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Trump Falsely Claims Gag Order Keeps Him From Testifying; Austin Addresses Potential For Civilian Casualties In Rafah; Another Round Of Severe Storms, Flooding To Hit Texas. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired May 03, 2024 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:39]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Friday, May 3rd.

Right now on CNN THIS MORNING:

Donald Trump back in court this morning for his criminal hush money trial, insisting he is very happy with how things are going.

President Biden making it clear he will not change his Israel policy, protests or not.

And heavy rain and flooding forcing mandatory evacuations in Texas. Residents told if they don't leave, there'll be stranded for days.

(MUSIC)

HUNT: Five a.m. here in Washington, D.C. A live look at your Capitol on this Friday morning.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Happy Friday. It's wonderful to have you with us.

With Donald Trump's hush money trial set to resume in just a few hours, we are waiting on the judge, Juan Merchan, to rule on new allegations that the former president violated his gag order again, in a pretrial hearing yesterday, prosecutors pointed to four of Trumps comments since last Monday, when the trial resumed, Trumps attorneys tried to paint Stormy Daniels, former lawyer Keith Davidson, as a serial celebrity extortionist.

The day ended with the jury hearing a series of secret recordings that were made by Michael Cohen, and one of them was with Cohen's former boss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: I need to open up a company for the transfer of water info regarding our friend David, so that I'm going to do that right away. Ive actually come up, I've spoken --

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Give it to me. COHEN: I've spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up and I spoke to Allen about it when it comes time for the financing, which will be --

TRUMP: What financing?

COHEN: We'll have to pay --

TRUMP: So pay with cash.

COHEN: No, no, no, no, no.

I got -- no, no.

TRUMP: Check.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HUNT: No, no, check.

After court, Trump address the gag order. He falsely claimed it's the reason he won't testify in the trial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, I'm not allowed to testify. I'm under a gag order, I guess. I can't even testify. And we're going to be appealing the gag order. I'd love to answer that question.

But I'm not allowed to testify. This is a judge who's totally conflicted, has me under an unconstitutional gag order. Nobody has ever had that and we don't like it. And it's not fair.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. Joining me now to discuss is Stef Kight, politics reporter for "Axios".

Stef, good morning. Nice to see you.

STEF KIGHT, POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: Good morning.

HUNT: Setting aside. So, this has never happened before. Setting aside the fact that, you know, a criminal trial for a former president the United States is also never happened before. Trump there basically trying to, and again, this is not true, right? He is free to testify in the trial in his own defense. It is up to him whether or not to do that, but it does look like he is looking for an excuse because it does seem like certainly every lawyer I've talked to has said that would be a really bad idea.

But he doesn't seem to want to look weak by bowing out of that.

KIGHT: It feels like a very Trump response, honestly, to hear him first saying things are going so well, I'm really happy with where this case is going. I feel like things are know where I want them to be.

And then also to then say, this is very unfair, you know, they're preventing me from speaking. They're preventing me from testifying, which again to your point is not -- is not true. So, you see Trump trying to paint both narratives, both that he is a winner and he's strong, he's not week, but also continuing to put out this narrative of I am a victim of a justice system that is out to get me and hear all the ways that I'm being treated unfairly.

HUNT: Yeah. What -- what stood out to you about what we saw in court yesterday? Because I mean, it really is kind of dragging us all collectively down into the gutter, I guess. They were -- they were trying to say that Trump was the victim here. What were your takeaways?

KIGHT: I mean, yeah, we are being dragged back into this case, which again was first the thing back before the 2016 election. You know, we talk about, we don't want to rehash 2020 sometimes and now were going back to 2016 time period. It really its the details that we got out of yesterday that was really remarkable hearing the audio from these phone calls and how clear it is that there were real discussions about paying people back over -- over this whole situation. I think it really is a level of detail that we've seen here.

We saw report -- reports of people in the courtroom, is that the jury seemed very interested in listening to the audio that Trump seemed agitated.

[05:05:02]

So its really the level of specificity hearing things and being reminded of what actually went down on in a story line that many people maybe haven't really heard all the details on.

HUNT: Right. So as we go forward into today, Trump has been denying that he is sleeping during the proceedings. He says: Contrary to the news media, I don't fall asleep during the crooked D.A.s, which onto especially not today. I simply close my beautiful blue eyes sometimes listen intensely and take it all in.

We should note, CNN has reported simply that Trump has been observed to be closing his eyes in the courtroom.

But clearly he doesn't -- he's a little worried about the optics.

KIGHT: Yeah. Again, back to this whole idea of he's trying to paint a certain image. He doesn't want to be seen as weak and you know, its he was probably embarrassed by the reports that he was falling asleep in court and also, you know, he's always loved the sleepy Joe tagline. He wants to push back against that.

You always have to remember this is all in the context of a campaign. He knows that he has to take every moment of media coverage to try to spin it in his favor. In the middle of a closely contested election year, where Joe Biden is free to go to all the battleground states, and Trump is not. And so every single moment he has to defend himself, defend his image. He is going to take all right.

HUNT: All right. Stef Kight for us, to kick off this morning -- Stef, thank you. I really appreciate it.

All right. Up next here, Defense Secretary Austin, warning more civilian deaths in Gaza could loom in the horizon.

Plus, significant flooding and destructive tornadoes in Texas. The severe threat not over yet.

And just a few minutes from now, China's space race with United States heating up.

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[05:10:48]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD AUSTIN, DEFENSE SECRETARY: What we've asked, what we've highlighted for the Israelis is that it's really important to make sure that civilians that are in that battle space move, move, move out of the battle space before any activity is conducted. There's a good chance that without taking the right measures that civilians will be -- you know, civilians -- we'll see a lot more civilian casualties going forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. That was Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a short time ago talking about the potential ramifications of Israel's expected ground invasion of Rafah. The population in southern Gaza has swelled to 1.4 million people since the start of Israel's war with Hamas, many of them living in refugee camps.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to go ahead with an incursion into Rafah. But sources inside the Biden ministration tells CNN they don't believe in offensive is imminent. Secretary Austin also noting yesterday that, quote, right now, the conditions are not favorable to any kind of operation.

Let's bring in Ben Wedeman.

Ben, good morning to you.

Is Netanyahu heeding President Biden's warnings about invading Rafah? How is the Israeli prime minister balancing the pressure that he's feeling from the international community on the one hand, and his own government and coalition on the other?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, he's certainly seems to be speaking out of sort of two sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he has said that the Rafah operation is going to go ahead with or without a deal.

The problem with that is if a deal is reached, an essential part of a deal for the release of hostages is a pause in the fighting. Obviously, a Rafah operation which would be a major military operation can't happen under those circumstances.

Now, as we heard, the United States has real profound reservations about any such operation in Rafah and they've made it very clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu and other members of his government that the United States believes that A -- there needs to be a humanitarian planning in place of four people if they have to be moved to provide for them elsewhere, shelter sanitation, food, some sort of basic health care. And we've heard Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, saying that no plan is in place as far as the United States is concerned.

The United States has also made it clear that they don't believe a major military operation is the kind of thing that Israel should be doing in Rafah. They are suggesting much more targeted military operations to avoid civilian casualties, major civilian casualties. But at this point, if we go by the record of the last 210 days of that war, one thing the Israelis clearly do not excel out is avoiding civilian casualties.

HUNT: Tragic indeed, we heard from Austin, of course, a warning about more on that score.

Ben, we also learned yesterday that Hamas said in a statement that they're studying the latest ceasefire proposal. They characterize it as saying a quote, positive spirit, end quote.

What is the latest on the negotiations around a potential ceasefire and hostage deal?

WEDEMAN: Well, the Hamas seems to be changing its tune. Yesterday, we were reporting that another Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, who's based in Beirut had told Hezbollah TV that Hamas looked upon the Egyptian proposal in a negative light.

Now we're hearing from Ismail Haniyeh, a more senior Hamas official based in Qatar, that they're going to look at it in a positive spirits. So, certainly, there's a lot of pressure on Hamas, on Israel to somehow come to deal, to release the hostages, to at least temporarily halt the fighting.

[05:15:07]

But both sides seemed to be dealing with internal divisions that prevent them from doing that.

HUNT: All right. Ben Wedeman for us on the latest with the Israel- Gaza war -- Ben, thank you very much for your reporting. I really appreciate it.

All right. Any moment now, China will launch its mission to the moon, the unmanned rocket aims to go to the far side of the moon for the first time and bring back samples. China hopes this will be the first step to taking their astronauts to the moon. They're shooting to do that by 2030. CNN's Marc Stewart is in China at their space launch center and he is

standing by waiting for launch.

Marc, good morning to you.

MARC STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. Kasie.

Let me just say right off the top, we begin this relatively up close view because of an invite by Chinese government. It's such a big deal for China right now. Chinese leader Xi Jinping calling it his eternal dream.

So there are people from all over China who have gathered here around the space center on the beaches of Hainan Island to watch this lift off in about 13 minutes or so from now.

As you mentioned, its immediate priority is to collect some moon samples from the far side of the moon, but there is also this bigger goal of putting a human back on the moon sometime in the next decade by China, as well as creating some kind of lunar study station.

But case as you know, this is not just about science, politics, and national pride certainly intervene. The Chinese government maintains that their view towards space, toward the moon is peaceful, but as we have heard in recent weeks, NASA officials, including the administrator of NASA, Bill Nelson, there has been concern that China perhaps is going to use its civilian program for military reasons, even suggesting a takeover of the moon.

But nonetheless, all of that aside, there is a lot of excitement always seen as space launch is exciting, and that is the anticipation and the thrill that people here in China all over the nation are looking forward to in the minutes ahead, Kasie.

HUNT: Hey, Marc, can we talk for a second about the significance of the far side of the moon. I mean, that was really what makes this particular launched unique. No one has done that.

STEWART: Yeah. Right, so it is an area of the moon on the southern part, if my geography is correct, the southern part of the moon that is ripe for exploration. This is what is so interesting. Once the launch happens, it will take about four or five days for this rover of sorts, this lunar lander to get into the moons atmosphere, and that it has to basically spiral into the orbit.

It could take as many weeks into early June and then it will be able to land. But this part of the moon, the dark side of the moon, it just does not get a lot of exposure. I mean, that's why it's called that, it is just full of so much intrigue.

I should also tell you, we're starting to hear some thunderstorms here. So I think fingers are crossed that this launched still moves forward.

HUNT: Yeah, and it sounds like we've gotten a little bit of a delay here, so were going to keep an eye on that, but we really appreciate you being there for us. Marc, do keep us posted. Thank you.

All right. Ahead here, a state of emergency flooding forcing mandatory evacuations in parts of Texas. Plus, Donald Trump's shocking admission about the events of January 6.

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[05:22:58]

HUNT: All right, 22 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup.

An NYPD officer accidentally fired his gun while entering Hamilton Hall Tuesday night. That's at Columbia University and the officer police say was using a flashlight attached to the gun when it went off? No one was injured. The bullet went into a wall.

President Biden unveiling a $3 billion initiative to identify and replaced lead pipes across the country through 2026. He announced the plan in North Carolina, which is receiving $76 million for pipe upgrades.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Folks, protecting -- protecting people from lead pipe contamination is just one of our nation's most ambitious water agendas ever. We're upgrading old water mains, treatment plants. Some of them are as old as 100 years old here in America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Biden says that nearly 50 percent of the funding is going to go for disadvantaged communities.

All right. We've got another round of severe storms set to hit Texas after heavy rains and flash floods triggered evacuations and parts of the state. Take a look at this, a tornado touching down in Hawley, that's northwest of Abilene about 7 million -- wow, yikes 7 million people are now under flood threats from Texas to Louisiana today.

Our meteorologist Derek Van Dam is tracking all of it for us.

Derek, good morning.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah. Some of the river gauges within this area, specifically Liberty County, Texas, that's just northeast of Houston, have never seen this much water since 2017, September 2017. If you do your math, that's the days of hurricane Harvey. So that's really saying something.

Here's Livingston, Texas, drones view. And this is from the Trinity River. This is highway 59. Obviously impossible and you can see some semi-trucks caught within this. I mean, the term record -- record levels holds a lot of weight, especially when you consider the history of flooding across southeast Texas. But there are certainly some gauges that are forecast to reach an

approach that record territory. Here they are, we have ten river gauges across southeast Texas, just north of Houston that are currently experiencing major flooding, several other, dozens other that are currently in flood stage.

[05:25:11]

Look at these rainfall totals. This is over the past month, but this is impressive. We're topping two feet in many locations. That's got a cumulative effect and a downstream effect on all the tributaries. The bayous and the rivers that lead into, lets say, the Trinity River for instance, and that is why we are experiencing so much flooding across this area, not to mention the urban sprawl that is Houston metropolitan.

There's just so much pavement and on permeable surface that water has gotten nowhere to go, but up, and unfortunately causing the flooding -- I mean, look at this. This is the San Jacinto River near Humble, forecast to crest at 62 feet, currently at 53 feet, major flood stage for the next several days, and here's the Trinity River at Liberty. That is approaching the record levels there, and just incredible stuff.

Here's a look at what's to come for Houston and Southeast Texas. Unfortunately, more rain, a marginal risk or I should say a slight risk. That's a level two of three of flash flooding across this area where you see that shading in of yellow.

By the way, it's not confined just to Texas. The flood threat extends into portions of central and southern Louisiana at the moment.

And look at this forecast rainfall -- I mean, this is through the weekend. We need to take this seriously because rainfall totals here could exceed another half a foot. So you add that on the extremely saturated grounds, you saw the rainfall totals a moment ago, approaching 30 inches in some locations. That is going to have disastrous effects on the ground. Here's a look at that tornado that spawn in Holly, Texas.

Kasie, so much going on.

HUNT: Really tough stuff.

All right. Derek Van Dam, our meteorologist for us on this Friday -- Derek, thank you.

VAN DAM: Okay.

HUNT: All right. Up next here, Donald Trump heads back to court this morning with the judge poised to decide whether he violated his gag order again.

Plus, President Biden finally breaking his silence after a week of unrest on college campuses across the country.

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