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Migrant Caravan Treks Through Mexico En Route To U.S.; Large System Dumping Heavy Snow And Rain Parts Of U.S.; Prices Fell Last Month For The First Time Since April 2020. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired December 25, 2023 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

REP. BRAD SHERMAN (D-CA): Yes, you know, I know the folks demonstrating at my office, not a single one of them mentioned Tigray to me when 500,000 people died. It's as if these professors are focused on one thing. And I think it's simply Israel is an ally of the United States. And these in some of these professors, therefore, are anti-Israel. It's part of the anti-American Day ideology.

Whereas in Ethiopia, it was one group of Ethiopians fighting with another group of Ethiopians. And the professors didn't mention it. The students didn't talk about it. 500,000 people died.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: And what does that tell you?

SHERMAN: It tells me that when they're Jews, there's news. It's peculiar that this one conflict, I think part of it is Qatar's funding of operations on U.S. campuses. But it's more complicated than I understand that this one conflict generates so much attention compared to other more deadly conflicts.

BOLDUAN: It is complicated, and it's also it's just also sad when you hear from students how they don't feel safe because of antisemitism. They don't feel safe because of Islamophobia that is happening on college campuses. And they're not even being given a platform to have productive conversation.

SHERMAN: I think the Islamophobia is not on campuses. I think the antisemitism is on campuses. But we have seen victims of Islamophobia and that's knowledge on campuses, but in various instances that have been tragic.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, thank you so much for coming in.

SHERMAN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Thanks for spending time with us. Thank you.

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: All right, and still to come with officials and towns already overwhelmed by the record migrant surge at the southern border we've learned a caravan of thousands is headed right now to the U.S.-Mexico border. We'll talk about coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [12:36:19]

BOLDUAN: Right now thousands of migrants are making their way toward the southern U.S. border. It is the largest caravan that the United States has seen in over a year. The U.S. is already dealing with an overwhelming number of border encounters and crossings as we've been reporting.

And Secretary of State Tony Blinken is actually heading to Mexico City on Wednesday to try to find some solutions to this and reach some agreements on how to at least slow the flow through Mexico.

Let's get to seen as Rafael Romo is in Texas right now. Rafael, what more are you learning on hearing about this caravan as it's heading toward the U.S. border?

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's thousands and thousands of people Kate that are coming here that will be here and maybe a couple of weeks, maybe three weeks, depending on how fast they traveled, most of them will be traveling, of course, by land and a few consider that situation and the fact that people have been coming here by the thousands.

For the last few weeks, you can imagine how bad of a situation it is for the local officials. And I was telling you earlier that this holding area behind me Customs and Border Protection had managed to empty it and as you can see now, there are filling it up again and you maybe see the shiny spots behind me. Those are immigrants who have been given a mylar blanket because it's a cold day windy here in Eagle Pass and we're right at the border with Mexico.

This is a community of less than 30,000 people, Kate, that has to deal with all of those immigrants arriving every week. And it's been a situation where we see migrants crossing the river not too far from where we are and surrendering themselves to authorities to be processed.

Troy Miller, the interim director for Customs and Border Protection earlier said that the influx of migrants they're currently seeing across southwest border is presenting a serious challenge to CBP personnel. This new migrants surge is also putting a lot of pressure on local law enforcement and this is what Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber had to say about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF TOM SCHMERBER, MAVERICK COUNTY, TEXAS: The law enforcement side, we're suffering because we don't have the manpower to take care of what we call the local business, the criminal elements and then the immigration problem. So it's costing us a lot of manpower. And of course, the federal government and state troops to you know, they're not here in the river like they're supposed to be there processing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMO: Kate, just to get an idea how many people are arriving here during the month of November, nearly a quarter of a million people were apprehended at the U.S. border with Mexico. Back to you.

BOLDUAN: Raphael, thank you so much.

SIDNER: All right. Some parts of the U.S. are getting a white out Christmas this year while rain washing out the holiday for others. Meteorologist Derek Van Dam has a look at the Christmas forecast for us.

Derek, I was very nasty to your predecessor. And I have to apologize to Chad because he made it all better in the end. Now, what do you got for us?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, I saw it well, OK. I'll start it by saying a heartfelt Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you.

SIDNER: Thank you.

VAN DAM: I'll put a little bit of sunshine on your map where you're headed to Texas today. I believe and that it's going to be sunny along the west coast as well. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the middle part of the country. Hey, that's the reality of winter right across the upper Midwest and into the northern plains. That's where things are getting a bit dicey this morning. We have blizzard warnings for just under 100 million people. Let me take you to Sioux City Iowa. You got to check out this video.

These are roads you do not want to be traveling on right now. Very tricky. We've got a mixture of rain and snow we'll call it sname for the better lack of a better word, right? And look it's just kind of a miserable day to travel.

[12:40:03]

Emergency officials saying hey, don't do it if you don't have to, of course a lot of us heading to the home family to celebrate Christmas. Interstate 80, that's the trouble spot across Nebraska. You can see it changes to rain the further east you travel towards De Moines. Here's a look -- a live look at Lincoln, Nebraska roads not looking too good, but there are a few cars traversing the area.

So the rain is going to spread eastward along some of the East Coast cities but on the backside, the winds coming straight out of the north that will draw in the cold air that keeps the snow in play, and actually seen some of that snow shift a little further towards the Denver Metropolitan for the day tomorrow.

And there's a rain as we try to head back home from grandma and grandpa's house on Wednesday and Thursday for the East Coast. Oh no. Not too bad of a weather forecast. I tried my best, Sara.

SIDNER: You did well. You did well, Derek. Thank you so much. Thank you to you and Chad Happy Christmas.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, did the United States pull off a Christmas miracle and avoid a recession and look at where the economy was, is and is headed in '24. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: Could the economic anxiety that began with the pandemic finally be ending?

[12:45:02]

A pair of reports last week showed the GDP group 4.9 percent in the third quarter the strongest in nearly two years. And in November inflation cooled to 2.6 percent, meaning prices fell on a month to month basis for the first time since April of 2020.

Yes, back then joining me now to discuss CNN Economics and Political commentator, and Washington Post opinion columnist, Catherine Rampell. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for wearing red Happy Christmas, everybody. It's Christmas.

I mean, what do you think about where we are right now with the economy, because Americans are starting to see some relief finally, in the prices and the paychecks.

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, these are relatively good economic numbers, we have managed to escape so far, you know, knock on wood, the expected risk of recession, inflation is coming down, we have very strong job growth. Still, these are good numbers to have. It's a pretty nice Christmas present.

SIDNER: So here are some numbers that are making the Biden administration unhappy that are not good numbers. And what we're seeing is that people are not giving credit to the Biden administration for the economy getting better. They actually still believe that Donald Trump handled the economy better.

Why are we seeing these numbers? And how might this play out in the election cycle that we're in.

RAMPELL: So I will give my standard caveat, or disclaimer, which is that presidents always get too much credit when the economy is good and too much blame when the economy is bad. In this particular case, you know, people are still very unhappy with the economy. Even if you see in the recent consumer sentiment and consumer confidence data, they're a little bit less unhappy than they had been. And that's because we've seen a lot of price growth to date. That is cooling right now.

But even so the fact that they are unhappy with the price growth that we've seen today, they're blaming Biden for it, whether Biden actually has any control over price growth, I think, is extremely overstated, both by Biden himself and his critics.

To the extent that we've seen some good news, it's mostly a credit to the Federal Reserve, which has managed so far, to escape the chance of recession, which, you know, had pretty high odds not too long ago, while bringing inflation down.

But either way, you know, Biden's going to get blamed or credited for whatever the economic conditions are. And as long as consumers are grumpy, he's going to get that blame.

SIDNER: Yes, it can be pretty rough. I like the way you said it. You don't take all the blame, you don't take all the praise, you're probably in a better spot. I do want to ask you about potential source subjects like sticky things that could cause a problem for us when it goes -- when we go forward, including the world economy, because that isn't doing as well as the U.S. economy at this point.

RAMPELL: Yes, it's quite interesting, actually, in the United States, not only have we had better job growth and economic growth than expected, let's say a few months or a year ago, we're actually doing better than forecasts had had us even before the pandemic began.

So if you look at, for example, where the Congressional Budget Office expected the level of jobs to be today, if you would ask him back in January 2020, we actually have about 2 million more jobs than had been forecast.

Same thing with gross domestic product, the measure of overall economic output, we're doing better today than had been forecasted before the pandemic began. That is not the case for most of the rest of the world. Most of the rest of the world is still dealing with the scarring effects of the pandemic, as well as some subsequent shocks, of course, like Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted energy supplies, primarily for Europe. And we've been in the United States somewhat shielded from all of that.

So yes, so the rest of the world is not doing as well as U.S. is and there could still be some contagion effects if we have some shocks next year.

SIDNER: All right. Let's hope for the best. Catherine Rampell, thank you so much. And thank you for coming on for Christmas. Appreciate you.

RAMPELL: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us. A groundbreaking novel turned Hollywood classic. Now reimagined The Color Purple is back on the big screen today. A look at the power behind this story still resonating for decades later.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:53:15]

BOLDUAN: Nearly 40 years after The Color Purple first came to the big screen it is back in theaters today this time as a musical It all began with Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer Prize winning novel and now gets a new treatment. This highly anticipated film version by Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers Discovery is the parent company of CNN as well. Stephanie Elam has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Color Purple is bad. But with the refresh.

COREY HAWKINS, ACTOR, "THE COLOR PURPLE": It's a beautiful reimagined and it's not a remake. It invites the older generation but invites the younger generation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Suffering is the great equalizer.

ELAM (voice-over): Based on Alice Walker's 1982 novel by the same name, The Color Purple tells the story of Seeley, a poor black woman in the early 1900s who find self-worth healing and happiness despite devastating odds with the help of the women around her.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I never thought I had to fight in my own house.

ELAM (voice-over): Steven Spielberg directed the first iteration of The Color Purple for Warner Brothers, which shares the same parent company as CNN. It garnered 11 Oscar noms with a star studded cast including Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and Oprah Winfrey, who is executive producer helped the new film reach more advanced theater buyouts than any other in Warner's history.

OPRAH WINFREY, HOST AND TELEVISION PRODUCER: So God can dream a bigger dream.

ELAM (voice-over): In the early 2000s, The Color Purple hit the Great White Way and was revived in 2015. This film adaptation taking a cue from Broadway is also a musical and emphasizes the message of hope more than the original film.

WINFREY: But I will have to say there's a buoyancy and a joyfulness to this reimagination that wasn't present in the first and that the music comes out of the spirit of the story.

[12:55:07]

ELAM (voice-over): The new version features dynamic performances from Taraji P. Henson is Shug Avery, Danielle Brooks and Sofia, Colman Domingo is Mister, and Fantasia Barrino who first started Sealy on Broadway. Yet she initially turned down the role for the movie.

FANTASIA BARRINO, ACTOR, "THE COLOR PURPLE": She carries everybody. And at the time when I was doing Broadway, I was carrying everybody and my life was so much like Seeley, I'm glad that I did it because I'm not that girl anymore. So she was strong. She held everybody together and she went through a lot of things, but look at Seeley now.

ELAM (voice-over): Besides Winfrey, the new film is executive produced by Spielberg, Quincy Jones and Scott Sanders.

SCOTT SANDERS, PRODUCER, "THE COLOR PURPLE": Black culture has used music to uplift for centuries.

ELAM (voice-over): It was his idea to turn the book into a Broadway musical. And now a Musical for the big screen.

SANDERS: We very intentionally looked at the story through a prism of black joy, of hope, of perseverance, and of true sisterhood. Taraji actually said, Alice Walker wrote us black Shakespeare, and we all know that Shakespeare gets reinterpreted all the time.

ELAM (voice-over): Reinterpreted, refreshed, and still resonating worldwide. Stephanie Elam, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: And as Oprah says it opens tonight. OK, wait, before we go, Frank, Ian, Mike Benaco (ph), Mike Manzo (ph).

BOLDUAN: There's a lot of Mike's.

SIDNER: We got a lot of Mike, Mike Telly (ph), Chris Carrie (ph), come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Let people see you. I know you're wanted by the FBI. We'll see who's behind the camera.

BOLDUAN: Everyone. Don't be shy. Thank you to our crew.

SIDNER: You too. Come on.

BOLDUAN: And everyone in Atlanta.

SIDNER: Come on.

BOLDUAN: That's a huge crew down there Merry Christmas, everybody.

SIDNER: Don't worry if the police won't come. Have a great Christmas. CNN Newsroom is next.

BODLUAN: And if they do, it's not on us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)