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Michigan Supreme Court Rejects Effort to Remove Trump from Ballot; Now: Blinken Headed to Mexico for Talks on Record Migrant Surge. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 27, 2023 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:01:06]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Not getting involved. That is the word coming today from the Michigan Supreme Court. What this legal move now means for Donald Trump and the 2024 election.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And as thousands of migrants trek toward the United States, the U.S. secretary of state is making a trip south of the border. What the White House is hoping to accomplish with today's meetings in Mexico.

BOLDUAN: And one of the stars of the Oscar-winning film "Parasite" is found dead. The questions now about a police drug investigation and the actor's allegations that he was being blackmailed.

I'm Kate Bolduan with Sara Sidner. John Berman is on a night shift today.

This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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BOLDUAN: New word out of the highest court in Michigan. Donald Trump's name will remain on the 2024 primary ballot in Michigan. The state Supreme Court just this morning rejecting an effort to get him taken off. This decision is a setback for the challengers who for months have argued in legal cases that Trump should be disqualified over his actions on January 6th.

Now cases across several states are still playing out. It was just eight days ago you'll remember that the Colorado Supreme Court handed down a very different ruling and decision, the historic decision that Donald Trump should be disqualified and removed from the ballot.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz has more for us.

Katelyn, talk us through what the Michigan Supreme Court is saying today.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yeah, Kate, a critical state, a critical decision, and this is all heading into this primary season. That's what this is about today. Michigan Supreme Court saying they're not getting involved. It's not up to them who is on the primary ballot in Michigan whenever that primary election comes around. There were people that had gone to the courts in Michigan to challenge Donald Trump's ability to appear on that primary ballot, and the courts throughout Michigan the lower courts, the middle courts and the Supreme Court now in Michigan all say it's now up for us to decide.

One of the justices in Michigan did write that this state, Michigan, and their state laws and how they govern their primary election is very different from how, say, Colorado governs their election. The Colorado Supreme Court just last week is the state and is the court that decided Trump could not appear on their primary ballot because of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, the insurrectionist ban, saying he should qualify as an insurrectionist and thus should not be able to qualify as a presidential candidate, including in the primaries there.

In Michigan, what the court wrote today is we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court, but we did just get a statement from one of the attorneys involved in challenging Donald Trump's candidacy in Michigan saying that they are going to continue to try even though this court is saying no, we're not going to deal with this in Michigan for the primary that at a later stage the people challenging Trump in Michigan will very likely go back to the courts and try again.

Every state is different. There are several states where Trump is going to be remaining on the ballot even though people have gone to the courts to try to take him off of the ballot in the primaries and potentially in the general election. That is one of the reasons, Kate, why the Supreme Court may want to get involved because every state is handling this with different ways, with different laws and with different outcomes in court.

BOLDUAN: We are seeing that definitely play ought in real time.

It's good to see you, Katelyn. Thank you.

SIDNER: All right. With us now to discuss, CNN political commentator and former communications director for Vice President Harris, Jamal Simmons. Also joining us, Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton.

Thank you both for coming on, on this Christmas week. Look at you both just working so hard. Check is in the mail.

(LAUGHTER)

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Thank you, Sara.

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Take off the glasses like --

[10:05:00]

SIDNER: Exactly. Just relax. It's fine. I want to talk to you firstly about the cases that are coming up for

Donald Trump that will clearly bang into where we are with this campaign and what this means and he's been very clear on saying that every time that he wins something in a court, he hasn't won them all, clearly, he puts that as another notch on his belt, if you will.

What do you think going forward is going to happen with all of these cases that are questioning whether or not the president can be on these ballots? Is this going to head to the Supreme Court, do you think, and what that might mean for voters?

SINGLETON: Yeah, I absolutely think it's going to head to the Supreme Court and I think the Supreme Court is going to have a final say.

I mean, I think there's a legitimate argument that some who support the former president has made as it pertains to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that while it lists a significant number of office holders, it does not explicitly name or state the president and one of the original drafts, it actually did. They removed it in the final iteration. And so, there are folks who disagree with that and it is certainly an argument worth entertaining from a legal perspective.

Politically, I don't think many judges similar to the court in Michigan, the Supreme Court in Michigan that you just discussed in the previous segment want to remove voters' ability to choose and select a candidate of their choice. Courts are very weary of sort of intervening in political processes, and I think the Supreme Court is going to ultimately see it that way.

SIDNER: Yeah. It's an interesting point.

Okay. Now I want to talk about, Jamal, the tweet that or -- not a tweet, okay, it's a Truth Social -- whatever, social media, that Donald Trump put out showing the sound cloud -- the word cloud, a thousand people likely voters told "The Daily Mail" that these are some of the things that come to mind when they think of describing Donald Trump. And in there you see words like economy, okay, and then you see power, revenge, dictator.

When you see those words, what does that tell you about where people's minds are and if this is going to have any effect on the general voting population?

SIMMONS: You know, Kristen Soltis Anderson has a great piece in "The New York Times" today. It talks about whether this is going to be an election about order and security, and I think if that's the case Donald Trump is trying to make the argument that basically he's a strong man, right? That he can be the one who can re-establish order in the American economy.

The problem is that Donald Trump is actually the vessel of disorder, right? He's the vessel of chaos. We know he's the one who brought, you know, all the way back to -- all the way back to the pandemic when he was talking about injecting bleach in our skins to solve the problem, he's just not a serious person to solve these problems. And this idea of calling people names, echoing Hitler, talking about vermin -- these are all things not for Republican voters who are interested in Donald Trump the strong man, but for general election voters who are watching this and seeing this, I don't know that the Biden campaign will let them forget that he talked about revenge and echoed Hitler in the primaries as a way to get stability in the general election.

SIDNER: Right now, the polls are looking very good for Donald Trump when it comes to the Republican nomination, but we'll have to see what happens when it comes to the general election.

Shermichael, let me ask you about Obamacare. Trump again pouncing on Obamacare. The issue I think for a lot of people is even when he was in office, it was never replaced. They never figured out a health care plan. There was nothing ever passed.

Is this a good line of attack?

SINGLETON: No. I mean, Sara, remember, we tried, Republicans tried. John McCain came in with the last bit of energy he had before he passed away and gave a thumbs down.

I think we need to move on from this, most Americans including Republicans, when we look at the data, the cross-tabulations actually like forms of Obamacare. Is it perfect? No. I would certainly like to see a proposal to increase competition to thus lower costs. That could be a compelling proposal for a certain sector of Americans, but to repeal it altogether, I don't think voters necessarily want that and to replace it with what?

I haven't really seen anything that would galvanize enough Americans to put the support behind members of Congress actually voting for said replacement. So I would advise the former president to focus on issues such as the economy and immigration and some of the foreign issues that the country's facing right now. This is something that I think registers very high for the average voter.

SIDNER: I wanted to ask you, Jamal, speaking of immigration. You know, you have this huge influx of migrants. There is a crisis at the border, Democrats and Republicans agree on that. The Biden administration sending some of the top lieutenants into Mexico today to have conversations.

What does this conversation need to look like? Because Biden is getting hit pretty hard on the issue of immigration.

SIMMONS: Boy, this is such a challenge because Americans of goodwill and good faith all over the country are trying to figure out what do we do about what looks like, clearly, an influx of people coming across the border, many of whom may not actually want be from the Americas, right?

[10:10:07]

They may be from other places. So, we do have a security challenge. So there are a couple of things and there will have to be technological points on that, and the technology at the border and probably need more border judges and the Biden administration has asked for that, more immigration judges so they can process the claims coming through faster.

I think you're also going to have to see what the vice president is focused on, which is dealing with the causes -- the root causes of immigration from kind of the northern and Central American countries and trying to keep people who really don't want to leave their families, don't want to leave the places they know and familiar. They want to be home. So, how do we deal with crime? How do we deal with the economic issues that happen down there?

So, you know, this is not an easy thing to fix. The problem is Donald Trump is running with the sloganeering kind of campaign. So, if you're Joe Biden, you're trying to govern and figure out the problem. If you're Donald Trump, you're trying to secure political points.

SIDNER: Yeah, when it comes to immigration, whoever is in office, things go south and this is a problem that's been going on for decades and decades and decades, through many, many presidents.

Jamal Simmons, Shermichael Singleton, thank you so much coming on this holiday week, and maybe there's a little bonus for you.

SIMMONS: Thanks.

SINGLETON: I hope so. I'm waiting for it, Sara.

(LAUGHTER)

SIMMONS: I'm going back to the cookie bar downstairs, in the kitchen.

SIDNER: Excellent.

(LAUGHTER)

BOLDUAN: Do not hold your breath for that bonus, guys. Just a little warning.

Coming up for us, as Sara mentioned, pressure is mounting and numbers are surging at the southern border. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and other top administration officials are on their way to Mexico right now to try and find some help from Mexico's president.

Plus, one of the stars of the Oscar-winning film "Parasite" was just found dead in his car and the new questions now surrounding his sudden death and the police investigations he was facing.

And from a breakthrough -- from a breakthrough advancement in sickle cell treatment to the exploding popularity of weight loss drugs like Ozempic, we are counting down the top health stories of the past year.

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[10:16:04] SIDNER: Happening very soon, top U.S. officials will arrive in Mexico as President Biden faces mounting pressure to stem the unprecedented flow of migrants coming to the southern border.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he is seen there in that dark morning hours leaving D.C. a few hours ago. He is going to be leading the talks today for the White House. Right now, roughly 11,000 migrants are waiting on the Mexican side of the border to get into the United States.

The mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas, told CNN last night that something has to be done now.

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MAYOR ROLANDO SALINAS, EAGLE PASS, TEXAS: Our city here in Eagle Pass, we've been getting slammed with 2,000 to 3,000 people a day and it's just an unfair, unethical situation what's going on here in eagle pass. We feel ignored by the federal government.

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SIDNER: CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is joining us now. You heard those words there, we feel ignored by the federal government. You hear that from both Democrats and Republicans who are leaders up and down the border.

What is the White House hoping to achieve as their top officials are going to Mexico?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, there's no doubt, Sara, that this has been an incredibly complicated issue for the White House to navigate as they get heat from both sides. Now, they are going to Mexico to try to get help from Mexico to drive down these border numbers and the urgency is clear by who is going. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will meet with the Mexican president as well as some -- as well as some members of his cabinet.

Now, officials tell me they're coming with requests and those include, for example, moving migrants who are at Mexico's northern border south to decongest that area, controlling the railways which are often used by migrants to more quickly get to the U.S. southern border and providing incentives like visas for migrants to remain in Mexico and not to continue up to the U.S. southern border.

Now, this is an extension of the call that took place last week between the president and the Mexican president where they both agreed that additional enforcement is needed and Sara, I am learning moments ago from a homeland security official that yesterday, there were 6,000 encounters on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Compare that to a few years ago when there were over 10,000, so there has been a drop here, but officials are talking that up in part to the holiday. So, they're still bracing for what can come in the coming days and so these steps that the U.S. is taking is trying to provide relief to these border towns that have grown restless and are overwhelmed and to underscore how challenging this has been from the White House, the year started with President Biden meeting in Mexico, meeting with his Mexican counterpart to tackle migration, record movements of people in the western hemisphere.

They're now bookending the year doing the exact same thing, trying to find some solution for the months to come.

SIDNER: Priscilla, you've been reporting on the breaking stories. Thank you so much for all of your work and we'll be checking back in with you once Antony Blinken gets to Mexico to see what is happening when he gets there. Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Joining us to talk about this is Democratic congressman from New Mexico, Gabe Vasquez. He's -- he represents the third largest border district in the country.

Congressman, thank you for coming in.

So, we know that top Biden administration officials are on their way to Mexico to try to drive down the numbers and the numbers do say a lot right now. We heard some of those from Priscilla Alvarez. Here are some other numbers that we're looking at. The seven-day average in November of -- in terms of encounters at the southern border were 6,800. The seven-day average in December was 9,600 plus.

How big of a problem is this current surge, in your view?

REP. GABE VASQUEZ (D-NM): Well, thank you, Kate. Thanks for having me on.

And you're right, I do represent 180 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, was the former chair of the Border Security Task Force, and I've dealt with all kinds of different challenges here on the border. As a city counselor, I was the first elected official to offer public financing for the re-homing of asylum seekers about four years ago.

[10:20:04]

But this is something that we haven't seen before. And I think the administration is making the right decision by using its diplomatic ability to work with the Mexican government because what we are seeing is an influx at the border that right now for non-profit organizations, our churches, other humanitarian efforts that are taking place outside of the scope of the federal government, that those folks are truly overwhelmed, and we are a compassionate state, we are a compassionate community here along the U.S.-Mexico border, but we do need some help.

We also need to make sure that especially these long journeys that women and children in particular are taking are journeys in which we as the United States are putting forth policy and proposals that do those people no harm, because we've seen that in these long treks here to the U.S.-Mexico border.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, you've been outspoken in your criticism from what I've seen of the White House for being open to stricter border policies as part of the ongoing funding negotiations.

Why? What is Biden getting wrong?

VASQUEZ: Well, look, I can just tell you from my district here in the second congressional district in New Mexico, in my own experience with the family of immigrants who work very hard to come to this country that we have to honor who we are as a country. The values that we represent are incredibly important to all Americans as they are to people here along the border and so we have to have first and foremost a humanitarian response to what's happening at the border.

So many of the things that are happening today, we can work out diplomatically with our neighbors to the south. And so, this is a good first step of the administration. However, the White House can also be doing more to consult with Congressional Hispanic Caucus members such as myself and others in leadership, including in the Senate, as well, to help bring forth solutions to the table that are actually meaningful and long lasting.

And also, these negotiations with Senate Republicans have to include things that Republicans have supported in the past like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. This is an opportunity for us to move forward on immigration policy, not move backward, and I think the White House really has to be able to negotiate in good faith and in conversations with folks like me who represent border districts.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, I mean, hearing is that you see this as an opportunity. So, you don't think that Biden is getting it wrong in terms of being open to cracking down on stricter border policy as part of the negotiations?

VASQUEZ: Well, I think that any negotiations with Senate Republicans or House Republicans has to include policies that the overwhelming majority of Americans represent like DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. We are not getting --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: But as you know, that's not part of the negotiations right now, because you talk about the overwhelming majority --

VASQUEZ: It is not.

BOLDUAN: The overwhelming majority of Americans supporting something, but there is also something we need to talk about which is just the reality of what a president and quite frankly, all of you are dealing with.

There are two things that you're facing, right? You have border crossing surge, the political center of gravity on this issue in terms of immigration and border security has moved sharply to the right, and this is a crisis and you are dealing with a divided Congress.

Why should the --

VASQUEZ: Well, look, the reality is -- BOLDUAN: Those are realities that you have to deal with.

VASQUEZ: The reality is that Republicans also want to use immigration in the upcoming elections as a wedge to divide Americans.

BOLDUAN: But when you look at where polling is right now, polling shows that registered vote --

VASQUEZ: It's also an opportunity --

BOLDUAN: -- registered voters are moving -- oh, I think we just lost you, sorry. Are you back with me, Congressman?

VASQUEZ: -- 1980s for us to actually get something done.

And so, in this very broken institution in Congress, when we had those opportunities to negotiate with our counterparts on immigration reform and something that is so critically important to communities like mine and to young people all across this country and families and folks who want to work hard and fill those jobs --

(VIDEO GAP)

BOLDUAN: Darn it. I think we lost --

VASQUEZ: -- go back to Trump-era policies.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, I'm so sorry. I think technology is not working in our favor today. We keep -- it keeps dropping in and out.

Congressman Gabe Vasquez, we'll talk about this conversation when -- very soon, this problem, this issue and what is on the plate of members of Congress right now in terms of trying to hammer out a deal on immigration border security not going away. We'll have another opportunity to connect.

Thank you so much.

SIDNER: And coming up, trying to broker a deal. As Israel ramps up its military plans, President Biden is turning to leaders in Qatar and looking for a diplomatic solution to help calm the situation in Gaza and secure the release of the remaining dozens of hostages.

Plus, the sudden death of a star in an Oscar-winning movie. What we're learning about alleged blackmail and a drug investigation into this very famous, well-known Korean actor.

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[10:29:34]

SIDNER: President Biden is keeping diplomatic lines of communication open as Israel expands its war effort in Gaza. The president spoke directly to the emir of Qatar Tuesday about the situation in Gaza and the potential for a permanent ceasefire. But Biden's main focus continues to be working towards the release of the 129 hostages that are still being held by Hamas in Gaza.

At the same time, a top ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with senior U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. to discuss the next phase of the war minimizing civilian casualties and a post-conflict --