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Vatican: Same-Sex Blessings Are OK If Conducted Informally; Trump's Rhetoric On Migrants Draws Comparisons To Nazi Germany; Scientists May Have Found The Cause Of Morning Sickness; Appeals Court Rejects Mark Meadows' Bid To Move Georgia Election Subversion Trial To Federal Court. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired December 18, 2023 - 15:30   ET

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

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Huge news for the Catholic Church. Pope Francis is now formally allowing priests to bless same-sex couples. This marks a radical change in Vatican policy, shifting away from a 2021 ruling which barred any such blessings.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And a release from the Vatican says people seeking God's love and mercy shouldn't be subjected to, quote, an exhaustive moral analysis. Further reaffirming Francis' suggestion that these blessings can be offered as long as they are done so informally and are not confused with the sacrament of marriage.

Let's discuss this now with CNN's Vatican correspondent, Christopher Lamb. This is huge, Christopher. What does this policy change mean?

CHRISTOPHER LAMB, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna and Boris, this is a very significant development because for the first time, the Pope and the Vatican have formally said that priests can offer blessings informally to same-sex couples. Now, these can't take place in formal church services, and they mustn't be done in a way that confuses the church's teaching on the sacrament of marriage being between a man and a woman.

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But it's a shift from the previous documents that we've seen from the Vatican, which said that the church cannot bless sin, and therefore could not offer any kind of blessing. Whereas this document is offering a very different approach.

And I'll just read out quickly the key quote. It says, when people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. The grace of God works in the lives of those who do not claim to be righteous but who acknowledge themselves humbly as sinners like everyone else.

So it's a big shift -- Brianna.

SANCHEZ: So would you say that this is a change to the church's position on gay marriage? LAMB: No, it's not a change on that. Pope Francis is being clear that

he's not shifting church teaching there. I think what it's trying to do is, on the one hand, maintain what the church is always taught about marriage, but at the same time offer a welcome and to be more inclusive to same sex couples, to LGBTQ Catholics, many of whom have felt excluded and marginalized by the church.

And Pope Francis throughout his pontificate has tried to offer a more inclusive approach on this matter. And this, I think, is in keeping with that long running approach the Pope has had for the last 10 years of his pontificate.

KEILAR: Yes. Very, very interesting as we keep an eye on this and what comes next. Christopher Lamb, thank you for that report.

LAMB: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Still ahead, former President Donald Trump ramping up his anti-immigration rhetoric just four weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Why his comments are drawing fresh comparisons to Nazi Germany.

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SANCHEZ: Former President Donald Trump has been stoking fears about immigration for years. It was one of the very first things that he discussed when he announced he was running for president back in 2015.

Now he's seizing on the recent surge in border crossings to score political points with his base yet again. And this time he's blatantly invoking Nazi propaganda.

KEILAR: CNN's Daniel Strauss is with us on this story. Let's just walk through the comments here because they're pretty stunning.

DANIEL STRAUSS, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Right. So at a recent rally, Trump used the phrase poisoning the blood in reference to immigrants crossing the border and said that they are immigrants who are coming from mental institutions, causing crimes. And really, I think he meant, I guess it's hard to say what he meant, just poisoning the blood of the American people and culture.

Here's the thing about it, though. That is a phrase that Hitler used in Mein Kampf to say that non-Aryans were being poisoned or the blood of non-Aryans were being poisoned by other races.

And this isn't very -- this isn't the first time Trump has invoked phrases used by the Nazis before to gin up his base, to sort of argue against anything less than the most hardcore immigration policies. And yet we haven't seen any movement, any real condemnation from his supporters or the Republican Party at large that you would expect from any other Republican in the field today, which really just shows the level of impunity President Trump knows he enjoys within the party over anything he says. KEILAR: Yes, it is stunning stuff. It really is what we're hearing.

SANCHEZ: Yes, definitely. We have CNN's Alayna Treene with us as well. She's in West Palm Beach, Florida. Alayna, only four weeks out from the Iowa caucuses. What's behind this immigration push from Trump?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Yes, well, it's really interesting that Donald Trump, I mean, he really ramped up that anti-immigration rhetoric in a pair of rallies this weekend, first in New Hampshire on Saturday and then yesterday in Reno.

I was at that Reno-Novato rally where he talked a lot about his potential second-term immigration plans as well. He really laid out, you know, he talked about violent crimes that undocumented immigrants here in the United States had committed. But he also vowed to devote unprecedented resources to the southern border.

And when talking about this, he did preview what he would do if he were to win the election in 2024 when it comes to immigration. I can just tell you, Boris and Brianna, from my reporting here at CNN, as well as our colleagues and other media outlets, we've covered extensively what these potential immigration plans would be. And essentially, they include rounding up undocumented immigrants across the country and placing them in detention camps while they await to be deported.

And an endeavor like that would require a massive amount of resources to be shifted to the southern border, to federal law enforcement. Donald Trump yesterday in Nevada talked about pulling on resources from the DEA and other federal agencies in order to stop the flow of migration at the southern border. So some really, you know, expansive moves that Donald Trump wants to make in relation to his hardline immigration policies.

And I also just want to point out the timing of these remarks. I mean, obviously, Nevada is a state. It's the third early voting state, so Donald Trump is very focused on that. But it's also a state that has a large migrant population. And so Donald Trump was really targeting some of that rhetoric to these voters.

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He also recognizes that right now there's a lot of conversation around immigration. And it's not a topic that the Biden administration has a great record on. They know that it's a weakness for the Democratic Party. And that's why you're hearing him really play up what he would do. But, of course, very, very stunning and remarkable language to come from a former president.

And also something that the Biden campaign was very quick to point out was parroting the language of Adolf Hitler, as Daniel just pointed out earlier.

SANCHEZ: The thing that strikes me about that, Daniel, is that I speak to Republican allies of President Trump. And they say, well, you know, his words don't matter that much. He's just upset about illegal immigration. But the fact is, your legal status, a green card, doesn't change the health of your blood. It's a dog whistle.

STRAUSS: Right. And, look, this also reminds me, a little while ago, I cover -- I wrote a story about the Republican Jewish Coalition, their conference this year, and I remember asking a lot of attendees about Trump and his past comments in that vein that usually are considered extremely offensive to the Jewish community. And they sort of shrugged it off and said, well, I like what he's done for Israel. I like that he moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

And so they sort of shrugged it off. It's pretty amazing. And Trump knows that, of his supporters, the ones that really enjoy rhetoric like that, they like to hear it again and again.

KEILAR: Yes, it's unleashed so much anti-Semitic rhetoric, which, of course, you see the actions follow that.

STRAUSS: And in a heated time in the world for anti-Semitism.

KEILAR: Certainly.

SANCHEZ: Daniel Strauss, Alayna Treene, we'll have to leave the conversation there. Thank you both so much.

STRAUSS: Thanks.

KEILAR: And coming up, it's something that the majority of pregnant women suffer from, but not now. But now, pardon me. All right, you know what this is about, pregnant ladies, or if you've ever been. But now scientists are saying they may have found the cause of, yes, morning sickness.

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SANCHEZ: Scientists may have found the cause of morning sickness. A study by the journal Nature suggests that it may be linked to a hormone that's already in our bodies.

KEILAR: GDF-15 is produced at low levels caused by stress in people who are not pregnant. But high levels of the hormone can trigger nausea. Most pregnant people, of course, develop some form of the condition. Some women, though, have such severe morning sickness, they need to be hospitalized. Like Amy Schumer, Princess Kate, two famous examples there.

Let's bring in CNN's Meg Tirrell to talk about this. Tell us about this study. It's so interesting.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's really fascinating. And, you know, the researchers say a lot more attention needs to be paid to this. Because it can be a really serious medical condition. Not just something that, you know, everybody deals with during pregnancy. It can really be dangerous.

What they've really honed in on here is this hormone, GDF-15. Which, as you said, circulates in the body during times of non-pregnancy. But they did find in this study that higher levels of this hormone during pregnancy is associated with higher levels of nausea and vomiting. And another interesting finding they found is that people who've been exposed to this hormone before pregnancy seem to develop sort of a tolerance to it.

So that when they had higher levels during pregnancy, they didn't actually feel quite as sick. So there's hope that these understandings about this hormone may lead to better ways to treat or prevent these kinds of severe morning sickness -- guys.

KEILAR: So interesting. And what does that mean, Meg, for there being a treatment? I mean, can they just expose people to it beforehand to make things better for them should they get pregnant?

TIRRELL: Well, potentially. All of this, of course, needs to be studied to make sure it's safe and that it works. But there are medicines that already exist. One is called metformin, which seemed to increase levels of this hormone. So, that medicine is already out there. And so the question is, you know, if somebody had already had this kind of extreme morning sickness in a previous pregnancy, would they know that and try to prevent it by building up this tolerance before they go through pregnancy again? So that could be one potential approach.

Another way could be a treatment during pregnancy where you're actually trying to block the effects of this hormone. Of course, these things have to be studied extensively. So it would be a little bit of some time before we figure out whether there could be one of these ways forward. But, of course, it's very exciting to actually find out some more of the scientific underpinnings here.

KEILAR: Yes, it really is no longer a mystery other than it's terrible, which we knew already. Meg Tirrell, thank you for that. And we'll be right back.

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SANCHEZ: The following breaking news just in to CNN. A federal appeals court has rejected former Trump White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, in his attempt to move his Georgia election interference case to federal court.

KEILAR: We have CNN's Katelyn Polantz, who's with us now. This is significant.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME INJUSTICE REPORTER: It is significant. It was this -- a big test. Meadows, Mark Meadows, he said he was Chief of Staff under Donald Trump. He wanted to move the case against him, at least, in Fulton County, Georgia, to federal court.

He lost at the trial level, now at appeals court, led by the chief judge in the 11th Circuit, says, no, what you did, you weren't a federal officer. This case was the tip of the spear, too. It wasn't just about Meadows. Whatever happened to Meadows could have been picked up by Trump and others in this case. It's a losing battle. So, that case that's in Fulton County, Georgia, as of now, staying in Fulton County, Georgia, not going to federal court.

KEILAR: So interesting. And then, there's also some Rudy Giuliani news.

POLANTZ: There is, indeed. So, we're four days after that $150 million verdict from Ruby -- to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, these two Georgia election workers, saying Rudy Giuliani must pay them. And they are suing him again. They went to court just today, just four days later, after they had that huge win, to say to the judge, we would like an order prohibiting him from continuing to lie about us because of things he was saying during the trial.

And then, immediately after the verdict, both outside the courthouse, to cameras that were there, saying, stay tuned, I have evidence, I couldn't present it. And then, he also went on Steve Bannon's podcast over the weekend and continued to double down.

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So, they're back in court, and they're going back to the judge, and they want an order saying Rudy Giuliani cannot continue to spread lies about them. And they said in this filing, it must stop.

SANCHEZ: And, Katelyn, quickly, he's broke, right? Like, all these legal matters have really led him to financial ruin.

POLANTZ: He says he's broke, but he does have some assets, and so what's happening now is there is going to be a hot pursuit in court to try and collect what they can as soon as they can.

SANCHEZ: Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much for the reporting.

KEILAR: And "THE LEAD" with Jake Tamper starts right now.