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Trump University Settles Lawsuits; Donald Trump's Team of Relatives; Trump Presidency Looms over APEC Summit; French Conservatives Seeking Presidency; U.K. Teen Wins Battle to Have Body Cryopreserved. Aired 3-3:30a ET
Aired November 19, 2016 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CYRIL VANIER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): A sting out to the courtroom. The U.S. president-elect settles a series of lawsuits that will prevent him having to testify about Trump University. This as he makes several controversial picks for his national security team. We'll detail those in the show.
Plus: frozen for the future. A teen who died of cancer gets her wish to be cryogenically frozen.
From CNN World Headquarters, I'm Cyril Vanier. Welcome to our viewers around the world. CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.
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VANIER: U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump has chosen three controversial figures to join his administration when it takes power in January.
From left to right, retired Army general Michael Flynn as national security adviser, Republican senator Jeff Sessions as U.S. attorney general and Republican congressman Mike Pompeo as CIA director. CNN's Sara Murray has the details.
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SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Donald Trump unveiling the first layer of his national security team, a trio of picks signaling the president-elect has little interest in moderating the hard-line views he campaigned on.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: We have to be tough and we have to be strong.
MURRAY: Trump announcing retired General Michael Flynn for national security adviser, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Congressman Mike Pompeo for CIA director, each one of them known for their unyielding and at times controversial views.
LT. GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN (RET.), FORMER DIRECTOR, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: Yes, that's right. Lock her up.
MURRAY: Flynn has been lauded as a talented battlefield intelligence officer. But he could fuel concerns that Trump White House is a haven of intolerance. He's made a habit of voicing concern about Islam, which he once called more of a political ideology than a religion.
Sessions is known for his staunch anti-immigration positions in his two decades in the Senate, but he's also echoed Trump's calls for Hillary Clinton to face a special prosecutor for her use of a private e-mail server, a threat Sessions could turn into a reality if he's confirmed.
SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: The evidence indicates to me that this should be fully investigated. I cannot say Mr. Comey has not completed a full investigation, but it seems like he has not.
MURRAY: As for Pompeo, the House Intelligence Committee member has been a fierce critic of Clinton's handling of the 2012 attack in Benghazi.
REP. MIKE POMPEO (R), KANSAS: How come not a single person lost a single paycheck connected to the fact we had the first ambassador killed since 1979? How come no one has been held accountable to date?
MURRAY: The Kansas Republican arguing there was a cover-up surrounding Benghazi as the panel investigating the failed to find new evidence of wrongdoing on behalf of the Obama administration or Clinton.
Trump unveiling his picks with little pomp and circumstance, blasting out a press release with his selections as he remained ensconced in Trump Tower. The president-elect now set to hunker down at his gulf club in Bedminster for a weekend of nonstop meetings.
Among those on his schedule, 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools Michelle Rhee and General James Mattis.
A source tells CNN Romney has long wanted to serve as secretary of state, but a Cabinet post in a Trump White House would surprise many, given the tone between the two men during the campaign.
MITT ROMNEY (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud.
TRUMP: He's a sad case. He choked.
You know what a choke artist is?
MURRAY: The lingering question is whether Donald Trump would actually choose a more moderate Republican, a Democrat or even one of his former rivals to fill one of these top level cabinet positions or whether the series of marathon meetings this weekend is essentially just for optics -- Sara Murray, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE) VANIER: Donald Trump has also agreed to resolve three long-standing lawsuits against Trump University and it is going to cost him $25 million.
The settlement covers about 6,000 former students of the now-defunct real estate seminars and it also means Trump won't have to testify at a trial that was scheduled to start later this month.
Some alleged victims say they were hoodwinked by the program. The U.S. president-elect, however, did not admit any liability, even as he decided to settle the case. Here's how one of his lawyers described the deal.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There had been no determination of the merits of this case. Like in any settlement, there are risks that parties take if they want to go forward and proceed all the way to the end.
In this case, there were risks on both sides. But as I said we felt very confident in our position. But at the end, President-Elect Trump was prepared to set aside his personal interests and focus on the monumental task that he faces in bringing this country together and fighting for --
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- the important issues and all of the people that he represents. He wants to spend his time and energy, his focus, his talents, his ability on fighting for Americans as opposed to having to fight for himself in this trial.
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VANIER: Donald Trump's children played key roles on the campaign trail. And now that he is U.S. president-elect, it's not clear what position they will hold once he takes office. There's talk that they may take control of the family business empire but like many things Trump, that, too, is drawing controversy. Our Brian Todd explains.
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TRUMP: Our government will be honest, ethical and responsive.
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Donald Trump is in the White House, he plans to hand off his business holdings to his children. But there are growing signs of potential conflicts of interest. Trump's daughter, Ivanka, joined him in his meeting with Japan's prime minister.
MATTHEW SANDERSON, POLITICAL LAW ATTORNEY: What it looks like is he may be forming less of a team of rivals and more of a team of relatives. And that's a problem.
TODD: Like any business, Trump's empire is affected by policies set by the government. With his children playing key roles in his transition team, choosing the country's top policymakers, critics say, it's problematic.
DREW HARWELL, THE WASHINGTON POST: It's incredible. There are conflicts at every turn. Trump said that there will be his kids and public ambitions, a wall between them and there's no wall now.
TODD: The transition team says it will make sure all rules and regulations are followed.
Trump's business organization says this is how it plans to handle the ethical dilemma --
MICHAEL COHEN, TRUMP ORGANIZATION ATTORNEY: It's going to be placed into a blind trust.
TODD: But experts say your own children are not who most lawyers call a blind trust.
SANDERSON: It's not credible to say's a blind trust. In an actual blind trust, he would divest himself of all of the interests he holds. He would sell off his properties that he owns and he would put the proceeds into a trust that's run by an independent third party.
TODD: Trump himself has shown uncertainty.
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TRUMP: I don't know if it's a blind trust if Ivanka, Don and Eric run it.
But is that a blind trust?
I don't know.
TODD: One of Trump's top supporters offers this assurance.
RUDY GIULIANI, (R), FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: There will have to be a wall between them with regard to government matters.
TODD: Also complicated, the case of Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is playing a trusted role in the transition team. He runs a newspaper and a the billion-dollar real estate company.
Could Trump give a top post to his son-in-law?
SANDERSON: It could be legally questionable and politically perilous for him to choose someone close to him and the number-one qualification being that they're related to Donald Trump.
TODD: Why doesn't Trump turn his entire business empire over to an outside third-party trustee?
MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, AUTHOR: Donald trusts no one more than he trusts Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric. The problem that Donald has is he doesn't trust many people.
TODD (voice-over): One glaring physical example of President-elect Trump's potential conflicts of interest is here, just a few blocks from the White House, the Trump International Hotel. Trump Hotels is the tenant.
Once he becomes president, Trump is going to be the landlord because the property is rented from the federal government.
Trump is going to be in a position to hire and fire the head of the General Services Administration, the GSA, which oversees the property. And Trump could conceivably be in a position to negotiate the rent here with himself.
Neither the Trump Organization or the Trump transition team would comment on that. The GSA told CNN it will work to address potential conflicts of interest with the building -- Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
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VANIER: The incoming U.S. president will also likely be a hot topic at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru. U.S. President Barack Obama landed there a few hours ago for the summit. World leaders are expected to throw Mr. Obama some questions over free trade and trade agreements, which President-Elect Donald Trump opposed throughout his campaign. Athena Jones has more from Lima.
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ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Obama arrives here in Lima, facing some difficult conversations during this APEC summit. There's no denying that the White House expected a very different result from the election. President Obama said many times that he did not expect Donald Trump to be elected president.
Well, now that Donald Trump has been elected president, there's a lot of uncertainty about the direction that U.S. foreign policy is going to take in the coming years.
One thing we know is that President-Elect Trump has been skeptical of a series of international agreements. Chief among them is the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He has called that 12-nation trade deal a disaster.
We know from congressional leaders on Capitol Hill that that deal is not going to come up for a vote in the lame duck session of Congress. That means that it is dead. That's a big blow to the Obama administration's efforts to rebalance foreign policy in the U.S. toward the Asia Pacific region, which is a powerhouse on the economic front and important militarily as well.
The White House says that the president will try to make the case that the U.S. --
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JONES: -- should remain engaged in that region. But it's unclear just how effective he's going to be able to be. We know that China stands ready to fill the void left by the failure
of the TPP with its own massive multi-nation trade deal. The White House says that that deal would lower or eliminate tariffs but wouldn't have the same high standards, standards protecting things like intellectual property, the environment, labor standards.
It wouldn't have those same high standards that the TPP has. And it would leave U.S. companies at a disadvantage. So this is going to be potentially a difficult trip for President Obama, who is scheduled to meet with China's president, Xi Jinping, and Australia's prime minister Malcolm Turnbull during the trip. Back to you.
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VANIER: Some Peruvians are also making it clear that they do not want the American president in their country. They marched in Lima on Friday, chanting, "Obama out and no to TPP." That stands for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, a controversial trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim countries.
It has been agreed upon but not yet ratified.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We are here because we want our voices to be heard very clearly that we are against the APEC summit. It's a meeting of world leaders that are not going to do anything but sign agreements that favor the big world powers, the countries they come from and nothing for Latin American states.
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VANIER: President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to kill the trade deal. Top U.S. lawmakers say it won't be pushed through Congress before Obama's time is up.
Moving on now, Saudi Arabian state news says the Saudi-led military coalition has declared a 48-hour cease-fire in Yemen. It is set to begin in about an hour, which would be noon in Yemen. The coalition says the cease-fire could be renewed if the Houthi rebels and their allies actually honor it.
Reports say humanitarian aid will be delivered to conflict areas during the cease-fire.
And the U.N. says rebel groups in Eastern Aleppo and Syria have agreed in principle to allow in food and medicine but Syria and its main ally, Russia, has not approved the relief plan.
On Friday, 46 people were killed in the fourth day of relentless government airstrikes on East Aleppo and more than 1,000 have died in the besieged city since the cease-fire collapsed two months ago.
We are about to show you a video that you might find disturbing. It shows rescuers trying to save a little girl from under the rubble. Sadly, scenes like this one have become routine in Aleppo. Half of her body appears to be trapped.
You can see her expression of complete shock, almost emotionless.
Sadly, scenes like this one have become all too common in Syria and especially in Aleppo.
It appears the Zika virus will cause trouble for years to come but now World Health officials are explaining why removing Zika from its list of public health emergencies is the best way to fight the disease moving forward.
Plus: a dying teenager gets her wish to have her body frozen.
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VANIER (voice-over): We want to show you pictures now from a makeshift refugee camp in Greece. Attackers threw gas bombs there on Thursday, setting a cabin on fire. At least two migrants were wounded.
The night before, hundreds of migrants had been on a rampage, smashing cars and shops. They were frustrated that they had been waiting for months for a response on their asylum applications.
In France, the first round of primary voting begins on Sunday. Voters will whittle down a field of seven candidates to just two contenders for the Conservative Party nomination. Whoever wins that could be a favorite to win this presidency.
At the front of the pack right now is Alain Juppe, mayor of Bordeaux and a former prime minister. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has been well behind for months but he has been closing in over the last month. He is vying for right center voters with a hardline platform.
But the biggest surprise has been Sarkozy's former prime minister, Francois Fillon. His number has just made a huge jump in recent weeks as he eyes an upset. The candidates made their case to the country on Friday.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): (INAUDIBLE) and I will not relinquish this. We're not all the same. We're not from the same mold. We will not all assimilate in the same mold. We have different origins, different skin colors and different religions. This is strength and this must be respected.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): It's this system that I want to change and giving back to the country its liberty. It makes me smile that I'm tagged with a liberal label, as one would once in the Middle Ages paint crosses on the doors of lepers.
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VANIER: And whoever eventually wins the nomination, their greatest test may come from her, from Marine Le Pen and her National Front party. They have been galvanized by Donald Trump's recent victory in the U.S. and they hope to use a similar populist message to win in France in next year's presidential election.
The World Health Organization declared that the Zika virus is no longer a global public health emergency. But the concern over the virus is far from over. The mosquito-borne illness caused widespread fear when it was linked to pregnant mothers and birth defects in Brazil earlier this year.
WHO officials say the change in Zika's status will help them focus now on a long-term approach to fighting the disease.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are not downgrading the importance of Zika. In fact, by placing this as a longer-term program of work, we're sending the message that Zika is here to stay and WHO's response is here to stay in a very robust manner.
We are dealing with long-term issues here, we're dealing with management of neurological complications in children and adults. We're dealing with family planning issues. We're dealing with health system issues.
We're dealing with maternal reproductive health issues and we're dealing with a long and comprehensive research and development agenda that needs to be multiyear and has been published by WHO just last month.
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VANIER: A word of caution: pregnant women are still being urged to take great precautions in mosquito-prone areas.
A British teenager who lost a battle with cancer has won her fight to have her body cryogenically frozen. CNN's Samuel Burke explains the legal case and the science behind it.
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SAMUEL BURKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A final wish from a young British girl just 14 years old, who knows she won't survive the rare form of cancer she is battling.
"I have been asked to explain why I want this unusual thing done. I'm only 14 years old and I don't want to die. But I know I'm going to. I think being cryopreserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even in hundreds of years' time.
"I think that in the future they might find a cure for my cancer and wake me up. I want to have this chance. This is my wish."
The girl's divorced parents disagreed with each other about carrying this out, the father writing, "Even if the treatment is successful and she is brought back to life in, let's say, 200 years, she may not find any relative and she might not remember things and she may be left in a desperate situation, given that she is only 14 years old and will be in the United States of America."
Friday we learned the judge allowed the procedure to be carried out a few weeks ago. The girl's lawyer said it wasn't revealed to the public initially out of respect for the family.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Having a very experienced children's solicitor involved and in addition to that, the medical professionals and a --
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- social worker, who happened to be on the case already, enabled the judge to be confident that this was an articulate, intelligent girl, who had clearly thought very hard about what she wanted.
BURKE: To cryogenically freeze a body, the patient should be pronounced dead as soon as possible after the clinical death. So when this young girl died here in London on October 17th, the first step was to immediately cool the body using an ice bath.
Then the blood is flushed out and replaced with a special non-toxic anti-freeze to prevent ice crystals forming, which would damage the cells. After that, the body is packed in dry ice for transportation. And when it arrives at the final destination, the body is slowly cooled down to even lower temperatures over several days and then placed in a storage tank filled with liquid nitrogen.
Many experts say cryogenics has never been proven to work, remaining in the realm of science fiction.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) cryonic (ph) patients are refugees from (INAUDIBLE) because they won't survive if they stay here. And it's a very uncertain trip to the future. But that might still may be better to be in (INAUDIBLE) future than being dead.
BURKE: There are only three cryogenic centers in the world, Moscow, Arizona, and Michigan, where this young girl's body is now, with her hopes that it won't be her final resting spot -- Samuel Burke, CNN, London.
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VANIER: A new series of satellites are about to be launched from the United States. That's happening tomorrow. And they should make your weather forecast a lot more precise. Meteorologist Derek Van Dam understandably is very excited about this. He is joining us now from the CNN National Weather Center.
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: And you should be, too, Cyril, because you are a father, I'm a soon-to-be father what if you and your family had more time to prepare for a tornado or flash flood or hurricane or cyclone?
Well, get a load of this. We are about to revolutionize the way weather is looked at from the sky. The U.S., in conjunction with NOAA, the National Weather Service, and NASA is launching GOES-R, a series of satellites that will bring us in to the future.
This is a picture taken outside of NASA's Cape Kennedy or Cape Canaveral, Florida, space center. We went behind the scenes to get a sneak peek at what the satellite means to you. Take a look.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This spacecraft will impact 300 million people a day.
VAN DAM (voice-over): This is GOES-R, the next-generation of U.S. weather satellites that will revolutionize the way you get your daily forecasts. The information from this satellite will be like going from analog to ultra HD resolution with one flip of a switch.
This is what weather satellite imagery used to look like, grainy black and white images that were hard to read. And this is what it will look like now with this super high-resolution imagery from the GOES-R. The first weather satellite, Tiros I, was small and circular with two television cameras that polar orbited the Earth.
By the 1970s, NASA began the GOES missions, geostationary satellites that continuously monitored the U.S. instead of circling the Earth. Today's GOES-R satellite will also have an even more advanced sensor that will record images simultaneously in 16 different wavelengths, 11 more than our current GOES satellite.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In six months it will return more data than all the other U.S. geostationary weather satellites have downloaded in the past 40 years.
VAN DAM (voice-over): For several years it has been like we upgraded our forecast models to high definition but were still shooting with standard definition cameras. But now by starting with a higher resolution image, with more detail, the goal of prediction models meteorologists use will instantly improve.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a severe storm somewhere in the United States over a 1,000-by-1,000 kilometer area they can take a picture every 30 seconds. So that means as you string those together, you can have almost a not quite real-time movie of a storm as it's developing.
VAN DAM (voice-over): But it's not just earthly disasters the satellite is protecting us from. The spacecraft also has a solar ultraviolet imager that will monitor what is called space weather or rather eruptions from the sun that can impact Earth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trillions of dollars of our economy is weather related or can be impacted by weather and the GOES satellite helps to provide warning.
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VAN DAM: All right. So really this rocket and the satellite that it contains has a long way to go. It has to get to 36,000 kilometers above us, in space, before it reaches the operational altitude. A lot of nervous scientists --
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VAN DAM: -- are hoping that this thing gets it right; $11 billion and a lot of heads will roll if this thing fails. So a lot riding on this moment in time.
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VANIER: Absolutely. We will be watching the launch tomorrow. Derek Van Dam from the International Weather Center -- and you do not know. He's been telling me about this for days the love and care he has put in to this story.
I get very excited about this story.
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VANIER: Derek Van Dam geeking out on the set tonight.
Thanks a lot.
Now look at this, California, cool pictures out of California, there's a slight mystery to solve.
Is this snow or is this something else?
People wondered. Actually it was kind of an enormous bubble bath. It was fire retardant because a system malfunctioned.
VAN DAM: Is that you?
VANIER: No. It is not me. It's some guy in California who likes fire retardant. There was no fire, fortunately. So it was all fun and games.
VAN DAM: Are you sure it was not a large nightclub with a massive foam party taking place?
VANIER: Just some system malfunction.
It happens.
U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump was famous long before he ran for office and his New York home, Trump Tower, was, too. But the recent high-level meetings have created a new star in the building. Our Jeanne Moos takes a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Donald Trump announced for president it was Trump Tower's escalators that became a star, replicated on "The Simpsons," a selfie magnet.
But now it's the elevator's turn to shine and shine they do in all of their golden glory. Reflecting in their mirrored splendor and closing doors the hallowed press assigned a document that job seekers and dignitaries, going up and down to visit the president-elect.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's going on upstairs?
Why are you meeting with Mr. Trump.
MOOS (voice-over): Like so many, the CEO of FedEx preferred fiddling with his phones to answering questions. Those who about to ascend tend to wave or smile or give a thumbs-up in lieu of words.
Sometimes the waiting journalists have to settle for a picture of the luminaries above, like South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and the four elevators require camera people to develop strategies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's kind of like the elevator version of the shell game where you don't know which elevator he's going to come out of.
MOOS (voice-over): And heaven help the shooter...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there are two elevators at the same time, and it's number one and number four, then you're like, which way do you go?
MOOS (voice-over): Even when it was only the one and the two arriving simultaneously, the crews almost missed Rudy Giuliani. CSPAN is now streaming the elevator cam live.
Although it is not as cuddly as the panda cam, you do get variety, from Trump's ex-wife, Marla Maples, to the pizza delivery guy, these superstar elevators shine so bright, no wonder Judge Jeanine Pirro (ph) is wearing sunglasses.
May their golden glow bathe a CEO who elected to use them to reflect before meeting the president-elect -- Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
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VANIER: Stay with CNN, we will be back with the headlines in just a moment.
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