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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

Growing Number Of Robberies Targeting Cryptocurrency; American Eagle "Great Jeans" Ad Sparks Online Debate; Police Arrest Man Suspected Of Killing Couple On Hiking Trail. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired July 31, 2025 - 05:30   ET

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

[05:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(Gunshots)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got shot. I got shot. I got shot.

NICK LEE, ATTACK VICTIM: I hit the guy once, I believe in the lower abdomen area.

SHIMONE PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Attacks on prominent crypto holders have been growing.

Police say in May, a man in New York was kidnapped, held hostage, and tortured for three weeks by men trying to gain access to his Bitcoin account. He escaped with his life, beaten, bloody and barefoot.

That same month in France gunmen ambushed the daughter and grandson of a French cryptocurrency boss, attempting to abduct them off the streets of Paris in broad daylight.

And it's not just the crypto elite being targeted.

In 2023, an elderly couple in North Carolina was held hostage by two men posing as construction workers. They zip-tied the couple before threatening to cut off the man's toes, genitalia, and rape his wife before making off with more than $150,000 in cryptocurrency.

Both men were convicted, and Justice Department officials say the ringleader is now serving 47 years in prison for his involvement in a series of similar attacks. The other is awaiting sentencing.

Ari Redbord is the global head of policy for TRM Labs. They're a blockchain intelligence firm that tracks wrench attacks. They issued a report this year analyzing wrench attacks and identified three key factors contributing to their rise: The perceived anonymity and irreversibility of cryptocurrency transactions, the public visibility of wealth, and the ease with which personal information can be gathered online.

ARI REDBORD, GLOBAL HEAD OF POLICY, TRM LABS: We've seen a spate of these recently, I think in part because you're seeing copycat-type activity. You know, one gang says hey, we can see -- we can do this and then we can steal these funds and move them at the speed of the internet. And another kind of does the same.

KAITLYN SIRAGUSA, ATTACK VICTIM: These are the bullet holes actually, and there is their blood still, where they were bleeding from --

PROKUPECZ: It's what? This is the blood from one of them being shot.

SIRAGUSA: Yeah, um-hum.

PROKUPECZ: So these are still the bullet holes.

SIRAGUSA: Yes, and some fragments.

PROKUPECZ (voiceover): Kaitlyn Siragusa and Nick Lee are now taking more precautions. They've hired private security and installed a 12- foot-high steel fence around their property.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop playing! Stop playing!

PROKUPECZ (voiceover): As for her attackers, the man who was shot survived and all have been arrested and charged in connection with the crime.

PROKUPECZ: The crypto thing now -- there's a lot of concern over security for people who own --

SIRAGUSA: Yeah.

PROKUPECZ: -- who own crypto.

SIRAGUSA: Yeah. I'd say if you have -- if you have crypto and you're public about it, definitely make sure you live somewhere where you can have a gun.

PROKUPECZ: And with these attacks happening all across the world, law enforcement from every part of the world is trying to work together to prevent these from happening. One of the things that they are using -- one of the tools is that they're trying to work with private firms who know how to trace cryptocurrency -- these blockchain tools, they're called -- and that is helping them in their investigations.

Another thing that we're going to see a lot of in the future are prosecutions and stiff penalties for people who conduct these kind of attacks.

Shimone Prokupecz, CNN, San Antonio, Texas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MJ LEE, CNN ANCHOR: Still ahead on EARLY START, critics say a series of new clothing ads are sending the wrong message, but is the backlash warranted? We'll show you the ads after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL)

[05:38:05] LEE: American Eagle's latest ad campaign has gone viral online but maybe not for the reasons the company intended. Actress Sydney Sweeney appears in a series of ads with a tagline "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans." Here is one of them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SYDNEY SWEENEY, ACTRESS: I'm not here to tell you to buy American Eagle jeans, and I definitely won't say that they're the most comfortable jeans I've ever worn or that they make your butt look amazing. Why would I need to do that? But if you said that you want to buy the jeans, I'm not going to stop you. But just to be clear, this is not me telling you to buy American Eagle jeans.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.

SWEENEY: You see what I did there, right?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Some people have taken issue with the phrase "great jeans" being used over images of a blonde, blue-eyed woman, saying it makes an implication of racial superiority. But others are insisting it's not problematic, just a smart bit of advertising.

And America Eagle's stock rose sharply over the last week as well, prompting the question is it true that there's no such thing as bad publicity?

And joining me now is Marcus Collins, a clinical assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. He's also the author of the book "For the Culture." Marcus, thank you so much for having this discussion with us this morning.

So what do you make of this backlash? You know, critics are saying this is a not-at-all subtle flirtation with eugenics or at the very least, a glorification of a certain race. What do you think?

[05:40:00]

MARCUS COLLINS, CLINICAL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MARKETING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ROSS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, AUTHOR, "FOR THE CULTURE": I think it's both. The matter at hand is less about political correctness or about political leanings but more so about meaning making. What does it mean? The idea here is that for some, they see just a -- you know, a sexy ad. The others -- they see a reframing of what makes for good genes, which looks like sort of dog signaling -- a racial dog signaling. The truth of the matter is that it's both.

The idea here for marketers that we're communicating to the world, people see the world differently, right? They make meaning differently. That's why for some a cow is leather, for others a deity, and for some it's dinner. Which one is it? It's all those things. Therefore, the heterogenous and many permutations of meaning that people have when they see ads -- this becomes the burden for marketers. And it has its consequences when those things are not aligned with what we intend to say.

LEE: Yeah. And, you know, as we were saying before, right after the ads were released, American Eagle's stocks jumped up significantly. I know a lot of people really love Sydney Sweeney and her work, but is it also possible that often any publicity, including bad or controversial publicity, can be just really good for business?

COLLINS: Well, yes and no.

Initially the stocks went up, but now they're trending downwards because it wasn't a lot of backlash at the onset when the ad came out last week. But this week -- well, over the weekend you start to see the social discourse.

And I think this is sort of the important part here that our intentions as communicators may be one thing but the way people interpret it is another. I'm not saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, meaning is in the mind of the interpreter. And business can move forward when there is congruence between the communicator and the receiver, but things get a little dicey when those things are incongruent.

The other part about this is that American Eagle might make hay with people who see the world the way they do, or at least what the intention may have been. But those who see it differently -- I don't think those people are going to be buying, and people like them probably won't buy also.

So is it good business? I would say it depends.

LEE: And given your expertise in marketing, when a company is under fire like this what do you think is the best thing for it to do? You know, when is a public apology warranted? When is it warranted for a company to pull down an ad campaign, or can sometimes making concessions like that actually make things worse?

COLLINS: It really boils down to intentions. If your intentions were to say something that was just a double entendre with the "jeans" and it's now being perceived differently, then you say hey, that was not our intention. That's not what we meant.

Now, whether it was lazy or it was naive -- whatever the case may be, that's when you apologize. But if you meant to be provocative and you meant to sort of dog whistle -- I'm not saying that the intentions were nefarious but you meant to be provocative and people took it as such and now they are pushing back, at which point you stand 10 toes down.

You go hey, you know, we believe this. We didn't mean for it to be a signal about eugenics and about a certain aesthetic is good, another aesthetic is not so good. What we meant to do is this -- apologies.

But if you meant to be sort of malicious then you should be convicted by that malicion, for sure.

LEE: Hmm. And what about for Sydney Sweeney, specifically? I mean, is this a P.R. crisis for her or something that's probably going to quickly blow over?

COLLINS: I think that Sydney Sweeney has found herself in the crosshairs of public pushback and controversy, and she's seemed to be able to weather them. So I think that she's probably hey, thinking this is just another one of these things that happens to her.

I think she'll be OK because this is not about here. This is about the brand. The brand is the communicator here. She just happens to be sort of the symbiotic vessel that's communicating something that seems to be out of sync with a large swath of the population.

LEE: So one person who weighed in on all of this was Texas Senator Ted Cruz. He wrote on X, "Wow. Now the crazy left has come out against beautiful women. I'm sure that will poll well."

That has gotten a range of reactions online. He's making obviously this political connection here.

Talk to us about why this so-called woke culture has drawn so much backlash here in the U.S.

COLLINS: I think that is probably poor and lazy attribution. He's had nothing to do with left-leaningness, and he's had nothing to do with "woke" -- at least the way woke has been repositioned and recontextualized. I think this has everything to do with meaning. How you saw it.

[05:45:05]

Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, that's your view on politics whether you are progressive in your social leanings or not. It's about what this thing communicated to you. How you translate it. How you saw it.

Of course, this is -- considering the political backdrop and the climate of the country at the moment this becomes a really good opportunity for a politician like Ted Cruz to jump into the discourse and poke some -- and point some fingers.

But ultimately at its core this is just about how people see the world through cultural lenses and make meaning accordingly. And I think that for those who see this as a woke statement, I think this is really a lack of empathy. Realizing that the world is not objective, it's subjective, and we translate the world through our cultural lenses. And the better we understand that the more likely we are to connect with humanity in meaningful ways.

LEE: OK. Here was one person's reaction to this whole saga on TikTok -- listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE, TIKTOK: They had a blonde hair, blue-eyed white woman sit in front of a camera and play with the words "jean" with a j, and "genes" with a g. And you all don't see nothing wrong with that? There's this guy in history. I can't -- his name is losing me -- who used that same ideology. None of them thought that this could be mildly problematic -- even mildly?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: One of many voices that were weighing in online.

What do you think?

COLLINS: He's not wrong. I would say though that for people who see it one way you can't expect other people to see it likewise, right? I think the idea is that once it is brought to the attention of the public the notion there is how empathetic can you be?

We kind of walk through the world believing that the world is objective and our way of seeing the world is truth. But the truth of the matter is that the world is objective. It's subjective. Things aren't the way they are. They are the way that we are.

And I think what we're missing here is an empathetic muscle. We're missing empathy here to say wow; I didn't know that you saw it that way. I didn't realize that for you, a cow is a deity. It's always been a burger to me. I'm sorry you see it that way. I'm sorry I've offended you.

But we've gone so far from being human. Our humanity has become so anemic that any other permutation of reality, any other interpretation of reality becomes an affront. And also an opportunity for us to fight to continue to the back-and-forth that has been sort of at the precipice of this country for quite a while now.

LEE: Marcus Collins, thank you for having this conversation with us this morning.

COLLINS: Thank you for having me.

LEE: Police in Arkansas say they've taken a monster off the streets. Coming up after the break a suspect is arrested in the killing of a couple on a hiking trail.

(COMMERCIAL)

[05:52:30]

LEE: Welcome back. I'm MJ Lee. Here are some the stories we're watching today.

Rescuers are scrambling to reach at least one man trapped under a partially collapsed building in Kyiv. Officials say the building took a direct hit as more than 300 Russian drones and missiles pounded Ukraine's capital overnight. At least six people were killed in the city, including a 6-year-old boy. Scores of others were wounded.

Kamala Harris says she will not run for California governor in 2026. The former U.S. vice president and Democratic presidential nominee ended weeks of speculation with her announcement. Harris says she wants to focus on helping Democrats win in next year's midterm elections. She's also expected to embark on a book tour this fall.

Shares of Microsoft have jumped on strong earnings reports. The tech giant revealed sales for its Azure cloud computing business beat estimates and topped $75 billion on an annual basis for the first time. And overall revenue rose 18 percent in the April to June fiscal quarter.

Police have arrested a man suspected of killing a husband and wife on a hiking trail in Arkansas. The bodies of Clinton and Cristen Brink were found over the weekend after they went hiking with their two daughters. Investigators say they were killed on a trial at Devil's Den State Park in northwest Arkansas.

Police say 28-year-old James Andrew McGann is the man who killed them. He faces two counts of capital murder. He was arrested at a barber shop in Springdale about 40 minutes north of the park.

Arkansas' chief of police became emotional while announcing the arrest.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, (R) ARKANSAS GOVERNOR: I want to be clear that if you commit a violent, senseless act here in our state, our law enforcement will hunt you down and bring you to justice.

MIKE HAGAR, DIRECTOR, ARKANSAS STATE POLICE: We were able to take a monster off the streets and bring relief to Clinton and Cristen's precious girls and to the rest of the citizens of Arkansas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: The couple's two young daughters were not harmed. Police say they are safe with relatives.

[05:55:00]

And ponies take center stage during a unique annual tradition on the Virginia coast. We'll tell you about the 100th Annual Pony Swim after the break.

(COMMERCIAL)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SABRINA CARPENTER, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Singing "Please Please Please."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: And that is, of course, Sabrina Carpenter's mega hit "Please Please Please" and there's a good chance crowds at Lollapalooza will hear it this coming weekend. Lollapalooza is one of the largest music festivals in the U.S. It kicks off today in Chicago's Grant Park. [06:00:00]

The mega festival usually attracts around 200,000 attendees. Luke Combs, Korn, and Rufus Du Sol are set to appear along with Sabrina Carpenter. If you can't make it to Chicago this weekend you can watch a livestream on Hulu.

And thousands of people turned out on the Virginia coast Wednesday to witness a unique century-old tradition, the annual Chincoteague Pony Swim. More than 100 ponies swam the small channel from their home in a national wildlife refuge to Chincoteague, all under the watchful eyes of volunteers who care for them year-round. Some of the ponies will be auctioned. The rest will swim back on Friday.

Thank you so much for joining us here on EARLY START. I'm MJ Lee in Washington, D.C. And "CNN THIS MORNING" starts right now.