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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Migrants Overwhelm Police At Border; Corsi Say He's Talking Plea With Mueller; New Tensions Between Russia And Ukraine; Cyber Monday Expected To Be Largest In History; Holiday Blizzard; Tesla Almost Died. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired November 26, 2018 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, EARLY START SHOW CO-HOST: Drama at the border. Hundreds of migrants overwhelm police. The move bound to inflame the heated rhetoric on immigration.

POLO SANDOVAL, EARLY START SHOW CO-HOST: Another tense situation, this one flaring up between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine says, Russians boats open fire and seize three of its ships. The U.N. planning to take that issue today.

ROMANS: And grab your wallet, it is Cyber Monday deals nationwide today. We have what you should be looking for and what is not worth your time.

Welcome back to "Early Start." I'm Christine Romans.

SANDOVAL: And I'm Polo Sandoval in for Dave Briggs this morning, about 30 minutes past the hour. The busiest land port on entry in the U.S. is back open this morning. The border crossing near San Diego closed for hours on Sunday after about 500 migrants rushed the border from the Mexicans side, overwhelming police blockades. Take a listen.

ROMANS: U.S. border patrol agents regaining control by firing tear gas. Tensions had been mounting since groups of Central American migrants started arriving on the Mexican side in the city of Tijuana just a few weeks ago. Mexico's interior ministry says, dozens identified among those trying cross illegally will be deported to their home countries.

SANDOVAL: The ministry, Mexico, warning that far from helping the migrants' cause, this kinds of fabrication could result in a serious incident on the border. All of this likely to inflame the President's rhetoric on immigration today. CNN's Nick Watt has more from the point of entry.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Polo, Christine, this border in San Isidro's is one of the busiest land borders on earth. It was shut Sunday afternoon for four hours to pedestrians and a little bit longer to all vehicular traffic. The reason, well, there were protest, there was a march and it was supposed to be a peaceful protest on the other side and apparently that got a little bit out of hand. People say that as many as 500 migrants tried to storm the border. They managed to get past Mexican police and that tear gas was actually fired. This is what eyewitness tells us teargas was fired from this side of the border at those people.

Now, Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement Sunday evening, she said that some of these migrants tried to scale what she describes as legacy fencing on either side of the port of entry and they are also throwing projectiles at custom and border patrol officers. Listen, the President last week said that if we feel we are losing control at the border at any point and if we feel there is a danger of people getting hurt, we will temporarily close down the border. Now that is exactly what they did.

The Mexican government now is saying that they plan to deport any of those people they manage to identify who tried to get into the U.S. But the border did reopen after a few hours after the CDP said they managed to get things under control. They had beefed up their staffing here at the border in anticipation of these protests suspecting that something may go wrong. It did. They closed the border and they dealt with it. Polo, Christine, back to you.

(END VIDEO)

ROMANS: All right. Nick Watt there for us, thank you for that. The incoming Mexican government is denying any deal was made with the Trump administration for asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while the cases are being decided. "The Washington Post" reporting on Saturday, that the government supported a U.S. plan that would require individuals seeking asylum to remain south of the border while their applications are being process. The plan reportedly emerged after a meeting last week between Mexico's incoming foreign secretary and U.S. Officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

[04:35:00] SANDOVAL: And that same piece, the Post also quoted, Mexico's incoming interior minister, Olga Sanchez Cordero, saying they agreed -- to the so called remain in Mexico policy. But in a statement to CNN, she then backed off saying that the new administration doesn't plan to make Mexico, what she called a third safe country for migrants. She say Mexico will focus on ensuring migrants to get help in accessing food, healthcare, and shelter and also the protection of their human rights.

ROMANS: A new administration coming in just a few days in Mexico, it could be a timing here waiting for a new administration. All right, today, former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos will have to begin his 14-day prison sentence for lying to federal investigators in the Russia probe. He pleaded guilty last year, twice in the last 10 days, Papadopoulos had asked the federal judge to delay the sentence.

Now, Roger Stone, associates Jerome Corsi says, that he is in plea negotiations with Robert Mueller's office. The special counsel is apparently pursuing the theory of course, he was the intermediary between Stone, a longtime Trump confidante and WikiLeaks before the site released hack of the credit party emails. SANDOVAL: A legal scholar, Alan Dershowitz, a frequent defender of

President Trump now says Mueller's report could be politically devastating to the President when it comes out, but when is the question. Dershowitz says the report could actually help or potentially be held up by acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, LAW PROFESSOR AND AUTHOR OF "ELECTILE DYSFUNCTION": When the report is made public and that is a very hard question considering the new Attorney General who has the authority to decide when and under which circumstance to make it public, it will be made public probably with a response alongside.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: Whitaker is a longtime critic of the Russia probe. Mueller cannot simply released his report. He has to provide a copy to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then to Whitaker who could choose to sit on it permanently.

ROMANS: Or he could also, prevent Mueller from indicting anyone. But Whitaker would have to inform Congress, he had done so, something that probably would leak, but so far, there is no indication he has been briefed on anything related to the Russia investigation.

SANDOVAL: President Trump heading to Mississippi today expecting two rallies in support of Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, she faces Democrat Mike Espy in the Senate runoff that scheduled to happen tomorrow. Since Election Day Hyde-Smith has face a series of stories showing her approval for elements of the South races past. She said that she would be in the quote (inaudible) of the public hanging if a supporter invited her. She later apologize for those comments that over the weekend CNN's (inaudible) reporting that during her time in the state legislator Hyde-Smith pushed for resolution honoring a 92- year-old woman for being the last known living real daughter of the Confederacy leaving in Mississippi. The resolution, praise the woman's father for fighting to quote, defend his homeland.

ROMANS: All right the U.N. secretary -- Security Council rather meets an emergency session today, Ukraine says Russian boats opened fire on three of its ships near the Kerch Strait between Russia and Crimea.

The standoff including a Russian ship ramming a smaller Ukrainian tugboat, another major complication involving Russia days before Presidents Trump and Putin come face-to-face at the G20 summit. Senior international correspondent, Matthew Chance has the latest from Moscow. What is going on here?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is a very dangerous major escalation taking place between Russia and Ukraine in that very strategic stretch border called the Kerch Strait. It lies between the Russian mainland and the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia. You may remember back in 2014 from Ukraine for many months now, U.S. officials and on the coast of Ukrainians have been accusing Russia of interfering with international shipping passing through that strategic stretch of water.

Preventing Ukrainian ships essentially from accessing ports in the sea of as off, which is a at what the Kerch Strait controls access to trying to interfere with shipping trade to Ukraine to apply some economic pressure to that country. This is the first time. This is a merchant that outright violence because Ukrainian Navy say at least six of its sailors were injured in that confrontation actually were a couple confrontations that took place over the weekend.

The most serious of which is when Russia opened fire on three Ukrainian naval vessels and then deployed its special forces to take control of them. Video just come out the ships being held in on the Russian control on the Crimean Peninsula. Now, we don't know the fights of the of the crew is with a been set back to Ukraine, whether being held in Russian a detention, but nevertheless, the prospects for business the possibility of this escalating power and as you mentioned the U.N. Security Council is already called in an emergency session to discuss the situation that has been cause of restraint from the NATO military alliance and the European Union and others.

[04:40:17] And now the Ukrainian Parliament is set to decide whether or not to impose martial law on the country in response. Christine.

ROMANS: Let me ask you, so the Russian justification for sending it special upper ops forces aboard another country's vessels is what?

CHANCE: The Russians say that these are vessels illegally entered Russian territorial waters. Although the legality of where the ships were is not clear, the Russians also say that I carry out the Ukrainians has been carrying out dangerous maneuvers in order to provoke this confrontation.

Look, what the Russian, I mean the Kremlin hasn't said anything on this yet. What Russian media where saying is this whole incident has been orchestrated by Ukraine to disrupt that forthcoming meeting between President Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Argentina. The signs are all politically motivated.

ROMANS: All right Matthew Chance for us in Moscow this morning. Thank you so much for that.

It is finally here that holiday that made up by the retail industry to get you to spend more money. It looks like it worked. You probably had spent the most money in history on Cyber Monday. Consumers are expected to spend $7.8 billion today. It is up about 18 percent from last year, online sales in the three hours between 10:00 p.m. tonight and 1:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. They are expected to drive a more revenue than a full day on average full day in 2018.

Let us take a look at the numbers over the weekend, final thanksgiving sales totaled 3.7 billion in online holiday shopping. This is a record 6.22 billion was spent on their online by the end of Black Friday that is up almost 24 percent from last year. Black Friday was also the first day ever to see more than 2 billion in sales coming from smart phone. This is why you're buying your buying your steps, so where are the deal today? Toys, Toys R Us closing this year shoppers are going online to get the

hottest toys and gaming systems. Another emerging trend this year. People shopping for experiences more people are expected to shop for things like cruises, hotels and flights today. One other fun fact, consumers spent a 5.2 billion minutes shopping online. Last cyber Monday, 5.2 billion minutes, that is equal to 10,000 years. In terms of lost productivity, big value, but less productivity. I always make this every year. I make this -- you know, there is a big percentage of these purchases that you're still paying off your credit card next year, so that big deal is not the deal you thought it was if you're paying 14 to 25 percent interest on it, right. So don't overspend. Don't make this hype make you overspend.

SANDOVAL: Those small deals will add up and now on your debt.

ROMANS: It is boring but it is important.

SANDOVAL: You mentioned the toys I may or may not have just purchased my BB8 robot, taking advantage of some of these deals, tell you what though, if you live in the Midwest, Christine, you certainly may not be able to drive, you may not be able to fly only thing you can do is stay at home and online shop.

This massive blizzard making for a very rough end for the holiday weekend, flight delays other messy morning in store to people today.

[04:45:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANDOVAL: This morning, 10 million people facing a blizzard warning snow, wind, rain is all hitting parts of the Midwest at the close of the thanksgiving holiday travel.

Thousands of flights were canceled, some delayed and also more of this could still be on the way today, especially in Chicago. In Missouri, Kansas international Airport was close to incoming flights. The governor of Kansas is issuing a state of emergency declaring roads treacherous, so where is the storm actually headed to? Who is next? CNN's meteorologist Pedram Javaheri, with the forecast.

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Christine and Polo, good morning to you both. Yes, we are watching what is happening across the Great Lakes of not only are we getting significant snow out of this, but even some thunder snow to be had across this regions. So it really speaks to the significance of some of these storms of the region, blizzard warnings remain in place for at least midmorning here across portions of northern and central Illinois areas of eastern Missouri as well. Getting on the action with a heavy snow and placed gusty winds reduce visibility as a result of course, Kansas' city airport was shut down at one point yesterday and now you know if the system begins pushing in right across the Great Lakes and eventually on across the Northeast.

Now snowfall for the major cities in the Northeast, not in the picture, it is going to be way to warm. But get in to the higher elevation and also the interior portion of New England, and it's all about the wintry weather the next 24 so hours. Certainly some disruptions to be had there and a lot of disruptions, I expect on this Monday. Left across areas of the Ohio and Tennessee Valley as well. All of this associated with this frontal boundary across this region that will kick of those winds up to 50 mile per hour. Look at those temps struggle to make it to the freezing mark in places like Chicago and Kansas City and Indianapolis and places in Minneapolis, highs only down 21 degrees.

ROMANS: All north. All right a new U.S. government report delivers a dire warning about climate change and its devastating effects, saying the economy can lose hundreds of billions of dollars were the worst- case scenario more than 10 percent of GDP by the end of the century. It is study mandated by law. A federal study, it was supposed to come out in December but was released by the Trump administration on Friday, smack in the middle of a holiday, and the findings, counter President Trump consistent message that climate change is a hoax. This report finds climate change could cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year at the southeast, probably lose more than half 1 billion labor hours by the year 2100 due to extreme heat.

[04:50:05] In parts of the Midwest, farms would be able to produce less than 75 percent of the corn they produce today. Heat stress can cause average dairy production to fall between 6 tenths percent and more than 1 percent over the next 12 years. Heat stress could cause industry $1.2 billion in 2010 and again it's getting a lot of attention for the timing of this report as well that was buried during the holiday weekend, something so devastating.

SANDOVAL: Something that was schedule to potentially be released in December. We saw it will most of us. Perhaps it wasn't time at home. A story to look out for today, Mars is about to get a new visitor from Earth. NASA site is saying that if all goes well. The inside space craft will land near the Martian equator sometime this afternoon. The scientists and engineers who designed that insight probe are calling the lending seven minutes of terror. Why? Because out of 44 attempts to land this thing on the red planet, only 18 have been successful. Once inside actually lands on Mars, this mission is to study the interior of Mars from the planet surface.

ROMANS: All right, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk had Tesla almost died earlier this year during his production of the model three. What he told Axios about Tesla and its plan to go to Mars. We will get a check on CNN Business next.

[04:55:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: All right the set of internal documents that Facebook does not want the public to see is now the hands of British lawmakers. The documents are linked to a lawsuit in California that accuses Facebook of having a little regard for user privacy. It claims CEO, Mark Zuckerberg devise a plan to forced Facebook's rivals out of business, CNN business technology correspondent Samuel Burke is live in London with the latest. Hi there.

SAMUEL BURKE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Christine. Good morning Polo. Perhaps the only question more titillating than what is in these document is, why doesn't Facebook want us to know what in these documents? This is all over a lawsuit of a small tech company suing Facebook, because they say Facebook when you give them access to data to try and put them out of business. Now normally we would be celebrating Facebook not giving people access to user data, but in this case, the president of that smaller tech company happen to be in the U.K. and the U.K. Parliament, which is been very aggressive going against Facebook trying to find out exactly more about what happened with Brexit on Facebook and fake news. They seized those documents.

Now there at Parliament and they might reveal them. Although a judge in the U.S. is trying to stop that. So we will listen today. As they have this hearing about this information and find out if these documents are finally revealed to the public and maybe we can find out then why Facebook doesn't want us to know about them.

SANDOVAL: And Sam, this is all coming down to ring what is a very paralyze time out for Facebook, not just overseas, but here in the U.S. of course of seeing lots of -- Zuckerberg testified for lawmakers here, but apparently the company even tried to release a lot of details over the Thanksgiving holiday, tell us about that.

BURKE: Yes, Polo, you and I both know this is called the Thanksgiving news on company has information they don't want people to see so they think that we might be asleep but the wheel as we had for our turkey and stuffing, but we were awake and we saw when Facebook put out a statement saying that they did in fact hire that right wing P.R. firm called the finders. There is a big expose about how Facebook it works with them in the New York Times.

Now they admit they did hire that group and Sheryl Sandberg at first it said that she didn't know about that. Now, she admits that she did in fact have email telling her that they'd hired this group and perhaps the most troubling part is that Facebook now admits that he paid this group to go after George Soros and much of this New York Times expose was looking at the fact that so many groups will use anti-somatic tropes against George Soros that he's a rich Jewish billionaire trying to influence politics.

Now Sheryl Sandberg is saying, we did not mean for any of our tax to use any anti-somatic narratives, and I just want to put up on the screen what Sandberg says about this specifically being Jewish is a core part of who I am and our company stands firmly against hate. The idea that our work has been interpreted as anti-Semitic is abhorrent to me and deeply personal.

Of course Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg are both Jewish. They post about it frequently. The way Judaism affects their lives on their Facebook pages. It must be particularly difficult to know that much of what they were paying for was at least being interpreted in this way by many people.

ROMANS: Yes. There is so much criticism of the company executives for not getting in front of all of this a lot sooner. You know, that criticism not going anywhere. All right, Samuel, nice to see you.

BURKE: Have a good day. ROMANS: Top of the hour, according to Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, tesla

almost died earlier this year, an interview with Axios that aired on HBO Sunday, Musk said Tesla face a threat of death during the model three production.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELON MUSK, TESLA CEO: It is actually the company is bleeding money like crazy and just -- if we don't solve this problems in a very short period of time we will die. And it is extremely difficult to solve them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Musk got tesla came within single-digit weeks of death before it was able to meet as a model three production goals, Musk also said he see a 70 percent chance that he will live to ride one of his space X rockets to Mars. He is 47 years old, so he has got some time.

SANDOVAL: 47, not just best. Early Start --