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Inside Politics

Trump Says No Second Meeting With Putin if He Doesn't Get the Answers He Needs on Friday; Trump Huddles With Zelenskyy, E.U. Leaders Ahead of Summit; Trump Names George Strait, Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, Michael Crawford, Gloria Gaynor as Kennedy Center Honorees; White House Orders Aggressive Review of Smithsonian Exhibits. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired August 13, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: -- and then leave the diplomatic conversation altogether.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': One of the things that the president was asked about at this press conference that he had was about the call that he participated in with European leaders and included in that was the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy and the German Chancellor had a press conference afterwards. Let's listen to some of what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRIEDRICH MERZ, CHANCELLOR OF GERMANY (through translator): Must be at the table at the next meeting. We want things to go in the right sequence. We want a ceasefire at the very beginning, and then a framework agreement must be drawn up.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian President (through translator): Everything about Ukraine will be discussed with Ukraine. We have to get prepared for a three-sided format of the conversation. There should be a ceasefire first, then security guarantees, real security guarantees. And by the way, President Trump expressed his support to that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Hans?

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Well, they're not saying different things, right? I mean, you clearly heard from the German Chancellor there, this idea of an additional meeting. That's what Trump clearly floated in his. I counted two to three ifs in Trump's sort of conversation about whether or not that meeting would actually take place. So, it's pretty clear he's giving himself a lot of hedges. It's very conditional.

But the president -- and President Trump also left on the table, he didn't specify some sort of negative consequences for Russia and for Vladimir Putin if this meeting doesn't bear the kind of fruit that the president hopes to be. Now, he preserved his decision space and didn't really enumerate or articulate what those would be, whether it would be secondary tariffs, more sanctions, but he's keeping that option on the table.

BASH: That was very noteworthy. I totally agree. When the president was asked about whether or not Russia would -- or there would be consequences for Russia if Russia fails to deliver really on anything in their meeting on Friday. And his answer was, there will be severe consequences. Although you're right, he would not get specific.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right. And we've been talking about these secondary tariffs, and we know that part of the reason that they were put on hold was because they were able to come to this agreement to have the two leaders sit down in Alaska. And that's likely what's on the horizon if something doesn't get worked out. But I also kind of want to talk about your point as well, when you were mentioning the European leaders really wanting to show that they're on the same page going into this, I think what's so different about this time around versus the last time President Trump met with President Putin is that President Trump seems to have a lot more caution around Putin.

So it's not just necessarily the European leaders who are trying to show unity, but we know President Trump has been on a number of phone calls with these various leaders, actually asking for their buy-in at certain points on potential deals that are coming around. He seems to have at least gotten somewhat of the message that these leaders have been trying to send him and even some of his own team for years, which is this is not somebody that you can trust. And now, he seems to be reaching out to the greater Europe community to try and get some feedback.

BASH: And I just want to add in here that President Trump isn't -- and the European leaders, Zelenskyy, they're not the only ones setting expectations ahead of this, so is the Kremlin. There are several stories that have come out in the last day or two out of Russia. Kremlin's war goals remain unchanged, says Russia's foreign ministry. Russia's foreign ministry pours cold water on the idea of territory swapping. Russia dismisses European consultations ahead of Trump-Putin summit as "insignificant."

WRIGHT: Yeah. And I've been talking to quite a few people, really vested in this Russia issue ahead of the Alaska trip. And they've basically been telling me that the burden is on President Putin to show at least to Donald Trump that it's not going to be like the last six months, and that there can be some changes made, even though I think Russia believes that they're about to break through multiple offensives in Ukraine and that they had the upper hand when it comes to the battleground in the field there. And so, it's going to be up to Putin to show Donald Trump that basically, they are friends, that he is the Putin that he was back in the first term, and that he can trust him.

And I think for the White House, the way that President Trump is going to enter the room is that, he has to be basically cognizant that that is the way that President Putin may try to play it. BASH: All right, everybody standby. After a quick break, we are going to go back to the whole reason the president had that event at the Kennedy Center. We're going to tell you how he is trying to make his mark, not just on the Kennedy Center, but on culture and American arts, and who his new slate of honorees are. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:39:08]

BASH: President Trump announced a slate of artists as the next class of Kennedy Center honorees. You see them there on your screen: George Strait, Michael Crawford, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor and Kiss. And he included a surprise announcement, maybe it's a surprise. He said that he himself, the president, will play host for the event which will take place in December.

My panel is back here. Welcome to the 1980s.

(LAUGH)

BASH: I'm -- I'm totally good with it. I love it. But it's just -- it -- the fact that the president's cultural reference is frozen in the '80s is very much on display with these picks. And again, I'm here for all of it. Speaking of the '80s, Sylvester Stallone is one of the honorees. Let's listen to what the President said about that.

[12:40:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: He knew what a boxer's body was. So they brought him one, and I won't tell you who it was, but it was a big name, but the chest wasn't exactly what you need. One shot and your heart would pop out. That wasn't too good. Then he did another one. He was fat, sloppy, but had a good face. Then he did another one and another one and another one. And he turned it down. He wouldn't take $1 million, he wouldn't do it. And it turned out that when they saw him, they said, you'd be actually pretty good for this role.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Talking about Sly Stallone.

NICHOLS: Yeah.

BASH: And the travails that he had when he wrote "Rocky," trying to get it made. I should say that did you know we were going to be going back to the '80s?

NICHOLS: I was waiting for the reference.

BASH: -- when you came here with your mustache, Hans?

(LAUGH) NICHOLS: I was -- I was -- I was waiting for the reference. I didn't know if you were going to do it, if I was going to slide it in, and sneaks up on you.

BASH: No way, I was not going to say that.

(LAUGH)

NICHOLS: I figured. Well, thank you for noticing. Thanks for all the kind compliments backstage. I hope my wife hears them, who's against it.

BASH: I like it. I'm into it. I love mustache.

NICHOLS: Look, here's -- Donald Trump loves producing.

BASH: Yeah.

NICHOLS: And this is another opportunity for him to produce.

WRIGHT: Yeah.

NICHOLS: Now, like, you know, I don't know, full disclosure, we're going to the Kennedy Center next -- next month I believe, where they have the "Sound of Music" playing. So I'm just looking up for a way to refer, say like, how do we solve a problem like the Kennedy Center?

(LAUGH)

BASH: Oh boy. Well, here's how he solved what he saw as a problem. And there is the fact that he calls it a problem is very politically charged. And what he did was he took the, not only the Biden appointees who were not even done with their term off of the Kennedy Center Board, but also those who were not necessarily specifically Democrats, more traditional artists. And he put on members of MAGA and people who are not only in his own cabinet, but also people who are loyalists to him. Everybody from the Attorney General to his Chief of Staff to Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business News.

Now, again, it's not unusual for a president to put people who they like at the head of the Kennedy Center. What was unusual was --

WRIGHT: Then to hold the vote in which they overturned the chair and made him chair?

(LAUGH)

BASH: That. And it usually doesn't happen until the end of the term. But look, I mean, this is -- broadening this out. This is Trump, you heard him use the term woke many times as he was talking at the beginning, trying to put his stamp on American culture and on the arts.

HOLMES: Yeah. And I also think there's another part of this, which we wrote about when the Kennedy Center takeover happened, which is not just on the arts, but also on Washington as a whole. And there is this overarching feeling among, and Donald Trump felt this way too when he was president, and among many people who supported him, that they were not welcome in Washington, D.C.

And what they learned in the four years that he was out of office was instead of going back and having this place where it's us against them, and these are their cultural institutions and we are not welcome there, they decided they were going to take over the cultural institutions. And that included the Kennedy Center. And we know President Trump, he was cons -- he booed -- members of his administration were booed there. And I was told by someone who helped facilitate this that there was reasoning behind this, which was he wanted anyone who was a Trump supporter or President Trump himself to be able to go there and have it be his center.

BASH: And it was -- this is probably where you're going with this. It was very personal for him --

HOLMES: Yeah.

BASH: Because, in the past, some of the honorees, the first time he was president, made clear before the president was going to go to the Kennedy Center for the event that they didn't want to meet with him. They didn't want to have anything to do with him.

WRIGHT: Yeah.

BASH: And he never forgot that.

WRIGHT: Yeah. He never forgot that. I mean, I think there's constantly this question floating around as who gets to decide the culture? Is it the people? Is it the artists? And I think Donald Trump has resoundedly decided that right now, it is him And that he can use the might and the leverage that comes with White House and a federal funding to bend it to its will and to make it a more acceptable version to him.

I think you're seeing that with the Smithsonians, of course, where people are really concerned about whether or not they're going to be just small tweaks, like removing mentions that he was impeached or whether it's going to be a wholesale rewriting of really fundamentally plaguing and torturous things like the history of slavery in this country. And so, I think Donald Trump is firmly putting his ideas at the forefront of what we decide as culture.

BASH: Right. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because the arts are one thing, there's --

(LAUGH)

BASH: -- the biggest debate that I've heard in a very long time on this going on right now, but it is subjective.

NICHOLS: Yeah.

BASH: Facts are not subjective. And he's going way beyond the Kennedy Center to some of the things that you brought up. [12:45:00]

Last night, we saw a letter to the Smithsonian institutions that the White House is involved in an internal review of the exhibitions and materials. And this is a quote, "this initiative," this is from the White House, "aims to ensure alignment with the president's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions." And what this means is that there are eight key museums under review in what the White House is saying is the first phase of this, I mean, in alignment -- to ensure that the exhibitions are in alignment with the president's views or directive. I mean, wow.

NICHOLS: Yeah, look, I mean, every generation kind of rewrites history. Every generation re does cultural institutions. I think what we're seeing here is that we feel as though Trump is -- might be going a step too far and away from the facts side. I don't know. I mean, my overall take on this is controlling history and controlling culture is exceedingly difficult. These things sort of happen on their own.

BASH: I think history and culture are different.

NICHOLS: And just because -- but what facts you include, sure, right?

BASH: Yeah.

NICHOLS: But what facts you include, and like, neither -- none of us at this table can predict what the top 10 hits are going to be or what the, like, the length of the -- width of the tie or whatever. But deciding which facts to include in a historical or in any sort of museum exhibition is always deeply political.

BASH: Sure.

NICHOLS: And he is going -- and if you visited Monticello 25 years ago, it feels different than it does now.

BASH: Yep.

NICHOLS: I mean, there's been a huge reappraisal on President Wilson.

BASH: Yep.

NICHOLS: Who used to have buildings in a school named after him at Princeton. And now, I don't -- I don't think there're going to be many Woodrow Wilson High Schools left in this country. So yes, these things are subjective. I think what -- there's -- the concern with Trump is that he is going to whitewash too many parts of history that -- the uglier side of some of America's own story, which always gets fraught.

BASH: Yeah. And then beyond culture, beyond history, it's even more than that. Let's broaden it out a little bit and just to remind people of things that have changed under him, because he can. He fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We know that, when he didn't like the weaker-than-expected Jobs figures that came out a couple of weeks ago. He is shutting down the EPA's scientific research arm. He wants the census to exclude immigrants living in the United States illegally.

And also, he has fired a lot of Inspectors General. And Kristen, Ronald Brownstein, our friend and colleague, wrote this. Coupled with the attack on BLS, this is rapidly advancing deeper into the territory of insisting that all data that doesn't conform to Trump preferences is inherently invalid and that only the leader can tell you the truth, a hallmark of authoritarians across world and through history. How does the White House respond to --

HOLMES: Well, the White House looks at almost all of those examples that you just gave differently because a lot of them are a means to an end for them. The fact of the BLS woman, they thought those Jobs numbers were unfavorable. They said she was bad at her job, they fired her. So that is a very specifically what you were talking about there. But one of the other examples on there, when I'm -- if we could pull it up for just one second, so I can know which one I'm talking about. It was --

BASH: The headlines.

HOLMES: The headlines from where we were. One of the examples was another way for him to politically show -- this one, the census. That is for him to try and exclude people in the U.S. illegally because they want to get more seats in the House. They are trying to manipulate the data in a way that helps him as well move forward. And these are all different ways in which they're doing that. You see it with the Texas redistricting as well. I mean, he now is using this power in a way that he says, well, so what that these were unspoken rules? That people didn't follow in the past in terms of --

BASH: Yeah.

HOLMES: -- changing the lines in Texas, not on the decade.

BASH: Yep.

HOLMES: But we can do it. So why not?

BASH: Thank you all for being here. Appreciate it. Coming up, MAGA merch, crypto, and of course real estate. I'm going to talk with the reporter digging into the unprecedented amount of money President Trump is making while serving as Commander in Chief.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Thank you very much everyone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:54:03]

BASH: This week, the Trump family's crypto firm announced a $1.5 billion digital coin deal, another investment in a venture that's already raked in millions for President Trump and his family. But crypto is just one of many ways the first family is making money. There are merch sales, meme coins, social media platform, of course, real estate projects in the Middle East. It's a dizzying number of deals that leave a huge question. "The number." How much is President Trump pocketing off the presidency?

That is the title of the piece you see there in The New Yorker, where Staff Writer David Kirkpatrick tried to answer that question. And David joins me now. Thank you so much for being here. Did you get an answer to your question? What is the number?

DAVID KIRKPATRICK, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: I came up with the best answer I could at press time and it was $3.4 billion. Astonishingly, it's probably gone up since then.

[12:55:00]

BASH: OK. So, let's break down that eye-popping number. More than $3 billion with a 'b'. Crypto, that's where you identify most of the profits. How much have the president and his family made in crypto and how?

KIRKPATRICK: Well, what's most remarkable is the number of transactions, the number of deals, the number of ways that the family has sought to make money. And I should tell you, when I set out, my method here was, first, look at some stream of income and decide, one, is it coming from the presidency? Does it depend on the presidency? And two, how much have they made out of it? So in that category, Truth Social and the company that it holds it, Trump Media and Technology Group is definitely depending on the presidency.

In the last month, the biggest chunk of what I'm calling their money from crypto has come through Trump Media and Technology Group. It has a stock that is basically a kind of financial indicator of the mood about the president. It's a meme stock, in other words, stock trades only on how people feel about the president. But they've taken that meme stock and they've swapped it for cash and Bitcoin. So they have $3.1 billion of cash and Bitcoin on the books. The president holds 42 percent of that company. His share of that is more than $1 billion. So that's a $1 billion bump in his net worth just in the last couple of months.

BASH: Eric and Donald Trump, Jr. responded to your reporting about all this. They were on Fox this morning. I want to play what they said and get your response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC TRUMP, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SON: -- infuriating. We had nowhere to go. Capital One stripped 300 bank accounts from me, 300 in the middle of the night. We didn't have a damn choice.

DONALD TRUMP JR., PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SON: Trump was the only guy that was actually a businessman before that. Are we supposed to stop running our businesses? Are we supposed to stop doing anything? He's not involved in these things. We are running those businesses as we have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: David?

KIRKPATRICK: Well, those are -- those are points that the family has made before. On the first part, in a kind of a garbled way, what Eric Trump is saying there is that they got into crypto because they feel they were blackballed by the big banks. What he's leaving out is the banks that stopped doing business with the family did so after the attack on the Capitol of January 6th, and other banks did step in. The other point that Don Jr. is making, which is that they're a business family. They can -- they should be able to stay in business.

When I went through their income streams, I set aside all the money that's their old business. The hotels, things like the hotel, all the deals that grew out of their old business. OK, fine. A lot of people might say they should have divested from that, but fine. But I'm only talking about ways that they're trying to monetize the presidency, ways that in one way or the other they're trying to cash in specifically on the fact that Donald Trump is in the Oval Office. Nobody's done that before. And that's what's so exceptional here.

BASH: That is such an important distinction. I'm glad that you differentiated between the fact that as Don Jr. said, he was a businessman. Of course, he was. And the businesses he had before he ran for office and what they have done since. Speaking of that, there are a lot of big real estate deals that you wrote about. There are smaller ventures as well, private merch sales. In fact, you point out in your piece, you can buy a $40 MAGA hat here on his official campaign site, which -- that money goes to the campaign, or you can buy it via the Trump Organization for $55. That money does not go to the campaign. I don't think I realized that you can buy it on Trump Org, as part of his business, the clearly political merch.

KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, I was really dumbstruck when I realized that on his financial disclosure forms, disclosing his personal income, he's including sales of what looked like campaign merchandise, the kinds of things that were I a Trump supporter, I would buy thinking I was supporting the MAGA cause and its candidates. But it's actually going into his own pocket. That's, I'm pretty sure, unprecedented.

You know what readers are going to want to know after they read the article is, all these payments, is any of them an effort to buy influence, a kind of quid pro quo? And those things are very, very hard to prove. But for me, the takeaway is that, given the astonishing rate at which they're making this money, given the obvious zeal to make more money, it does make the question more pressing. If you're making a payment to them, do you have reason to believe that they're going to give you something in return?

BASH: David Kirkpatrick, just fascinating reporting. Thank you so much for being here and sharing it with us. The White House responded to David's reporting with this from the Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt. She told The New Yorker, "The claims that this president has profited from his time in office are absolutely absurd." --