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At Least 82 Dead, Dozens Missing in Texas Flash Floods; Trump Signs Major Disaster Declaration for Texas; Elon Musk Says He has Formed New Political Party; Erin Patterson Found Guilty in Mushroom Murder Trial. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired July 07, 2025 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm told that they found three RVs in this area, one of which was flipped over and buried in the mud. So they're trying to dig that out to see if there's anyone there who's inside.

They've also told me that they pulled off a license plate from the RV so that they can help track down who these RVs belong to as well. Part of the major problem here for any search and rescue operation is this nonstop rain. As soon as the rain and the lightning started to come in, we saw those volunteers and rescuers scatter for their protection.

I know that they'll be back with heavier equipment to help dig out that RV and make sure that there's nobody inside. Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MJ LEE, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump is pledging continued federal support for the Texas following devastating floods, but he stopped short of commenting on the future of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. CNN's Kevin Liptak has more reaction from the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: President Trump says he will probably visit the affected areas of Texas on Friday. He actually said he wanted to visit this weekend but decided against it because he thought the security apparatus could affect the search and rescue efforts there. The president is calling what is happening horrible and says the federal government will continue to assist state and local authorities as they deal with this tragedy.

The president signed a major disaster declaration for Texas on Sunday, and what that did is unlock federal resources for the community there. It allows FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to begin its work on the ground. The U.S. Coast Guard has also deployed resources there, including two helicopters, three fixed-wing aircraft, which have thermal cameras able to detect movement on the ground that might not be visible to the naked eye.

FEMA has also set up seven shelters, which, as of 1 p.m. on Sunday, were housing 137 people.

President Trump, in his letter to Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, wrote a handwritten addendum in Sharpie, saying that our wonderful secretary, Kristi Noem, is available at all times. Kristi Noem, obviously the secretary of Homeland Security.

Now, there are some questions being raised about staffing levels at the National Weather Service. Some critical positions were left vacant after their occupants decided to take early retirement initiatives offered by the Trump administration as they have worked to reduce the size of the federal government. One of the positions is a warning coordination meteorologist at the Austin-San Antonio office of the National Weather Service.

Now, it is not a definitive answer of whether these positions, if they were filled, could have changed anything on the ground there, but it is certainly something that will be scrutinized going forward. President Trump also addressed some of these questions on Sunday. Listen to what he said.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think that the federal government needs to hire back any of the meteorologists that were fired?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I wouldn't know that. I really wouldn't. I would think not. This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it. Very talented people are there, and they didn't see it.

It's -- I guess they said once in a hundred years they've never seen anything like this, so I wouldn't -- I mean, people are trying to blame the school. They're trying to blame the camp. They're trying to blame -- it's just a horrible thing, but no, I wouldn't say that no.

LIPTAK: Now, President Trump was also asked if he still plans to phase out FEMA. Remember, his goal is to eliminate that agency and put more responsibility on states for preparing and recovering for disasters. Those changes were set to go into effect after this year's Atlantic hurricane season.

The president declined to answer that question. He said that FEMA is busy working and that it was a question for another time.

Kevin Liptak, CNN, The White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: After a 90-day pause on his reciprocal tariffs, Donald Trump says his administration will begin sending out letters, starting later today, to all U.S. trading partners without a deal in place. Trump says the take-it-or-leave-it letters will detail the tariff rates countries will have to pay for goods exported to the U.S. starting at the beginning of August. In April, Trump announced a base tariff rate of 10 percent, with some countries facing an additional 50 percent. And now he says it's time for a deal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Went out on Monday having to do with the trade deals. Could be 12, maybe 15. You know Secretary of Commerce right here.

[04:35:00]

And I guess Howard, I would say it could be maybe as many as 15 or so. And they'll be going out on Monday and some will go out on Tuesday and Wednesday, and we've made deals also. So we're going to have a combination of letters and some deals have been made.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Let's take a look at the U.S. stock futures now. In pre-market trading, the Dow is down around 60 points. The S&P 500 is down nearly 30 points. And the Nasdaq, as you see there, is down around 140 points.

And joining me now is Natasha Lindstaedt, professor of government at the University of Essex in England. Very great to have you this morning.

President Trump, as you know, got his top domestic priority through the passage of the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill. And coming out of that, you know, we've seen this serious rift between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Musk going as far as to say over the weekend that he's going to create a third political party.

Will he go through with it? And so what if he does?

NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX: So it's a good question if he's going to go through with it. He says that he's going to. I mean, he has a few things going in his favor.

A recent poll by Qantas Insights showed that 40 percent of Americans could, in theory, support Elon Musk's new party. You also have a growing number of independents. Officially, there's 32 percent of Americans that are registered as independents, but 43 percent, according to Gallup polls, identify as independents.

And there's also the fact that Musk has hundreds of millions that he could spend to bankroll candidates. And he could sort of mimic the grassroots efforts that is needed, usually, to start a new party. We saw that he was able to outsource a lot of the get-the-vote-out effort for Trump's presidential campaign. So he might be able to do something similar here.

But, of course, historically, third parties haven't done well in the U.S. You have, you know, the 1912 Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party or Ross Perot's Reform Party, which he formed in 1995, three years after he ran for president, where he did get 19 percent of the votes, but he didn't get any electoral votes. And these third-parties tend to be very personalized, very personalistic.

And if you just about Elon Musk as person, his approval rating isn't very high. His disapproval rating is somewhere 60 percent and is actually trending in the wrong direction. But he may be able to disrupt, particularly in the 2026 midterms where you have some tight House races.

We see that Andrew Yang's Forward Party, which has far less resources, has been able to elect a handful of representatives like a state senator from from Utah. So with all this money and with the fact that many Americans are really frustrated, he might be able to win some close, tight -- and tight House races, and he might be able to impact policy of those that are frustrated with the Big, Beautiful Bill and all the additions to the national debt and deficit.

LEE: And do you sense that all of this could also be leading toward some kind of political run of his own? For Elon Musk? You know, he does have a real following, as you were talking about, and he certainly has unlimited resources.

LINDSTAEDT: I'm not sure what he would actually be able to run for, but I think he might be able to support candidates that that have a chance of really affecting what the Republican strategy is, and possibly even the Democrat strategy.

I mean, you're right to point out that he loves attention, that that he likes to put himself in the spotlight quite a bit. But not being an American citizen, that would rule out running for president. I'm not sure what other level of office he could actually run for. I think he's going to try to just influence policy and really disrupt the two party system the best that he can. If he manages to actually get all the signatures that are needed on every state ballot to do so.

LEE: And lets just turn to tariffs for a second. President Trump's 90 day deadline that he set for countries to make trade deals with the U.S. is now just around the corner. A lot of confusion about what will actually happen once we are past that deadline. And Natasha, the potential economic ramifications are huge.

LINDSTAEDT: No, definitely. I mean, I know that the U.S. is trying to negotiate with the EU, which obviously works as a bloc, and they said that they will retaliate if the U.S. imposes these tariffs at some points. Trump has said that the EU is incredibly nasty and difficult to work with, and that he could impose tariffs as high as 50 percent. But the EU will retaliate. I think what the EU is hoping for is that they can get some sort of deal, like the U.K. has with the U.S., where tariffs are nowhere near as high on the automobile industry. The tariffs on the U.K. are somewhere around 10 percent and on the steel industry somewhere around 25 percent. Whereas the global level is around 50 percent.

[04:40:00]

But all of this, of course, has impacts on the markets, because what the markets don't like are they don't like tariffs in general, but they also don't like uncertainty. And there is a lot of uncertainty because the only two trade frameworks that are in place between the U.S. and other countries are with the U.S. and the U.K. and the U.S. and Vietnam. So all of this is hurting the dollars

We packs on the markets, because what the markets don't like are they don't like tariffs in general, but they also don't like uncertainty. And there is a lot of uncertainty because the only two trade frameworks that are in place between the U.S. and other countries, are with the U.S. and the U.K. and the U.S. and Vietnam. So all of this is hurting the dollar's performance and it is affecting investors because they just have to deal with a situation where there's just too much chaos.

LEE: Yes, certainty is definitely what many investors would like to see at this point. Natasha Lindstaedt, thank you so much.

LINDSTAEDT: Thanks for having me.

LEE: Still to come, Central Texas facing the threat of more flash floods as search-and-rescue workers continue to look for survivors.

Plus, a verdict has been reached in Australia's mushroom murder trial. We'll have details in a live report.

[04:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEE: And we are following new developments in Australia, where the jury in the mushroom murder trial has delivered its verdict, finding Erin Patterson guilty on all counts. The 50-year-old was charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder after feeding her in-laws a beef Wellington lunch made with poisonous death cap mushrooms two years ago.

CNN's Ivan Watson has the latest on this from Hong Kong. Ivan, some of the details from this trial are just so remarkable. What's been the reaction to this guilty verdict?

IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, I mean, this was a small- town murder trial that attracted International attention, I think, in large part because of the circumstances here that the chief suspect now proven guilty, according to a 12-person jury, for three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

There's no question that nearly two years ago, she invited a group of her in-laws to lunch and three of them died of poisoning. And there was no doubt what killed them. It was death cap mushrooms which had been put into these dishes of beef Wellington.

The suspect, Erin Patterson, she has pled not guilty. She insists it was all a tragic mistake, that she used to hunt mushrooms as a hobby and they got mixed up in the rest of the food.

But the prosecution argued that this was premeditated, that she deliberately put poisonous mushrooms in the food, that she made up a pretext, lied, saying that she had cancer as an excuse to invite her in-laws to this lunch, that she then pretended to be sick and then tried to cover up what happened by remotely wiping her phone after it had been taken into police custody, when she threw away a dehydrator that had her fingerprints on it and had remnants of the death cap mushrooms in it. And again, pretended to be sick and recovered. So in the end, the motive was not revealed here. That was not required

here. Erin Patterson did testify that she had lied to police in panic, she testified, but that wasn't enough. The jury settled now. They decided after six days of deliberations to unanimously judge Patterson was guilty again on three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

This attracted international attention. It was the subject of four podcasts. And the convicted killer now has 28 days, 28 days to challenge this guilty verdict -- MJ.

LEE: Really dramatic details there. Ivan Watson in Hong Kong. Thank you.

And we'll be right back.

[04:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEE: First responders in Texas are confronting communications issues as they search for survivors of the extreme flooding over the weekend. A volunteer rescue group tells CNN they've had issues with radios not working.

They've started using Starlink satellite communication devices to ensure they can stay in contact. Officials say more rain is on the way to central Texas, with dozens of people still missing and at least 82 confirmed dead so far.

Earlier, CNN's Pamela Brown spoke with Texas resident Robert Brake, who's searching for his missing parents. He called them in Kerr County early Friday morning, urging them to evacuate. Minutes later, his brother discovered that the home where they were staying had been swept away by floodwaters.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERT BRAKE, SEARCHING FOR MISSING PARENTS: My brother was staying at the R.V. park he had called at 4:44 and said call mom and dad because they were staying, visiting my brother at the R.V. park, HTX R.V. park. And I called my dad at 4:44, dad you got to get out of there, he was still -- he's a little older. He was still discombobulated.

My brother was about 40 yards away, he went up to help them at 4:53 and all the homes they were staying in were gone, they were just leveled there, was no longer there. We haven't heard or seen of them since then.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So you did make connection with your dad initially right?

BRAKE: At 4:44, yes ma'am, he answered the phone.

BROWN: At 4:44. And what did he say to you then? BRAKE: Nothing. I just -- I told him Luke's R.V. was getting swept away. Lucas, my brother, needs some help at the time we didn't realize the magnitude of what was going on. My brother just barely escaped with his own life and his wife and by the time my brother went up to help him realizing what was going on they were already gone seven minutes later.

[04:55:00]

BROWN: Horrible. Tell me more about the search and the rescue.

BRAKE: I'll tell you, you know, that's been probably the part that's got us through the most. These folks have just been unbelievable. We have seen everything from DPS to state troopers, local sheriffs, ambulances. We've seen Coast Guards, Black Hawk helicopters.

You know, when you look outside and you see the support, the overwhelming support of people that are showing up, not just in uniform, but with their hearts. You know, it just, it provides -- it provides -- it provides us a little more hope.

You know, there's people with big hearts that are out there doing the best they can to take some circumstances, trying to assist us find our loved ones.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: Just so many heartbreaking stories like this one. I'm MJ Lee in Washington. I'll be back with more of CNN's breaking news coverage right after this break.

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