Well, that was at 9:33 a.m. and then: This is a great time to buy, three exclamation points, all caps, DJT, which also happens to be the stock ticker for his stock. That was four minutes later.
And take a look at this chart that my next guest, the Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and many others have highlighted online. That is a chart which shows Nasdaq call volume. So essentially a measure of buying spiking moments before Trump announced his 90-day pause on social media.
So, you don't get a spike like that right before something like this, generally, unless people know about it. The public learned about it at 1:18 p.m. and now at least one House Republican is demanding answers as well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JEFF HURD (R-CO): I would absolutely want to know that. We are in a special position of responsibility in public trust here as elected officials, and finding out if somebody was trading on inside information I think is something that's really important.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: It's good to hear that Congressman Hurd just coming out and calling it like he sees it not being pressured.
He is far from alone in that concern.
Senator Schiff is OUTFRONT. He is one of a growing number of Democratic senators demanding answers from the White House about who knew what and when.
So, Senator, as I said, and I know that chart, that call volume chart obviously has been widely distributed. You saw that chart that I just showed, as well as the president's comments.
Obviously, when something like this is about to happen and with this president, you don't know who knew what, when or how far before that he decided he has said it was in the morning. So how certain are you that there was insider trading going on?
SEN. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Well, we really don't know at this point. That chart does illustrate that something appears to be very wrong, that it does appear that some must have had some information. It would be a remarkable coincidence otherwise. But the American people should be able to find out. And in fact, there
should be public reporting of people within the administration who bought stock and when they bought it, and when those reports are made public. We ought to demand some answers.
But the problem is these White House officials have not been posting their stock transactions. They have not been following the required disclosures.
BURNETT: Yes.
SCHIFF: And right now, there's no one to oversee what they're doing in the administration. And apart from my colleague on the House side that you just played a clip of, most of the Republicans have been utterly silent on this.
BURNETT: So, you know, if you don't get, obviously, Trump's SEC chief to investigate, and it would be a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. You don't have the attorney general, Pam Bondi, investigating. If it doesn't come from there and it doesn't come from Republicans in Congress, right, who control it? And therefore, launch an investigation at the committee level. Is it dead? I mean, does just nobody, nobody do anything?
SCHIFF: No, it isn't dead. And what we found during the first Trump administration is even in the minority, we could hold shadow hearings as we did. And as I did just earlier this week with witnesses who come forward. Sometimes they're whistleblowers, and other times they're people who are just willing to speak out when they see acts of corruption.
So, we may have whistleblowers who come forward. We may have others that are aware of potential stock transactions that give information that we can follow up on. Eventually, the truth is going to come out. You just can't hide something like this.
Obviously, the press plays a vital role also in uncovering wrongdoing. But we will get to the bottom of this one way or another. I'm confident we'll get answers, but right now, there's such a sense of impunity in the White House that, you know, if it's not the president trading in his own meme coin or the presidents kids with their cryptocurrency, or, you know, this reckless handling of the tariffs, it is an environment in which you have to expect that corruption is likely.
BURNETT: Senator, I want to ask you, there has just been some breaking news here in the past few minutes, probably as you were, you know, getting -- getting plugged in to talk to us.
[19:30:05]
The Supreme Court has ruled and said that the Trump administration has to facilitate -- that's the word they're using -- the return of the -- Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. He's a migrant, a Maryland man that the administration says it was an administrative error for why they deported him to El Salvador and they shouldn't have done it. But nonetheless, they said they weren't going to bring him back, right?
They have been -- it's been ruled that they have to bring him back. But some sort of a requirement of exactly when or how or, you know, essentially leaving a lot of gray area here.
Do you believe the Trump administration is going to comply and bring him home?
SCHIFF: Well, so far the signs are very poor. Now, we didn't have this decision by the Supreme Court, and I hope and expect that they will have to comply with it. But up until now, what they've done has been extraordinary.
They -- they plucked this man off the street. They deported him in violation of a court's order. They acknowledged they did it in in error. They refused to lift a finger to bring him back.
They taunted the judge, essentially saying, it's your court order. Let's see you enforce it. It was a mocking tone by the administration. They never offered to try to remedy their mistake.
Now, they're being told by the Supreme Court that they're going to have to remedy this. Will they pick up the phone as we know the president could do, and call the president of El Salvador, with whom he is very close, and say, hey, we made a mistake, send this guy back?
They're going to obviously be most concerned with what they're always concerned with, which is saving face. So that doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence. But if they ignore this instruction by the Supreme Court and the fault by the district court, then we are really in that uncharted territory we feared, where they're simply flouting even a court order.
BURNETT: All right, Senator Schiff, I appreciate your time. Thank you.
SCHIFF: Thank you.
BURNETT: And next, the breaking news of a helicopter crash in the Hudson River in New York. The video is just its horrific and shocking of the helicopter going down. We have new details on what happened and what happened to those on board.
And we take you inside a growing movement in the U.S. thanks to Elon Musk and J.D. Vance but is pushing women to make as their central goal having more babies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a civilizational catastrophe coming. And the way to solve it is to have sex.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[19:37:12]
BURNETT: Breaking news, an investigation underway after horrific tragedy. Six people killed in a helicopter crash in New York's Hudson River.
The pilot and a family of five visiting from Spain, including three young children, were all killed. It's horrifying what happened. The video of what seemed to happen, to understand what even went wrong, certainly incomprehensible as that helicopter was coming down. Warn you? It's disturbing here.
You can see how fast the helicopter came down. Upside down as it crashed into the river. And at the top of the screen on the left, you can see the debris that flew up as the chopper came down.
And then we also have a piece of video, very important to understand what happened here, where you can see a big piece of the helicopter actually spinning up into the air after the chopper was -- was coming down almost as it broken apart.
The air traffic control audio, you can hear the chaotic moments right as this happened.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
EMERGENCY RESPONSE PILOT: River traffic, be advised. You do have an aircraft down Holland Tunnel. Please keep your eyes open for anybody in the water.
Please keep your eyes open. You guys see anything in the water, please let us know.
PILOT: Okay. We're just circling over Holland now.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
BURNETT: Brynn Gingras is OUTFRONT. She has been live at the crash scene since this happened.
Brynn, and you know, at first, we had heard people were -- were coming off maybe in critical care, but going to a hospital, there was hope. Of course, this has ended in a horrific tragedy. What are you learning?
BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, yeah, Erin. And you see that video and you just get a gut punch. We're here on the scene where the, you know, there's still people, you know, rescue crews out there, of course, not performing any rescues at this point. All those bodies were taken out of the water.
But this investigation very much underway. The NTSB, the FAA, as part of this investigation, and you just described it for your viewers there. Witnesses called 911, many of them describing how pieces of that helicopter came off of the body of the helicopter crashing into the water before the helicopter went into the water upside down. So inverted, meaning the cabin was up. Likely that might have helped first responders get to those people who
were on board those six people. And I want you to hear from officials talk about the life saving efforts that they made at that point.
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KAZ DAUGHTRY, NYC DEPUTY MAYOR OF PUBLIC SAFETY: We were met by the first responders, and they told us they did everything they can to try to save these victims. And you can see the trauma in their face. They did everything they can.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GINGRAS: Yeah. Six people on board, including a pilot and a family of five traveling here to New York City from Spain.
What we understand is that that helicopter took off for a tourist flight, which of course, is so very common along the skyline here of New York City and of course, here on the New York and New Jersey side, they took off from Lower Manhattan and traveled north, getting sights of the Statue of Liberty, of the skyline of Manhattan, heading north to the George Washington bridge before turning back down and following the New Jersey side of the Hudson River here before crashing down in the air for a total of 16 minutes.
[19:40:12]
Of course. So many questions still, Erin, of exactly what caused it to go down, still unanswered at this point.
BURNETT: Just so, so horrible. Brynn, thank you very much.
All right. Former Black Hawk pilot Brad Bowman is OUTFRONT because he's flown this exact model of helicopter involved in this crash tonight.
Brad, just an unbelievable to imagine those last moments. And I'm sure, you know, it's really hard to even think about it.
As you try to understand what happened here. If we -- if we look at it, it appears to be going down at about a 45 degree angle. And then there's a moment where we appear to be looking at a broken propeller. You hear there in the air for 16 minutes, and then something like this happens.
What -- what does it tell you from what you're seeing as to what could have gone wrong?
BRAD BOWMAN, FORMER BLACK HAWK PILOT: Thanks, Erin. You know, it is -- it is very difficult to watch the video and consider that six people lost their lives. And our thoughts are, of course, with their families. And we want to let the investigation play out.
But when I look at the video, the key things to see here is that you have parts of the helicopter already separating long before it impacts the water. And that includes the rotor blades, of course, the tail boom and tail rotor and the main rotor blades.
And there's several reasons why that could occur. One reason would be that you would have inappropriate maintenance or, part failure due to fatigue of a particular part corrosion. You can have collision with other objects or engine failures. Those are just 5 or 6 examples of what could cause the rotor blades, the main rotor blades, or the tail rotor to fail and separate. And then obviously when that happens, then that's not good.
BURNETT: You know, the helicopter was a Bell 206, as I said something that you have flown that exact model and you also have flown this exact route over the Hudson in a Black Hawk, actually just two weeks before 9/11. So, you know the route and you know, the aircraft.
You know, I'm sure you've been exactly where this has happened. And this the Bell 206 and this particular crash tonight, we understand from the FAA. And this is just what we're finding out, Brad, was built in 2004, and its airworthiness certificate had been issued in 2016. That was good all the way until 2029.
So, you mentioned maintenance as a possible thing. And obviously, we don't know until we know, but -- but when you look at that information that we have, what are you focusing on right now.
BOWMAN: You know, I eager to see what the NTSB and FAA conclude. And I would definitely want to look at the maintenance records on this particular aircraft. I flew a -- an Army version of the Bell 206, which was much older, and this was a more modern, upgraded version with more capabilities. But I definitely would want to look at the maintenance logbooks to see what might explain a mechanical failure that that was this catastrophic and resulted in this horrible end.
BURNETT: It's just a horrible end.
All right. Brad, thank you very much. We appreciate your time.
BOWMAN: Thank you.
And next, the rallying cry for a growing number of Americans to increase the birth rate. With supporters now facing very tough questions. Is it eugenics?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eugenics is when you say these are good traits. These are bad traits.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Plus, Trump mistakenly calls his former national security advisor by mistake, then insults him, dropping the F bomb. We'll tell you what he said.
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[19:47:43] BURNETT: Tonight, this message is gaining steam.
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J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So let me say very simply, I want more babies in the United States of America.
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BURNETT: Well, it's led to what's called the pronatalist movement. And it's getting more popular because of messages from Vice President Vance and Elon Musk, who, of course, has at least 13 children with multiple women.
CNN's Meena Duerson is OUTFRONT at the 2025 Natal Conference because, yes, there is a conference.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JACK POSOBIEC, NATALCON SPEAKER: Raise your hand if you are a mom or a dad in the room here tonight.
This is the war for civilization, and we are going to win it one life at a time.
MEENA DUERSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're here at NatalCon, which is a gathering of about 200 people from all over the world who have come here because they all feel very strongly that the world needs more babies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a civilizational catastrophe coming, and the way to solve it is to have sex. Like, that's got to be the easiest pitch in history.
DUERSON: Birth rates around the world are plummeting, and they think this is the issue of our time.
HANNAH CENTERS, NATALCON ATTENDEE: It's a massive conversation, and that's why we're here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to encourage more people to get married and have kids. We need those people to be the people of the future.
DUERSON: Many countries are no longer having enough kids to replace their populations. Some experts predict this will cause labor shortages and inflation, permanently changing the economy.
The people most passionate about this call themselves pro-natalist.
MALCOM COLLIS, FOUNDER, PRONATALIST.ORG: People are like, why are high fertility people always so weird?
DUERSON: Malcom and Simone Collins have four kids, soon to be five, and are some of the loudest advocates for pronatalism.
M. COLLINS: What we've seen is pronatalism and demographic collapse have become the global warming of the right. Some of the first people who really recognize the scale of the problem are major players in the White House right now, you know, like J.D. Vance and Elon Musk.
MUSK: The birth rate is very low in almost every country, and unless that changes, our civilization will disappear.
DUERSON: Elon Musk's fixation with population collapse has pushed pro-natalism into the spotlight. His tweets about NatalCon helped double attendance for this year's event, where the tickets cost $1,000.
BENJAMIN DETRY, NATALCON ATTENDEE: Yes, I spent all of my savings coming here, actually.
DUERSON: Do you want to have kids?
DETRY: Yes.
DUERSON: Do you have -- you don't have kids?
DETRY: No, no.
DUERSON: How many do you want to have?
DETRY: Well, minimum of five. I want to have my first 22. And then I want to have.
DUERSON: You got to get on that.
DETRY: Yeah, I know.
DUERSON: Organizers said they heard a lot of interest in matchmaking. So they gave yellow wristbands to singles to help them find each other.
You have a yellow wristband?
DETRY: Yes.
DUERSON: So you're -- you're open to mingling?
DETRY: Yes. Well, yeah.
DUERSON: Have you met anybody good?
DETRY: I'm not sure if you can tell. Yeah, but, like, there's a lot of lads here. Theres not that many ladies.
DUERSON: The speakers are largely dry economist types focused on tweaks to boost birth rates, from tax credits to housing. But politically, the vibe is firmly right wing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The marginal people need to go back to the margins.
POSOBIEC: We want to raise families. The left is raising pride flags over cat shelters.
PEACHY KEENAN, NATALCON SPEAKER: 2024 actually did have a slight uptick in births. Bad news it was just the anchor babies from the illegal immigrants.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's pretty difficult to draw a neat, tidy circle around everybody here. The far right or the extreme right? We would like to have more babies, but we would like to have more of our babies. On the other end, people like more babies are always good, whether its babies or immigrants. And the other axis, you know, trad Catholics, Mormons, and then like a kind of tech bro or tech futurist genetic selection of embryos, trying to refine the quality of the babies that are born.
DUERSON: Because the Collinses are building their family through IVF, using experimental testing to rank embryos for traits from health risks to intelligence, they get one of the biggest criticisms of pro- natalism that its code for eugenics.
M. COLLINS: Eugenics is when you say these are good traits, these are bad traits.
SIMONE COLLINS, FOUNDER, PRONATALIST.ORG: This is just people choosing among their own embryos. We're not talking about sterilizing people or all the classic problems that are out there with eugenics.
DEUERSON: Ahead of the conference, press coverage called out some speakers as race science promoters and eugenicists. And students accused the event of hosting Nazis. A criticism organizer Kevin Dolan, dismissed.
KEVIN DOLAN, NATALCON ORGANIZER: You can't be governed by people calling you names. I think that these ideas, they're not going to come from people who don't want to hurt any feelings.
DUERSON: Do you feel like there's a risk of alienating people with the kind of speakers you've selected, and that tenor --
DOLAN: Yeah, of course.
DUERSON: Is that a risk for the larger cause?
DOLAN: I mean, yes, some of those people are polarizing. They're my friends. And, you know, I'm not going to chuck 'em under the bus.
PAUL CONSTANCE, NATALCON ATTENDEE: We can't let the right own things that are that fundamental.
DUERSON: Paul Constance was the only liberal we met the whole weekend.
CONSTANCE: I'm here because I think it's a really big, big topic. And progressives need to be in the conversation.
DUERSON: Why is this such a big deal to you? CONSTANCE: So, I have kids in their 20s. Young people today feel very
hesitant or unable to form families. It's very easy to talk about cat ladies and to imply that people on the left don't care about kids. It's much harder to actually put forward policies that would make everyone of any political stripe be more inclined to form a family.
UNIDENTFIED FEMALE: I think that one of the things that often gets skipped over in any discussion of nihilism today is kind of the actual lives of women who make decisions about whether or not to bring a child into the world. Don't forget about the ladies. Don't forget about the people who have the babies.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DUERSON: And I think you can see that crowd is pretty homogeneous, very white, largely male. You know, we heard many of the speakers had to drop out because they were pregnant. So lost a lot of a lot of women that way. A lot of men told us they were there repping their wives because, you know, when you have a big family like that, you can't travel to a conference. It becomes very expensive and someone has to do that childcare.
So, I think this lack of diversity kind of shows this is a self- selecting group. You know, this message is kind of staying within these bubbles for now. And while these people are quite panicked about this, you know, a lot of experts we spoke to for this piece said collapse is really a little overblown.
BURNETT: Yeah, it is amazing though. I mean, it's such an incredible report, but it did stand out. So many white men. I mean, that's -- that's who was represented there.
Meena, thank you so much. It's an incredible reporting.
And next, Trump mistakenly calling up an official he fired. And what happened next was just about as awkward as you can imagine. Wait until you see this report.
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[19:58:45]
BURNETT: Tonight, misdial. President Trump called the wrong McMaster and then apparently it got ugly. Trump mistakenly called his former national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, and called him on his personal cell because he was put through to him. And this was a confusing thing.
Apparently, they confused H.R. McMaster with the South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster. Now, all of this is according to CBS News. Now, all of this happening is obviously quite something, not only because the president unknowingly called the wrong person, but because Trump's relationship with H.R. McMaster is nasty.
Listen to Trump in August 2021.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
TRUMP: McMaster was not a smart guy. All he liked doing is talking to the press, and I rarely listen to him and then ultimately fired him.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
BURNETT: H.R. McMaster has been critical of Trump as well, writing in his memoir that Trump is emotionally unfit for office and that, quote, he lacked basic knowledge of how the government runs.
Now, according to CBS, Trump only realized he had dialed the wrong McMaster when Trump started saying, quote, Henry and H.R. McMaster corrected him. He said, quote, Mr. President, this is H.R. McMaster, end quote. This is, you know, CBS, they're saying H in H.R., short for Herbert, not Henry.
So, the conversation, I guess, had been going on for a while. Then Trump realizes he's talking to the wrong person and finally understanding who he really was talking to, according to the report, says, quote, why the F would I talk to H.R. McMaster?
Needless to say, from that point the call was incredibly brief. The call just happened, also, think about this just days before Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to the signal chat, where Trump's national security officials were discussing war plans.
Thanks so much for joining us.
"AC360" starts now.
