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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

President Trump Says He'll Speak with Putin on Tuesday About Ending Ukraine War; White House Denies it Violated a Judge's Order to Halt the Deportations of Venezuelan Gang Members to El Salvador; Violate Tornadoes Hit Parts of the U.S. with At Least 39 Dead and Vast Destruction. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired March 17, 2025 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:00]

RAHEL SOLOMON, ANCHOR, EARLY START: Good morning and welcome to our viewers joining us from the U.S. and all around the world, I'm Rahel Solomon, it is Monday, March 17th at 5:00 a.m. here in New York and straight ahead on EARLY START.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump saying he'll be speaking with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to see if we can bring that war to an end.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: The White House said that its decision to carry out these deportation flights did not conflict with the judge's ruling.

TRUMP: These were bad people. That was a bad group of -- as I say, hombres.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're seeing the path of destruction of the tornado that hit this area.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is pretty bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLOMON: And we begin with President Donald Trump speaking to reporters on board Air Force One just a short time ago. You just saw a clip there. He talked about some of the recent U.S. deportations, his crackdown on the federal workforce and tariffs. But he also confirmed that he will be speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday as he works to negotiate a deal to end the war in Ukraine. Here's what the President had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We'll see if we have something to announce, maybe by Tuesday, I'll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of -- a lot of work has been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can't. But I think we have a very good chance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What sort of concessions will you be seeking to have Putin make to get a deal done?

TRUMP: Well, I think we'll -- you know, be talking about land. It's a lot of land. It's a lot different than it was before the war, as you know. And we'll be talking about land. We'll be talking about power plants. That's -- you know, it's a big question. But I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll ask him to --

TRUMP: Ukraine and Russia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll ask him to --

TRUMP: We're already talking about that, dividing up certain assets. Yes, and they've been working on that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLOMON: All right, let's go to CNN's Clare Sebastian who joins us live from London. Clare, good morning. You know, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff also told CNN yesterday that he had a positive meeting with Putin last week. So, Clare, where does that leave things? Where does that leave things now?

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Rahel, I think look, we're going into yet another critical week of diplomacy. I think when you hear Steve Witkoff say things were positive, he didn't give a lot of detail. It's not exactly clear what that meant. We have no evidence based on the rhetoric that we heard from President Putin last week, that Russia is willing to give any kind of concessions and to do anything other than really sort of the nice words around the U.S. proposed ceasefire.

So, I think, look, the centerpiece of this week clearly is going to be that call between President Trump and President Putin, that Trump trailed in that clip that you played there. And I think for Russia, this represents a real opportunity to essentially try to drive a wedge again between the U.S. and Ukraine. Last week, of course, we saw those relations repaired to some extent, military aid restored.

And of course, this agreement in principle on a 30-day ceasefire. So, I think Russia will be looking to do that, and to sort of bring Trump round to their way of thinking on the whole idea, of course, as Russia continues to assert that it is Ukraine and not Russia that is standing in the way of peace.

The last time they spoke on February 12th, it was just a few days later that we heard Trump say that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was a dictator, which of course led to that cascade of events that eventually brought us the Oval Office spat and all of the fallout from that. Of course, we cannot prove that those comments had anything to do with

his call with President Putin, but I think this call carries considerable risk, number one, for Ukraine, as it looks to try to keep up its sort of repaired relationship with the U.S., and of course, for Europe. We see this morning, European Foreign Ministers arriving for a meeting, all of them trying to reiterate the point that if Russia stopped its attacks, this war would end.

And overnight, again, another 170-plus drones fired at Ukraine as Russia continues with a very heavy aerial assault. And frankly, continues trying to push Ukraine out of the Kursk region, where it has been occupying to some degree now since last August.

[05:05:00]

So, I think this again, a critical week and one that carries considerable risk, as I said, for Ukraine.

SOLOMON: Yes, certainly, a lot at stake here. Clare Sebastian live for us there in London. Clare, thank you. President Trump is defending his decision to deport hundreds of migrants allegedly affiliated with the Venezuelan gang, using a centuries-old wartime law. He was asked if he would comply with the judge's order pausing those deportations while speaking to reporters earlier. And here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I don't know, you have to speak to the lawyers about that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you planning to do more deportations?

TRUMP: I can tell you this. These were bad people. That was a bad group of -- as I say, hombres.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLOMON: Late Saturday, a judge put a temporary hold on the deportation flights and ordered any planes already in the air to turn around, but that did not happen. The White House Press Secretary argued that they did not violate the order because it was issued after the migrants had already left the U.S. Karoline Leavitt issued a statement saying in part, quote, "a single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil."

An assistant professor at Brown University's Medical School has been deported to Lebanon despite a U.S. judge's order blocking her immediate removal. The expulsion of the Rhode Island doctor, a Lebanese citizen and U.S. visa holder, will be the focus of a federal hearing in the coming hours. The judge overseeing the case has demanded information on whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection willfully disobeyed his order.

The agency has not revealed why the doctor was removed. Meanwhile, Brown University, sending a campus-wide e-mail on Sunday advising its international students and faculty members to avoid international and domestic travel amid the Trump administration's immigration policy changes. Trump supporters describe all of this as simply the application of existing law.

Critics derided as cruel and arbitrary either way, and regardless of where you stand, this is creating a climate of fear that has migrants, both documented and undocumented, afraid at times to leave their homes. And this is a group that plays a huge role in the U.S. economy. There were just under 48 million immigrants in the U.S. in 2023, with a total spending power of $1.7 trillion.

The American Immigration Council estimates that immigrants paid about $652 billion in taxes that year. The group adds that they comprise more than a fifth of employment in sectors like agriculture, construction, transportation, warehousing and other services. I'm joined now by David Leopold; he is the chair of immigration for the law firm UB Greensfelder and joins us from Cleveland. Great to have you this morning, David. Appreciate you being here.

DAVID LEOPOLD, IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY & CHAIR, UB GREENSFELDER: Thank you.

SOLOMON: Let's just begin there with the economic impact of some of these policies. What are they and how soon before the public begins to feel that?

LEOPOLD: Well, look, you're describing an atmosphere of absolute fear, not only in immigrant homes. And not only in homes where there may be somebody who is undocumented or on a visa, but also in the homes of U.S. citizens. I'm getting phone calls from people who are not only immigrants, but people who have passports, people who have lived here for years and years and years.

Doctors like the one who was just deported from Rhode Island, who are asking me, can I travel? Things like that. What's the impact? We're going to feel the impact in the grocery stores. None of this, none of this lowers the price of eggs. And none of this lowers the price of milk, which is what the President ran on. This is a climate of fear that I don't think this country has ever seen.

And it's not about immigrants. It's about all of us. It's about our country. It's about the way we're going to live.

SOLOMON: And what about housing? I mean, one thing that we talk about a lot in terms of housing prices and just demand for housing is the lack of supply. Talk to me a little bit about the impact we may see there in terms of perhaps a decline in workers to build these houses.

LEOPOLD: Sure, absolutely. Well, about 20 percent of the home construction industry in the United States are immigrant workers -- 20 percent. So, when you take those folks out of the mix, and it's not just people who have been arrested and deported because ICE is searching for them, it's people who are afraid to go to work. It's people who are afraid to go out of their home.

You described in the opening people who are afraid to travel. That's also internally, because if you travel out of your home, if you go into the sidewalk, you may find an ICE agent standing there ready to arrest you.

So, what does that do if we don't have people who are building our homes, if we don't have people who are building our buildings, if we don't have people who are working on our roads and our streets and our cities and our infrastructure, then that is going to have a direct effect on the economy, of course, prices are going to go up, supplies are going to be less prevalent, and people are not going to be able to obtain the services they need.

[05:10:00]

And by the way, it's not just in construction. And I think that when the American people voted last Fall, they voted -- they clearly voted for a secure border. I don't think there's any question about that. But what they didn't vote for was for their neighbor to be deported. They didn't vote for the woman or the man who takes care of their mom or their dad or their grandparents in assisted living. They didn't vote for that person to be deported.

And I think they're going to be surprised when the people that take care of this economy, the essential workers, the people in the meatpacking plants, the people in agriculture, the people who are putting food on our table are gone because the prices are going to skyrocket and the economy is going to be in serious trouble.

SOLOMON: Yes, I mean, that was sort of my next question. I mean, how do you respond to people who say, well, he was clearly voted in. He was voted in on -- in part because of his immigration policies. But I guess based on what you just said, I'll rephrase it this way. Have you heard any sense of betrayal from people who may have voted for him and thought, wait, this is not what I was voting for, including but not exclusively, immigrants or people who may be connected to the immigrant community. What are you hearing on that?

LEOPOLD: I'm hearing people are absolutely surprised and stunned. And when I say that, these are people who supported the President in the November election last year. People voted like I said, because they were worried about the border. But they are very surprised to see their doctor deported. And it's not -- it's not just the doctor out of -- out of Rhode Island.

I represent a lot of health care institutions, and people who are giving services to our parents and our family and our children and us, those folks are worried, you know, and we -- this country, our economy is global. You know, years ago when you had a hardware store downtown, they were competing against the hardware store across the street.

Nowadays, when you have a business in your city, they may be competing with the business in Paris or in London or in Tokyo. The economy is global. We are -- we are interconnected. And to shut America off and to shut our borders and to keep our people who are actually here lawfully as permanent residents or as visa holders, and taking care of our healthcare and taking care of our construction and taking care of the very services that we absolutely rely on to keep -- put those people in fear and to deport them whenever you can get your hands on them, which is what the administration is doing, is going to devastate our economy.

And yes, it's going to surprise and stun the folks who voted for him. And we can already see this all across the country.

SOLOMON: OK, well, we'll leave it here, but we appreciate your insights and perspective this morning. That's David Leopold, chair of immigration for the law firm UB Greensfelder. Thanks for joining us.

LEOPOLD: Thank you.

SOLOMON: OK, we played that sound for you at the top of the show of President Trump speaking to reporters a bit -- amid Air Force One late Sunday night. He answered questions there on several topics, including his tariff plans. And when he was asked whether he would make any exceptions on his announced tariffs. This is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: No, I have no intention of it, no.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, is this --

TRUMP: April 2nd is a liberating day for our country. We're going to be getting back some of the wealth that very foolish Presidents gave away because they had no clue what they were doing. And April 2nd, I would have made it April 1st, but you know what? April 1st is April Fool's Day. I figured, you know, I don't like doing it, but I made it April 2nd. But it's a liberation day for our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLOMON: He also explained why he thinks the tariffs are fair, and suggested that they could even be expanded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They charge us and we charge them. Then, in addition to that, on autos, on steel and aluminum, we're going to have some additional tariffs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLOMON: All right. As we start the new trading week, investors big and small, from corporate CEOs to employees watching their 401ks and their investment portfolios hoping for at minimum a smoother week for the markets. A few things that may shape the markets this week. Well, later this morning, we'll get the retail sales figures for February.

Then on Wednesday, we'll learn what the Federal Reserve plans to do with interest rates. And what's widely expected that rates will stay at current levels. But often times, it's the press conference after the rate decision that gives us more information. It's usually Jerome Powell's comments at the press conference that moves markets. So, watch that space. I remember U.S. stocks are coming off their worst week in two years with the S&P entering correction territory on Thursday. [05:15:00]

Many economists are raising the chances of a possible recession in the U.S. Meanwhile, the Trump administration and his White House not doing much to calm those fears. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Secretary, can you guarantee the American people here and now that there will be no recession on President Trump's watch?

SCOTT BESSENT, SECRETARY OF TREASURY, UNITED STATES: Well, Kristen, you know that there are no guarantees. Like, who would have predicted COVID, right? So, I can predict that we are putting in robust policies that will be durable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLOMON: OK, let's take a look at how U.S. futures are looking ahead of markets opening. At this point, markets are all set to open lower. The Dow looks off about 200 points at this point. Nasdaq off about half a percent, S&P just about the same. It is early in a new week. So, let's see what the day brings. Let's see what the week brings.

Still ahead for us, dozens are dead and many are without power after severe weather storm system tore through parts of the U.S. over the weekend. Ahead, we will go to Alabama. That's where more than half of the state's counties are being assessed for damage. And later, U.S. Democrats are -- a House divided after a fight over the Republican funding bill. We'll take a look at what new polling reflects about the frustration felt among the party's supporters when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:20:00]

SOLOMON: Welcome back. A violent weather system has left a trail of death and destruction across the Midwest and southeastern U.S. At least, 39 people were killed in seven states over the weekend. Nearly a third of those deaths were in the state of Missouri. The outbreak began on Friday, prompting nearly a thousand storm reports, with dozens of tornadoes confirmed in Arkansas.

Two separate EF-4 tornadoes were confirmed on Friday according to the National Weather Service in Little Rock. It's the first time that more than one tornado of that strength occurred on the same day in the state since 1997. Our Rafael Romo is in the hard-hit state of Alabama, where the governor says that most of the state was impacted.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): We've seen dozens of volunteers here clearing the debris left after a tornado ripped through this community. Utility workers with heavy machinery have replaced multiple power poles in the last few hours, and should be close to restoring electricity to the entire neighborhood.

But it's going to take a little longer for this community to go back to normal, especially considering the extensive damage sustained by many buildings like this high school behind me. Dozens of volunteers from a church in Talladega came down earlier today to help this community remove the debris. This is how a couple of those volunteers described what they saw. Let's take a listen.

JAMES STEWART, VOLUNTEER: I've seen nothing like this since I was a kid. I've seen a few tornadoes in my lifetime and a couple of hurricanes, but other than that, this is pretty bad.

ROMO: What do you think of the destruction that you've seen so far?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's massive. I'm talking about buses upside down, poles bent in half, trees scattered. It's rough.

ROMO: Unfortunately, several people have been confirmed dead as a result of the severe weather here over the weekend in Alabama. One of the people who died was a gentleman who lived in a mobile home in Winterboro, not too far from here. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said earlier in a statement that damage has been reported in 52 of the state's 67 counties, noting officials are still assessing the damage. Rafael Romo, CNN, Alpine, Alabama.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOLOMON: All right, still ahead for us in the U.S., a major retailer is sounding the alarm. Coming up, inflations lingering impact on low income budgets. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:25:00]

SOLOMON: Welcome back. All eyes are on Washington as U.S. investors wait to see the moves that President Trump makes this week concerning the economy. But it's a busy week ahead and our Anna Stewart has more on the business stories we're watching.

ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Rahel. It is shaping up to be another big week for the markets as investors and consumers continue to navigate the uncertainty over Trump's trade war. In just a few hours, we will get a sense of how confident U.S. shoppers are feeling when retail sales for February are released.

Now, in January, cold weather and other factors led to a near 1 percent drop in sales, and economists want to know if that drop was a one-off or the start of a new trend. Then on Wednesday, we get the big one, the U.S. interest rate decision. Now, the Federal Reserve is expected to keep rates on hold this month, but with tariffs, market selloffs and inflation remaining stubbornly high, there is certainly lots for Jerome Powell and his fellow Fed governors to discuss.

On the corporate side, things are getting busier too. Later in the week, we get earnings from two big economic bellwethers. FedEx and Nike, and chip giant Nvidia is holding its annual conference. CEO Jensen Huang will be delivering a keynote speech on Tuesday. Investors will be looking for any updates on its A.I. chips and its move into robotics. Who knows, perhaps next year, an A.I. humanoid can deliver you the business news instead of me. But for now, back to you, Rachel.

SOLOMON: Oh, but we prefer you, Anna. We prefer you. All right, a retailer -- thank you, Anna Stewart. A retailer is seen as a bellwether for the American public and consumer has a pretty grim assessment. Dollar General is a nationwide chain whose 20,000 stores are a mainstay in many rural communities and lower income neighborhoods.

The CEO says that customers are increasingly complaining that their finances are getting worse, and that they're especially worried about inflation. And even though the headline inflation rate has eased in the past year, the core of household costs, including housing and healthcare, well, they remain high.

And another sign of worry is a closely-watched index of U.S. consumer sentiment fell 11 percent this month, to its lowest level since November 2022. Joining me live from New York is Hitha Herzog, Chief Research Officer at H Squared Research. Hitha, great to have you this morning. You followed this space of retail very closely. When you hear the retailers such as Dollar General and Walmart make warnings like this, how much of an alarm bell does that raise for you?

HITHA HERZOG, CHIEF RESEARCH OFFICER, H SQUARED RESEARCH: I mean, it's certainly concerning because they are talking about their core customer not being able to pay for basic items or they're living paycheck to paycheck. That's what is so concerning here. We did see inflation numbers come down a little bit, which gave the market a boost on Friday, as you know, towards the close.

But because of that, I mean that's just a small little.