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Liberal Judge Wins in Wisconsin, GOP Holds Florida House Seats; Trump to Announce Sweeping New Tariffs at White House; Interview with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL): GOP Wins in Florida, Shoring Up Narrow House Majority, Trump's New Tariffs; Senior Russian Official Expected to Visit Washington for Talks. Aired 8:00-8:30a ET

Aired April 02, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: They're calling this a once-in-a- lifetime to once-in-a-generation event. Arkansas, the Little Rock Office National Weather Service, John, mentioning that some areas that have never flooded before could flood from this multi-day heavy rain event.

So it is going to be very active, lots of things to monitor.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, people really need to pay close attention to this, listen to the alerts, listen to the warnings, and take action if you need to. Derek Van Dam, thank you so much.

Brand new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The countdown is on and the world is watching. Just hours from now, President Trump set to reveal his sweeping new tariff policy. We have new details on how this is playing out at the White House and on the markets.

And a message from the polls of voters in the purple state of Wisconsin delivering a warning to President Trump. While Republicans in deep red Florida districts maintain a majority, but just barely.

And a senior Russian official is heading to our nation's capital. The new reporting on where negotiations stand and the war in Ukraine.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: The president calling it Liberation Day, but not clear that the markets are feeling very liberated right now at all. In a matter of hours, President Trump is set to announce a sweeping new round of tariffs that he says will target all of America's trading partners.

Investors are bracing for impact. The major indices are trending down ahead of the opening bell. That is going -- this is going to drive the day, much of the day.

Also driving the day, election results. This morning, voters in Wisconsin have dealt a blow to the president in a key race and giving Democrats a reason to celebrate for once in the recent months after the Democratic-backed candidate for the state Supreme Court pulled off a big win. And in doing so, maintaining a liberal-leaning majority on that state Supreme Court bench.

That is despite Elon Musk jumping headfirst into that race, spending millions of dollars to try and defeat that candidate. Even paying a visit to hand out $1 million checks to voters.

Republicans fared better in a pair of special elections in Florida, holding on to two congressional seats and their narrow House majority. But both races showing some pretty big swings from the 2024 election, when Donald Trump won both districts by more than 30 points.

Now, less than five months later, the margins for those Republican wins last night were cut in -- cut by half. Joining me right now, CNN's Washington bureau chief and political director, David Chalian. David, on Wisconsin, pun intended, what do the results mean for Donald Trump and Elon Musk?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, nothing good. That is clear. I mean, a 10-point victory for the liberal, progressive, Democratic-backed candidate, Susan Crawford, was not what any Democrat I spoke to in Wisconsin was anticipating.

They thought they might edge out a single-digit, low single-digit victory here in battleground Wisconsin. A 10-point victory is pretty substantial, especially given, as you said, when you ask about the ramifications for Musk, I mean, he was all in for $25 million, $26 million at the end of the day that he put into this race, himself personally, allied groups that he supported, and came up short, very short.

And for Trump, I think it's hard not to look at this state that you, you know, narrowly won twice, lost once, proved determinative as part of the outcome, whether you sit in the Oval Office or not. It's a real 50-50 purple state in American politics. And you see a pretty substantial win on the Democratic side. No doubt you take note of that and you say, OK, this is clearly, in part, in response to the political environment with me atop it, if you're the president.

Now, I don't know that he'll sit and analyze those results, but I guarantee you the party infrastructure around him will.

BOLDUAN: So then when it comes to Florida, a win's a win. That is definitely true in the short term for Republicans, right? But in the long term, given how competitive it ended up becoming, is it a warning sign?

CHALIAN: Yes, I mean, listen, this is deep red territory in both districts, Kate, as you know, in Florida, and they won by double digits. I mean, this is not -- it was not a razor thin victory here for Republicans. And as you noted, for Mike Johnson and Donald Trump, mission critical was filling those two Republican vacancies with Republicans in order to pass Donald Trump's agenda and not diminish what is already a historic narrow majority in the House. [08:05:00]

But there is little doubt that the the massive inroads that Democrats were able to make here, taking a Trump 30 district plus 30 -- or Trump plus 37 district and dramatically shrinking those margins of victory for Republicans, shows what is true in American politics today, that the Democratic Party has the highest propensity voters, the most engaged voters, especially when Donald Trump is not sitting on the ballot.

And if you're in this sort of off your special election, off calendar kind of moment, those that show up to vote that do that habitually, and that are clearly energized, look at the fundraising advantage the Democratic candidates had over the Republican candidates in each of these heavily Republican districts. The energy you see there is a lesson that Democrats will take away. And I'll just add one more thing, Kate.

Imagine if you're a Republican member of Congress, that sits not in a Trump plus 30 or a Trump plus 37 district but sits in a Trump plus five district or plus 10 district, you are starting to get a little concerned about what the political environment is telling you for the midterms next year.

BOLDUAN: With these election results coming in on basically the same day of liberation tariff day about to set in, could be a lot of bellyaching going on with some of those Republicans you're talking about right there. Great to see you, David. Thank you so much.

CHALIAN: You too, Kate. Thanks.

BOLDUAN: John.

BERMAN: Yes, let's talk about the latter part of that. Investors around the world on edge as President Trump gets ready to announce the details of his tariff plan.

Those details have been murky, even contradictory in some cases until now. Stock futures have been down so far this morning. You can see right there. The Nasdaq down more than a point, S&P down nearly a point, the Dow down about 0.6.

With us now is Colby Smith, Federal Reserve correspondent for The New York Times. Great to see you again. Listen, the president likes to keep people guessing. They haven't released details of this plan. They're going to come out of four o'clock after the markets close. He wants to build -- he wants to build suspense for this. But economists look at this and say this is part of the problem. We shouldn't be guessing.

COLBY SMITH, FEDERAL RESERVE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Absolutely. And I think uncertainty has been the big theme over the last couple of months, frankly. We don't know what exactly these tariffs are going to entail.

And in a time of that degree of uncertainty, it's impossible for businesses to plan. So we've seen them in a state of more or less paralysis. They put investments on hold. They put hiring on hold. They're waiting around to see, you know what exactly is going to come from these tariffs. So in some sense today is going to reduce some of that uncertainty because we finally will know what exactly is coming in to play here.

But the problem is, is that what we're likely to see our policies that are going to be detrimental to growth. So it unleashes a whole other set of uncertainties about just, you know, how detrimental that could be.

BERMAN: They like clarity. If they get clarity, the president has promised it. But it's still possible that he doesn't come forward with a clear plan that will translate into two years of policy.

SMITH: No, absolutely. And I think that's -- if you think about a business, they're not going to bring, you know, production back on shore if it's possible that in a month's time in two months time in six months time that, you know, these tariffs are reversed. It's a very expensive process to change your supply chain and to make these kind of bigger shifts in how a company operates.

And so it puts companies in a serious bind, which is why economists are so downbeat on the outlook at this point. I mean, we see some combination potentially of higher inflation, lower growth. We've seen this already.

BERMAN: That's the S word. That's stagflation.

SMITH: Stagflation. Right now we're hearing whiffs of stagflation. I mean, I think it's important to remember the fact that the economy, you know, entered this year on pretty solid footing. The labor market is still relatively strong. You have 4.1 percent unemployment. I mean, these are important kind of foundations. But the problem is, is that those are starting to be strained.

BERMAN: And you write about right now other conflicting data that economists are looking at this sort of the hard data and the soft data.

SMITH: Yes, absolutely. And I think that's the big distinction here. So the soft data, these are things like surveys. This is where they go out and they pull how confident do consumers feel? Are businesses planning to hire? I mean, it's anecdotal, but at a time when it's not exactly clear how, you know, these policies are going to impact the economy, that type of data has taken on increasing significance.

The issue is that it could, when it shows up in the hard data, it might be too late for policymakers to respond to. And that puts policymakers like the Federal Reserve in a very, very tough situation because they're having to respond potentially late to either signs of significant weakness or, you know, significant inflationary pressures.

BERMAN: Could be quite a day. A lot of very uneasy investors and economists. Colby Smith, thanks so much for coming in, I really appreciate it -- Sara. SIDNER: All right, President Trump's policies, tariffs and all. Also part of what voters consider during the special elections in Florida and Wisconsin last night.

[08:10:02]

Joining us is Republican congressman of Florida, Byron Donald. Thank you so much for being here. Let's talk about Florida first.

When -- it was a win, two seats go to the Republicans. But do you see any warning in the fact that these were won by Donald Trump for 30 plus points and suddenly we're seeing that cut down to about half with the Democrats gaining steam there? Is there a warning in that to you?

REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): Not really. I mean, look at this. When you deal with special elections --

SIDNER: Really!

DONALDS: No, no, no. When you deal with special elections, a win is a win. First and foremost, are Democrat voters very motivated to get to the polls? Yes, they are.

They're not happy with some of the things that Elon Musk is doing going through the federal agencies, actually cleaning out the waste, fraud and abuse that has really been damaging the federal agencies for a very long time. You see Democrat officials up here on Capitol Hill. They're upset about it.

And so, yes, is the base of the Democrat Party upset? They are and they're motivated. But when you take a step back and you look at the reality, Republican voters turned out not to the degree of a presidential election because that doesn't ever really occur in specials, but they turned out and both Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine had double digit victories.

So everything in Florida is just fine and it's going to get better from here.

SIDNER: I do want you to sort of respond because some of your Republican colleagues and some of those who are Republican analysts have said there is a lesson in this, that Democrats need to be very that Republicans need to be very careful about how they go forward, especially when it comes to the economy. Because if you look at this, if you were in a different district that wasn't so strongly read, there may be a problem for other Republicans. Seeing how much money was raised by one of the Democratic candidates and seeing how the numbers shrunk so much. You don't see that at all.

DONALDS: No, I don't. Because again, you have the Democrats who have had no victories at all in the last couple of months. So basically, until last night in Wisconsin. In Florida, once again, you demonstrated the strength of Republican districts, Republican voters got to the polls.

You have to understand a special election is far more about turnout than it is about mood because you don't have the level of turnout across the electorate like you do in a presidential election or even in a midterm election. So if there's any lesson learned for Republicans, it's making sure that you have your get out the vote operations ready to go in these special elections.

What that means for the midterms is we have to make sure we're on the ground getting our voters to the polls the way obviously the Democrats raising tens of millions of dollars for these races did for their elections because they need something to glom on to.

They try to find a way to shift the House majority. They failed last night and we're going to be focused on the agenda of President Trump. The same agenda that the American people voted for last November.

So I would say to some of my Republican colleagues who are looking at this data, it might be a little skittish. All this proves is make sure you're on the ground getting people to the polls. And here in Washington, let's actually get the agenda accomplished so that President Trump can sign it into law. And so the American economy can flourish going forward into the future.

SIDNER: Speaking of the economy, there are a lot of jitters on Wall Street. You have seen the numbers. They have tanked several days in a row worrying about these tariffs and they're going down right now. The Dow futures right now is down.

Do you want to see more specifics first before you assure Florida voters on how Donald Trump's decision on tariffs will impact them?

DONALDS: Well listen, the president's been very clear. Today is the day he's going to come out with his package on tariff policy. What markets and what business leaders want more than anything else is just to know what it is.

So when the markets, what you're really seeing is uncertainty around the fact that they don't know how the president is going to change tariff policy. Let's go back to his first administration. There was the same type of talk about tariffs.

The Biden administration didn't change virtually anything associated with the tariff policy of Donald Trump. And the reason why is because what the president is making sure is that we have manufacturing in our country, that we actually have domestic supplies in our country, that people actually have high paying jobs here in America associated with those industries as opposed to just on shoring everything from Asia. Which if you go back to COVID-19, was not in the best interest of the United States. And then after that point, we have to move to a sound footing in our economy based upon real incentive structures and real private sector growth.

We cannot continue the Obama-Biden ways of just subsidizing industries and increasing federal spending, which destroys purchasing power for the American people and is not sustainable.

[08:15:00] The way you do that is bring industries back to the United States and allow the American people to be a part of the economic engine as opposed to just getting cheap goods but not having the necessary jobs in return in order to sustain themselves and have a sustainable growing American economy. That's what we're going to accomplish.

Now, the markets might be a little skittish in the interim, but over the long term, we will stabilize out and we'll have a better foundation for our economy into the future.

SIDNER: Are you OK, though, with people feeling pain? They voted Donald Trump in because they were tired of dealing with the inflation that was there during the Biden administration. Are you OK with your constituents feeling more pressure and more pain when it comes to the economy as these tariffs are put in place and the retaliatory tariffs are also put in place?

Are you OK with pain being on their shoulders for a while as this all gets worked out?

DONALDS: Nobody wants pain for their constituents. I don't want pain for the people of Florida.

SIDNER: But Donald Trump said there will be some pain and disruption.

DONALDS: But hold on. But you are making an assumption without knowing the details of what the President's tariff policy is going to be.

SIDNER: I'm not making the assumption. Donald Trump himself said there was pain and disruption that was going to happen.

DONALDS: You're making an assumption. You are making an assumption, an economic assumption right now. Let's be very clear.

The real pain economically has been the massive inflation coming from bloated overspending here in Washington, D.C. That is the real pain that the American people have felt the last four years. What President Trump is trying to do now is bring industries back to the United States. So it's not so much pain.

You might have some some temporary adjustments in our economy, but that is for the growth of the American economy long term, stability and jobs over the long term for the American people and American workers. And that is actually a good way to take our economy as opposed to following the same terrible policies of the previous administration and the Democrats writ large of just subsidizing industries and raising raising the debt of the United States. That is not the way that you can that you actually build an economy.

There's an old saying in finance. You can make markets jump, but you can't make them fly. And when you follow the old way, the Biden/Obama way of just subsidizing industries, yes, you make them jump. You can make people feel good in the interim, but it's not sustainable over the long term.

Donald Trump is looking at the long term financial outlook for every American, and that's why we're starting today with Liberation Day.

SIDNER: Right now, the markets are lying down. They are not jumping or flying. Congressman Byron Donalds, thank you so much. Appreciate it -- John.

BERMAN: All right. For the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine, a top Russian official is headed to Washington. New reporting on why he's coming and how President Trump feels about Vladimir Putin this morning.

We've got new reporting this morning on how a pro Israel group could be responsible for getting some foreign students and scholars detained. The list, they say they handed over to immigration officials.

Thousands of jobs cuts from America's federal health agencies. The surprising impacts it could have on some of the most cutting edge medical research.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: New this morning, the Kremlin now confirms a senior Russian official is planning to visit Washington for talks on Ukraine. Sources tell CNN that that official is a close advisor to Vladimir Putin and expected to arrive this week, which would mark the first time a senior Russian official will be in D.C. since the start of the Ukraine war.

Alex Marquardt has this important reporting. He's joining us right now. And Alex, this visit comes at an interesting time when President Trump, it's very clear, is struggling to get any kind of a ceasefire deal over the finish line.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Kate. This visit very notable, not just because it is, as you say, the first time a senior Russian official has been coming to Washington since they invaded Ukraine, but at a critical moment in these ceasefire talks. My colleagues, Jennifer Hansler, Alayna Treene, and I are told that Kirill Dmitriev, this top Kremlin aide, close advisor to Vladimir Putin, is coming to Washington.

He will meet specifically with Steve Witkoff, the American president's envoy who has gone now to Moscow twice to meet with with Vladimir Putin. And Dmitriev will be coming here to try to convince the U.S. that they do want peace in Ukraine, to advance those talks, but also because he has a longer term outlook. He has been advocating for improved ties between the two countries, not just to get them back on track after the Biden administration, but because he and Witkoff really do see opportunities beyond the Ukraine war to foster economic and financial opportunities between the two countries. So this conversation will take place on a number of different levels.

Now, important to note that Dmitriev, Kate, has been sanctioned by the United States. He was sanctioned by the Biden administration three years ago because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Dmitriev is not just a close advisor to President Putin. He is the head of the RDIF, which is Russia's sovereign wealth fund.

This is what the Treasury Department wrote when they sanctioned Dmitriev, that Vladimir Putin and his inner circle of cronies have long relied on the RDIF and Dmitriev to raise funds abroad, including in the United States.

And so, Kate, we are told that the Treasury Department actually had to lift temporarily their sanctions on Dmitriev in order for him to be issued a department -- a State Department visa. So he will be coming here at a time when there is this mounting frustration. We've heard President Trump talk about how angry he has been with Vladimir Putin for dragging his feet.

[08:25:03]

Dmitriev will try to say to Witkoff and perhaps others, we do want this peace deal in Ukraine. But there are still major questions, Kate, over whether President Putin genuinely wants that or whether he's playing for time -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Alex, thank you so much. Great reporting -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, right now, stock market futures, you can see them all in the red. Not great this morning as the world awaits President Trump's sweeping tariff plan. We'll talk about that ahead.

Plus, new this morning, a pro-Israel group says it had a list of students and scholars who attended pro-Palestinian protests. And it says it shared that information with the U.S. government. What is the government doing with it? And we'll talk about that as well.

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SIDNER: Just hours from now, President Trump will reveal aggressive new tariffs on countries around the world. He's called Liberation Day -- that's what he's called it for weeks now.

[08:30:00]