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Washington Gunman Motivated by Fake News; Trump Unleashes Twitter Tirade Against China; Jury Deadlocked in Walter Scott Case; Italy's Prime Minister Stepping Down; Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired December 05, 2016 - 10:30   ET

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


[10:30:00] JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Podesta were involved in a child sex ring which all of that certainly is false.

Now, as I said, arrested and charged. The investigation continues. It also happens to be something this restaurant and its owner and its employees have been dealing with for weeks and weeks. In fact, there have been death threats.

The owner issued a statement just yesterday which says in part that they are not going to let this run them out of business. He said, "Comet Ping Pong is a beloved institution in Washington. We are heartened by the support and loyalty of our customers and our community and our life blood. And we will continue to serve them joyfully for decades to come and beyond."

So the problem, though, with all of this is that fanning the flames of the issues and the false facts that follow, the question really is how long it's going to take before there's enough public information out there and sunshine to put the whole thing to rest -- Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Joe Johns reporting live from Washington. Thank you.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Donald Trump unleashing on China. Where else but on Twitter. Mr. Trump tweeting last night quote, "Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency, making it hard for our companies to compete, heavily tax our products going into their country? Or to build massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don't think so."

Those tweets coming just two days after Mr. Trump's controversial phone call with Taiwan's president.

CNN's Alexandra Field live in Beijing with China's reaction. Good morning.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Well, this has certainly raised concerns right here in Beijing. Look, President- elect Donald Trump's preferred method of communication, Twitter, is blocked to the public of course here in China but you can count on the fact that leaders, that officials, got the message loud and clear. What they did not do was issue an immediate official response to these tweets that the president-elect had put out there.

Instead, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry did offer some remarks about those tweets when asked at a regularly scheduled briefing. And I've got to say that the response was measured considering those tweets. Here's part of what he said. He said, "The economic and trade relationship between China and the United States has been a highly mutually beneficial one or it wouldn't have developed this far. We don't want to speculate on the motivations behind President-elect Trump and his team's actions but we will make clear our stance when it comes to policies related to China."

The question that's being asked here in Beijing is what exactly will the policies related to China be under the Trump administration. They had all gotten used to hearing the tough talk that President-elect Donald Trump was espousing on the campaign trail. He had taken a hard line against Beijing that was playing well with the base, at home, domestically, but for the first time, following these tweets, we are seeing that people here in Beijing are taking this a little bit more seriously.

There was an op-ed in the "Global Times" saying that these tweets are generating more worry, more concern, that the Trump administration really would take a tougher economic stance against China. Previously, the same publication, the "Global Times," had run other op-eds in which they offered analysis saying that perhaps President- elect Trump was bluffing on the campaign trail, that certainly he's unpredictable but they had said that they did not expect that it would be in his interest to overturn international relationships.

They believe that he's more of an isolationist, that his focus was at home and they didn't think he was likely to antagonize China once he got to the White House. These tweets, that phone call with Taiwan, a very controversial phone call, have of course led some in Beijing to perhaps begin to step back, reconsider that and have a higher level of concern right now -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Alexandra Field reporting live from Beijing.

So this is why Trump's tweets on China matter. China is increasingly aggressive militarily. It's building islands in the South China Sea in disputed waters, and China is basing military systems, military aircraft there on those islands, that's according to U.S. officials.

It's already caused conflict with American military aircraft. This is what happened last year. CNN's Jim Sciutto was on board an American plane when China sent out a warning to U.S. personnel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the Chinese Navy. This is the Chinese Navy. Please go away quickly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. So with me now is Jim Sciutto.

Jim, what do you make of this? Is this just some factions becoming hysterical or do we need to worry?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No. It matters. It matters. A couple of things. One, China's a nuclear power. Second largest economy in the world. One of America's biggest trading relationships after Canada. And you've had a consistent U.S. policy towards China through multiple administrations, Republican and Democrat, and that is tough but cooperative where they can.

[10:35:05] Neither side wants to antagonize to the point where you lead the conflict. So now you have president-elect, and as Alexandra was saying, Chinese diplomats have been used to American presidential candidates going anti-China on the campaign trail. That's a natural message, it appeals to the base, et cetera. But once you're elected, as President Donald Trump has been, President-elect Donald Trump has been, then you're in a position to actually change policy.

So their ears are perking up to these statements now because in those statements, granted they're are coming out on Twitter, they seem to indicate not just a minor tweak in U.S. policy towards China but a major readjustment, a much more hostile outlook towards China and let's be clear. China today is, by its own right, increasingly hostile in some ways, building and militarizing those islands that we flew over in the South China Sea, more nationalistic.

If there was a time when making antagonistic comments from a U.S. president mattered, it would be right now. And that's why this is extremely concerning.

COSTELLO: But here's the thing, Jim. Here's the thing. Like Donald Trump ran on make America great again and he's going to rebuild respect in the world for the United States. He ran on a more muscular foreign policy. So his supporters are asking, why is this bad? We're finally standing up to China, a country that's frankly hurt America right in the economics?

SCIUTTO: Well, you could say hurt America. The truth is, and I'm not -- and trust me, I'm not advocating for China or for anything except that this is a mutual economic relationship that is enormous trade in both directions, right. Now there are trade disputes, there is no question. Currency manipulation is one that the Obama administration complained about for a number of years as well.

The question is, in the field of foreign affairs, do tweets of kind of somewhat angry statements, do those move nations? China is a country of one and a half billion people. It's got nuclear arms. It's got a big Navy. It's growing.

Is that an effective foreign policy? Is that going to move China? Or is it -- and this is something you'll hear Democrat and Republican, China diplomats and officials, et cetera, is that -- is this kind of statement going to change China's position towards the U.S. to the positive? That's a question. Or is it going to antagonize further? We'll have to watch it. But in the course of human history, have

those kinds of antagonistic statements moved nations that are powerful in their own right and have their own nationalistic axes to grind? That's the question. We'll have to place a diplomatic bet on how that changes things. It might feel good. It might feel good for all involved. Does it change things for the positive? We'll have to watch.

COSTELLO: Jim Sciutto, many thanks.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Coming up in the NEWSROOM, a lone holdout and a near mistrial. Will the jury be able to return a verdict in the Walter Scott murder case? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:42:28] COSTELLO: Right now the jury in the Michael Slager trial is deliberating for another day in Charleston, South Carolina. This after a lone juror refused to convict the ex-police officer, saying in a note to the judge, quote, "I still cannot without a reasonable doubt convict the defendant. I cannot and will not change my mind." And just moments ago the judge took questions from the jurors.

So let's talk about this. With me now is CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Laura Coates.

Thanks for being here, Laura.

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Thank you.

COSTELLO: So this lone juror, what if this lone juror cannot -- you know, he says he won't change his mind. So does that mean it's a hung jury? And it's a retrial?

COATES: It could very well mean that. I mean, you have this requirement that verdicts be unanimous. And we do that because out of fairness of justice we want people to have unanimous verdicts. And, you know, it's the one thing that a prosecutor is always afraid of, that little seed of reasonable doubt and that same seed of doubt is what a defense attorney will hold on to for dear life.

Remember, Carol, you've got 55 witnesses over a five-week period. There's always room for reasonable doubt. You and I and the rest of the world has seen this videotape and it seems to leave no other conclusion other than guilt. However, all you need is one juror to have enough doubt to say, listen, I think that this is inappropriate. And remember, that note from the juror goes on to talk about, listen, I don't expect my other jurors to follow my thinking or change their minds, and my heart does go out to the Scott family, that note says. But there is a seed of reasonable doubt for this juror.

COSTELLO: OK. And just to, like, refresh our viewers' memories, this ex-officer, he was fired over this shooting, right?

COATES: Yes.

COSTELLO: Yes. He stopped a man named Walter Scott because Walter Scott had this broken taillight. There was some sort of altercation, I don't know what it was, but Walter Scott got out of his car, he turned around and started running. The officer shot at him eight times. Mr. Scott was struck five times, three times in the back, and there's really no evidence of any physical altercation between the two men, correct?

COATES: Right. And even if you were to believe -- former Officer Michael Slager, that there was an altercation between the two men, 18 feet went by between the two men before he actually shot at or Mr. Scott. And I have to say that's the part people find completely unreasonable for anybody to find any sort of doubt here. 18 feet apart was when the officer first shot at Walter Scott. And remember, even the local union refused to pay this officer's legal fees in this case which normally is a real big signal that the officers aren't behind you either.

[10:45:06] But here, we seem to have a juror who says listen, there's something about this case that I don't find reasonable. And I think, Carol, one of the things that may be happening is the prosecution allowed the jury to examine or consider voluntary manslaughter in addition to murder, which leaves a little bit of room for a juror to say well, maybe the government's not convinced that this was somebody acting out of malice. There's some kind of room for us to doubt and maybe that's the reason this juror is holding out.

COSTELLO: Well, the officer in this case did take the stand which is quite unusual.

COATES: Yes.

COSTELLO: Usually lawyers don't allow their -- right? Their clients to take the stand but in this case, maybe it worked.

COATES: You know, what else could he have done? You've got the video. Their whole defense essentially was, I know you've seen the video, I know that with your own eyes, all you see is this narrative of a man who was shot in the back, shot at eight times, but listen, I had a fear for my life. I was afraid this man would come back towards me with a taser which of course doesn't really execute lethal force but a taser and I had to act appropriately.

And so his last line of defense was to take that stand and, Carol, it may have just worked. But there is a possibility with an 11-1 holdout in favor of conviction that any reasonable prosecutor would re-bring this case and again, in January, there's a federal trial against this same former officer for civil rights violations.

COSTELLO: Laura Coates, thanks for your insight. I appreciate it.

COATES: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: You're welcome. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl's legal team is trying a new strategy as they

prepare for a court martial. They're asking for a presidential pardon. A White House official now confirming to CNN a request for clemency has been made. It came after the election. The official did not comment on the status of that request.

Bergdahl is accused of walking away from his post in Afghanistan. He was later captured and held by the Taliban for nearly five years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:54] COSTELLO: All right, right to the Trump Tower and VP-elect Mike Pence and his wife.

MIKE PENCE, VICE-PRESIDENT ELECT: That our president-elect is bringing to assembling a government that's going to make America great again. Thank you all.

COSTELLO: All right. Before we went to that, Mike Pence was talking about Ben Carson being nominated as HUD secretary for Mr. Trump. We also understand that Donald Trump will formally announce General Mattis as his pick for secretary of Defense. That will happen tomorrow night in North Carolina. Other Cabinet picks will be announced this week. That's coming from the Trump transition team. Of course, we'll certainly keep you posted.

In other news this morning, the Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi says he will resign. This comes a day after suffering a resounding defeat in a referendum. It is a crushing setback for the establishment in Italy.

Renzi had hoped to reform Italy's constitution and revive its economy but the plan was rejected by nearly 60 percent of Italian voters.

CNN's senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman live in Rome. Hi, Ben.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. It was a resounding defeat for Matteo Renzi, this 41-year-old Italian prime minister who when he saw those numbers late last night with as many as 20 percent of the electorate completely rejecting the passage of this amendment over about 40 percent who approved it, he quickly gave up. He sent out a tweet today, saying, "Thank you, everyone. It's been 1,000 beautiful, difficult days. Viva Italia. Long live Italy."

Now in the next hour and a half, he's expected to hold his last Cabinet meeting, after which he will go to the office of the Italian president, where he will hand in his resignation.

Now this vote has been interpreted in a variety of ways but it's important to keep in mind how many people voted against it. It includes people from the far left, from the far to the far right, and everyone in between. Some people voted because they simply wanted to get rid of Matteo Renzi. Others felt that they didn't want anyone to tinker with Italy's 1948 constitution and others still felt the amendments he was proposing did not go far enough.

So it's not so much a vote against the establishment, but it's very much a vote against the current prime minister of Italy who is of course about to step down -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Ben Wedeman reporting live for us this morning, thank you.

Voting under way for the 2016 CNN Hero of the Year. The all-star tribute airs this weekend. So be sure to vote.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are the kind and the caring. They are the strong and the brave. They are the ones who see a need, fill a void, make a difference.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This Sunday night, CNN presents a very special live event. The "10TH ANNUAL CNN HEROES ALL-STAR TRIBUTE."

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(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:58:44] COSTELLO: Checking some top stories for you at 58 minutes past.

The Georgia man convicted of intentionally leaving his toddler in a hot SUV to die will soon learn his fate. A judge is set to sentence Justin Ross Harris today. Last month jurors convicted Harris of malice murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son. He faces life in prison. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. The city of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, is planning to reopen for business

this week after those deadly wildfires. Officials in the popular tourist area say they are working right now to assess infrastructure damage. In all, 14 people were killed in last week's fires. More than 130 others were injured.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced he will visit Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, later this month. It is the first time a Japanese leader has visited the site since the attack there almost 75 years ago. Nearly 2400 people died in the attack which compelled the United States to enter World War II.

Usually hockey fans would get kicked out for throwing stuff on to the ice but not so last night. Those are teddy bears, thousands much them, hitting the rink during last night's Hershey Bears game. And they just kept flying. The team collecting more than 20,000 stuffed toys for charity as part of their annual Teddy Bear Toss. That's awesome.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello. "AT THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND BOLDUAN" starts now.