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Trump Wins New Hampshire, Haley Says "Race Is Far From Over"; Russian Military Plane With 74 Aboard Crashes Near Ukraine Border; Alaska Airlines CEO: Loose Bolts Found On "Many" Boeing 737 MAX 9s; U.N. Refugee Agency: "Mass Casualties" After Its Shelter In Gaza Hit; Markets Open Higher After Dow Slips Below Record High. Aired 9-9:30a ET
Aired January 24, 2024 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:00:00]
TARA VANDERVEER, STANFORD WOMEN'S BASKETBALL COACH: I would not be up here without the great players that I've coached, without working at the great universities I've worked, having a great staff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: VanDerveer, best for her time as Ohio state's women's coach, beat the former record set by former men's basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski. He shared a congratulatory message, saying, quote, Tara remains a true guardian of our sport.
The jacket she was wearing --
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: So great.
MATTINGLY: With all the -- that was awesome.
HARLOW: You know, she had to delay a bridge game with her mother so that she could, you know, finish the celebration. Very cute. Very cute.
MATTINGLY: That's nice. It's a good story. Legend.
Thanks so much for joining us.
CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.
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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Nikki Haley moving on to South Carolina with Donald Trump reportedly fuming that she vowed to keep fighting on after his win in New Hampshire.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we just got word that the Haley campaign released two new ads in South Carolina this morning. A $4 million ad buy that sure doesn't seem like quitting, even as senior party officials, including state parties now, are pushing Haley to get out. We've got brand-new reporting just in. Sara is away. I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan.
CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.
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BOLDUAN: All righty. Right now, Nikki Haley says, onward to South Carolina, and is putting money where her mouth is with that ad buy that John mentioned. Donald Trump though says, look at the scoreboard. The Republican National Committee seems to be suggesting the same. RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel saying that when she's looking at the map, she doesn't see a path for Nikki Haley.
Even still, Nikki Haley just released her first two ads in South Carolina. Here is her message for voters in her home state.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation.
(CHEERS)
This race is far from over. Now we're the last one standing next to Donald Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: Well, what is going to happen in the next weeks, one month before that primary is very unclear. One thing that is clear, Haley has gotten under Donald Trump's skin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: Who the hell was the impostor that went up on the stage before and, like, claimed a victory? She did very poorly actually. I don't get angry. I get even.
(END VIDEOI CLIP)
BOLDUAN: CNN's Jeff Zeleny joins us from Amherst, New Hampshire.
Jeff, wild night. What's next?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kate. Wild night and perhaps an even wilder month to come should Nikki Haley decide to stay in this race, as she's pledging to do.
Look, New Hampshire is always the beginning of the process. The question today is, is it the end of the Republican primary campaign? That's a decision that Nikki Haley will have to make, but she is holding a campaign rally tonight in North Charleston. She's vowing to fight on for the next.
If she decides to do that, this will be an epic battle as former Donald Trump was teasing last night, saying he's going to do nothing, you know, but to try and stop her rise. We've seen an aggressive campaign. This is nothing what South Carolina would be that has a history of bitter feuds in primary campaigns.
But the Haley campaign is already on the air this morning, in South Carolina with television advertisements. This is a sampling of what she's selling to voters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AD ANNOUNCER: Biden, too old. Trump, too much chaos. A rematch no one wants. There's a better choice for a better America.
Her story started right here. America's youngest governor, a conservative Republican, and boy, did she deliver.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZELENY: So, clearly, voters in South Carolina are familiar with her story. But the electorate there has changed as well. A significant population shifts, and it has become much more Trumpy, if you will, during his era.
Many Republican office holders in South Carolina have lined up to support him. In fact, many of them were here in New Hampshire campaigning on his behalf, first and foremost, Senator Tim Scott.
So, there's no doubt she has a tough road ahead if she goes forward, because the electorate there is different than New Hampshire. She struggled here to win over Republicans. But as of now, she's staying in this race, so Donald Trump still has a primary on his hand, even as he looks forward to a general election matchup with President Joe Biden.
BOLDUAN: Yeah, Tim Scott positioned right over Donald Trump's right shoulder throughout that speech last night, could not miss it. And especially when he came up to the podium and talked about how much he loved Donald Trump.
Before South Carolina, there's Nevada. Donald Trump wanted to talk about that last night.
Let's play this for everybody.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[09:05:03]
TRUMP: I did hear Nikki say, well, now it's off to South Carolina. Well, I love South Carolina. I love it. But, you know, she forgot one thing. She forgot one thing. Next week, it's Nevada.
Next week, it's Nevada. It's not South Carolina. We love South Carolina. But next week, it's Nevada.
And I'm pleased to announce, we just won Nevada. We just won, 100 percent, because all of them, they looked at it and they took polls. I was polling at 95 percent to 4 or 5 percent. And they decided not to play in Nevada.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: So, Nevada is different this year. I have a hard time summing it up, succinctly, Jeff, what's going to be happening there. Talk to -- talk to us about this.
ZELENY: Well, he is not wrong in the sense that he is likely won Nevada because he is the only one participating in the Nevada caucuses. But what comes before the caucuses is the primary. You may ask, why are there two contests? After the 2020 election when there were problems with the caucuses, the state legislator changed the law to have a primary. The Nevada Republican Party didn't like that. They said, we want our party-run caucuses.
So, there are going to be a primary on the 6th, the caucuses on the 8th. Sounds all very confusing. The simple point is, you win delegates through the caucuses that Trump is participating in. So, that's one of the reasons Haley is not going to Nevada. Other candidates weren't as well.
But the reality is, the next real competitive contest should she stay in the race is South Carolina with a quick stop in Las Vegas. Perhaps we'll see you there, Kate.
BOLDUAN: I hope so. You know, moral vehicle victories do not matter when it's all delegates that get you over the finish line. Great to see you, Jeff. Onward.
John?
BERMAN: You'll see Kate at the craps table at Caesar's. That's where I was going.
BOLDUAN: I mean, I didn't want to say that aloud, but thanks for doing my internal monologue for me.
BERMAN: All right. All right, Kate.
So, it turns out that winning is good. And Donald Trump did win in New Hampshire, and the percent he got, that is the highest for any non- incumbent in New Hampshire primary. But here's the question, is that the right way to judge Donald Trump as a non-incumbent? He's unusual. He was president of the United States. Some people look at him and say, he is a quasi-incumbent and if you judge this margin as if he were almost an incumbent, it looks a lot different. Look at what happened in 1992 when George H.W. Bush ran for re-election. Pat Buchanan got 38 percent. Everyone thought this was a disaster for George Herbert Walker Bush, and it really wounded him throughout the entire campaign and into the general election.
This looks a lot like this. Keep that in mind. There's some other numbers underneath this which are also of concern to some Republicans. Look at moderates here. And, again, yes, Trump won the election, but he got crushed by Nikki Haley among moderates, some 50 percent moderates vote in a general election. We were talking all along about New Hampshire had undeclared voters.
You could vote if you were registered undeclared or Republican. Nikki Haley cleaned up there. She won by 30 points. That's a lot of independents.
Yes, Donald Trump certainly crushed among registered Republicans. You can take one quick look at that here. He beat Nikki Haley by 50 points. For Nikki Haley, that's a reminder, it's awfully hard to win a Republican nominating contest if you are losing Republicans by 50 points.
Finally, you know, as we look ahead -- and Jeff and Kate really alluded to this -- the calendar. The calendar here is something. We are done now with New Hampshire. That was right here.
You've got all these days left in January, and you've got all this time before South Carolina, Nevada notwithstanding and the Virgin Islands -- also a favorite of Kate Bolduan's and mine. That's there also, but this is a ton of real estate.
This is a ton of time to have to weather attacks if you're Nikki Haley. A whole lot of things can happen during that time. And a lot of them, they're not great.
One other thing I want to point out, too, that's of concern to some Trump supporters is this number right here again. And I put it side by side with this. Yes, he won.
But in our exit poll, we asked, if Trump is the nominee, right, would you be dissatisfied but not support? Would you not support him if he was the nominee?
Look at this. Republicans, 19 percent of Republican voters said they would not support Donald Trump if he were the nominee. Among independents, it's a giant 66 percent.
So, look, if you are the Trump campaign, this is glass half full. If you are maybe the Democrats or Nikki Haley, it's glass half empty. The reality might be it's just, you know, Kate, glass half Trump.
BOLDUAN: It's just glasses. And those -- that calendar, pull the -- can you pull that up?
BERMAN: There's a lot I can do over here.
BOLDUAN: You are a very talented man.
BERMAN: This is the calendar.
BOLDUAN: The calendar, I was going to say -- those green circles that you -- that you made are like the most ominous green circles I've ever seen.
[09:10:06]
That's a lot of time for a lot of things to happen -- good, bad, and ugly.
Joining us now right now is Washington bureau chief for "The Boston Globe", Jackie Kucinich, and Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett, born and raised in New Hampshire, worked on Jon Huntsman's 2012 presidential campaign.
Let's talk about this, Matthew. Let's start with the ad buy, $4 million ad buy in South Carolina, the first for Nikki Haley. That does not suggest that we're about to bow out. What do you see in this?
MATTHEW BARTLETT, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, first off, no one ever bows out or announces they're going to bow out until they do. A $4 million ad buy is substantial, certainly in her home state, which is a true open primary, even unlike New Hampshire.
But looking at the road ahead, it's very difficult for Nikki, not just in South Carolina but moving forward. The donors, the dollars, the voters might say differently. Coming out of a presidential like this, where you are one on one, it's a psychological choice to really sit down with your friends, with your advisers, and look at the road ahead.
BERMAN: So, Jackie, here's a question I'm not sure that's been asked quite enough in the last 12 hours, what happens if Nikki Haley does stay in, and I'm not to really talking about for Nikki Haley, honestly. What does it mean perhaps for Donald Trump going forward as the probable nominee if Nikki Haley stays in for a while?
JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, his focus is going to be split. And he said basically as much last night. I mean, his victory speech was mostly about Nikki Haley. It hardly was about Biden. And, you know, in contrast to the magnanimous speech that he gave in Iowa where he thanked DeSantis and he talked about himself, he -- that was not the case last night.
And we all know that when Trump is angry, you do -- who he is angry at, you hear it a lot. You saw it with Ron DeSantis, how he tore him down throughout the summer and kind of dismantled his campaign. They will try to do the same thing to Nikki Haley. She's not behaving like someone who is not going to leave it all on the field, unlike DeSantis, who you saw him pulling back ads, you saw him making his campaign smaller. She's not doing that yet.
So, I think, you know, they made this point that if the money is still flowing, she's probably going to keep going on. Perhaps until Super Tuesday, we'll have to see.
BOLDUAN: Matthew, exit polls -- John went through some great exit polls.
BERMAN: Thank you.
BOLDUAN: You're welcome. You're welcome. I think your fatigue is actually making us nice to each other, which is very strange. Exit polls say that roughly four in ten Haley voters attributed their
support for her because of their distaste of her opponents, meaning Trump for -- Trump for Haley -- a vote for Nikki Haley was a vote against Trump. I heard that from quite a few voters that were going to support Nikki Haley yesterday. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: What do you like about Nikki Haley?
LOUISE, VOTED FOR NIKKI HALEY: Several things. One thing, she's not Donald Trump.
BOLDUAN: Was that most important to you?
LOUISE: Yes. The guy has no conscience.
BOLDUAN: Is there something that Nikki Haley said along the way that you realized, this was the one?
LOUISE: She really wasn't the one.
BOLDUAN: Who was the one?
LOUISE: I liked Christie. I liked Christie because of the way he told it. When he backed out, she was the lesser of the two evils.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: The conversations with voters were so fascinating throughout. Is that any way, though, to win a primary, Matthew? Or said another way, is this equally a problem for Donald Trump in a general?
BARTLETT: Listen, you spent a long day here in Nashua. Welcome to the political hangover. We know the results, what happened last night. We are trying to figure out what happened.
And yes, this is not a way to win a primary, to try to be either a moderate darling or independent candidate. You need base voters. Donald Trump has them, has them locked up, a great night for him.
But moving forward, there's much worry that independents, people that voted for Nikki Haley last night, will not be voting for Donald Trump in a general election. That is very dangerous.
And then beyond that, if you look at what his speech was, no one will remember the margin of victory after last -- after tonight. But people will remember that speech, which was vicious, even vile at Nikki Haley, saying that Democrats don't love our country, they are evil. That's not a welcoming message for the voters that he would need in the general election.
BERMAN: Well, let me pick up on that, and this is going to you, Jackie, because our friends, David Drucker and Michael Warren of "The Dispatch", they have some reporting that that's exactly Haley wanted, that Haley was poking the bear.
[19:15:05]
This is what they say. Haley's aggressive concession speech was sounded nothing like a concession, was part of a deliberate plan to bait Trump. I get guess it worked, Jackie. The question is, why? Why do you do that? What does Nikki Haley get out of that? What does it mean for voters out there?
KUCINICH: I mean, in her last pitch as she was going toward election day, she was talking about essentially his temperament, essentially how he conducts himself. Chaos follows him is something that she said over and over again. She was talking about, you know, whether he was too old to do the job.
And so, what she did last night by baiting him, you kind of saw the mask slip. The person that was in Iowa, that thanks -- again, that I mentioned before, that thanked the two of them, wasn't there last night. I will tell you who else liked the fact that he went off the rails last night to say the least is the Biden campaign. They were looking at that and saying, that's the guy we want to run against to.
BERMAN: Jackie Kucinich, Matthew Bartlett, great to see both of you. Thank you very much.
Great to see you here in person. How was the drive back from New Hampshire last night?
BOLDUAN: It was eventful.
BERMAN: Harrowing?
BOLDUAN: It was eventful, yes.
BERMAN: Harrowing.
BOLDUAN: Yes, and we're back, and we're still here. You can't get rid of us, guys.
New video this morning.
BERMAN: Stop it.
BOLDUAN: We're going to go overseas. New video this morning of a fiery plane crash in Russia and conflicting reports about whether Ukrainian soldiers or Russian missiles were on board.
Boeing's CEO will be on Capitol Hill after that door plug blew off a plane midair. And CNN has new details from the head of the FAA about where the investigation is focused right now.
And Dow futures up just minutes before open. What the recent record setting stretch means for your money and the state of the economy. We'll be back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [09:21:11]
BERMAN: All right. This morning, a deadly plane crash in Russia right near Ukraine's border. You can see, it happened right here in the Belgorod region. You can see the ball of flames going up right there. Dozens and dozens appear killed in this.
There are conflicting reports about what happened here. That's important.
With us now, CNN senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen who is live in eastern Ukraine. Also here, chief global affairs correspondent Matthew Chance.
And, Fred, just so people know, this is the type of plane we're talking about here. What happened? Who is saying what?
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, John. Well, you're absolutely right. There are conflicting claims as to what happened there. I mean, we do know that this plane definitely crashed into a fireball on impact.
This is an IL-76 transport aircraft from the Russian military. The Russian military has confirmed that's It's sort of a medium-size transport plane. I would say somewhere the size between the Hercules and the C-17. And the Russians are saying it was shot down by Ukrainian surface to air missiles.
Now, you correctly noted that Belgorod is, of course, in the border area between Russia and Ukraine. The Russians are saying a surface to air missile was fired from Ukrainian territory.
The Ukrainians haven't commented on that yet. However, depending on who was on board, that is the big question right now. And that's where the Russians are making the accusation that 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war they say were on the plane meant for an exchange with the Ukrainian military to bring them back to Ukraine.
The Ukrainians also not commenting on that. However, what we are hearing from the Ukrainians is they do say that there was a prisoner of war exchange that was supposed to take place today, and that that exchange has now been called off. The Ukrainians, however, are also urging to be careful about any information that is put out there.
You're absolutely right that before that, there was claims on Ukrainian state media saying there were surface to air missile loaded on that plane, which the Russians sometimes actually shoot at Ukrainian territory. But all of that unclear as well.
What we know, however, from the local government there in the Belgorod region is that this crash happened outside of the city of Belgorod, northeast of that. They also say that no one survived the plane crash, John.
BERMAN: All right. Fred, stand by, if you will. Matthew Chance, people see here on the map, the region we're talking about, Belgorod right here, not far from Kharkiv over on the Ukrainian side of the border. Talk to us about this region in particular and what has been happening there now for almost two years.
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Well, it's been one of the areas close to the Russian border with Ukraine that has been very active, particularly over the past couple of months as Ukrainian forces have carried out cross-border strikes. Within the past few weeks, as a matter of fact, you have seen a more aggressive stance from the Ukrainian air defenses. They have been targeting and hitting key Russian aircraft inside Russian airspace, denying the Russian air force the kind of freedom of movement that they would otherwise enjoy.
Just earlier this month, an A-50 aircraft, which is one of the big AEWAC type radar battlefield control aircraft -- there's only a handful of them in Russia, only a handful there -- one of those was knocked out of the sky by a missile attack. And so, it's very possible that this Ilyushin 76 aircraft, this IL-76, was taken out in the same way as part of that newly aggressive stance by the Ukrainians.
The big question, of course, as Fred was referring to there, what was the cargo on board that Ilyushin 76? Was it human cargo, 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war that were essentially on their way home, that were going to be swapped later in a prisoner exchange? That's what the Russians say.
[09:25:00]
The Ukrainians have basically cast some doubt on that. They have not categorically denied it, but they poured some doubt on the idea that was the case. What they say is that their intelligence suggests that this was a military aircraft carrying S-300 rockets, missiles, in which case it would have been a high priority target for the Ukrainian air force -- John.
BERMAN: All right. Matthew Chance, our thanks to you. Frederik Pleitgen in Eastern Ukraine, stay safe.
Kate?
BOLDUAN: Nikki Haley is heading home to South Carolina, getting ready for her first post-New Hampshire rally there. What her plan is now to get an actual win on the primary scoreboard in her home state.
And Alaska airlines, the CEO says he is angry after an inspection discovered, quote/unquote, many of their Boeing MAX 9 planes with loose bolts.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:30:12]
