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Donald Trump Faces Second Defamation Trial Amidst Iowa Victory; Trump's Legal And Political Worlds Collide After Iowa Win; E. Jean Carroll Defamation Trial Commences As Trump Campaigns In New Hampshire; Government Shutdown Looms As House Speaker Negotiates Deals; Israel Withdraws Military Division From Gaza, Shifts Focus On Airstrikes. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired January 16, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:48]

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN HOST: Donald Trump's political and legal worlds are colliding. Fresh off of his big win in Iowa, Trump is now in court for a second defamation case. That was filed by E. Jean Carroll. Then he's off to New Hampshire in his campaign for the White House. Congress also facing down a government shutdown deadline. But while the House speaker is cutting deals with Democrats, members of his own party won't make it easy to pass a deal in time.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And going for gold, a handful of shows dominating the Emmys last night. We're going to look at who won and the moment that left so much of the audience in tears. We are following these developing stories and many more. All coming in right here to CNN News Central.

MARQUARDT: One day after Donald Trump's decisive victory in the Iowa Republican caucuses, the former president is on trial yet again in a New York courtroom. Again, waiting to find out how much he has to pay for defaming E. Jean Carroll. Also, again, it's a stark example of the campaign to courtroom zigzag that is now a standard feature of Trump's election year schedule.

KEILAR: Yeah, it certainly is. And this is a civil trial. So, he doesn't have to be there. In fact, he completely skipped the entirety of the first Carroll defamation trial last year. In that one, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll. That verdict applies here. So, keep that in mind. This jury will only decide how much more Trump must pay the plaintiff. We have CNN's Paula Reid tracking all of this in New York. We have Kristen Holmes on the trail in New Hampshire. Paula, tell us where things stand from inside the courtroom.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, a jury has been seated. They will remain anonymous throughout this process because as we've seen in other Trump-related cases, when they're not anonymous, some of these jurors have faced pretty serious threats. Now, in a short time, we expect that they will get underway with opening statements. And the judge, apparently keen to move this along, wants to wrap those up today. But as you noted, Trump is clearly bringing the campaign to New York again today instead of spending the whole day in New Hampshire or another key state.

And as you said, this is a choice. He does not have to be in court today. He did not have to attend any of the court proceedings that he has sat in on in the last 10 days. But he and his legal team, they appear to be making this choice as part of a way to amplify this larger narrative that he is somehow the victim of an unfair system. And at the beginning of today, we saw Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, who is also his spokeswoman, spar with the judge over trying to, not have court on Thursday, because on Thursday, -- Trump's mother-in-law, they're holding a funeral for his mother-in-law. Now, the judge had already considered a request to move the whole trial back because of this funeral, denied that. The judge seemed a little irritated they were bringing it up today, but Habba did narrow her request to just Thursday. Now, that was denied.

But even something small like that, administrative, where the judge is like, look, he doesn't have to be here. He has no role. And I already told you, we're not going to move these proceedings because of this funeral. Something like that can help feed into this larger victimhood narrative. Now, these jurors, now that they have been selected, they were whittled down, actually, from a group of dozens. And it was interesting that in the course of selecting the jury, we learned that there were some Trump supporters, folks who had donated to him, his political opponents. A few even thought the election had been stolen. But again, they are anonymous. So, we're not going to reveal details about exactly who was selected.

But now, they need to decide how much interest, damages Trump will pay to E. Jean Carroll. I will note that last spring, a jury found him liable for sexual abuse against E. Jean Carroll and that he defamed her. They awarded her $5 million. Now, she's asking for $10 million. This should only take a few days. But I will note, at that last trial that I covered, along with our colleagues, Trump did not attend even a minute of that case.

MARQUARDT: And to that point, Paula, with Trump attending today and Carroll also being, this is the first time in decades that they've come face to face.

[14:05:19]

REID: Yeah, it's wild, Alex. It's a great point. I mean, I remember when she testified in the trial last spring, it was incredibly emotional for her. And having covered many trials that relate to survivors of sexual abuse or sexual assault, this is likely going to be a very emotional time for her. It's unclear how many days he will show up. It's unclear if he's going to cooperate with the parameters that the judge has laid out in terms of putting limits on his participation. But I think we should remember, even when we're talking about the campaign or the potential damages, we also have to remember that there's a survivor in the courtroom there, someone that a jury has found was sexually abused. And it's a lot for her as well.

MARQUARDT: And Kristen, to you on the politics of this, Trump is in New York today after coming from Iowa. He then heads to New Hampshire, snowy New Hampshire. Where you are. So, what happens once he arrives?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we expect him to give remarks. And I will note he's likely going to run late because of the weather. As you can see, it's not the perfect flying weather. But then he's allegedly going to be back in court tomorrow before another event in New Hampshire. Now, he did ramp up his schedule in New Hampshire after we saw that rise in polling from Nikki Haley. We know that his team is very concerned about what they have seen with Nikki Haley in this state. We have seen him sharpening his attacks. We have seen the campaign putting out a series of ads hitting her on immigration as well as Social Security and Medicare.

These are the issues that they believe are critical to New Hampshire voters. Now, they do feel good coming off of Iowa. They weren't sure what that margin was going to look like. They had been tempering expectations, saying they thought that anything over 12 points would be historic and would be worth celebrating. Obviously, it was well above 12 points. The point of them wanting such a large margin was to set the momentum going into New Hampshire. They are looking at all the data today. I am told that they are going through their strategy, how exactly to hit Nikki Haley. They do not believe Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a player in this state, but they do believe that Nikki Haley has been on the rise.

The other thing I want to point out, I talked to one advisor this afternoon who said that they believe that Vivek Ramaswamy dropping out of the race here in New Hampshire will help Donald Trump. They don't know how much he had in polling, but right now they are at a point where they believe every single vote counts, and they believe 98% of people who support Vivek Ramaswamy would turn to Donald Trump next after he dropped out.

KEILAR: And the reason why we're looking at New Hampshire and expecting something so different from Iowa, is that it has such a different makeup when it comes to who is going to be casting these ballots, Kristen. Tell us about that and why the Trump team is actually worried his legal problems could be a vulnerability there.

HOLMES: Yeah. What they are looking at here in particular is independence. Independence can vote in the primary, and you have independents that go through a wide variety lot of self-identification when it comes to politics. You have independents who identify as conservatives, liberals, moderates. When they saw the polling from CNN, which showed that Nikki Haley had trimmed down Trump's lead to single digits, they saw the same thing that we saw, which was that 55% or Haley won 55% of moderates, while Donald Trump won 60% of conservatives.

They knew that he could get the 60% of conservatives, but when it comes to New Hampshire, you just have such a large swath that could go either way. Again, because they identify as independents, but could be more left-leaning or right-leaning. Now, I will say that they are taking all of this into consideration, they being Trump's campaign. They launched a series of ads attacking Haley on immigration. I'm told that was to sure up that conservative base. They believe that Donald Trump has a grip on the conservative base. They wanted to make sure that they held on to that. The other thing, those ads on Social Security and Medicare, that's meant to target more moderate independents.

They want to chip away at that. They know people are going to show up. They're going to show up. They're going to show up. They're going to vote against Donald Trump because they don't like him, but they want to chip away at that number and hope more Republicans come out than moderates or independents.

KIELAR: All right. We'll be watching Kristen Holmes. Paula Reid, thank you to both of you. And the Republican race for the White House, of course, moving on there to New Hampshire after Donald Trump's historic landslide win in the Iowa caucuses, where he got more than half the vote, besting Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley by 30 points or more. Trump winning in nearly every voter category. And in 98 out of the 99 Iowa counties. Just look at all of that red.

MARQUARDT: That one yellow county, Johnson County. Unbelievable. Nikki Haley is betting on the larger moderate vote in New Hampshire that Kristen was just talking about, where polls show that her seven points, where polls do show her seven points currently behind Trump, the first signs of a real crack in his dominance. New Hampshire's primary is just a week away. That's where we find our Omar Jimenez. He is in Manchester, New Hampshire. So Omar talk to us about how Nikki Haley plans, as she says, to make this a two-person race just between her and Trump, forcing Ron DeSantis out.

[14:10:19]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, so she really wants to lean into some of that, again, moderate support and some of those undeclared or independent voters that we have here in New Hampshire to try and bolster a real challenge to the former president, a challenge of which we have not seen actually materialize to this point -- at any point in the primary process. So, one of those ways is she is changing her framing. We heard her a little bit last night talk about how she is viewing this as a two-person race.

Specifically, she, it seems, has discounted Ron DeSantis as a candidate altogether. DeSantis started his day in South Carolina as opposed to here. She says that she is really looking forward to trying to challenge Trump. In particular, she painted a red line today. She said she's not debating anymore unless former president Trump is on that stage. We know he has not appeared at any point on the stage to this point. But take a listen to how, in her own words, she is framing this next phase of the campaign.

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NIKKI HALEY, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (R): When we know it's a head-to- head, you heard me last night say, look, we have a choice. Are we going to do more of the same? Are we going to go forward? And more of the same is not just Donald Trump. It's Joe Biden. Both of them are exactly the same. They're both in their 80s. They both put us trillions of dollars in debt. They both are dealing with investigations, that are distractions.

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JIMENEZ: And that's the thing. She, again, is framing this as a Trump and Biden future that she is campaigning against. And we've been talking to voters throughout today. And what's interesting is none of the voters we've talked to have identified themselves as a Democrat or Republican. All of them have identified themselves as undeclared. And they've all said they're taking a hard look at what they've got coming up to vote in the next week.

KEILAR: All right. Omar Jimenez, thank you for that report from Manchester. On the trail there. Let's turn now to Kim Rice. She is the co-chair of Nikki Haley's campaign in New Hampshire. She's also a former state representative. Thank you, Kim, so much for being with us. You watched the results, I'm sure, coming in. Now, Haley is saying that this is a two-person race between her and Trump. But she is, so far, in third place after Iowa. So explain why this is not Nikki Haley maybe looking at your state and being a little bit presumptuous.

KIM RICE, NEW HAMPSHIRE CO-CHAIR, NIKKI HALEY CAMPAIGN: Well, I think that, you know, she did in the past 11 months, she started at 2%. I think she had a strong showing in Iowa. And now we're going into New Hampshire, where she's polling very well in single digits behind Donald Trump. And we had a new poll come out today that's showing she's neck and neck with Donald Trump. I think she's going to have a strong showing. And I think she's going to, you know, do very well. She's a hard worker. She's doing everything right. The retail politics of New Hampshire, she's got the backing of our very popular Governor Sununu, and she's doing everything right. I think it's going to be a great time in New Hampshire for the next week.

KEILAR: She's polling higher in New Hampshire, in part because of the very high share of undeclared or independent voters that can vote in your GOP primary. How is her popularity in your state not just a one- off then? How can she carry that through to later states?

RICE: Well, I, I think that once she does very, does well in New Hampshire, then people are actually going to start looking longer also. They're going to say, stand up and take notice.

KEILAR: You think it will carry over even in states where independents can't have a say, like they do in New Hampshire?

RICE: I do. I do. Let's remember that Nikki Haley was an original Tea Party governor. People that want to call her a moderate and, you know, give her names like rhinos. She was a Tea Party governor. Nikki Haley is a conservative and I think people will see that.

KEILAR: We're learning that ABC is now giving Haley and Donald Trump a 5 p.m. deadline today to commit to a scheduled debate that was to be held there Thursday in New Hampshire. Your candidate said the next debate that she's going to do is either going to be with Trump or Biden. Trump, of course, hasn't been doing debates. Do New Hampshire voters deserve to see her debate, even if it's not with Trump? RICE: Well, I think that we've seen plenty of debates with Nikki Haley. And I think seeing another one is the definition of insanity. She smoked DeSantis time and time again. It's time to have the debate between her real challenger, either Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

RICE: As we are hearing her say to Omar Jimenez, she's going after Trump now. She says we can't have four more years of chaos. But then separately, another reporter asked if she were to win, would she pick Donald Trump as her running mate? And she wouldn't say no. Should she have said no when she's been very clear about what she thinks Donald Trump represents?

[14:15:19]

RICE: So Nikki is very laser focused on in the moment. She's not looking six months down the road. You know, I'm not going to say what she should say. I'm just going to say that she's laser focused on what's happening right now, not what's going to happen six months down the road.

KEILAR: All right, Kim, thank you so much for being with us. We really appreciate it.

RICE: Thanks so much for having me.

KEILAR: Still ahead, Israel withdrawing a key military division from Gaza. This could be the biggest sign yet of a new phase in the fighting, and we're going to discuss that. Plus, what Iran is now saying about these overnight strikes inside Iraq and Syria.

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MARQUARDT: Israel's defense minister says that the Israeli military will soon end what he calls the intensive maneuvering stage of the war against Hamas in Gaza, even as the fighting is expected to continue in the Gaza Strip for quite some time.

KEILAR: Israeli soldiers, they continue to encounter what is being described as pockets of resistance across the enclave. Today, Hamas fired some 25 rockets into Israel. It's actually the largest barrage seen in weeks. We have CNN's Jeremy Diamond in Tel Aviv covering all of this for us. Jeremy, what more are officials there saying about the ongoing military operations?

[14:20:09]

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's clear that what we're seeing on the ground today is a significant shift in the course of this war effort that Israel has been running now for the past three months. We are seeing not only the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, saying in the clearest terms that the Israeli military has concluded its intensive ground operations in the north, also saying that that will soon happen in the southern part of the Gaza Strip around the area of the second largest city in Gaza of Khan Yunis.

But at the same time as we are hearing the rhetoric, we are also watching the action on the ground match that rhetoric, and that is with the withdrawal of one of Israel's four divisions that have been operating inside the Gaza Strip. To put this in context, that could be somewhere in the range of 8,000 to 12,000 troops being withdrawn from the Gaza Strip in the northern part, but also some of the central part of the Gaza Strip. And this is a clear sign that Israel, after weeks of pressure from the United States, is finally bowing to that pressure, acknowledging that it needs to shift to a lower intensity phase of operations.

And that is exactly what the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, outlined today, saying that the next phase of this operation will focus more on raids, on airstrikes, on special operations designed to continue to eliminate Hamas's lingering capabilities in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. But also in the southern part of the Gaza Strip to continue to go after Hamas's leadership. But amid this shift, what we are seeing is that Hamas still maintains the ability to fire rockets towards southern Israel, a barrage of at least 25 rockets hitting the southern town of Netivot along the Israel-Gaza border there.

Most of those rockets intercepted by the Iron Dome system, but some of them were not, although no injuries were reported. And so amid that barrage of rockets, you're seeing already some criticism from right- wing members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition, notably Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, saying that it is an error that will cost lives to withdraw troops. But also Gideon Sa'ar, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, a member of the opposition who joined the war cabinet and is kind of a center-right politician, he also said that it is a mistake to reduce the strength of Israeli forces inside of Gaza at this critical moment.

MARQUARDT: Israel believes there's a lot of unfinished business in Gaza. When it comes to Hamas. Jeremy Diamond in Tel Aviv, thanks very much. Now tension remains high amid fears that the Israel-Gaza conflict could expand the violence that we have seen even further all across the Middle East. Today, Iran defending what it called targeted strikes on Monday. Ballistic missiles struck what Iran says was a spy base for Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, that's in Iraq, as well as anti-Iran terror groups in Syria. Both the U.S. and the United Nations have condemned those strikes. Joining me now is CNN military analyst, retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. General Hertling, thank you so much for being with us.

Throughout the past few months in the violence that we have seen beyond just Gaza, we have seen Iran's hand really everywhere when it comes to Hamas, of course, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and then those proxies in Iraq and Syria as well. But Iran themselves, General, they haven't fired any missiles until now. So, what does that signal to you? What do you think it could lead to?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILTARY ANALYST: It's a couple of things, Boris, and it's fascinating to watch Iran ramp this up right after the attack on the Houthis in Yemen. I think they've seen one of their proxy groups get a kinetic strike against them. I was going to use the term whacked. That's sometimes what we in the military use. But when the Houthis had this strike against them, it was a significant one. One hundred munitions, 30 targets, 13 different locations throughout Yemen. I think it put the Houthis back on their heels quite a bit.

Iran, being the leader of this proxy group, even though the Houthis are somewhat independent, they're taking some of their orders from Iran, realize they had to get back into the fray. A combination of that, the strike inside of Iran by ISIS, the attack by the United States against the Iranian-backed proxies inside of Iraq, multiple targeting in Syria and Lebanon and in Iraq by both Israel and the United States. The fact that Iran then reacted by sending a missile into their neighbor's territory, into Iraq, and striking into Erbil, caused some tension.

And what I mean by that is, having spent a significant amount of time in northern Iraq, I know that there is contest between the Kurdish sections and the Iraqi sections. So, by striking into Erbil, they're riling up the Kurds, creating some tension both from a military and an economic perspective, it's a huge oil-growing region, and an independent semi-autonomous region by Kurdistan. So it's only increasing the complexity. And I think it's a signal by Iran that they want to play in this fight, and they're not going to let their proxies continue to be struck.

[14:25:19]

MARUARDT: And General, just until a few days ago, we hadn't seen this fighting between the U.S.-led coalition and the Houthis. Today, we have the third round of strikes by the U.S. against Houthi rebels. They targeted anti-ship ballistic missiles. We also saw that an operation seized weapons made by Iran that were on a boat heading to Yemen. Do you expect this back and forth, this tit-for-tat to continue for some time?

HERTLING: I do, Alex. And it's interesting, the timelines for the attacks today by the U.S. forces and the Houthis. At 1.45 this morning, Sana'a time in Yemen, the United States independently took action against what they saw was four anti-ballistic missiles inside of Yemen, looking like they were being prepared to fire. So, the preventative measure of striking those targets first before they could be used against shipping is part of the deterrence mechanism.

Then later this afternoon at one San's time. the Houthis fired one missile at a cargo ship and struck it. So, I think they're trying to show that they haven't been completely depleted by the U.S. strikes, but they are still active in the area and they will still attempt to interrupt shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. So yeah, this is getting more and more complex by the day. You know, a couple of months ago, we had a 10% chance of this expanding, this war expanding into a regional conflict. My percentages are a little bit higher today than they were back in October.

MARQUARDT: Yeah. And we also saw the Israeli military launching air and artillery strikes against Hezbollah up in Lebanon. General Mark Hertling, we have to leave it there. Thank you very much for your thoughts today. Appreciate it.

HERTLING: Thanks, Alex. MARQUARDT: Lawmakers are scrambling yet again to avoid a partial government shutdown. They're battling the clock, bad weather and hardliners in the House. We'll be discussing with Republican Congressman Warren Davidson. That's next. Plus, we're keeping a close eye on the weather today as a frigid Arctic blast threatens millions of Americans. Nearly 80% of the U.S. will see below freezing temperatures over the course of the next week. And the snow is creating dangerous road conditions like this in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're tracking all of this. Stay with us.

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