Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

DOJ Charges Russians With War Crimes; President Biden Urges Congress to Pass Ukraine Aid; Donald Trump: Day One Dictator?. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired December 06, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:42]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Donald Trump refusing to say unequivocally that, if he's reelected, he would not abuse power. So how will Trump's Republican rivals respond on the debate stage tonight? With weeks to go before Iowa, will they finally go after their front-runner, especially with Trump skipping out again?

And while the former president looks ahead to 2024, prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, are still looking to hold him accountable for the chaos that followed the 2020 election. A new key witness has been added to the list, Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence. CNN's exclusive details are straight ahead.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: An extraordinary new audio of freed Israeli hostages confronting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a private meeting. We're going to tell you why they are venting their frustration at the Israeli government.

We are following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: Tonight, four Republican presidential hopefuls will face off in another primary debate. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, South -- former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Vivek Ramaswamy will all make their case to voters.

But for the fourth time, the far-and-away Republican front-runner will not be there to spar with them. Former President Donald Trump has already started discussing what a second term would look like. Trump and his allies are even hinting at how he would use his presidential powers to go after his perceived enemies.

That has led to warnings from former government officials and fellow Republicans about the dangers of another Trump term. Last night, Trump had a chance to clear the air. He was asked point blank if he would abuse his power. He did not give a simple no.

CNN's Alayna Treene joins us now with more.

Alayna, most candidates would be pretty clear about not seeking to be a dictator, but Trump's last answer last night implied more than that.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: It did, Boris.

I mean, Sean Hannity last night. And I asked Donald Trump twice, and over the course of several minutes, whether he would try to abuse presidential power or use the government if reelected to go after his political opponents. And Donald Trump deflected. He did not take the opportunity to deny it.

Let's take a listen to what they said. Do

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever, if reelected president, to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You mean like they're using right now.

HANNITY: Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.

TRUMP: Except for day one.

HANNITY: Except for?

TRUMP: Look, he's going crazy.

Except for day one.

HANNITY: Meaning?

TRUMP: I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.

HANNITY: That's not a...

TRUMP: He says, you're not going to be a dictator are you? I said, no, no, no, other than day one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now you could hear there, John -- or -- excuse me -- Boris, that Donald Trump was joking about potentially being a dictator, again, like you said, not something I think a lot of other candidates would do.

But, listen, I think it's really important to point out here that Donald Trump has said explicitly and publicly, both on the campaign trail and in interviews, that if he were elected to the White House next year, he would use the Justice Department to go after enemies. He would use the government to try and target his political foes.

And so I think that's really important to keep in mind. And I also just want to point out, you saw in that last clip there Donald Trump also did what we see him do time and time again. He tried to flip the script. He said what Joe Biden is doing, tried to portray Joe Biden as someone who is abusing his office and pointing to the four indictments that are stacked against the former president.

SANCHEZ: So, Alayna, instead of being at the debate, what is the former president going to be up to?

TREENE: Well, as he has done with all of the previous debates so far, he's skipping this debate again tonight. He's instead going to attend a fund-raiser hosted by one of the super PACs that's supporting his candidacy.

And what I find just really interesting about this is, I have talked about this with Donald Trump's team, his advisers, his inner circle, repeatedly over the course of the last several months, but also in the last 24 hours. And they argue that they think the strategy of not going is really effective.

[13:05:15]

They say they want to try and portray Donald Trump as being in a different league than the other candidates, and try to portray it as if these debates are beneath him, and they say that strategy is working.

Of course, though, you're going to have the other four candidates on stage, and they're very frustrated by Donald Trump's absence. They have not been given an opportunity to attack him directly in front of millions of viewers. But they're also not really having an opportunity to try and lure in a lot of the pro-Trump viewers that you know Donald Trump brings when he does participate in debates.

And so I think it's a very frustrating thing for the other contenders who are going to be on that debate stage tonight.

SANCHEZ: Alayna Treene, thank you so much for the reporting.

We want to bring in Jessica Dean now, because she has more on the debate that's set to take place tonight.

Jessica, what are you going to be looking for?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, remember, we have got just four candidates this time, Boris. So as these debates continue the stage and who's on the stage, the numbers get smaller and smaller.

So it's just that dynamic. And Alayna makes such a great point, which is, former President Donald Trump is not going to be on that stage. He hasn't been on any of them. And we have seen over the course of the several debates that started back in August on a -- in a larger field that really there hasn't been a real going after Donald Trump.

There have been moments. But we have heard from tonight's moderators that they intend to try to inject him into this as much as possible. So that's one thing we're certainly going to look for. But then, when you look just within the dynamics of the four people on that stage, you have Nikki Haley, who has a lot of wind at her back right now, and has really done well in part because of her performances on the debate stage.

She has really taken these opportunities to gain momentum. And there's been very pointed interactions between her and her and especially Vivek Ramaswamy, so probably more of that. And then for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who's going all in on Iowa -- and, remember, we're now just several weeks away from Iowa. That's January 15, so we're closing in on that.

He really wants to make a mark. In a number of these debates, he hasn't had one huge moment, nothing like we have seen from Nikki Haley in terms of really capturing the moment. So can he do something like that tonight on this stage? And then, of course, Chris Christie, who was able to get a place on that stage kind of at the very last moment, he has also had his message of going directly after Trump, more than anybody else on that stage, time and time again.

We can expect to see more of that tonight.

SANCHEZ: Yes, a lot to watch out for, potentially the last debate before voters start making decisions in Iowa.

Jessica Dean, thank you so much -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, let's talk more now about all of those developments in the 2024 race.

Let's be joined now by former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent in Pennsylvania and Jackie Kucinich, who is a CNN political analyst and the Washington bureau chief for "The Boston Globe."

All right, what's at stake tonight, considering the former president isn't there? What are you watching for?

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, what I'm watching for, Nikki Haley's ascending, Ron DeSantis is descending, Ramaswamy is just a grifter, and then you have got, of course, Chris Christie, who's launching frontal assaults.

I want to see if Haley is going to actually go after Trump, I mean, because second place is last place in this business, and Trump is in first place by a long shot. And so she's the one everybody's watching right now to see if she can break through and maybe position herself as the alternative to Donald Trump.

KEILAR: It does seem like it's the race for second place, though, these debates.

What are you looking for?

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

Well, I think you're right about Nikki Haley, but she's kind of tilled a very different path than a Chris Christie. She's been the, OK, thank you, Trump, but it's time to move on, and where Chris Christie has been wanting to really smack him in the teeth. I'm really curious what all of these people, aside from Chris

Christie, because I think we can predict what he's going to say, what their reaction to what Trump said last night is, and because we're kind of past the point where they can be like, oh, I don't want to talk about Donald Trump, I want to talk about myself.

You're running against Donald Trump. He is beating you by 30 points. If you're going to make that up, time is very limited at this point, and you have to know where these people stand, frankly, on democracy.

KEILAR: Yes, because, I mean, let's -- the different approaches to how you deal with what Donald Trump said, like you said, you can kind of ignore it, or I want to talk about something else.

There's Liz Cheney or Chris Christie. They are ringing the alarm. There's someone like Congressman Tim Burchett and what he said to Phil Mattingly this morning. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TIM BURCHETT (R-TN): He has a lot of bravado as a New Yorker, and he's going to be surrounded with attorneys. He can't just say it and make it happen. There's a process that everything goes through, and there's -- we have a judicial system, and that's what we have got. We have got a Justice Department who I think is corrupted, but -- so I don't know.

I would assume, though, that he would not be able to do any of that. He would have to go through the proper processes, and that's what you say during elections.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:10:00]

KEILAR: It's like the third approach, which is downplaying some of what he says, as if we didn't see the first movie in the series here, or enabling what he's done.

DENT: Well, if I were -- Chris Christie on the stage tonight is going to weaponize himself over this issue and basically say that Trump is a threat to the constitutional order and the stability of the republic.

The question right now is, is Nikki Haley going to channel her inner Chris Christie and launch, sharpen those stilettos? She likes to talk about those stilettos as weapons. And she's going to have to really take off the gloves and I think take Trump head on this and other comments. I know they're all worried about antagonizing the Trump base.

But at some point, you have to really draw a sharp contrast. I don't think she has done that yet. She needs to do better than just saying, hey, I'm the next generation, vote for me. She's going to have to get out there and explain why Trump's got to go.

KUCINICH: But it's so telling how Congressman Burchett dealt with that. It basically was like fingers crossed that the system holds, whereas things got pretty hairy there at the end of 2020.

KEILAR: He's got guardrails, he's sort of saying.

KUCINICH: He's got guard -- yes, exactly. There will be adults in the room.

We have heard all of this. And so that's sort of like, here's hoping. How long is that going to hold if this continues? He's being very clear about how he wants, how he's staking out this potential second term. And are Republicans going to keep going along with it because they're afraid of the base?

Seems to be the case right now in the House.

KEILAR: What does that say? Donald Trump is not being unclear about what a second term might look like. What does it look like, in your view?

DENT: Well, he's telling us what he's going to do. It's going to be about retribution and grievance. He's going to go after his enemies. He's going to do radical things.

I could see him pulling out of NATO. I mean, he's going to disrupt and break the china, so to speak. He is going to really upset the whole international order. And I think a lot of us are concerned that these institutions that held while he was president and after he was president might not hold this time.

I'm not to the point where I'm ready to say it's all going to end, but I am deeply concerned where this is going.

KEILAR: You're not with Burchett, to be very clear.

DENT: No, no.

KEILAR: Very clear.

DENT: But I'm not quite where Liz Cheney is yet.

KEILAR: All right.

What do you think? What is he advertising for a second term?

KUCINICH: Well, it seems like he's someone who actually knows how the levers work now, where, when he came into office initially, he was a novice at this and really didn't know where he could push the limits and where he couldn't.

Now it seems like he knows where things are weak, where the fences might not be able to hold and who stood in his way last time. So it seems like he's going to surround himself with people who aren't going to throw down a red line for him, like we saw in the last administration among a couple of people who have now probably written books.

DENT: He's going to populate his administration too with sycophants and grifters.

KUCINICH: Exactly.

DENT: He -- the last time, at least we had the Mattises, the McMasters, the Tillersons, Cohns, and others who were strong personalities in their own right and institutionalists. Those people are gone.

Now, the good news with grifters and sycophants, they are probably not that smart, many of them. So, the question is, will they be able to figure out how to how to break all the china?

KEILAR: They can break some of it. I think we have seen that, for sure. They can definitely break some of it.

All right, Kevin McCarthy out at the end of his term. Sayonara, he is saying to Congress. But what is your reaction?

DENT: Don't feed the crocodiles, hoping that they will eat you last.

The lesson that Kevin McCarthy took from the John Boehner and Paul Ryan experience was, Boehner and Ryan wanted to -- they stiff-armed the exotic members, the hard-liners. Kevin McCarthy brought them in, hoping that they would somehow -- he would appease them, pacify them. It didn't work.

They took him down in the end. So I think that was the message. And the opposition to him was always personal. It really wasn't about the continuing resolution or the debt ceiling. He was always viewed as part of the establishment wing of the party. He wrote the book, along with Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan, the young guns. That was their thing.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Nostalgia.

DENT: That's what he was.

(CROSSTALK)

KUCINICH: ... like a candle.

(LAUGHTER)

DENT: But he was never really seen as part of that whole MAGA movement wing.

KEILAR: No, certainly wasn't.

Jackie, Charlie, thank you so much to both of you. Appreciate it.

And ahead of a key vote this afternoon, President Biden is urging lawmakers to pass a crucial aid bill for Israel and Ukraine, as Senate Republicans defend their plan to sink the package.

And four Russian soldiers now facing war crime charges against an American who is living in Ukraine. We have much more on the historic charges from the Justice Department.

Plus, a string of shootings in Texas leaving six people dead and three injured. Now police have charged one man with capital murder.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:18:55]

KEILAR: We just heard from President Biden, who is urging Congress to pass billions of dollars in critical military aid for Ukraine, warning of dire consequences if Congress continues to wait.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If Putin takes Ukraine, he won't stop there. It's important to see the long run here. He's going to keep going. He's made that pretty clear.

If Putin attacks a NATO ally, if he keeps going, and then he attacks a NATO ally, when we have committed as a NATO member that we defend every inch of NATO territory, then we will have something that we don't seek and that we don't have today, American troops fighting Russian troops.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The Senate will be voting on this funding package. That is expected later today. It does appear doomed to fail, because Republicans are digging in on adding border security measures to this.

CNN's M.J. Lee is at the White House live for us with the latest.

M.J., tell us more about what the president said here.

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, we are seeing a top national security problem already for the White House clashing with domestic politics clash, a fight that's happening on Capitol Hill right now.

[13:20:07]

This is funding for Ukraine and border policy. The remarks that we just heard from the president were clearly meant to be a ring the alarm bell kind of remarks. You look at some of the language that he used, he said it's stunning that this aid hasn't gotten through yet. A failure to do so would give Putin the greatest gift, that Russian forces are committing war crimes.

And he said if Russia does encroach on NATO countries, then we're seeing a situation where American troops ultimately end up getting involved. But what I asked the president in the room after his remarks was whether he believes Democrats should consider giving more on border policy in this package to try to get it through.

And he seemed to say that negotiations were going well for a while, but he said Republicans ended up walking away. Here was that exchange with the president just a minute ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Given the current path, would you be OK with Democrats willing to put more on border policy to get this current package through?

BIDEN: Yes.

LEE: What would you be OK with Democrats agreeing to?

BIDEN: I have already laid out in our negotiations with Lankford and others what we're willing to do, significantly more, particularly if they started off equipping the border capacity that we need on the border, from judges to more border security, in addition to making some substantive changes.

But they're unwilling to do it. We thought we -- I really thought -- I felt good for a while. I thought we were making some real progress. Lankford is a decent guy. It looked like he was prepared to move in a way, in a direction that we could come up with a compromise, both changing in substance, changing policy on the border, as well as security at the border.

But they have walked away. It's, take everything we have here, their one proposal, which is extreme, or nothing.

In the meantime, the nothing means we don't get any support for our friends and our innocent people of Ukraine. Anyway, I will talk to you more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: And the administration is expected to announce another $175 million security package for Ukraine via the PDA.

This is the Presidential Drawdown Authority. That would provide ammunition, artillery, other kinds of equipment for Ukraine. But the administration has been warning for days now that they can't keep doing this. They keep using the language there's not a magic pot of money, that it's really imperative that Congress approve new funding.

And, of course, the big concern right now, Brianna, on timeline is that members are going to leave town for the holidays before this gets done.

KEILAR: Yes, a big concern there. M.J., thank you for that.

We also have Melanie Zanona, who is on Capitol Hill for us.

Melanie, how much of an impasse is this? Is there a way for Congress to deal with this before leaving for the holidays?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Well, it's unlikely that Biden's message here is going to change the fundamental dynamics on Capitol Hill, which is that Republicans are insisting that border security provisions be attached to any additional funding for Ukraine. And so we will see what sort of response we get from Republicans here.

So far, the White House has been issuing these dire warnings increasingly all week, and it has fallen on deaf ears. But one thing that Biden did say, which I think some Republicans are going to take notice of, is that he is willing to compromise on the border.

Now, for Democrats and Biden, this is a political issue where they could be vulnerable in 2024. So there is some incentive for them as well to do something to show that they are trying to secure the border. But it is a complicated issue. The White House has already said it is willing to do some maybe stricter asylum laws, but Republicans are pushing for something much more hard-line.

They want an almost complete crackdown on those laws. So that has been a key sticking point. And even if they are able to agree on something on a bipartisan basis in the Senate, there is no guarantee that it's going to be able to pass the GOP-controlled House.

Over there, Speaker Mike Johnson has been insisting on a hard-line partisan border security bill be attached. That is something that has been a nonstarter with Democrats. And he's also insisted that Ukraine aid be separated from Israel. They don't want to do this in one big package, so the GOP even divided right now over both strategy and policy.

So the Senate will still take a vote later today, a procedural vote, on a package just for Israel and Ukraine. We are expecting it to fail because Republicans are planning to vote against it. So that can either really solidify the stalemate or reinvigorate the talks.

But at this moment, Ukraine aid looking increasingly dire here in Capitol Hill, Bri.

KEILAR: All right, Mel, thank you for the latest there -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Historic criminal charges were announced today for brutal offenses against an American caught in the middle of Russia's war on Ukraine.

For the first time, the Justice Department using the U.S. war crime statute, charging these four Russian soldiers for the alleged abduction, beating and days-long torture of an American man living in Ukraine. The attorney general said the Russians interrogated their victim in April of last year.

[13:25:08]

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: They stripped off his clothes and took pictures. One of their conspirators threatened to sexually assault him.

And during the interrogation, when the victim's answers did not satisfy the defendants, we allege that Budnik, who was also a commanding officer, threatened the victim with death, and asked for his last words.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Let's get the latest from CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez.

Evan, the attorney general stressed that this wasn't someone aligned with a military. This was just a civilian.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right.

This was somebody who is an American who happened to be living in this town, this small village in the Kherson region of Ukraine, Boris. And what the Justice Department alleges in these in these charges that were brought in the Eastern District of Virginia is that this man was taken, taken away by these Russian military officers, two of them commanding officers.

And they were taken -- and he was taken and, for 10 days, subjected to multiple questionings. He was taken outside and put through a mock execution. They fired a gun right next to his head, missing his skull just by mere inches, and, again, trying to terrorize this person because he wasn't providing the answers that they wanted, that they believed he had.

And so that's where these charges come from. And this is something, obviously, the Justice Department, the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, they have an entire team that has been working on this since the Russian invasion -- shortly after the Russian invasion.

And those stories emerged of the torture subjected to -- that people were subjected to there in that region. And for the United States, right, the jurisdiction is obviously a U.S. citizen who was subjected to this. But they have also been trying to help them gather evidence, the Ukrainian authorities, to gather evidence for possible international war crimes tribunals.

Now, one of the things that we heard from the attorney general today too, Boris, is that we're probably going to see more cases like this, that they have additional investigations that they have been doing. We know some of those stories have emerged over the last couple of years of this war.

And so they're doing that. And, also, one of the other interesting things is that the -- these teams are also now working on gathering evidence of war crimes by Hamas...

SANCHEZ: Wow.

PEREZ: ... which is, of course, something that we're all paying attention to after the events of October 7.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

Evan Perez, thank you so much for the reporting. Appreciate it.

So, the former vice president is on the list. Why Mike Pence could be a critical witness for Georgia prosecutors in the election subversion case.

And later: Israeli officials saying their troops have surrounded the home of Hamas' top leader in Gaza. An update from the region when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)