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Deal Reached With Mexico on Migrant Crisis?; Idaho University Demolishes Murder Site; Will U.S. Supreme Court Decide Trump Ballot Question?; Nikki Haley Under Fire Over Controversial Civil War Comments. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired December 28, 2023 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:08]

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: A group now taking the fight to keep Donald Trump on Colorado's ballot to the Supreme Court. But the question remains this morning, will the High Court finally weigh in?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: All right, demolition under way. The site where four Idaho college students were killed is being torn right now before our eyes, despite pleas from some of the victims' families to keep it standing.

SIDNER: And student loan payments back again, but over nine million borrowers aren't paying. We talk to a financial expert about why this could be good news for the economy.

I'm Sara Sidner alongside John Berman, who decided to show up today with his happy face on. Kate is enjoying a little bit of time off, but not as much as you have had.

(LAUGHTER)

SIDNER: This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

Bitter much?

BERMAN: All right, happening now on the campaign trail, Nikki Haley at a campaign event. I think we have pictures of it. She is on the trail for the first time since she gave that controversial answer overnight to what caused the Civil War.

She managed to answer the question last night without using the word slavery. This morning, she has tried to clean up those comments already on a radio show. She said, of course, she knows the Civil War was about slavery.

What you're looking at right now is her first public event in North Conway, north country there in New Hampshire, back on the trail. We will see. We're watching this very carefully to see if she mentions it at the event.

I want to remind you what she said last night. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) QUESTION: What was the cause of the United States Civil War?

NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, don't come with an easy question.

I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn't do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, that was Nikki Haley last night.

What you just saw was what will be Nikki Haley's first public campaign event today. We see the New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu, there. He just endorsed Nikki Haley. This could be a big moment on the trail for her.

CNN's Eva McKend is in New Hampshire watching this all develop this morning -- Eva.

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: Yes, John, cleanup mode, indeed.

This speaks to the larger way that Nikki Haley has run her campaign, really in sort of a play-it-safe mode. Her rival, Chris Christie, characterizes it as her trying to be at all things to everybody.

Well, that can't work when you have to answer a pretty straightforward question about the origins of the Civil War, and she neglected to reflexively mention slavery. She's singing a different tune this morning, though. Take a listen to what she told this radio host.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

HALEY: Of course, the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That's the easy part of it. What I was saying was, what does it mean to us today? What it means to us today is about freedom. That's what that was all about.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MCKEND: So, President Biden weighing on in on this, tweeting it was about slavery. We also heard from DNC Chair Jaime Harrison tweeting out basically about her record as governor of South Carolina, assailing that track record.

It was, of course, under her tenure that the Confederate Flag was taken down from the state capitol. But Democrats argue that was after the pressure, after the terrible slaughter at the Mother Emanuel Church, that she was pushed into that position.

So this is an ongoing conversation now on the campaign trail. We will see if she addresses it further. She typically does not take reporter questions at campaign stops, but she does take questions from voters. And perhaps they will ask her about this as she makes multiple stops today on the campaign trail.

She's going to be joined by Governor Sununu on some of those stops -- John.

BERMAN: All right, Eva McKend in New Hampshire, thank you very much.

You're looking at live pictures right now of Governor Nikki Haley. She is in North Conway, beautiful North Conway, New Hampshire. We're going to keep one eye on this event to see if she addresses this issue.

Again, this is an event where she's running the show right now. So unless she takes questions from voters who ask about it, unclear whether it will come up or whether she assertively tries to deal with it again. We will keep you posted on that.

In the meantime, joining me is Errol Louis CNN political commentator and political anchor for Spectrum News.

Errol, first of all, do you think she needs to address it this morning on camera at this event that we're monitoring right now?

[11:05:03]

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think she probably ought to, because she's got a very tough set of caucus and primaries coming up, and she doesn't want this in the news cycle.

She needs to dispose of it as quickly as possible by going back to, I think, the Nikki Haley of 2015, who in the wake of that terrible massacre at Mother Emanuel just decided to remove the Confederate Flag from the Statehouse, which should have happened a long, long time ago.

She was perfectly clear about the morality there and then. Now, as she's trying to sort of play footsie with some of the far right elements of the Republican base, she's kind of stumbling over her words, which is really unfortunate.

BERMAN: Yes, it is interesting to see. She just asked for a show of hands right there, not questions, but a show of hands on an issue. Again, we're watching this very, very closely.

She has blamed a Democratic plant for asking this question last night about the Civil War.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Well -- well, actually, let's listen to Nikki Haley for one second.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

HALEY: Yesterday, I was asked -- last night, I was asked about the Civil War and what I think of the Civil War, what was the cause of the Civil War.

Of course, the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That's unquestioned, always the case. We know the Civil War was about slavery. But it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government.

For 80 years, America had the decision and the moral question of whether slavery was a good thing and whether government, economically, culturally, any other reasons had a role to play in that.

By the grace of God, we did the right thing and slavery is no more. But the lessons of what that bigger issue with the Civil War is that let's not forget what came out of that, which is government's role, individual liberties, freedom for every single person, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do and be anything you want to be without anyone or government getting in your way.

That should be the goal of what we always try and take away from that, right, because we never want to return back to that place. But we always want to remember the lesson of what it means to be a free individual and that everyone deserves to be a free individual.

So we stand by that. I say that as a Southerner. I say that as a southern governor who removed the Confederate Flag off the Statehouse grounds.

(APPLAUSE)

HALEY: And I say that as a proud American of how far we have come.

So now I will start. I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself. We're going to talk about the state of the country. And we're going to talk about how to save her. I was born and raised...

BERMAN: All right, what you just saw there was very interesting, South Carolina Governor, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley choosing, choosing to address this issue in her first campaign event of the day.

You get a sense of just how important she believes it was to clean up this answer she gave last night when she was asked what caused the Civil War and she did not mention slavery.

This morning at this event, she proactively went out and among the very first thing she told this audience in North Conway, New Hampshire, a long, long way, by the way, from the South, the very first thing she told that audience practically was, of course, the Civil War was about slavery and also the role of government there.

Errol Louis, you're watching this alongside us. What did you make of what she said and the fact that she said it?

LOUIS: Well, she is very carefully dancing among a lot of different factions within the Republican Party.

Let me sharpen her answer a little bit. The Civil War was not about small government, which is kind of the way she's sort of trying to transform the well-known events of the past. The reality is, the Confederate traitors, who tried to break off and enlarge a slave empire in this country, were defeated not only through the grace of God, but by the force of arms of a very large armed Union government.

So there are times when big government is needed to deal with Confederate traitors, for example. And she can draw, of course, whatever conclusions she thinks will get her more votes, but I think the historical record is really pretty clear. And she's going to encounter this again and again.

Here's another question and, you don't have to be a Democratic plant to bring it up. Why did the Republican Party come into existence? Why was Abraham Lincoln the first Republican president? Let her try and figure out an answer to that, and I think we will really get to the real question here, John, which is, who is -- who are we going to be as a country?

[11:10:04]

What is this country about? What are the fundamental moral principles that a president is expected to both talk about and also advance and create policies to uphold? Until she can really sort of get that straight in a way that's not her counting votes in the back of her head, I think she's really going to have a very hard time.

BERMAN: Yes, she's still dancing a little bit here, isn't she, Errol? I'm glad you pointed out the ambiguity in her answer even this morning.

Yes, she said, of course, the Civil War was about slavery, but also the freedom of every individual and the role the government had to play. And the reason that's ambiguous is because there were some in the Confederacy who said it was a war about the freedom of individual rights to hold slaves, right?

LOUIS: Exactly right.

BERMAN: That is what -- and the government role, the role of government, well, there were people in the Confederacy who said that the North, the government in the North had no role in ending slavery.

And she's still leaving that ambiguity there. Why?

LOUIS: She -- again, she's counting votes.

And, by the way, she's studying for the wrong test, as many of these Republican rivals for Donald Trump's voters have been doing since the very beginning. If you want something raw and unvarnished, if you want the kind of ugliness that the Confederate Flag, for example, came to symbolize for a lot of pro-segregation forces over the last few decades, well, you can just go to Donald Trump and he will give it to you raw.

This ambiguity, this kind of cloudiness, people don't respond to that. Voters want you to stand for what you stand for. Even if they land in a different place, they always reward authenticity. If Nikki Haley sounds inauthentic or she sounds calculating, I think it's just going to backfire on her, really. BERMAN: All right, well, we will see if this is the last time today

or in the next few days that she addresses this issue, but clearly trying to clean some things up.

Errol Louis, thank you so much for watching this alongside us this morning.

LOUIS: Thank you, John.

SIDNER: All right, the U.S. Supreme Court now has the option to decide whether Donald Trump can constitutionally be barred from a 2024 ballot. Here's why.

Overnight, Colorado's Republican Party asked the Supreme Court in an appeal to overturn a state-level Supreme Court ruling that says Trump is ineligible to run because the 14th Amendment bans insurrectionists. They argue: "By excluding President Trump from, the ballot Colorado Supreme Court engaged in," as they put it, "an unprecedented disregard for the First Amendment. There is a real risk the Colorado Supreme Court majority's flawed and unprecedented analysis will be borrowed,' they argue, "and the resulting grave legal error repeated."

That is what they're asking the court to look into. Colorado, though, is an outlier, actually. Other state supreme courts have so far rejected similar efforts to keep Donald Trump off the ballot. Decisions in Maine and Oregon could come at any time.

With me now is Caroline Polisi, federal and white-colored criminal defense attorney.

Thank you so much for being here.

We're looking at this situation where the Colorado Republican Party has said, all right, we are appealing this. We're going to the Supreme Court.

How do you see the Supreme Court reacting? It's surely because so many states are looking at the same issue and they're ruling differently. Do you see this -- them picking up the case?

CAROLINE POLISI, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I absolutely do, Sara.

And I don't say that lightly. This is exactly the type of case that the Supreme Court should take, in that they can't let sort of chaos reign during this election cycle, wherein different states have different candidates on the ballot.

So that's why I do think they will take up the issue. Unfortunately, I don't think we are going to get a satisfactory answer to this big issue, which is whether or not President -- then-President Trump engaged in insurrection. That would be covered by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

We saw the lower Colorado court really engage in that issue and decide that, yes, he had. However, I think that the Supreme Court will not get to that question. They will likely rule under the sort of idea of whether or not this is a political question, whether or not the courts are the ones that are supposed to be stepping in and deciding this, rather than, say, Congress or the electorate.

And I think that is where they will draw the line. But I do think they will take it. It is ripe for review.

SIDNER: When you take a look at this, the 14th Amendment is pretty clear, in that it says anyone who was engaged, any person that's holding office that is engaged in insurrection is not eligible.

It doesn't say anything about being convicted. It doesn't even say anything about being charged. But the law is used in many different ways. And it's not just what's written on the paper. It's how it is used and how it plays out in court. How do you see this playing out in court?

POLISI: That's exactly right.

And, again, we saw this trial court level engage in a very fact- specific inquiry as to whether or not it believed that then-President Trump had engaged in an insurrection. And the judge there, she came out that he did. However, because of this other part of the law, which says it applies only to people that have previously taken an oath of office, and then thereafter engaged in the insurrection, can't hold other specific types of offices, she said it didn't apply to those types of offices.

[11:15:24]

And I think, again, the question will be, as you noted, President Trump wasn't prosecuted for this crime. The January 6 Committee, the congressional committee, did find that he engaged in the insurrection. But the question is, who gets to decide?

And we saw how poorly it went when the Supreme Court sort of stepped in on political questions in 2020 in Bush v. Gore. And I think that looms large in their head. I do not think that they are going to be the ones to decide this issue.

SIDNER: Remember when hanging chads were the biggest story of the political year?

POLISI: Yes.

SIDNER: It's been a minute since that.

POLISI: Exactly.

(LAUGHTER)

POLISI: Exactly.

SIDNER: Caroline Polisi, thank you so much for coming in.

POLISI: We don't want a repeat.

SIDNER: We don't want a repeat.

POLISI: Thank you.

SIDNER: Appreciate it.

BERMAN: All right, new numbers this morning from Border Patrol. Is progress being made on stopping the influx of migrants?

Happening now: demolition under way on the Ohio -- Idaho house where four college students were murdered, but not without objection from the families of the victims.

And we are getting new video in from Gaza in the location where Israelis have told people to evacuate immediately.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:21:06]

BERMAN: All right, these are live pictures of what was the house in Idaho where four college students were stabbed to death.

You can see it. It really has been torn down. It all happened over the last few hours here. Some of the victims' families, they had begged, begged for the school, which is tearing it down, the University of Idaho, to wait until after the suspect's trial. But the University of Idaho went forward this morning, and they did it actually ahead of schedule.

The demolition was ahead of schedule.

CNN's Veronica Miracle is outside that home in Idaho.

Walk us through what happened here and why it's so controversial.

VERONICA MIRACLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, it took only about an hour-and-a-half for this house to be completely destroyed. You can see behind me all there's left really is debris. They have been moving in a quick orderly fashion.

They have had trucks just in and out of here. And, again, this should be over by the end of the day. The University of Idaho officials telling us that they have really wanted this house to be demolished for months and have been making the efforts in order to do so for several issues, the first being that, when this house was standing, you could actually see it from campus.

Officials saying that it was a daily reminder of the horrific crimes that happened here, those four University of Idaho students stabbed to death in the middle of the night. And students who live in this area, as well as staff, having to see this property was incredibly emotional and difficult.

There were also security concerns. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JODI WALKER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO: So, we have had security at the site the entire time that the house has been in our possession, because we do.

We have people who try to access the house. We have had people stop by. People drive by every day. And so it's definitely a concern that something could happen there, people could gain access, and it be used in ways that we don't intend. And so just removing it from that site will be helpful for that as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRACLE: John, as you mentioned, at least two of the families have asked the university, as well as the prosecutor's office, to stop the demolition as late as last night, sending a letter explaining about eight points of concern, essentially wanting to make the trial as easy as possible for the jury,because, of course, they want a conviction in this case.

Some issues they brought up were what about the jury not being able to look at the vantage points of the roommates inside the house? What about outside the house if evidence is presented around the perimeter or entry and exit points? Now the jury wouldn't be able to see that.

However, the university received an e-mail from the prosecutor's office, and they have been speaking with and in communication with the prosecutor's office every step of the way. But, according to the prosecutor's office, Idaho code actually states that the jury wouldn't even have been able to go inside the house because it was so different than what it looked like when the crime occurred -- John.

BERMAN: All right, Veronica Miracle in Idaho.

We can see it with our own eyes. That house is gone. So, any controversy, any discussion about whether or not it should be demolished at this point is now moot.

Thank you, Veronica.

SIDNER: All right, in just the last hour, we have learned that a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who was taken hostage by Hamas after being injured actually was killed that day on October 7. How the woman's family is remembering her and her husband.

And new developments this morning on the U.S. Southern border. Mexico's president says they have reached an agreement on one way that might help address the major migrant crisis that's happening on the Southern border. And now Mexican officials are coming to Washington next month.

We will explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:29:00] BERMAN: This morning, there appears to be an agreement in place to reopen U.S. Southern border crossings that have been temporarily closed.

That information coming from Mexico's president, and it comes as U.S. Border Patrol is releasing new data. It says that they apprehended more than 2,2000 migrants in the Del Rio Sector last week alone.

CNN's Rosa Flores is at the border in Eagle Pass, Texas.

Rosa, what's the latest from there?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're learning more from the talks that happened in Mexico City yesterday, more about the substance of these talks between the U.S. and Mexico.

And I want to start with what we're learning from U.S. officials. Now, this is new reporting from my colleague Kevin Liptak. And this is according to a National Security Council spokesperson, who says that Mexico's president has taken significant new law enforcement actions on the border.

And I can tell you that we're seeing the effects here in Eagle Pass, because this was the epicenter just last week. And now we are seeing no migrants. I want to get out of the way to give you a sense of what we're seeing. This field was packed with thousands of migrants last week that were waiting to be transported.