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The Situation Room

Instacart Inflating Grocery Prices?; Trump Administration Sued Over White House Demolition; Will Trump Launch Land Strikes on Venezuela?. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired December 12, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:01]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: So, Colonel, what do you make of that comment by the president?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: So it seems like, Wolf, everything is shifting.

Not only is it a counterdrug mission. Now it's become a countermigration mission, in addition to potentially an economic blockade mission. So there are multiple approaches to this, and I think what the basic idea is, is that they're going after regime change in Venezuela.

That's what seems to be happening, but there's no overarching or coherent strategy involved in this, at least none that we can discern at the moment.

BLITZER: If the president, the Trump administration begins attacks on land in Venezuela, as the president seems to think it will happen soon, in his words, what do you think the impact of that will be?

LEIGHTON: Well, it could have -- we could have significant impacts.

So it depends on exactly what kind of a mission he's talking about. If the president is envisioning something like we did in Panama in 1989 with Operation Just Cause, that would be a very quick strike going in, taking out the leadership, and removing the de facto leader, in that case, Manuel Noriega, back in those days that was the leader of Panama.

Now, when it comes to the Venezuelan situation, you have got a much bigger country, basically twice the size of California, much bigger than Panama, greater population, and a willingness, by some at least, in Venezuela to stand up for the regime.

So that could complicate things, and it could require the insertion of ground troops into Venezuela. We had ground troops in Panama as well, but we also used a lot of airstrikes and things like that.

BLITZER: Venezuela also has an impressive military capability.

LEIGHTON: It has some capability. They have F-16s, for example, but they also have Su-30s from Russia, basically a mix of Russian and American equipment.

They also have Cuban mercenaries who are involved in military efforts in Venezuela, but they -- in addition to that, the Cubans also provide intelligence to the Venezuelans. So there is this connection. And then you have some other factors in there that are somewhat unknown, such as the Hezbollah presence in Venezuela, IRGC, the Islamic Republican Guard, up from Iran.

They are also present in Venezuela, so you have a mix of very different forces that could potentially cause some real difficulties if we tried to go in with a land campaign.

BLITZER: This week, of course, we saw the seizure. It was a dramatic seizure of that Venezuelan oil tanker in the Caribbean, an escalation in the waters not far from Venezuela. What's the significance of that?

LEIGHTON: This is a very big deal, because what they did was, they took this very large oil tanker.

When it was built about 20 years ago, it was considered one of the largest in the world. And this oil tanker is implicated -- it's basically on the Treasury Department's sanction list. And it's implicated in the illicit oil trade that involves not only Venezuela, but Iran and other countries that are basically involved in propping up the Venezuelan regime.

So you have Venezuela, you have Cuba, you have the Russians, you have the Iranians all involved with this one tanker. And there's the distinct possibility that it is actually owned by a Russian oligarch. So this might be part of the Russian shadow fleet that is also providing support to the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

So all of these pieces are basically interconnected at this point.

BLITZER: The pressure is clearly growing on the Trump administration to release that video of the second attack on that alleged drug boat back in September, the one that killed two survivors of the first attack.

How do you see this playing out?

LEIGHTON: Well, that video should definitely be released so that people can figure out for themselves exactly what happened.

But it's pretty clear that everything is aligned along political lines right now. So the Democrats are supporting the idea of releasing the video. Many Republicans are either wavering or not in support of releasing the video and they say that basically there's nothing to see here.

I think there is something to see here. And I think, in this particular case, it becomes really important for the public to see this video, see exactly what happened, and whether or not the rules of war were violated in this particular case.

BLITZER: All right, we will see if we all get to see that video as well.

LEIGHTON: Yes.

BLITZER: Colonel Leighton, thank you. As usual, thank you very, very much.

For more analysis on the growing tensions with Venezuela and other top stories of the week, I want to bring CNN political commentator Michael Smerconish. He's the host of CNN's "SMERCONISH," also "The Michael Smerconish Program" on SiriusXM.

Thanks so much, Michael, for joining us.

We always love having you in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Where do you see this conflict with Venezuela going next? And how much do you expect it could potentially become a liability for President Trump, who has campaigned on ending U.S. entanglement in so-called foreign wars?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, it does seem at odds with his posture of no forever wars.

And I draw a distinction between the attack on September 2, the second boat strike, and the situation in Venezuela. And, Wolf, this is the way that I see it. Relative to that second boat strike, there's a partisan divide on it.

[11:35:02]

And Republicans see this as an aggressive posture that was necessitated by all these drugs coming into our country. People disagree relative to whether the second strike was proper. We haven't seen the video.

But you know the Trump position. The Trump position is one of, these boats are bringing drugs. I had a guy today on radio saying to me, hell yes, blow them out of the water.

Venezuela, I don't think the administration has defined exactly what is the intent in purpose. Is it regime change? Is it to stop drugs from coming into the country? Is it immigration? Is it all of the above? I think that they need to more clearly articulate exactly what they're doing, because our history in the not-too-distant past has been that regime change doesn't end well.

It all sounded great when it was Iraq and the idea was they're going to embrace democracy and welcome the United States. And we know it didn't turn out that way.

BLITZER: As you know, Michael, another sensitive issue, Congress this week failing to pass health care legislation. And we're quickly approaching the expiration date for those enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that affect so many Americans out there.

I want to play what one Republican congressman, Don Bacon, told our colleague Manu Raju. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DON BACON (R-NE): And all these folks are going to go back home and you're going to have to look voters in the eyes and say, we have done nothing while your -- their premiums are going up like $2,000 a month. It's not going to happen.

The reality is going to hit here. We got to -- to me, it's just basic reality. We need a short-term extension. And then let's talk about some deeper reforms.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The speaker seems dead set against this, though.

BACON: Because what he's hearing from a lot of folks, hey, we didn't vote for ACA. We didn't vote for the IRA. This is a Democrat problem. But we're in charge.

RAJU: How bad do you think this will be for Republicans if you do not extend these subsidies?

BACON: I think it will be used like a sledgehammer on us a year from now. The reality will be bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: So what do you think? You suspect he's right?

SMERCONISH: I remember having this conversation with you a couple of months ago in the context of the government shutdown and voicing the opinion that, when we get to the end of the year, and now people not only dependent on subsidies, but all Americans opening up their envelopes and seeing the escalation of their health insurance premium, in my case 20.6 or 7 percent.

Now the timing is such that I think the pendulum is going to swing toward Democrats unless there's a Republican alternative. I find interesting that Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick from my backyard, who is really in a purple district, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is now playing a leadership role, I'm sure because he's worried that this is exactly the type of issue that would put him on the bubble in 2026 unless there's resolution.

By the way, his solution is extend the subsidies for two years with reforms.

BLITZER: That's Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, right?

SMERCONISH: Oh, my gosh. I just referenced his brother, who's deceased and who held the seat previously. Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: All right.

The health care debate folds into the broader conversation about Americans' affordability concerns. President Trump traveled to your state, beautiful state of Pennsylvania, a state I love, this week to talk about that. Listen to what he said. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have no higher priority than making America affordable again. That's what we're going to do. And, again, they caused the high prices and we're bringing them down. It's a simple message.

Democrats talking about affordability is like Bonnie and Clyde preaching about public safety.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: How do you think, Michael, voters will judge that messaging in next year's midterms?

SMERCONISH: What's unique about this in sort of the history of Trump, Trump 1.0 and 2.0, is that now the economy is becoming a liability for him. It's been his strong suit, that and immigration.

And yet, according to the data, the polls -- Kristen Soltis Anderson has a good analysis today in "The Times." It's now because of the economy that his numbers are in decline. We haven't seen that before.

BLITZER: Michael Smerconish, as always, thank you very much for joining us.

And, to our viewers, be sure to catch Michael's show "SMERCONISH" every Saturday 9:00 a.m. Eastern right here on CNN. I watch it.

Coming up, breaking news: the Trump administration sued over their demolition of the White House's East Wing. We have breaking details on the lawsuit. It's dramatic.

That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:43:29]

BLITZER: New this morning, the nation's historical preservation group is now suing the Trump administration over its plans to build a giant ballroom over at the White House.

Back in October, the Trump administration quickly demolished the White House East Wing to make room for the ballroom for this project.

I want to bring in CNN's Brian Todd.

Brian, why is the National Trust taking this dramatic step? And this is a lengthy lawsuit.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's a lengthy lawsuit, Wolf, 47 pages. It was filed just moments ago. We have a copy of this lawsuit now. To answer your question, Wolf, they are suing because they want this

project halted, first and foremost, and they're suing because they said that the White House and its allies and its -- and certain agencies like the National Park Service did not get the necessary approvals or conduct the necessary reviews.

We have a copy of this lawsuit. You see the pictures here. This has been what many people have been complaining about, the demolition of the East Wing of the White House that began in October for the construction of a 90,000-square foot ballroom.

And just moments ago, as Wolf mentioned, we have obtained a copy of this lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. They are suing the National Park Service. They are suing President Trump himself, plus the National Park Service, plus the Department of the Interior and Interior Secretary Douglas Burgum and others, over the construction of the ballroom where the East Wing and the Colonnade used to be.

And here is just one quote from one of the initial pages of the lawsuit -- quote -- "No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever, not President Trump, not President Biden and not anyone else. And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in.

[11:45:11]

"President Trump's efforts to do so should be immediately halted and work on the ballroom project should be paused until the defendants complete the required reviews, reviews that should have taken place before the defendants demolished the East Wing and before they began construction of the ballroom and secure the necessary approvals."

What they are also saying is that there are two entities from which the White House needed to seek approval and at least a review of this project, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. And according to this lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the White House did not seek any review from those agencies and did not seek any public input on this project.

Now, I can tell you also, Wolf, we are reaching out to the White House for comment. Our colleague Kevin Liptak is handling that right now. We should be able to get that from Kevin in just a moment.

But what I will say is that the president has had this in his sights to renovate this area, to do a ballroom for years, not just months, years, including before he came into office. He said he offered the Obama administration -- he said he would pay for it.

The Obama administration, he said, never got back to him. President Trump has said many times that he believes this is necessary, that people who come to the White House for certain events, they have to go to a tent that's kind of separate from the main body of the White House. And in bad weather, a lot of people who are here for balls and things

like that, they just get kind of disheveled having to walk through the rain and get into a tent. That's been his perspective. He's been eying this for a long time. His idea is to make this very much like the Donald Trump ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. It's going to look a lot like that.

BLITZER: And there are plenty of other ballrooms that I have been to, many of them right near the White House, huge ballrooms, that they could go to, not just a tent.

TODD: Right.

BLITZER: I have been to the tent on the backyard of the White House -- on the North Lawn of the White House...

TODD: Sure.

BLITZER: ... and the South Lawn of the White House as well. And that East Wing was beautiful. And too bad it's been destroyed.

All right, Brian, thank you very, very much.

Kevin Liptak is over at the White House right now.

This has been a huge priority for the president. And, as Brian just said, you're working to get some reaction. Are you learning anything?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, the White House hasn't responded to this lawsuit specifically.

But I will tell you that White House officials have sort of downplayed criticism from this particular group, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which you will remember back in October, as this project was getting under way, actually wrote a letter to the White House asking them to pause work to go through some of these various boards for review.

And the White House said at the time that this trust, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, was comprised of -- quote -- "loser Democrats and liberal donors." And so you see them kind of shrugging off the criticism.

We should say that this body is chartered by Congress, tasked with preserving some of the nation's historic buildings. It actually does have a relationship with President Trump dating back to the 1990s. It worked with him on some projects at Mar-a-Lago. So he does have sort of an existing relationship with this body going back several decades.

We should say that the boards that this group is now requesting and demanding that the court require that the administration go through, the National Capital Planning Commission, is now stocked with President Trump's appointees. It's led by Will Scharf, who's the staff secretary at the White House.

He has said previously that this project will eventually go before that body, but that its purview and that its remit does not cover demolition. And that is why they say this project didn't go before that board before they began tearing down the East Wing, but that once sort of vertical construction begins, that it will go before that body.

And so whether this lawsuit sort of spurs that action and prompts them to go more quickly remains to be seen. But you're right, this is an absolute priority of the president's. He still mentions that on almost a weekly basis.

When the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was here, for example, the president said that the dinner he held in his honor on the White House state floor would have been a much grander occasion if they had had that ballroom constructed in his honor.

We should also say that there has been some discord among the planning team. The president has assigned a new architect, the previous architect still on board, but he had reportedly raised some questions about the sheer scale of this project.

The president is envisioning a 90,000 square foot ballroom. The White House itself is only about 55,000 square feet. And one of the concerns that the National Trust for Historic Preservation has raised is that it would essentially dwarf the original building once it's completed, and so all of these concerns are now due to be heard in court -- Wolf.

[11:50:04]

BLITZER: The president keeps pointing out that this ballroom will be paid for by private donations, not taxpayers. Is that a factor here?

LIPTAK: It could be.

And I think the president and the White House have said that they will be transparent, and they have released some of the names of the donors who will contribute to this project. One of the questions is how potentially they will be honored as part of it, whether their names will be written on the wall or whether they will have sort of plaques in the final ballroom to designate who donated and what sort of contribution they were able to make to this project.

But it has raised certainly questions about what kind of influence those donors might have with the White House and whether or not these individuals are essentially using these donations to curry favor with the president, recognizing that this is a major priority of his.

BLITZER: All right, Kevin Liptak at the White House for us.

Kevin, thank you very, very much.

Other news we're following: Just when so many Americans are feeling the strain of rising grocery prices, you may actually be paying more thanks to algorithms and artificial intelligence. Yes, if you use Instacart, for example, the grocery and delivery app, you may be part of an experiment that charges shoppers different prices for the exact same items from the same stores. The practice has just been exposed by Consumer Reports, which says it

could evolve into a more pernicious pricing strategy, a strategy called surveillance pricing, which involves using personal characteristics, behaviors, and things like your shopping history to set individualized prices.

Joining us now is Derek Kravitz, Consumer Reports investigative reporter.

Derek, thanks very much for joining us.

Instacart says the price differences are, in their words, negligible. But you found that's not necessarily the case. Tell us what you learned.

DEREK KRAVITZ, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, CONSUMER REPORTS: Yes.

So we had hundreds of volunteers check prices across the country live, and from various places, Minnesota, Ohio, D.C., Seattle, Washington. We found that nearly three-quarters of all the products we tested had some type of variation going on, as many as five different price points for certain products.

Some of the products had as high as a 23 percent variants, Skippy peanut butter, Lucerne eggs, Wheat Thins, Cheerios. And at the end of the day, this could add up to real money. We found, in some cases, we could see a 7 percent difference in basket totals for $100. That could lead up to a $107 difference for some people, and then $1,200 a year for a family of four.

So that's real money when you have the fastest increase in grocery prices since the late 1970s.

BLITZER: Did the consumers have any idea at all that they were involved in any of this?

KRAVITZ: No.

Everyone we had volunteered for this particular project, no one was aware that they were in an active price experiment. And Instacart has been fairly up front with their clients and their business partners that most people are unaware that they are in an active experiment.

And people we spoke to were pretty offended by it. The key words that everyone was repeating when we spoke to them about it, unfair, predatory, manipulative. And so they were frustrated by this -- these experiments.

BLITZER: Some of the country's biggest retailers, as you know, are partnering with Instacart on this. Which ones have you identified?

KRAVITZ: Yes, we did some confirmation testing to find out which retailers were actually participating in these experiments. We found Kroger, Costco, Target, Albertsons, Safeway, some of the biggest grocery retailers in the United States. But we didn't find all 10. We know Instacart told us that 10 different

retailers do this, but they wouldn't tell us who. So we found just a handful. So there's some unknown questions here.

BLITZER: Is there anything illegal, for example, or at least untoward about what Instacart is doing with this pricing experiment now?

KRAVITZ: Yes, good question. It's a gray area.

Regulators are playing catchup. At the federal level, the FTC regulates retailers, and it's -- they're not quite sure what to do here. A surveillance pricing investigation by the FTC was under way. The Trump administration has quietly sort of stopped comments for that FTC probe.

And so now states are trying to figure out how they're going to approach this question. Some states like New York and California are actively considering how best to police surveillance prices.

BLITZER: And, Derek, what is Instacart's response to your reporting?

KRAVITZ: Yes, we engaged with them over a period of months. They were very up front, saying that, yes, we experiment with prices, but we do so in order to understand the customer and that, at the end of the day, everyone pays maybe a little bit less or a little bit more, but it all evens out.

[11:55:13]

But our investigation, our data shows something a little bit different. We found some pretty wide price variance for a lot of customers. And so, during a period of rapid inflation and increasing grocery prices, this means something to people. And I think that's why people are reacting like this.

BLITZER: And you warn in your article that this could lead to a more pernicious pricing strategy overall. What should consumers be worried about?

KRAVITZ: Yes, I think most people, including regulators and customers, are worried about surveillance pricing. They're worried about their own personal data, their buying behavior, their shopping history, or even their demographics being used to either set prices or tailor promotions or discounts that then influence final prices.

And so, really, people do not want that data to be used in this way for essential items like food. We're used to it for airlines and concert tickets and things like that. But we're not used to it for essentials. And so that's the big question, right?

And people, generally speaking, when we survey them, do not want this strategy used against them.

BLITZER: All right, Derek Kravitz, thanks for your reporting. Appreciate it very, very much.

And, to our viewers, thanks very much for joining me this morning.

"INSIDE POLITICS" with our good friend and colleague Dana Bash starts right after a very quick break.