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New, Grave Warnings of What a 2nd Trump Presidency Would Mean; Biden Campaign Pivots to Focus on Health Care; U.S. Destroyer Shoots Down Drones Over Red Sea; Senate Stalls on Border Funding Threatening Ukraine Aid. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 04, 2023 - 09:00   ET

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

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When she left Harvard or as she says she was pushed out of Harvard last year, that raised a lot of concerns in the community that monitors this sort of stuff, disinformation, because in their view, they're getting attacked on all sides, right? They are getting pushed from a Republican House Representatives. Researchers in this space are getting sued. It's all kind of setting up a space as we go into 2024, where people who are calling out disinformation in these campaigns in the past could be Muslims.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: When, by the way, some of these platforms are allowing more of that disinformation --

O'SULLIVAN: I lot more of it.

HARLOW: -- back on their platforms.

O'SULLIVAN: I lot more.

HARLOW: Thank you, Donie.

O'SULLIVAN: Thanks.

HARLOW: Thanks. And thanks for joining us this morning.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN: CNN News Central starts right now.

HARLOW: Thank you guys.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States and it is getting shorter every day. New warnings, including from former Republican officials about the risks of a second Donald Trump presidency.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: In Gaza, the death toll is surging as Israel expands its military operations against Hamas. Palestinian civilians and more than 130 hostages caught in the middle. An urgent push is underway to get Israel and Hamas back to the bargaining table.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Exhausted and demoralized, the new report on the stress air traffic controllers are under and the risk that it carries for air travel. I'm Kate Bolduan with Sara Sidner and John Berman. This is CNN News Central.

BERMAN: And new this morning with Donald Trump surging in the polls, fresh sounds of alarm about what a second Trump presidency might mean. And some of the warnings are coming from one-time Republicans, quote, "let's stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality. There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it's getting shorter every day." That's Robert Kagan, a former Reagan official writing in "The Washington Post."

"A second Trump term would instantly plunge the country into a constitutional crisis, more terrible than anything seen since the Civil War." That's David Frum, a speechwriter for George W. Bush writing in "The Atlantic." "The New York Times" writes this morning, quote, "Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker."

So sometimes you can tell what Donald Trump views as political vulnerabilities because he simply tries to flip the script. This is what he said about President Biden this weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: CNN's Kristen Holmes is in Washington this morning. There seems to be this growing rumbling from around the political spectrum, paying very close attention to Donald Trump and the possibility that there could be a second Trump presidency?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John. There's a lot here. So we can start with this weekend and then we can move on to Trump's long admiration for authoritarian rule. Starting with this weekend, the big argument that President Biden has made against a second Trump term is that it would be bad for democracy.

As we have noted, he is now facing charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election, the Democratic process. He has constantly criticized and tried to undermine the election system as a whole, which is our Democratic institutions. He has called for the termination of the Constitution, and that doesn't even go into what he has said about free press.

But now he is saying that President Biden is the real threat to democracy. And the argument is one that we have heard before. He is essentially saying that the four indictments that he, Trump, is facing are Joe Biden weaponizing the Department of Justice to go against a political opponent in Donald Trump. And the thing to note here is that a lot of his supporters do believe this. They do believe that there is a two -tier justice system.

And this really goes into what we talk about when we talk about an agenda in 2025, particularly given the fact that Trump himself has said he would use the Justice Department to essentially weaponize it and go against his enemies.

And one of the lines you read were that his impulses have remained the same, but the buffers to check him are weaker. And it's not just that the buffers are weaker. It's that he is aware of what they are. And he and his team are looking at ways to go around them.

The other part of this is that the buffers that we've had in place for decades, if not centuries, seem to be immune to Donald Trump. I mean, he has been impeached twice, the only former president to have been so. And yet he is still leading in the Republican field. But when you talk about a Trump 2025 agenda and what those buffers are, one of them, one of the things that Donald Trump talked about a lot when he was in office and since has been that he felt that these civil servants in the government, those serving as kind of a check on the executive, we're standing in his way of getting what he needed to get done. And that is why one of the big proposals is to essentially wipe out people who are civil servants in the government to take away their restrictions that keep them in office and keep them in their jobs to make it easier to replace them with loyalists.

[09:05:21]

And this is just one of the steps. And we talked about immigration, for example. John, one of the things that we're looking at was how do we work around Congress? If they're not going to give us the funding, how do we go around them to still get this giant mass deportation done?

And that's really what we're talking about when we talk about these buffers, him understanding what they are and trying to work around them already before he's even run against Joe Biden.

BERMAN: And he's got people planning for him already. Kristen Holmes, thank you very much for that. Sara?

SIDNER: All right, let's discuss this and much more now with Molly Ball, National Political Correspondent, for "TIME."

All right, let's get straight to these headlines about Donald Trump. When you see these headlines in several different publications, including from Republican speaking out, and you hear a lifelong conservative Republican Liz Cheney saying, we are sleepwalking into a dictatorship, Trump's still far and away the leading GOP candidate right now. Will any of these warnings make a difference to voters?

MOLLY BALL, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, for Republican-based voters, and just a little update to my title there, I'm with the Wall Street Journal now. But, you know, Republican voters, I think, have been hearing these warnings for a long time. To me, it all feels very much like 2016, when we saw the same rhetoric coming from the Republican establishment saying to Republican voters, look, we're not liberals, we're not Democrats making this critique, but we really think this guy is dangerous. So there is a fair amount of deja vu. I think, as Kristen was saying,

there is a feeling on the part of a lot of the Republican base that is most devoted to Donald Trump, that he was not able to go far enough in his one term as president, and that it was because of the so-called deep state.

You know, we have a story over the weekend about the fact that this is sort of ironic, considering the Republican party's longtime emphasis on limited government, on reining in executive power and limiting federal control over local policy.

You know, a lot of the policy promises that Donald Trump is making, in addition to being rather alarming for those who are concerned about democratic institutions, they also would sort of bulldoze local control over a variety of areas of life and policy.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you about this because there is a flipping of the script here where Donald Trump has gone after Joe Biden saying he's the one that's destroying democracy, something you see a lot, something that Donald Trump is accused of. He will then turn and put that on his opponents.

Look, you talk about his Republican base and that's one thing, but what about the overall, the general election, the independence that everyone focuses so much on? Is any of this going to make a difference in the general if he indeed goes up against Joe Biden?

BALL: It's too soon to say, but I do think we saw in 2022, you know, during those midterm elections, there was some criticism from sort of, I don't know, centrists that President Biden put a lot of emphasis on the democracy issue, gave a sort of fiery speech on the eve of the midterms, warning about the threat of the so-called Maga Republicans. And that ended up being somewhat persuasive to people. We did see, you know, those election-denying candidates like Kari Lake in Arizona really paying a price for subscribing to the attacks that Donald Trump has made on the election process, on democratic institutions, on the peaceful transfer of power.

And so this attempt to, you know, reframe January 6th and the attempt to overthrow the government and turn that into something that his supporters see as pro-democracy, that was not persuasive to general election voters in 2022. And it's something that I think, you know, Democrats see as a potentially winning issue again in 2024, as long as Trump is not successful, you know, in, as you say, flipping that script.

SIDNER: Yeah, Molly, there is another issue that has come up, something that we saw very much in 2016. I feel like we're on some sort of repeat here, health care. We have now heard from Donald Trump was the first to start it, talking about getting rid of Obamacare.

And then DeSantis has also jumped in saying he's promising a new health care plan to supersede as he put it, although he didn't spell out any plan, Obamacare, by also jumping in. Is this going to be a big issue now that you see all of these candidates jumping on this idea that Americans are unhappy with their health care in general?

BALL: It's interesting because, you know, you don't see healthcare as a top issue in polls as it has been, as I can certainly remember it being say, a decade ago, you know, when Obamacare was still new, and the Republican Party was very much energized by opposition to it.

[09:10:10]

We've seen that fade quite a bit. Most Republicans privately will admit that they don't see the Affordable Care Act going anywhere or even being significantly modified. And voters seem much more concerned with other pocketbook issues, particularly inflation, high prices, the state of the economy in that sense.

So, you know, I think Democrats are happy to see this issue come up again. They feel like it's a winning issue for them. But in terms of the Republican primary, it's part of this theme that we have seen of Governor DeSantis trying to attack Trump as both not being sufficiently conservative and not having executed on his promises when he was president. He of course did try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and notably failed. So DeSantis is saying to Republican-based voters, if that's something you still care about, here's a guy who didn't get it done.

SIDNER: All very interesting and all something we'll be watching for at least the next year. Molly Ball, Senior National Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, I appreciate your time. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And new this morning, the Israeli military has announced that it is expanding its combat operations to the whole of Gaza. This includes the south, where many people have fled to take shelters. We have been covering.

The IDF has ordered people south of the city of Khan Yunis to clear out. Israeli forces, exchange fire with Hezbollah across its northern border with Lebanon. The IDF says three soldiers were hurt.

In the West Bank, Israel says two suspected militants were killed after they fired on Israeli troops. And in In Gaza, Israel believes there are still 137 hostages being held. The United States continues to push to get Israel and Hamas back to the negotiating table after it seems things quickly fell apart this weekend.

CNN's Alex Marquardt joins us now from Tel Aviv. Alex, where do things look at this moment?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, since those talks fell apart, since that fragile pause ended on Friday and those hostage releases stopped, we are now in the fourth day of renewed fighting, the fourth day of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military saying that overnight there were some 200 airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, and Israel announcing that it is now expanding its campaign to all of Gaza.

Remember, the first five, six weeks of this initial phase of the campaign was in the northern Gaza Strip. Now, they are moving south, which raises major concerns about where these civilians are going to go. Of course, northern Gazans had been told to move south, and many of them had gone to this city of Khan Yunis, where Israeli and American officials now believe many of -- or much of the Hamas leadership has gone to. And so now Israel is calling on civilians in Khan Yunis to move even farther south.

The U.N. estimates that there are 1.8 million Gazans who have been displaced. That is the vast majority of the 2.2-million-person population.

Kate, the big question is whether Gazans are actually getting this message. How easy is it for them to actually get that? Israel is relaying these evacuations via social media, via leaflets that have been dropped, with QR codes that take you to a rather complicated map, a grid map with different numbers in different areas.

So not only is it complicated to understand, but it is -- it is, you cannot assume that Gazans are actually getting this message because of how weak the internet connection has been, because of the numerous blackouts in communication that we've seen over the course of the past few weeks.

And at the same time, Kate, we are starting to see and hear more of an alarm from the highest levels of the Biden administration. Top Biden administration officials talking about the imperative of keeping civilians safe.

Over the weekend, we heard the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was talking about his experience in urban warfare. He said you can only win in urban warfare if you keep the civilian population protected.

Here's a little bit more of what you have to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD AUSTIN, DEFENSE SECRETARY: You see, in this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat. So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUARDT: And Kate, in just these past four days, there have been hundreds more Palestinians killed in Gaza. The death toll now quickly approaching 16,000. That is according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Alex Marquardt in Tel Aviv, thank you. John?

BERMAN: So in the Red Sea, off the coast of Yemen, a U.S. Navy destroyer shot down at least three Houthi drones as it came to the rescue of three separate commercial ships under fire.

[09:15:00]

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are claiming responsibility for the attacks on what they say are Israeli ships, the Houthis do. CNN's Natasha Bertrand is at the Pentagon with the latest on this. Natasha, what are you learning?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Well John, this was a really significant series of attacks that occurred yesterday in the Red Sea and the Houthis, which are an Iran-backed militant group in Yemen, they have claimed responsibility for those attacks.

But just to put this in perspective, the USS Carney, which is a destroyer that is currently in the Red Sea, they responded to a number of attacks carried out via missiles by these Houthi rebels, including one ballistic missile that targeted a commercial vessel.

In total, three commercial vessels were attacked by these missiles and a few of them were actually struck directly and suffered damage. Now, throughout all of this, the Houthi rebels were also launching drones. And the USS Carney shot down three of those drones, according to U.S. Central Command, and there were no injuries or damage to the U.S. destroyer during the series of attacks.

But look, none of this is coming in a vacuum. This all comes as these Iran-backed proxy groups have ramped up their attacks on the U.S. and its allies over the last several months in response to the U.S.'s support for Israel as part of the Israel-Hamas war.

And the Houthi militants have said that they will not stop these attacks because they say they're standing in solidarity with the Palestinians. But in the meantime, the U.S. says that it is considering all possible options for a response.

The U.S. has responded in the past to these attacks by these Iran- backed groups in Iraq and Syria. They have launched airstrikes on weapons depots and storage facilities being used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian proxy groups.

However, those have not deterred these attacks. And the attacks have really only escalated over the last several months to the point where we are now at over 70 of these attacks being carried out by these Iran-backed groups against U.S. and coalition forces in the region.

So the question now is what is going to stop these attacks? The U.S. says at this point that they are weighing all of their options. John.

BERMAN: In an enormous amount of activity in that region right now. Natasha Bertrand, keep us posted, thanks very much. Sara?

SIDNER: Coming up, as soon as today, the Senate Majority Leader could put a bill on the floor for billions in aid to Israel and Ukraine, but Republicans are threatening to block it over border security. We're live on Capitol Hill.

Plus, a special election is coming after George Santos was kicked out of Congress. We'll speak to one of the Democratic candidates hoping to flip the seat back to blue.

And the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing George Floyd is back in prison after recovering from 22 stab wounds. What we're learning about the inmate accused of attacking Derek Chauvin. All of that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:22:02]

SIDNER: This morning, the White House issuing a stern warning to Congress, pass foreign funding or risk kneecapping Ukraine on the battlefield. The letter from the Office of Management and Budget Director comes as Congress returns to work this morning with a critical agenda on the table.

Border talks have stalled, complicating the passage of President Biden's $106 billion supplemental aid package that includes money for the U.S.-Mexican border, Ukraine and Israel. CNN's Lauren Fox is joining us now from Capitol Hill this morning.

Lauren, where are we? What's the latest?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara, this was always going to be a very heavy lift for Republicans and Democrats to come together on an issue as a vaxxing, as immigration, especially given the fact that the White House is giving those stern warnings that they need money for Ukraine as soon as possible.

I'm told from three sources familiar that border talks stalled over the weekend. Negotiators had a conversation on Friday evening, but after that they did not continue to talk throughout the weekend. That is because Democrats, in their view, think that Republicans are pushing these talks too far and too close to what the House passed immigration bill included earlier this year. That is an on-starter, Democrats say, and part of the reason that there is a pause in these talks.

Now, I've covered a lot of these negotiations up here on Capitol Hill. It's very common that negotiations fall apart before they come back together, but things are not in a good place right now. And multiple sources that I'm talking to believe that it's possible that the Senate could move forward with this money for Ukraine and Israel without additional border funding.

The problem, not additional border funding, but changes to border policy, the problem with that approach is that it's dead on arrival in the House of Representatives. Speaker Mike Johnson has made extremely clear that he is going to need robust policy changes from the Senate in order to move forward in his chamber.

Democrats also need Republican votes in the Senate, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear that he also wants robust policy changes to the southern border. So, things not in a good place right now. This morning, things can always change, Sara, but right now it looks like those border talks are stalled. SIDNER: I think the headline here, border talk stalled, not in a good

place when it comes to trying to put this through Congress. Thank you so much, Lauren, for your reporting. Kate.

BOLDUAN: And joining us now for more all of this is Washington Correspondent for the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution," Tia Mitchell. Tia, help me out with this because what Sara and Lauren were talking about this really it's -- it's very important and it's all coming to a head right now. Specifically the fight over aid to Ukraine, it's really been churning up for weeks and the argument from Republicans that are bulking is that they essentially when it comes specifically to Ukraine and is they want to hear more clearly from Joe Biden, where the money's going, what the goal is for the United States.

[09:25:04]

But that letter from the White House this morning really seems to be trying to address it, but very clearly offering this morning that's -- if we don't give them money, it were kneecapping Ukraine on the battlefield. What really is at the core of this disagreement then?

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION: Well, also, one of the problems with the Ukraine funding is that there are some House Republicans that really won't support it no matter what. The White House can provide all the justification, all the accountability measures, and there are just some Republicans who just on principle don't want to spend more U.S. dollars to aid Ukraine.

And so therefore, Speaker Mike Johnson has to figure out, what can he get enough Republicans to support some type of funding with Ukraine, either by packaging it with border security funding, for example, packaging it with that support for Israel.

And it's hard, again, his majority is now that much slimmer, and that means he has fewer votes he can lose, and quite frankly, just in Republicans particularly, support for the war in Ukraine is waning.

BOLDUAN: And as, you know, the Republican majority in the House is slimmer, but it does set this strange dynamic because you have the Republican leaders in both the House and Senate who are supportive of more Ukraine.

Both Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell has very much been talking about their support for making sure that Ukraine has what it needs. Do you think this could be another situation when you're looking at the more complex situation in the House where the House Speaker needs Democrats to approve this? And what would that then mean for his speakership, do you think?

MITCHELL: So it's very interesting dynamic, as you know, Kevin McCarthy was removed as speaker because he passed legislation by relying on Democrats. And more and more, it's looking at nothing can pass in the House, nothing kind of consequence without the help of Democrats. And what we're seeing is that the honeymoon is ending for Speaker Mike

Johnson. There are more and more conservative, hardline Republicans saying they're unhappy that, you know, he's looking to Democrats to solve some of the issues they're facing on the floor.

It's really a no win for any Republican leader. This is just more pronounced, but it's been that way for quite a while, quite frankly, in the U.S. House. There are no easy solutions. And quite frankly, part of it is because our U.S. government was built on kind of this principle of, no side should get everything they want. There should be a level of compromise in coming towards the middle. That's quite frankly what our founding fathers envisioned, but unfortunately, particularly in the hard right, that unwillingness to work together, that willingness to kind of dig in to get your way is kind of what they are prioritizing right now. So it's really causing a lot of breakdowns, particularly among Republicans.

BOLDUAN: And at the same time, Tia, you have the House Speaker saying this weekend that he thinks he has the votes to formally launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. One person who thinks that is a bad idea is Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. Let me play what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think they run the risk of doing an inquiry that doesn't necessarily lead anywhere, while they've been ignoring a lot of the problems that our voters are talking about. Make sure you're not ignoring all these other issues and don't use that inquiry as kind of a trojan horse to not then meet your responsibilities on all these other things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: I thought that was really interesting, hearing that coming from him. What do you do with that?

MITCHELL: It's -- I mean, I think in a way he's right because what he's saying is that you guys may be focusing on an impeachment inquiry, put all your time and effort into hearings and investigations and fact-finding, and still not come up with anything truly incriminating against President Biden.

Meanwhile, you're facing government funding shutdowns. You're facing the expiration of the aviation authority, foreign surveillance, this foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine. And there are so many things that are on the table, the National Defense Authorization Act.

There are things on the table that American people would like to see done. Plus, the bigger issues, the economy and prices and AI. And he's saying we could be focused on that and not on an impeachment inquiry that could go nowhere.

BOLDUAN: Yeah, and as we have heard from members of Congress from the beginning of time, we can walk and chew gum at the same time but they really have not proven to be so great at that, for sure. [09:30:06]

Tia, thank you so much. It's good to see you. John?