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- [00:06]
Christiane Amanpour
Hello, everyone, and welcome to amanpur. Here's what's coming up.
- [00:11]
John Kerry
The scene was like a horror movie.
- [00:12]
Claire Duffy
We had to climb over the rubble and everything.
- [00:15]
Christiane Amanpour
Devastation in Venezuela as rescuers scrambled to save victims of the nation's most powerful earthquake in over a century.
- [00:23]
Donald Trump
Then Iran is being very nice. They're agreeing to everything that I want and they have to. Otherwise we just go back and do what we have to do.
- [00:32]
Christiane Amanpour
Washington and Tehran struggle to shape the narrative around peace talks. Will they be able to reach a deal on time? I ask a key negotiator of the last agreement, former US Secretary of State John Kerry. Also ahead, government is always about choices and it's clear to me that a full ban is the right choice. With just weeks left in office, could Prime Minister Starmer's social media law become his defining legacy? I speak to children's rights campaigner Baroness Biban Kidron about her new book and the fight to protect children online. Plus, inside America's ugly birthday battle, how the nation's 250th anniversary is deepening. Division The Atlantic's Michael Shearer joins Michelle Martin. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London and it is a race against time right now for Venezuela where rescue teams are frantically searching for survivors after two back to back earthquakes, some of the worst and strongest ever recorded in the country. At least 164 people have been killed according to acting President Delsey Rodriguez, but that number is surely expected to rise as crews reach hard hit areas and the full scale of the devastation becomes clear. Social media videos like this one show the terrifying scenes as people rushed into the streets to escape falling buildings after the quake struck around 6pm local time. The heaviest damage appears to be centered in and around the capital, Caracas where people have been heard calling for help beneath the rubble as reporter Mary Triner Mina has found.
- [02:33]
Mary Triner Mina
I'm at Playa Grande. This is one of the areas most devastated by the 2 air quake that took place Wednesday in Venezuela. Here there's an active survivor rescue and there are neighbors and rescue teams trying to locate the people that are still inside of these buildings. Like this man.
- [02:51]
Michelle Martin
What is the number?
- [02:52]
John Kerry
Senor Carlos.
- [02:53]
Mary Triner Mina
Carlos. Carlos is a neighbor and he's trying to get in touch with a lady that is in that building. He is waving at us. Every time Carlos talk to her, she's trying to wave their hand with the red floss. So many people that are trapped from yesterday are trying to get the sense of the time that they are being stopped. There and trying to make the efforts to bring more rescue team, more people to this area that is still with many people alive. And they want, of course, that they are out of this situation as soon as possible. La Guayda, as I said, is one of the areas most devastated in Venezuela, especially the international airport of Caracas that is located here. As you can see, there's a lot of rubble and debris in these buildings that I'm in right now. An entire complex of buildings are devastated.
- [04:09]
Christiane Amanpour
Mary. Trini Mena reporting. Now, the US has offered to send help to Venezuela along with humanitarian organizations and several other countries, including China, Argentina and Brazil. Next, the clock is ticking on negotiations between the US And Iran. And if there weren't already major sticking points, now the two sides can't seem to agree on what they've agreed to, with the Trump administration describing, describing preferred outcomes as concrete deals and Tehran promptly disputing those claims. So let's ask former Secretary of State John Kerry about this dynamic. He was a key negotiator of the Obama administration's JCPOA nuclear deal and later as President Biden's climate envoy. He's joining me now from London where he's attending Climate Action Week. So welcome back to the program, Secretary Kerry.
- [05:04]
John Kerry
Thanks for having me. Glad to be with you.
- [05:06]
Christiane Amanpour
Can I just first ask you, you know, your well, the successor, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has said that help is on the way from the United States. Given though, that Venezuela is practically to all intents and purposes, a US Protectorate after the snatching of Maduro, what should the United States do? What is it capable of doing in this case?
- [05:29]
John Kerry
Well, we can do an enormous amount and we really have a moral obligation to do so. The president said that we're going to run it, meaning the administration. And this is a dire situation. So the United States traditionally has really stepped up to help nations when they're under duress. And obviously Venezuela is
- [05:51]
Christiane Amanpour
do you think, I mean, let's say it comes to this, that there are so many homeless people they're going to maybe be refugees? Should the US Let them in?
- [06:03]
John Kerry
Well, we have a regular process. We have a regular program for people immigrating to the United States. And under emergency situations, we very often take people in. When we dealt with Afghanistan or Iraq and we were leaving, we obviously tried to bring people for safety here. I don't think that's the situation in Venezuela right now. You have a fundamentally humanitarian crisis based on a natural disaster. And I would hope that nations all around the world would assist. And one of the Things the administration should do, actually, is be coordinating that. I mean, you know, you shouldn't sit there and watch it. You need to help pull other nations to the table to help, particularly in the American sphere.
- [06:50]
Christiane Amanpour
Let me just move now to what's also in your wheelhouse, of course, and that is the, the whole situation in the Persian Gulf. Secretary Rubio is in the Gulf, has been in the, in the GCC states, and is trying to reassure or convince regional allies that whatever has been agreed to between President Trump and the Iranian leadership will not be at their expense. From what you know about this and what you know about having to keep allies on side, how do you think that's going and what are the key sticking points?
- [07:25]
John Kerry
Well, the sticking points are the entire agreement right now, because there are many countries in the region that wanted the President to, quote, finish the job. That requires some difficult definition. But they're very worried that they're going to be left with something, or Iran has freedom to do things that they haven't before. And that's clearly why Secretary Rubio is there, to try to assure them that's not going to happen. But we all know that Secretary Rubio thought that the foundation of this, of this war, initially, he really didn't believe in it. And those are the reports, at least, that came out of the White House with good reporting. So I think that right now, the administration's in a very tough place. It's not a peace agreement, it's a ceasefire. And try to find an agreement on the potential of the production of nuclear weapons, whether they can find other ingredients for peace. With the missile issues, the Houthi issues, Hezbollah issues, is very tough. President Obama made the fundamental decision that the urgency of dealing with a nuclear weapon at the time that we faced this challenge was that there was about a two week plus few days, maybe breakout time to have a nuclear weapon. And if we spent all our time trying to do with Hezbollah or missiles, we would have left them free to continue to do what they had been doing. And we didn't want that to happen. So we focused on the real biggest danger first, and that was the nuclear, the potential of them becoming nuclear. And we put together the most intrusive, comprehensive arms control agreement in history, where we were very precise about the ways in which we could enforce it. We had the right for the iaea, the international agency, Atomic Energy Agency, to be able to go in and inspect on demand. We had the ability to be able to spring back all the sanctions. We had a very elaborate scheme created which destroyed thousands of their centrifuges, destroyed their plutonium reactor, put 130 additional inspectors on the ground in Iran. They're gone now. So, you know, the point to make here is that it took time, us approximately two years of open negotiations and some period of time where we were feeling it out and trying to figure out whether there was something real here that could be done.
- [09:56]
Christiane Amanpour
You know, obviously, the negotiation that you talk about in the JCPOA deal has been front and center as people compare what Trump has done and, and what your administration did. So let me just play to you what President Trump has said about just the idea of going to war against Iran. Here's what he said.
- [10:15]
Donald Trump
Look, for 47 years, no president was willing to do what I'm doing. And they should have done it a long time ago. It would have been a lot easier. There's no president that wanted to do it. And yet every president knew. I've spoken to a certain president who I like, actually a past president, former president. He said, I wish I did it, I wish I did. But they didn't do it. I'm doing it.
- [10:41]
Christiane Amanpour
So just to be clear, apparently spokespeople for all the former presidents have denied recently speaking to President Trump. That was in March when he said that. I guess what I want to ask you is, did you get tempted, Was your administration anywhere close to going to war to actually degrade Iran's military ability? And that's the first question. Then I want to ask you about war gaming.
- [11:08]
John Kerry
Well, President Obama was absolutely prepared to do whatever was necessary to protect the interests of the United States, as well as to protect our ally, Israel. And at that point in time, there were real dangers, but they weren't ready to explode. And I think the president wisely made the choice not to agree to Prime Minister Netanyahu's request to be able to go in and bomb and to even join in the bombing, President Obama said, no, we're going to try diplomacy. That's the way you have to do these things. You build support. And indeed, that diplomacy brought China, Russia, France, Germany, uk, The eu, all came to the table, and they were all part of the development of this process. And in the end, when the president, when President Trump decided, oh, I'm going to pull out of this agreement, I'm going to tear it up. Worst agreement ever saw. It allows them to go get a nuclear weapon. No, Mr. President, it did not allow them to go get a nuclear weapon. What it allowed them to do is get themselves in trouble if they wanted to. And we would with a year of available time, because that's the breakout time. We moved it from two weeks to a year. We had the ability to be able to, to do whatever was necessary to protect the interests of the United States. But we thought it was better. President Obama thought it was better to negotiate based on the premise that you have to exhaust the possibilities of peace before you decide to go to war. That did not happen here. That distinctly did not happen, even though there were offerings and discussions taking place on a Saturday morning. Kaboom. The president went to war and didn't even consult with our own allies. We had none of those countries with us in this initiative the way they had been previously.
- [12:56]
Christiane Amanpour
And then let me ask you about when you go to war. I mean, surely the intelligence community, the military community, the national security community will explain to you what are the potential pitfalls, to wit, the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's obvious potential strong chokehold over it. What were you all told about, you know, the perils or the opportunities of war? What should have been, you know, had been told to President Trump about this? Because almost immediately the Strait of Hormuz came up and bit everybody in the, you know what?
- [13:33]
John Kerry
Yeah, well, Christiane, I don't know precisely what was told him. I've read some excerpts from various news sources about the conversations that took place in the, in the Situation Room. But, but let me just say this. We were prepared to do whatever was necessary to protect the United States and our allies, but not to rush to war, not to do it as a first choice, not to put it as an early option. We always had the choice of being able to enforce using force. But President Obama, I think, completely properly stayed away from that because it just wasn't ripe. It wasn't the moment to do that. Now, this administration never considered the issue of ripeness. They took Prime Minister Netanyahu at his word, or at least the president did, that the people were going to rise up and take back their country. And in the first days of this war, the rationale for going to war was, well, we want the people to be able to take over. We have to help them. Then there was a rationale that, because there was the rationale that the ability to be able to stop them might be changed because Israel had decided it was going to go by itself. So the president decided he had to go. That initially came from Secretary Rubio. And then finally, of course, you had the president revert to the notion that the reason they had to bomb was because they had to prevent them from having A nuclear weapon. This despite the fact that only months before they had, quote, obliterated the nuclear program. Now they have to go back and obliterate it again when it wasn't the kind of threat that required that they did not have the ability on the day that he bombed to actually come up with a bomb in the near term. And it seems to me that the president rushed to pass diplomacy, rushed to pass what common sense dictated would bring our fellow, you know, our colleague, nations, our allies from across Europe to the table to support us. And indeed, with respect to the Straits of Hormuz that you asked, you know, what did they say about that? We knew that the Straits of the would be weaponized if indeed you got into a conflict. President Trump at least said something to the effect that we didn't know that they were going to do that or they would do that. I remember warning before this war took place in an event that I was at in Florida, that the Iranians know how to do asymmetric warfare as well as are better than most people on the planet. And that's exactly what they've done at great cost to the world in terms of prices up, inflation up, disruption, people, you know, again, moving refugees and so forth. I think it was completely unnecessary. The president should not have torn up this document which Russia, China is Russia, China, even the Israeli intelligence, Europe, all said it's working, leave it the way it is. And if you have changes you want, present them to Iran, tell them, hey, I don't like what President Obama did, here's what I'm going to demand. And then they could negotiate about that. But they completely bypassed that kind of legitimate, exhaustive, transparent diplomacy that would make the world a much better place if we hadn't had to go to war the way we did.
- [17:10]
Christiane Amanpour
So now let me ask you then to sort of pivot to the energy crisis and the climate crisis. And you're in the UK where there's been a really unprecedented heat wave. And one of the, the British, or I think it's called London Climate Week was cancelled because of the climate. You know, you've spent so many years being the climate czar for President Biden and really taking this issue on. Where are we right now?
- [17:40]
John Kerry
Well, right now, as I sit here, parts of the Earth are sort of blowing up and burning up at the same time. And it appears as if the administration is willing to ignore science, ignore facts, the facts on the ground for the way people are being impacted all around the world. I mean, after 40 years, we've been hearing that the first decade of those 40 was the hottest ever, and then the next decade and then the next, and now the one we're in, the hottest ever. And each day, yesterday was hottest day in June, in London today, just as hot. So this is going to get worse, folks, before it gets better. Because it is mathematics and science and physics that is defining what is happening on our planet. And when you burn fossil fuels without capturing the emissions, you warm the planet. And that warming is coming home to roost in countless different ways that are extremely costly. We're spending trillions of dollars in order to clean up after storms that are more intensive because there's greater humidity in the air and the heat, and it makes a greater and more intense storm than you would have had otherwise. You can run a long list. We have insurance companies in the south, in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, in Texas, in California. Insurance companies are pulling out of insuring. I mean, first of all, what kind of good business plan is that? But secondly, you're seeing people all around the world that are being impacted and they're not even able now in some places to buy the insurance to protect their home. So, you know, at some point we really need to deal with the facts here. And I think more people, I would say yesterday here in London, I was with Rockefeller foundation briefing that showed that people are not retreating from concern on climate change, they're just numbed by the kind of language that is sometimes used. But if you talk about what is happening to people in their homes, what's happening to their food and food prices, what is happening to their communities as a result of floods or other disasters, you know, when you look at those things happening, people are much clearer about what they think we should do that would make a difference. And I'm seeing that play out in the marketplace. The marketplace is now turning towards renewable energy that is independent. They don't have to rely on the Straits of Hormuz being open. There are countless countries that have taken the warning from what has happened in this war. And the great movements with respect to climate have come historically, like 1973, after the oil crisis, 1979, when China decided, oh, we better. You know, it's not a question of whether we should do it for the climate reasons. We need to do it for security, to have a guarantee about our fuel because they don't have gas and they don't have the ability to be independent the same way. So now China is the largest manufacturer and deployer of renewables in the world, having done more deployment and more manufacturing than all of the rest of the world put together and they own the market, 90% of the solar panel market and a huge proportion of the wind power market. And they also make a really good car, to be honest with you, but can't sell it in our country. But people are buying it in other parts of the world. Electric vehicle sales now are going way back up because of gas prices. So there's a natural order to things that I think is unfolding in the marketplace. CEOs of companies are not going to buy things that are going to hurt them or hurt communities or find their energy from things that are destructive. They're going to make decisions that improve their products, improve their ability to sell their products and improve their ability to avoid disastrous consequences for contributing to the bad things that happen when you're not being particularly honest about what's going on.
- [21:52]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, former Secretary of State John Kerry, thank you very much indeed for being with us. And stay with CNN because we'll be back after this break.
- [22:06]
Derek Van Dam
Finding a source you can trust for weather forecasts should be easy, right? This is CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam thrilled to introduce the new CNN weather app. Check your daily forecast to plan your day, the weekly forecast to see what's on the way and prepare for any major storm with our robust real time video coverage. The app is stunning. And if you're a weather nerd like me, you'll love our in depth stories and the photo of the day. Download the CNN weather app on iOS today.
- [22:36]
Claire Duffy
I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, Franklin Schneider, thanks for doing this.
- [22:43]
Franklin Schneider
My pleasure.
- [22:44]
Claire Duffy
So we had this episode idea because a producer on our team, Hazel, is currently in the midst of an apartment hunt and they have been running into content in listings that appears to be AI generated. You wrote about this phenomenon earlier this year. How did it come to your attention?
- [22:59]
Franklin Schneider
It's just become so widespread. I mean, the problem is you can't tell a lot of it is AI unless you look very, very, very closely. I've read industry reports that suggest at least 50% of all listing Im been altered with AI.
- [23:14]
Claire Duffy
Wow.
- [23:15]
Franklin Schneider
And it might be as high as 70, 75%.
- [23:18]
Claire Duffy
Listen to CNN's terms of service wherever you get your podcasts.
- [23:28]
Christiane Amanpour
Now, it'll be one of his final major policies and perhaps the one that could define his legacy. That would be the outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his ban on children accessing social media. But is the best solution. A similar ban in Australia is proving to have little effect with research showing over 80% of children have actually found ways around the restrictions. Now experts say the real focus should be holding tech giants to account, like Baroness Biban Kidram. She made her name as a filmmaker before turning her attention to a different calling, children's rights online. It's a journey she's chronicled in her new book, Users. And she's joining me now from London. Biban Kidron, welcome back to our program.
- [24:17]
Baroness Biban Kidron
Lovely to be with you.
- [24:20]
Christiane Amanpour
So, look, let's just start with Users, and it's a gripping tale. Tell me about the name. Who is it aimed at? That name.
- [24:31]
Baroness Biban Kidron
So the users in the book are really. It's the story of how the tech companies sort of hijacked society, how they took over our personal lives, our children, business and so on. And it's that story about how we were all interneted and what the costs of that are. And it really offers a framework for fighting back, I suppose, before I get to the framework. Not us.
- [25:01]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah, them, exactly. Not the addicts.
- [25:05]
Darby Saxby
Exactly.
- [25:05]
Christiane Amanpour
Look, we said it could be Prime Minister Keir Starmer's lasting legacy, but. And there's a big but, his Australian counterpart who did this in their country. They have found, according to research, that the current generation of 16 and unders are finding workarounds. A lot of them, like 80% of them. What does that say to you?
- [25:32]
Baroness Biban Kidron
Well, I think there's a number of lessons in it. I think the first thing to say is that Al Benghazi, the Prime Minister of Australia, did the world a huge favor. He just went, not on my watch. No toxic products in the hands of children. I will take responsibility for doing something. Now, a lot of us didn't think he came at it exactly the right way, but he has put this, put this issue right at the center of politics. And I think that what you're going to see is from the Australian, you know, kind of from that first ban, parents across the world are saying, hey, we want a bit of this, we want a bit of this. And policymakers are now looking at it and saying, what works, what doesn't work, what do we need to do differently to get what he was trying to do rather than doing it exactly the way he suggested.
- [26:28]
Christiane Amanpour
So some are suggesting that maybe this generation would do exactly what they've done, and that's found workarounds. But the bans will really be, you know, different, perhaps for kids who grow up under a ban rather than it being imposed on them when they're older, teenagers. I don't know whether you agree with that, but I just want to ask you, you know, some of the kind of the horror stories that you outline in your book about children. So strangers can access young people's location and photos. Algorithms, of course, erode their self esteem. Children are exposed to damaging contact and interactions and of course they're not isolated, they're just horrible. Wholesale, as you say, robbery of childhood. Expand on that a little bit.
- [27:12]
Mary Triner Mina
Yeah.
- [27:15]
Baroness Biban Kidron
So I think the first thing before we get into ban, not ban, is how have we got here? How have we got in plain sight of parents and politicians and the media to a situation where half the kids in the UK have seen a beheading, that girls feel anxious and upset about their bodies, that actually I have to work with police, specialist police force, to try and work a way around the AI child sexual abuse that is being created at scale. So the first question we have to ask is, what do we want for our kids? Is this? Right? And one of the things, if you look at it, you go, hang on a minute, this is a product. Someone here is running a company making money and they're making money on the back of this experience of our kids. So I think to your first question, what do we need to do? We do need to look at the tech companies. We can't do this by saying, oh, you know, parents, police your kids. Kids don't do any transgressive things. We know what kids are like, we know that they'll try. We know that actually this lot who are quite addicted on these products will try and get back to them. But I think we have to do two things. One is we have to keep the tech companies accountable for their products. Because if this was an air fryer, I tell you, we would have recalled it by now. Yeah, I think the second thing that we have to do is take the age, take the age thing off the parents and say, actually companies, you know, if we find 16 year olds on your site, it's you who's going to be in trouble, not the kid. And so when I think about the ban, I think about it as how do we ban tech companies from putting toxic products in the hands of our children?
- [29:11]
Christiane Amanpour
You know, in the book you describe some of these encounters with these tech titans around, you know, boardroom tables when you're trying to hold them accountable. I was actually, I couldn't believe it when I read about the, the one that involved Prince William. You know, I think he was at this meeting and you had an American tech, you know, honcho yelling what happened?
- [29:35]
Baroness Biban Kidron
So it was, you know, I have to say that the Royal Family were very, very quick to this issue. They really understood. And so it was back in 2017 that he set up a royal task force to look at the time, at the issue of bullying. And at the time, I think everyone thought, oh, we don't know about this, so we'll bring everyone around the table and it'll be all fine, because as soon as we explain how toxic it is, the tech companies will do the right thing. And we met for 18 months again and again and again, and we met in palaces and headquarters and so on. And at every point, the tech companies involved just sort of blocked all the things that we wanted to do to make it better for kids. And eventually, because I am a politician and I sit in Parliament, I put down a regulatory response, and the tech executive just took me apart in public, and he just said, we will not be regulated from a small town in England. And the sort of. The sense of entitlement and the of sense. Sense that they were beyond our control. Our touch was palpable in the room. And I think what was very funny was it got a lot of sympathy in the room from broadcasters who were there, other NGOs, civil society, and even some of the other tech companies. And, in fact, I did get the regulation passed. So we did regulate them from a small town in England. And people must be really, you know, the tech companies really have to be regulated by our democratically elected governments, because what they call no regulation is not no regulation, Christiane. It's regulation by their terms of service across the world.
- [31:30]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah. And this tech executive you're talking about is from Facebook. And I say that because there was an accountability hearing in court. You remember, of course, the California court recently issued that landmark ruling against Meta and the risks that its products pose. You know, basically saying that they were addictive. You say that all of this sort of momentum could be a tobacco moment. That is when the tobacco companies were discovered to have lied about the addictive nature of their product. They were outed in a big, big way, and things have completely changed in that domain. Do you think that we're there yet, that the fight back, as you suggest, is reaching that critical juncture?
- [32:17]
Baroness Biban Kidron
I think it is, and I think there's a couple of reasons. First of all, the court cases in the US Are really central to what's going on, because it stopped being about freedom of speech, just like in the tobacco, as you say, it stopped being about personal responsibility. It was about how do you design your product, what did you know about it, when did you know it? And why are you hurting people? And I think that that is a very clear differentiation. And the US Courts appear now to be willing to look at the design of the product. That is huge. I think there's something else, because the book starts with children, but what happens to children online does not stay online. And what happens to children eventually happens to the rest of us. And it goes into the questions of, you know, information security, job displacement, and so on. And as you build up and you think, hang on a minute, this is costing me my job. This is costing my child their childhood. This is costing me any semblance of shared truth in the world. And all the problems that we see out of that, people are beginning to go, I'm not sure that free was such a fabulous deal,
- [33:30]
Christiane Amanpour
you know, just about that sort of, you know, exponential growth of all this horrible material. Some stats. Stats have it that, you know, the AI generated porn images of children have just risen crazily. In 2025, over 3,000 AI generated sexual abuse videos were recorded, an increase of over 26,000% compared with the previous year alone. You know, this is according to the Internet Watch Foundation. How convinced are you that actually AI can be, you know, prevented from accelerating this harm?
- [34:12]
Baroness Biban Kidron
Listen, it absolutely can. And I was talking to one of the godfathers of AI last week, and we were talking about this, and one of the things he said which really just caught my imagination, he said, you know what? B ban he says to get rid of 90, 95% is, you know, virtually marginal. You know, it would be so easy. The last 5% would be difficult but worth doing. And I think that that 95%, why aren't we already at the 95%? Why are we rolling out products without checking or insisting that they test for the creation of AI child sexual abuse? Why is it that we're actually putting products on the market, not just for children, but for all of us that can create these things and not actually going, hang on a minute. Is this the world we want to live? Because, Christiane, I have to tell you, last week, I got a letter from the pet, from a parent whose child. Her image was scraped and it was sent to a misogynist group who used it for collective masturbation. It cannot be that we live in a world where children cannot actually have their image posted in public, because, first of all, you lose the children, then the same things happen to women. You take the women out of the public square. In the end, it's not a public square if we can't be that. So I think the Truth is we have to make some decisions now and say these guys are making a lot of money out of the dark side of their business. They're making a lot of money out of untruth, out of child sexual abuse, out of actually getting rid of our jobs, our future. And I talk to a lot of children and they say, you know, out of the words of the young come wisdom, because they say, I don't understand what is so efficient of putting us out of work, of taking our future away, of taking all the truth and the commonality of life. Yeah. And then putting all the money into Silicon Valley. That doesn't seem like an efficiency.
- [36:37]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah. I mean, it is an extraordinary tale. And are you optimistic, in a word?
- [36:43]
Baroness Biban Kidron
Do you know what? I am. And I really try and show that in the book. You know, there's some pretty hard stories there. But the last chapter is really about what we have to insist we do live in democracies, a lot of us. And, you know, I've been doing this thing recently. I've spoken to a lot of people. I've asked, did they vote on tech policy last time? No one, Christiane, no one has actually put their hand up. So we have to make this a public issue. And we have to remember that in an attention economy, our attention is the fuel.
- [37:19]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, you've had a very good last word there, Biban Kidron, thank you so much. And we'll be right back after this short break.
- [37:32]
Craig Ferguson
Craig Ferguson is going coast to coast to unpack what it really means to be an American today.
- [37:37]
John Kerry
What could possibly go wrong?
- [37:38]
Craig Ferguson
CRAIG ferguson, American on purpose. New episodes now streaming on the CNN app. Go to CNN.com watch to subscribe or log in with your TV provider.
- [37:47]
Sanjay Gupta
I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. Dr. Darby Saxby is a psychologist at USC who has been researching what happens to men as they become dads. How do their brains change? How do their hormones change? What happens to their mental health and to their other relationships?
- [38:07]
Darby Saxby
Men are built with the brain architecture that can adapt to parenthood. I think of caring and parenting not just as traits that you're born either being good at or not, but as skills that you can hone through time and repetition and practice. And so women are really socialized to expect to occupy a primary parenting role. And we don't necessarily raise our boys. And with that objective in mind, listen
- [38:37]
Sanjay Gupta
to Chasing Life streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [38:47]
Christiane Amanpour
Now, to the feuding over how to best mark America's birthday. This Fourth of July will mark a huge milestone, 250 years since its founding. But what you might not know is that the two organizations tasked with planning the celebrations are locked in a tense dispute with the president. At the center, the Atlantic journalist Michael Shearer has been closely monitoring how it's unfolded and what he calls America's ugly birthday battle, as he tells Michelle Martin now.
- [39:17]
Michelle Martin
Thanks, Christiane. Michael Scherer, thanks so much for talking with us.
- [39:20]
Michael Shearer
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [39:21]
Michelle Martin
So you've been covering this whole issue around the festivities, how we're going to acknowledge Celebrate America's 250th. You've been covering this for more than a year. But before we get into the conflicts around it, tell us the original idea. It's my understanding that Congress created the America 250 Commission a decade ago.
- [39:42]
Michael Shearer
Some of your viewers might remember the bicentennial in 1976. President Ford, coming out of Watergate, tried to make it a very unifying event. And there were nationwide celebrations that were remembered for years afterwards. In 2016, Congress saw the 250th coming up, a quarter millennia for the country, and, and decided it would fund an, a similar celebration. And the idea was to come up with events, come up with branding, get the American people involved, have contests, all kinds of things like that. And that that planning proceeded for about eight years until President Trump was re elected. And when he was reelected, he was reelected on a platform that included his own ideas for what, what the country should be doing for America's 250th celebrations. And, and that's sort of where the current story begins.
- [40:34]
Michelle Martin
So Freedom250, that's President Trump's idea. What was his vision? What is his vision?
- [40:41]
Michael Shearer
Yeah, well, so initially President Trump's team wanted to work with the congressionally authorized group. So Freedom250 only comes into existence late last year. Trump's vision was a bunch of other events. He was very interested in big spectacular events. He had talked during the campaign about having a great American state fair. And his initial planning would be in Iowa and it would last a year. And it would involve 50 state states participating. He's talked about a Patriot Games, which is a high school athletic competition. He's talking about a garden of American heroes, a statue garden that he actually talked about during his first term. And obviously he wants a big party in Washington for the Fourth of July. Over the course of the first year of his presidency, those plans started to shift. The, the, the Iowa State Fair idea just wasn't practical. So he basically took over a celebration on the national Mall that was being planned by the Smithsonian Institution and rebranded it the Great American State Fair. And then he added a bunch of other branded events, you know, that we had the UFC fight on his birthday a couple weeks ago. We have an IndyCar race. A number of his cabinet agencies are doing what are now branded as Freedom 250 events. Embassies around the world have been doing that. You know, banners with Trump's face on it have been unfurled outside buildings across D.C. national Park. Employees are being told to wear Freedom 250 pins. And so as we've gotten closer to the actual 250th, the plans have really started to expand and the President is increasingly sort of putting his mark on them.
- [42:24]
Michelle Martin
But what happened to America 250? I mean, this was a bipartisan effort, right? I mean, this wasn't something like the Democrats dreamed up or something that the Republicans dreamed up. It's my understanding that the America 250 Committee, all of it has always been bipartisan. So what happened? Was there, like, beef from the beginning?
- [42:42]
Michael Shearer
Not from the very beginning. So in the very beginning, they're actually getting along. The first few months of 2025, the president tells America250 that he wants to have a number of events in the spring of last year to set off a year of celebrations. And these include a visit to Fort Bragg to celebrate the Army's 250th birthday. Army starts before the country, and he wants a parade on his birthday in Washington D.C. to celebrate the Army's 250th. He wanted celebrations for the Navy and the Marines. There were some other speaking events. And initially America250, this bipartisan group says, sure, we'll work with you. They allowed President Trump to raise money from private donors through the America 250 apparatus. So, you know, companies like Coinbase or Palantir or Lockheed Barton, who paid for the parade, were giving money actually to America 250 and they worked together to get $150 million in appropriations as part of the one big beautiful bill act that would go to the 250th celebrations. Then in July of last year, the President goes to Iowa to kick off this, you know, year long celebration, the 250th birthday. And at that speech says, speaking of Congressional Democrats, I hate them, but all
- [43:59]
Donald Trump
of the, all of the things that we've given. And they wouldn't vote only because they hate Trump. But I hate them too. You know that. So it's sort of the. I hate. I really Do I hate them?
- [44:12]
Michael Shearer
And he was particularly upset at that point at, you know, obstruction on his legislative agenda. But that was rather alarming for the America 250 supporters. People were waving America 250 signs in the audience when that happened. And that was an event that was technically paid for by America 250. And so it began the process of this divorce where America250 organizers said, we're not comfortable with this becoming too political. Why don't we make it so that you focus on certain events and we'll focus on other events, and we just agree on how to divide up this money that Congress has appropriated? And in the late summer of 2025, they actually came to an agreement roughly about what the programming would be, how the money would be divided. And within months, that agreement had fallen apart.
- [45:00]
Michelle Martin
Why did it fall apart? I mean, is it about the money or is it just to be blunt about it, that President Trump just doesn't play well with others?
- [45:11]
Michael Shearer
Yeah, I think money was a big part of it. I think as the president's plans for these celebrations expanded, it became clear that he wasn't going to be raise all the money he might have wanted or that was originally budgeted from private sources. And there was this $150 million pot. And so initially, when that. When that bill passes, the sort of working agreement is that about 100 million of it is going to go to America 250 projects, and 50 million of it will go to White House projects. By late last year, that had flipped. And America250 is told, you're only getting 50 million, they sign a memorandum of understanding with the Interior Department who is distributing that money. And under the agreement, interior would transfer $50 million to America 250 for its programming. This is down from the initial hope of 100. And then even that falls apart. 25 million is transferred in early January, but the other 25 million never comes. And when I went to the Interior Department with this in the White House and said, why? Why have you broken this agreement? You. You may. They started questioning, really without basis, the spending of America 250, the congressionally authorized group, and started attacking basically their integrity, that this is wasteful. The consultants were taking the money, that they're not going to light money on fire. Ironically, there are people who are supporters of America250 who say Freedom250 is doing exactly that, that, you know, it's Trump's consultants and campaign don't Campaign vendors who are taking in all that money through the Freedom250 planning efforts. And so now we have basically this. This war of words between two groups who both say they're focused on uniting the entire country over the coming weeks to celebrate the nation's birthday.
- [46:56]
Michelle Martin
So let's go back to the fact that the original group, the America250 group, is bipartisan. It was set up to be bipartisan. There are Republican members. What do they say about all this? Because presumably a lot of them are still involved. And in fact, some of them, as I understand it, I guess they're called commissioners. We're Trump supporters.
- [47:18]
Michael Shearer
So there's two tiers of those members on the commission. There are elected leaders who are our commissioners, and then there's an executive board who are made up of Republican and Democratic appointees of the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate. So, you know, the speaker of the House gets a certain number of appointees. The minority leader in the House gets a certain number of appointees. Republicans members have expressed concern about this money never being delivered. Lisa Murkowski, who's been very involved in the commission, a senator from Alaska, questioned Burgum in a recent hearing about why the other 25 million had not been delivered.
- [47:58]
Michelle Martin
As Bergen being the Interior secretary.
- [48:00]
Michael Shearer
That's right, the interior secretary. And Bergam basically said in that hearing, look, it's not up to me. The White House is handling this. I'll talk to them and find out what's going on. This is, this is really a White House matter, even though the money's coming from my agency. So there is definitely concern from elected Republicans. But then within the commission of the appointed members, there is significant frustration about the attacks on their basic integrity, you know, on the, on their ability to handle public money. There's a lot of anger from both Republicans and Democrats inside America 250 at any suggestion that anything. What they've been doing is divisive or partisan or not looking out for the taxpayers whose money they're spending. But, but there's not much of that happening in public because we're really, you know, a week away or so from the, the pinnacle of these celebrations. And we're going to have America 250 events in New York and Philadelphia and Los Angeles, lots of smaller events around the country. We're going to have lots of smaller Freedom 250 events. And then, and then all the celebrations in the Washington area are being put on by Freedom250. And so everybody's sort of, you know, biting their tongue for the moment to see if we through this.
- [49:13]
Michelle Martin
Are they, though? Because one of the Things that I think has gotten a lot of people's attention who may not be following this particularly closely was this concert that the President wanted to put on Freedom250 and that a number of entertainers. Well, actually, I don't even think. I think most of them withdrew. I mean, they withdrew within days, in some cases hours of having been announced. Tell us what happened there and why did it unfold that way?
- [49:43]
Michael Shearer
Well, that's part of this confusion. I mean, you know, one of the remarkable things about Freedom 250 is that they have done everything they can to mimic America 250 in almost every way. You know, America 250 has a pretty extensive online store where you can buy America 250 merchandise. Freedom 250 basically mirrors that store exactly. Almost every piece of merchandise you get with the America250 logo, you get with Freedom250 logo. Trump's campaign vendors is the one producing those items. And so I think there was a lot of confusion. This event on the National Mall was originally a Smithsonian event. It was going to be a government event. So what happened was once the President realized he couldn't have his year long state fair in Iowa, he decided to move it to the National Mall to make it just a few weeks. And he basically told the Smithsonian that I'm going to use your permit replacing what would have been the Smithsonian Festival of Festivals. And as part of it, just like at any other state fair that you go to, there were going to be musical acts. Now, the memo never got to the musical acts, that this was not the government putting it on anymore or a bipartisan commission putting it on. This was the President's team in this new nonprofit called Freedom250. And so once they realized that, and they realized the political overtones, they started to back out. The President became very upset, canceled all the musical acts, sort of confirmed their worst fears and announced that he would hold a kickoff rally instead. That he would call the rally to end all rallies. That would be basically a MAGA political Trump rally.
- [51:19]
Michelle Martin
Political rally, a typical Trump rally. So the funding, that money was already appropriated. So how is it possible that the President can just decide not to spend it?
- [51:33]
Michael Shearer
Yeah, there are two types of funding that America 250 got. It got annual appropriations. So it was getting 10, $15 million a year starting in 2016 to begin this planning. But then last year it sought a supplemental appropriation, a one time payment to really pay for a lot of the events this year. And that was added to the one big beautiful bill act that was a Republican only bill that passed that was drafted by the White House with Republicans in Congress. And the way that law was written, it said $150 million will be spent on the semi quincentennial celebrations. It did not name the organization that would get the money. And so that gave Interior and therefore the White House a lot of power over how it was actually spent.
- [52:17]
Michelle Martin
In the end, I want to go back to the Republicans, though, because again, Republicans have been participants in this all along. Interestingly enough, Kellyanne Conway, a very close Trump advisor in his first term. She is an America 250 commissioner. She told you that America's birthday party will be epic. And she says she's witnessed more collaboration than confrontation. I mean, is that just spin or how do you hear that?
- [52:44]
Michael Shearer
Well, her role at America250 is sort of the bridge builder right now because she is close to the president. She does talk to the president and she's tried to lower these tensions and she was definitely trying to do it when I spoke to her as well. In trying to deemphasize the divide that has happened. I mean, I think there's still a hope, hope from some people in the, on the America 250 Commission that Trump attends some of their events as well over the coming weeks. So far we haven't gotten any indication that that's going to happen. I doubt it will happen. But, but, but we don't know exactly how it will play out. We also really don't know how the president himself will behave over the next week and a half. You know, he's got two big speaking events, one on the National Mall this week, one on July 4th. He could make those unifying speeches about celebrating the whole country and bringing the country together in the spirit of Gerald Ford 1976. Or he could, you know, repeat what he said in Iowa and say, I hate Democrats. And, and those would, those would give a very different sheen on the, on, on the event. And, and there's really no way of predicting what he will decide to do.
- [53:59]
Michelle Martin
Michael Scheer, thank you.
- [54:01]
Michael Shearer
Thank you.
- [54:04]
Christiane Amanpour
And finally meet Merlin the Duck, the viral sensation and unofficial mascot of Mexico's World cup team. This friendly, feathered fiend has waddled into the hearts and minds of millions of adoring fans worldwide, but particularly in his home country, sporting his patriotism, loud and proud in his miniature football shirt, shirt and tiny top socks. And now his fame has reached new heights, trading the colorful streets of Mexico City for the grand halls of the presidential palace after he and the pet's owners were invited for a very special meeting with none other than President Claudia Sheinbaum herself. And today, Mexico celebrates a perfect pass out of the group stages after three wins. And no, no doubt Merlin would be a welcome cheerleader for their next game if not for FIFA's churlish ban on ducks and other animals inside the stadium. That's it for now. Thank you for watching. And goodbye from London.
- [55:11]
Sanjay Gupta
From the descendants of history makers involved in the Louisiana Purchase to the Lewis and Clark expedition, discover the untold stories of American expansion in the CNN original series this Land now stream on the CNN app.