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The Situation Room

Trump Threatens Brazil With Tariffs; Texas Flood Recovery Efforts Continue. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired July 10, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:31:47]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: We're following the heartbreaking devastation from the deadly flooding in Texas.

Here in Kerr County, one of the hardest-hit areas, the rising death toll includes at least 36 children. The destruction left behind reflects just how quickly and ferociously the floodwaters came in that fateful night.

And I met up with a family of nine who was gathering at their home here in Kerrville for what was supposed to be a fun-filled Fourth of July weekend. It quickly turned into a fight for their lives.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PENNY DEUPREE, FLOOD SURVIVOR: It's hell. It's whatever. But we're alive. God was with us every second, provided what we needed.

BROWN (voice-over): An incredible story of survival for this Hunt, Texas, matriarch and her family.

DEUPREE: Right, there's the escape hatch right there.

BROWN (on camera): Yes, the escape hatch.

DEUPREE: Yes.

BROWN: So you all squeezed through that...

(CROSSTALK)

DEUPREE: I was the hardest one to squeeze. That was the problem.

(LAUGHTER)

DEUPREE: I couldn't diet fast enough to get out there, but anyways.

BROWN: But you got out. (voice-over): Eighty-three-year-old Penny Deupree was the first to

wake up, and sense something was wrong in the early morning hours of July 4.

DEUPREE: I got up to go to the bathroom.

BROWN: Yes.

DEUPREE: And when I went to the bathroom, I flushed it, and it goes -- and I went, again, we're having plumbing problems. So I laid down for a few minutes, and I went, it's rained a lot. I think maybe I better check the front of the house. And that's when I -- it was just flooding already.

BROWN: Her daughter, Keri Wilt, who lives two miles down the road, explains how all nine people staying at the house managed to escape.

KERI WILT, FLOOD SURVIVOR: So they gathered everybody up into the sleeping loft. This is where the grandkids slept, right? And they all got up to there, and you can see as you pan around that where the water level was.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Each one of them had a buoy, and we're just hitting it and trying to get out.

BROWN (on camera): Who was holding the babies?

WILT: Their parents. So they had a whole system and -- in getting them to safety.

BROWN: Oh, my God. Wow, this is insane. I can't believe they survived.

WILT: It's a miracle. It's not insane. It's a miracle.

BROWN: So just imagine they're up here, seven adults, two babies, two dogs, and the water is rising so quickly, they're trapped. And the only way to get out was somehow to burst through. And so they just grabbed something, and the three men were trying to create this.

And all they had in the pitch black was a baby monitor light.

(voice-over): Most of their possessions are gone, but they're left with the most important thing.

WILT: We have nine lives. We have everybody's safe, everybody's healthy, not barely a scratch on anybody.

BROWN: And a connection to their family history, while a little battered and bruised, is another story to tell.

WILT: My great-great-grandmother is Frances Hodgson Burnett. She's the author of "The Secret Garden," "Little Lord Fauntleroy," "A Little Princess," and 50 other books.

BROWN (on camera): Of course. [11:35:00]

WILT: And my mother was the keeper of kind of her stuff. So we -- she remained actually hanging here throughout. She got waterlogged, of course, but she's OK.

A lot of laughter was had in this house, right?

DEUPREE: You are exactly right.

BROWN (voice-over): And plenty of laughter still to come.

WILT: That's my dad.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we found him.

BROWN (on camera): Oh.

WILT: He's in there. We found his ashes.

BROWN: Oh, my gosh.

Should we move the Dr. Peppers off of him just to give him some dignity here?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He would somehow have mind that amusing, I think.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, yes.

BROWN (voice-over): Even if it's sitting around in a circle by the rubble, because they're still on this side of earth and together.

(on camera): You must have thought at one point, though, you were going to die or...

DEUPREE: No, I didn't.

BROWN: You didn't?

DEUPREE: No, because that's not an option.

BROWN: Yes. Yes.

DEUPREE: Right? Is it?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I will tell you, people here in Texas, they are tough.

And, as you saw, Penny's house is unlivable after the flood. I asked the family where she will be staying. And her daughter says she's moved in with her, that she's thrilled to have a new roommate.

The Deupree family does have a GoFundMe to help with the rebuilding process. Here with us now are Kerrville Independent School District

Superintendent Dr. Brent Ringo, the high school assistant football coach, Evan Owens, here in Kerrville, the high school for the city.

Thank you both for being here.

Dr. Ringo, I want to start with you as the superintendent. I know this has just been such an unimaginable time for you. Not only did you lose the beloved coach, but you have staff members who still have family members missing. Tell us how this -- these devastating floods impacted the community.

BRENT RINGO, SUPERINTENDENT, KERRVILLE, TEXAS, INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT: It's been very heart-wrenching since Friday.

Our school community's very tight-knit. So is the Hill Country community. And given these notifications that we're missing a coach and his family, just, one, unimaginable, and it's truly devastating, because he was such a loved, beloved coach in our community, teacher. He was our teacher of the year for the high school and also our secondary teacher of the year.

And so the impact is being felt far and wide. And our goal has been to provide our supports to our teachers, our community, our students. And we're telling them take it one day at a time. Coach Zunker's motto was, you will never walk alone. And so we're telling our community, you're not in this alone, and we're all in this together.

And we're going to grieve together and get through this.

BROWN: Yes, I went to the vigil last night at the high school and just was really touched by how many people showed up. The parking lot was packed. And everyone is really there for each other.

If you would step in, Evan, tell us about Reece and the kind of person he was. You just said he was a teacher of the year.

EVAN OWENS, ASSISTANT FOOTBALL COACH, TIVY HIGH SCHOOL: You know, I think the biggest thing about Reece was, he came off as a super intense guy. Everything that he did was passionate.

But a lot of that passion wasn't just directed at sports. He would give you the shirt off the back if you needed it. He helped everyone. He cared about everyone. And he tried to act like a father figure to -- for our soccer program and the kids in his class, and even just a random kid in the hall that looked like they were having a rough day.

Reece was the guy that would stop and try and get them going.

BROWN: Yes, tell us more about the impact he had on the kids.

OWENS: You know, I think it showed a lot last night at the vigil. We had a lot of people that showed up, that they related that he was like a father figure to them.

Reece always tried to make it more than soccer, tried to relate the adversities and the hardships that they went through on the soccer field to life. And I think it's evidenced with we would have -- we had a tournament that we hosted every year, and we would have alumni come back and help us run the tournament just to be around Reece.

We had an alumni game and we would have 40, 50 alumni show up to play just because they wanted another day being around, being coached by him, because that's the impact.

BROWN: An amazing person who was really a fixture here in the community, as so many of these victims are. It is a very tight-knit community.

And, Superintendent, you have been actually helping the community, the first responders, providing them resources and housing, right?

RINGO: Yes, we have.

We received a call Friday morning to house first responders, the ones that were showing up. They were pouring in town by 9:00 a.m., 10:00 a.M. and they needed a place to sleep for their mission planning. And so we provided Tivy High School. We're housing about 60 first responders there.

They were the first ones on scene. And, Sunday, received the call that we needed to house about another 225 game wardens for the rescue and recovery mission. And so, as they arrived Sunday, they're being housed in the middle school, sleeping on cots in classrooms.

And it's an honor and very humbling to be able to support our first responders who are showing up to support our community.

BROWN: And you have been helping the camps too, right?

RINGO: We have. Friday, day of devastation, the tragedy, we told our community and Kerr County we are here if needed.

And so, at 5.25 p.m. on Friday, we received a telephone call from Camp La Junta that there's 400 campers that need transportation. There's no power, no running water. It's about to get dark.

[11:40:05]

And so we put an all-call out to our drivers, our coaches, anybody who's got a bus to show up. And within 10 minutes, we had about 16 drivers commit to showing up, and called Camp La Junta back, said, we're rolling your way right now with 10 buses, probably 16 coming.

And we were able to load all 400 campers and get them to safety. We still had a few buses. And we went to the sheriff's deputy that was on the road and said, hey, we still have six more buses. Is there a need? And he did the radio callouts, and the National Guard said there's about 300 more Mystic campers that need transportation.

So we went further down the road to the staging area. And the girls were being transported to us from the National Guard due to the high waters that were still in place. And for our bus drivers to be able to give them a smile and tell them everything's going to be OK, we're going to get you to see your families, very, very heart-wrenching as a father.

BROWN: Yes.

RINGO: (INAUDIBLE) just be able to show up and provide that support. I cannot thank our bus drivers and our coaches...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Oh, absolutely. And there's that amazing video of the girls from Mystic who were singing the Camp Mystic song that was so popular.

RINGO: Yes.

BROWN: And that touched me as a former Mystic camper. And I'm sure it was touching to the bus drivers as well.

RINGO: It was. That was on one of our buses. And the girls (INAUDIBLE). They were showing up (INAUDIBLE) they were wearing their T-shirt, their shorts, no shoes. Many of them had no shoes on.

And so hearing them sing and still support each other, our bus drivers hugging them. Our coaches, our high school principal showed up. And we had a driver, Aubrey Pruitt, she earned her license the week before. She had never transported kids until this call came out.

And so that all-call and support, we just want to be there for our community and help through this process. We're going to get through it. And a it's very resilient community.

BROWN: All right, Dr. Brent Ringo, Coach Evan Owens, thank you both.

RINGO: Thank you.

BROWN: We will be right back.

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[11:46:35]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: President Trump is now threatening Brazil with a crippling 50 percent tariff unless officials there dismiss immediately charges against the country's former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump sent a letter to Brazil's current president calling the trial -- and I'm quoting Trump now -- "a witch-hunt that should end immediately" -- end quote. Bolsonaro is accused of trying to stage a coup against the government after losing his bid for reelection.

Let's go to CNN senior reporter Matt Egan right now.

Matt, what are the impacts if in fact this threatened tariff rate becomes reality involving Brazil?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Wolf, this is really an unprecedented use of tariffs.

And, ironically, it's aimed at a country that the United States has a trade surplus with. And, look, President Trump has used tariffs for a variety of reasons, everything from raising revenue and trying to protect U.S. manufacturing to protecting national security.

But this is a new rationale altogether, trying to stop alleged witch- hunts. As you mentioned, the president is upset with the treatment of the former President of Brazil Bolsonaro, who's been known as the Trump of the tropics. Now, what's really notable here is how much this has escalated with Brazil, because, back in early April, Brazil faced a 10 percent tariff.

That's the bare minimum under the Trump administration. And now it would be 50 percent tariff as of August 1. Now, as far as the impact here, it's everything that the United States buys from Brazil, which includes everything from coffee and iron to aircraft and crude oil.

Brazil is the fourth biggest source of foreign oil into the United States. And, of course, oil is the main component of gasoline. And so we have got to watch very closely what happens here. The other thing that's really notable is that the United States actually sells more stuff to Brazil than it buys.

The U.S. has a trade surplus last year of almost $7 billion. That's in stark contrast to the trading relationships with Japan and China and other countries that the U.S. has a deficit with. And now we wait and see whether or not these tariffs really do kick in and how Brazil responds -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, lots at stake indeed.

Matt Egan in New York, thank you very, very much.

And there's other breaking news we're following. Only moments ago, a major upset on the grass courts of Wimbledon; 23-year-old American Amanda Anisimova has defeated world number one Aryna Sabalenka to advance to the women's final this Saturday. Anisimova will head to her first career Grand Slam title match after taking down the three-time Grand Slam champion in three sets.

Anisimova returned to tennis last year after taking a year off to focus on her mental health. She says her win today -- quote -- "doesn't feel real right now."

And we will be right back.

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[11:54:02]

BLITZER: Welcome back to our breaking news coverage of the catastrophic Texas floods. At least 120 people have been killed, many of them children, and more than 160 are still missing.

At least 27 campers and counselors died at Camp Mystic, an all-girls camp on the Guadalupe River.

BROWN: Yes, it's a place I went as a kid, staying in Bubble Inn, one of the cabins decimated in the flooding.

And there are so many challenging parts to cover in this story, but, Wolf, you went to camp. I went to camp. Camp is such a special place where you forge lifelong bonds, and you learn, you grow, and you just are there to have fun. I always -- when I think back at my time at Camp Mystic, it was a little sort of utopian experience, full of laughs, and I couldn't wait.

I was looking forward to it all year. I couldn't wait to get to camp. I know you feel similar, and it's just so hard -- such a part of the story that is so hard for all of us is these campers who lost their lives. And I'm told some of the family members are now getting their little girls' letters in the mail. It is so hard.

[11:55:13]

But, at the same time, Wolf, so many lost their lives. And we continue to shine a spotlight on that. And then we're not going to let up on the story. We're going to continue to tell this story in the weeks and months ahead -- Wolf.

BLITZER: As we should. And, certainly, all of this brings back lots of memories of my own camp experience.

I went to Camp Ramah in New England in Palmer, Massachusetts. It was a carefree time. We played outside, lots of sports, made new friends. And that was what Camp Mystic, Pamela, was supposed to be for these young kids as well. Instead, it became an unimaginable tragedy.

BROWN: Yes, I know everyone there at Camp Mystic is absolutely devastated.

BLITZER: My parents' biggest concern was that I would be homesick. I wasn't homesick after a couple of days, making new friends, and really enjoyed that summer at Camp Ramah.

All right, thanks very much.

And, to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning. You can always keep up with us on social media @WolfBlitzer, @PamelaBrownCNN. We will see you back here tomorrow morning, every weekday morning 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

BROWN: "INSIDE POLITICS"...

BLITZER: "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" is coming up next, right after a short break.