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Trump Gets Letter from Putin, Plays Golf with Tiger Woods; Trump Tweets About Son Giving Up Charity Work; Trump Asks Boeing to Price Out Super Hornet Comparable to Lockheed's F-35; U.N. Expected to Vote Soon on Israeli Settlements; New ISIS Threats in U.S. Aired 1:30- 2p ET

Aired December 23, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:30:19] JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: President-elect Donald Trump hit the golf course down the road from his Florida resort. Playing alongside him, none other than Tiger Woods.

Boris Sanchez is at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach where the president-elect is spending the Christmas holiday.

Boris, is he keeping the transition out of on the rough?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He's certainly hoping to, Jim. From what we understand, the president-elect traveled to that golf course a few hours ago, and is expected back here at Mar-a-Lago any minute. We didn't have much access to him as he was playing and can't tell you what pointers he was giving Tiger Woods on his golf game. But as I said, he's expected back any minute for high-level meeting we're told by the transition team. Not exactly sure who he's meeting with or if we might expect some Christmas announcements in terms of who he might be appointing to his cabinet, but we will be keeping an eye on that -- Jim?

ACOSTA: A letter from Vladimir Putin and golf with Tiger Woods. Quite a day.

Boris, before the president-elect went golfing, he fired off tweets over his son's decision, Eric's decision to end money raising for miss charity. What can you tell us about that?

SANCHEZ: Yes. He sent out the streak of tweets you mentioned dating back to yesterday. The latest ones were about the Eric Trump Foundation and how his son had ultimately decided to stop raising money for the foundation, because of the potential for conflicts of interest to cloud a potential role for him in the Trump administration.

I want to read the tweets to you now. He starts saying, "My wonderful son, Eric, will no longer be allowed to raise money for children with cancer, because of a possible conflict of interest with my presidency. Isn't this a ridiculous shame? He loves these kids, has raised millions of dollars for them, and now must stop. Wrong answer." Of course, this comes as there were criticism, a couple weeks ago,

about Ivanka Trump potentially auctioning off some coffee time with her either in New York or Washington, D.C., for charity. That plan was eventually scrapped.

Of course, in the backdrop of all this, we're waiting for that announcement from Donald Trump. It was originally scheduled for December 15th in which he would outline specifically how he would separate himself from his empire to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Ultimately, the team pushed that back into January -- Jim?

ACOSTA: They certainly did.

Boris, appreciate it. Thanks.

Let's bring in my panel, Susan Page, with "USA Today"; Washington bureau chief; and Betsy Woodruff, politics reporter for "The Daily Beast."

Susan, no press conference in our stocking with Donald Trump. Ask you about the tweets, talking about Eric Trump, and calling it a suspension of fundraising operations at his charitable foundation raising money for the St. Jude's Children's Hospital, which does amazing work as well as other children's hospitals around the country. Donald Trump tweeted that it is terrible that this is happening. This is horrible.

Doesn't he have a point to some extent that now his son is not able to raise this money for these kids?

SUSAN PAGE, WASHINGT BUREAU CHIEF, USA TODAY: He'll have a continuing problem, continuing issues over the line between his family's interests and the country's interest and where there might be a conflict between them. We had a poll out showing a majority of Americans say Donald Trump has not done enough to separate his interests, his family's interests, from those are the country's interest including one out of five Trump voters. Something I think some concern, not the biggest concern on people's minds, one of the things that alarmed some people about President-elect Trump. There are things you can do as the child of a business leader that raise no questions. Give you admiration like raising money for St. Jude's, but it raises questions when raising money from people with interests before the government and your father's the president.

ACOSTA: This is the adjustment Donald, we think will have to make to be president of the United States. How's it going so far, would you say, Betsy?

BETSY WOODRUFF, POLITICS REPORTER, THE DAILY BEAST: A little rocky. The fact he's suggesting these accusations of potential conflicts of interest are misguided or spurious. Estranged. He spent the entire campaign saying the Clinton Foundation that does great work was a terrible, criminal enterprise. God forbid, we have perception of conflicts of interests.

Meanwhile, the idea that his son won't be able to be engaged in this kind of fund-raising, necessarily involving access and relationships is something that troubles him. This is a problem or issues presidents have will to deal with for decades. A memo Justice Scalia wrote heading the Justice Department of Office of Legal Counsel to the Ford White House, you have to be careful of conflicts of interest. Even though you aren't bound by the same legislative rules that apply to White House employees, the perception you're acting in your own interests rather than in the interests of the country can deeply undermine you and damage you. It's up to Trump to take them seriously but they're very real.

[13:35:18] ACOSTA: Susan, let's talk about other tweets about arms purchases and department budgeting. He was talking about fighter jets ordered by the government from Lockheed Martin, F-35. Donald Trump tweeted he's asked Boeing to price out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet. And it is true that the Lockheed Martin F-35 is way over budget. It's something like almost $400 billion over budget. This is a huge source of revenue for that defense contractor. But a couple of problems in that the F-35 and F-18 are different aircraft. One is stealth, F-35 Stealth. F-18 does not have stealth capabilities. Should Donald Trump be negotiating in public with these defense contractors? He does have a point to be made here about defense contract work here in Washington.

PAGE: So there is this procurement process the Pentagon usually follows in buying new weapons systems, and this goes right past it. Right? To suggest that he'll deal with it and suggest to another manufacture they come up with some alternative. You know, maybe -- one reason Donald Trump got elected, he promised to shake things up. People think there are things about Washington that don't work right, one is waste, abuse, this might be one, but it's a complicated enterprise to address in a tweet.

ACOSTA: Yes. But I also think about some of the voters we met out there on the campaign trail that many of us in the press just completely missed. People who are maybe Reagan Democrats, people who go to work every day in jeans and construction boots, sitting, maybe at the end the day, the week, saying, thank you Donald Trump, for going after the big fat cats in Washington and telling them to cut it out. Isn't there something to be said for that?

WOODRUFF: Without a doubt. Trump targeting defense contractors, brand new territory for Republicans. Republicans are fond typically talking about waste, fraud and abuse at the government as long as it's not at the Pentagon. These companies have been sacred cows, so close to Republican foreign policy infrastructure. The fact Trump is going after Boeing and Lockheed Martin is a big change, significant. I think that's suggesting some of the basic ways that sort of policy and influence work in Washington, well, I mean, we knew this already, will change dramatically under him.

ACOSTA: Go back to Donald Trump playing golf with Tiger Woods. Why not, right? It's almost Christmas. Give us something to work with here.

In the past - I picked it up last night -- he has been critical of President Obama playing golf. President Obama is in Hawaii presumably playing a lot of golf. I heard out on the campaign trail all the frim Donald Trump, President Obama play too much golf. And at one point, slammed President Obama for playing more golf than Tiger Woods, he once said. Irony here? What do you make of this?

WOODRUFF: Yes. I think so. We can answer yes to that question. This isn't the first time that Trump made an extremely radical departure from his campaign trail line. Of course, also turns out he's not locking up Hillary Clinton. Another broken promise. He's enjoying his free time instead of getting down to business is, yeah, inconsistent. In a way, it shows something Trump has been open about, which is campaign trail rhetoric is campaign trail rhetoric. He's been self-aware of that in the post-campaign time. Even saying, yeah, I just said that because I wanted to get elected. It's interesting seeing, though, how quickly he's made that pivot from the trail to the president-elect.

ACOSTA: And not the first president to realize this, campaigning and governing are two different things.

Betsy Woodruff, Susan Page, thanks very much. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas.

PAGE: And to you.

ACOSTA: Coming up next, we're carefully watching an imminent vote at the U.N. over Israeli settlements. The Israeli ambassador to the U.N. says the delay will not hold longer, and expects the U.N. to vote this afternoon. And as the clock winds down, Republicans and even Democrats are urging the U.S. to veto the resolution. Senator Lindsey Graham going so far as saying he will threaten to cut off funding to the U.N. if it moves forward.

For the latest, I'm joined by Oren Liebermann in Jerusalem, and CNN global affairs correspondent, Elise Labott, here in Washington.

Oren, Israel is offering unprecedented criticism of the White House. President Obama has not left office, obviously. What are the Israelis saying?

[13:39:54] OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Unprecedented is exactly the word. Never seen criticism like this from an Israel government of an American government. The statement is from a senior Israeli official. It accused President Obama and Secretary Kerry of colluding with the Palestinians and working behind Israel's back. This is a look at how ugly the relationship between Netanyahu and Obama is, with criticism of the likes we've never seen before coming from the Israel administration directed right at Obama after indications that they wouldn't veto this draft U.N. resolution that's critical of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Again, this unprecedented statement coming from the Israelis.

As for the accusations that somehow the U.S. colluded to put this together, the Palestinians say that's simply not the case. They have no response to that. But they say it was President Obama that protected Israel at the U.N. all of these years in his time in office -- Jim? ACOSTA: Elise, I understand both U.S. and Palestinian officials are

denying these accusations. What have you learned about that?

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jim. Look, it's a very explosive accusation by the Israelis, and the U.S. Has talked to the Palestinians and to the Egyptians over the last several months as this resolution was moving forward. This is not a U.S. Resolution. This was an Egyptian resolution they worked on with the Palestinians and there have been Palestinian official who have visited here and talked to the State Department, but the State Department vehemently denies they colluded with the Palestinians or Egyptians or anybody. In fact, i'm told that the U.S. did not advertise how it would vote to anybody and didn't really know. Because this text was just introduced yesterday -- Wednesday night, and so there was a big scramble at the State Department. Secretary Kerry has been working on this kind of long speech to lay out his vision of a peace process. He was not prepared to do that yesterday. But then the Egyptians put that vote on the table. Secretary Kerry was all set to give his speech, and then that was put on hold after the intervention of the Israelis. Really, a diplomatic scramble by Prime Minister Netanyahu, not only reaching out to all of the countries on the Security Council, Egyptian President Sisi, but also President-elect Trump. They warned the administration, if he could not persuade the administration to hold off on his resolution, they had no choice but to ask the president-elect to intervene. And you saw that rare statement by a president-elect calling for the U.S. to veto that resolution. That was followed by a call between President Sisi of Egypt and the president-elect about the way forward.

So, I think in the Israeli point of view, this really -- while it was unprecedented for a president-elect to get involved, it was also a very rare move by the U.N. and an abandonment of the core principle, to protect the U.S. at the United Nations -- Israel at the United Nations -- sorry.

ACOSTA: Right. And I talked to one U.S. official who indicated they are not happy over at the White House.

Elise Labott, Oren Liebermann, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Coming up, President-elect Donald Trump spent a lot of time out on the campaign trail talking about if he would or wouldn't use nuclear weapons. We'll run through that timeline, next.

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[14:46:33] ACOSTA: During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump talked a lot about nuclear arms but his comments weren't always consistent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. I mean, they have a big problem with that. Maybe they would, in fact, be better off if they defend themselves from -- (CROSSTALK)

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX ANCHOR: A nuclear arms race --

TRUMP: You already have it, Chris. You already have a nuclear arms race.

I'd be the last one to use nuclear. I'd be the last one.

Certainly, not do first strike. I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it's over. At the same time, we have to be prepared. I can't take anything off the table.

Hillary Clinton wants to confront nuclear-armed Russia with a shooting war in Syria that could very well lead us into World War III.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Let's discuss. I'm joined by former CIA director and former adviser to the Trump campaign, James Woolsey.

Director Woolsey, you just heard Trump's varying opinions on nuclear arms. What kind of message does this send and what do you make of what he said, apparently, to MSNBC earlier this morning basically opening up the possibility of a new arms race with the Kremlin?

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR & FORMER TRUMP ADVISOR: I think he's talking about improving quality, not necessarily numbers. Most identify arms races with numbers. But I haven't heard him say anything that suggests he wants to adds numbers to the force. But he does need to improve quality, because the Obama administration has let things run down in our nuclear capability for the last eight years. There's training that needs to be done. There are plenty of changes that need to be made in logistics and infrastructure. And all of that has to be dealt with far more effectively than it has been under tight financial constraints the last eight years. And that's extremely responsible and reasonable position to take.

ACOSTA: Let me drill down a little bit. Obviously, you don't want the nation's nuclear capabilities to go into mothballs and rust out, but when the president-elect, during a transition period, not even sworn into office, says to a news outlet, let it be an arms race, if you were the CIA director and you watched that on national television this morning, what would have been your reaction?

WOOLSEY: You know, the Russians lost the last arms race. They got to the point where they couldn't finance taking us on, and they got very worried, because we were doing ballistic missile defense work rather vigorously, and it was one of the things I think that led to their basically winding down their side of the arms race, anyway. So, I don't think I would look back at the last few years, back in the '90s, let's say, and call that a bad period. It was a period in which the Russians were winding down, and effectively, we won that arms race.

ACOSTA: And you're seeing a similar strategy, you think, take shape with President-elect Trump when he says, let it be an arms race? You think that he hopes history will repeat itself, and Vladimir Putin will fall into a trap here?

[13:49:46] WOOLSEY: I don't know. I think that may have been more of the nature of a wisecrack, emphasizing that we're not the ones who are a skeletal society from the point of view of our economy. Russia doesn't do anything except pump oil and gas, and build weapons. And by putting some stress on them with respect to oil and gas, by getting the price down and making them have to get by on, let's say, $140 barrel of oil instead of where they are now, I think that would be a great thing for American consumers. And it would -- but it would not be a good thing for the Russian planners, and that doesn't bother me that much, frankly.

ACOSTA: And we were talking about this letter that Vladimir Putin sent to Donald Trump that was released by the transition. I'm sure you saw something about it, read about it. How significant will you say that letter is and what would you say about the significance of Donald Trump's response to it. In the letter. Vladimir Putin says that he hopes to have a more constructive relationship with the United States. and in response, the president-elect says, you know what, Vladimir Putin's comments are correct. It appears to me, having covered the second half of the Obama administration, to be a dramatic departure from the relations between the United States and Russians under Barack Obama.

WOOLSEY: It's fine to have cordial relationship with the Russians. It depends on them. They have a history of taking over and damaging their neighbors, such as Ukraine, such as Georgia. If they ease off on that and leave their neighbors alone, we can pretty easily have very cordial relations with them. It's when they are expanding and taking over and capturing and digesting parts of Ukraine and the rest that we have a serious problem looking towards not only that activity by them but also the possibility that they would move against a NATO country, such as one of the Baltic States.

(CROSSTALK)

WOOLSEY: And so, it's kind of up to Russia whether or not they want to be dealt with in a friendly fashion by us or whether they want to challenge us by taking over their neighbors.

ACOSTA: And do you have any concern that perhaps Vladimir Putin is softening up the president-elect with all this praise and warm feelings he's expressing, softening him up for a more aggressive posture come the New Year after Donald Trump is sworn in to office?

WOOLSEY: I don't think this is something that our president-elect needs to worry about. You can watch what the Russians do. What they say is kind of interesting. What's most important is what they do. And if they - if what they do leads to hostile approaches towards neighbors and toward us, they need to realize that we may well be following Teddy Roosevelt's dictum of speaking softly and carrying a big stick. But they don't want the stick to cause trouble for themselves. And if they don't, that's fine. They can actually not try to take over their neighbors and be reasonable neighbors to other states.

ACOSTA: All right, Jim Woolsey, thank you very much from that perspective. We appreciate it.

Coming up, the FBI and Homeland Security just released a bulletin on some new ISIS threats. The details coming up next.

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[13:56:37] ACOSTA: The FBI and Homeland Security Department officials are warning officials about new ISIS threats in the U.S.

CNN Justice correspondent, Evan Perez, joins me now.

Evan, what can you tell us about that bulletin? This came in a few moments ago.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jim. This was issued in the past hour to law enforcement agencies and private security companies that help secure churches around the country. This is in light of a posting made on some pro-ISIS websites in the last couple days, calling on supporters to attack churches and holiday gatherings in the United States. It included a list around the country.

And it reads, in part, "ISIS sympathizers continue aspirational calls for attacks on holiday gatherings, including targeting churches."

We've seen in the past ISIS has called on its supporters to attack military targets, to attack law enforcement. What we're seeing lately is more of the type of thing we've seen this past week in Berlin, attacking soft targets, Christmas gatherings and that kind of thing, what we saw in Nice with a truck being used to mow down people, and also in Columbus, Ohio.

So, this, again, a bulletin that's being issued by the FBI and Homeland Security Department. Out of an abundance of caution we are told there are no known specific credible threats in the United States. It's simply that time of year where the law enforcement community simply is ever vigilant for threats that can be coming this way -- Jim?

ACOSTA: Not only something federal officials, Homeland Security officials. but also, local law enforcement officials across the country will be keeping an eye on.

Thank you, Evan Perez. We appreciate it.

That's it for me. I'll be back at 5:00 on "The Situation Room."

The news continues right after a quick break. Thanks for joining us.

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[14:00:04] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, there. i'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching CNN. I want to welcome out viewers in the United States and around the world. Thank you so much for being with me on this Friday.

We are following several major headlines this afternoon.