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Battle to Make Trump's Cabinet Cut Heats Up Inside Mar-a-Lago; We Barely Made it Out, Californians Flee Homes Amid Wildfires; Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rates by a Quarter Point. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 08, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, the battle is on for top spots in Donald Trump's new administration. New reporting on who could go where and why all happening at the transitions power center, once again, Mar-a-Lago.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: They barely made it out. Hundreds rushed to evacuate as a devastating wildfire explodes across California, torching more than 20,000 acres. So far, right now, the fire is moving dangerously fast as firefighters are in a race to try to control it.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The FBI investigating a string of racist text messages sent to dozens of black Americans following the election.

I'm John Berman with Sara Sidner and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: And breaking overnight, CNN projects Donald Trump will win Nevada. Not a state he needed to win the presidency, obviously, but this morning, it is further evidence of how broad and decisive Trump's election victory is. He is now one state away to winning all seven battleground states. Arizona is now the only state yet to be called. And this hour, Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris there by over 155,000 votes.

While those votes continue to be counted, the focus of Trump's transition is centered squarely at his Mar-a-Lago home, lots of jockeying to make the cut for White House or administration top job going on. And with Donald Trump making his first job announcement, naming his top political aide, Susie Wiles, as his White House chief of staff. She will be the first woman to ever hold that post.

Alayna Treene is in Florida for us with much more on this. And, Alayna, what should people know about Susie Wiles and also what her pick means potentially for how the White House is going to operate this time around?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Right. Well, I mean, chief of staff was always going to be the first announcement he made, and it is a massive deal, of course, but particularly when you know about how Donald Trump operates and how he ran the White House the first time around. You know, some chiefs of staff did not have as much power as they had in the past, but I think with Susie Wiles out the helm, it does show that she's going to have a very big role in whatever happens moving forward with regard to the transition and to operations overall.

Now, one key thing to keep in mind about Wiles is that she has been incredibly loyal to Donald Trump. Of course, loyalty is one of the things that Donald Trump values ,ost in the people he surrounds himself with. And, really, she stuck by him ever since he left the White House in disgrace, really, and throughout.

And one thing that I consistently hear from the people who work with him, but also people outside of Trump's inner orbit outside of really the MAGA politics, is that she is respected. And that's a very. Hard thing to do, particularly when it comes to people who are operating at such a powerful position within Trump's world is to gain the respect of those beneath you. And so that was a huge contributing factor to this as well.

Now, one key thing I think that says a lot about how Wiles is going to kind of run the White House and run operations come January 20th is what we heard, what Steve Contorno had heard from someone who told him that she had reservations before taking this role. This is what they told him. They said, quote, the clown car can't come into the White House at will, and he agrees with her.

Now, the reason I think this is so important is because one of the things that Susie Wiles had always done very well is she recognized she can't control Donald Trump himself, but she could control what was happening around him, particularly the access to him and trying to cut off access from very controversial figures.

I'll remind you, back in 2016 and throughout his time in the White House, Donald Trump had a flurry of people calling him up, parading in to the White House, talking to him at Mar-a-Lago. That is still happening. But what Susie Wiles has been able to do is try and control that. And I think that's going to be a very big part of what she does come next year.

BOLDUAN: We may have lost audio with you, Alayna.

[07:05:01]

Can you hear me, Alayna?

TREENE: I can hear you now, yes, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Perfect. It was just a momentary blip. So, talk to me also about your new reporting about where -- about Donald Trump's mindset over the last 48 hours.

TREENE: Well, I think there's no secret, and we've been talking about this a lot, Kate, that the battle that is happening right now at Mar- a-Lago on the patio where Donald Trump likes to mingle with his guests, there's a lot of jockeying going on. I can tell you that Donald Trump is not immune from that. He is very aware of what is happening. But when I've talked to people close to him who are spending the days with him at his resort, they say that it's very clear that Donald Trump, of course, is reveling in his victory. He's very much loving taking these calls from world leaders and CEOs and them trying to get close to him already, beginning to plant the seeds of how their relationship could be moving forward.

But one thing that I do think that's been fascinating to hear, and I've heard this from a ton of his top advisors, is that they argue that he is much more self-assured and confident in what he is doing this time around, particularly, of course, the people who were with him in the aftermath of 2016. They say that unlike before, where Donald Trump really relied on other people, he felt like other people made decisions for him because he was so unfamiliar with the with D.C. He feels far more confident now in making those decisions himself. He is very involved in this process. And they argue that's due to the fact that he has won the popular vote. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Alayna Treene, thank you. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. This morning, hundreds of firefighters are battling the fast-moving mountain fire in Southern California. More than 20, 000 acres have already been burned, and that happened in less than two days. It is fueled by extremely dry conditions and gusty winds. The flames have torched dozens of homes so far, and some residents said they barely made it out alive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is like surreal. I mean, I know we live in a fire danger area, but this is -- it came out of nowhere. It was so fast.

RICHARD GALANTE, LOST HOME IN MOUNTAIN FIRE: I'm on 14 medicines for my heart and my stomach and all my meds, everything got destroyed. We didn't have time to do anything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Wow. CNN's Camila Bernal is in Camarillo, California. Camila, what are you seeing? I just see the devastation behind you and how quickly that happened.

CAMILA BERNAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara, devastation that is absolutely heartbreaking. That is how the Ventura County sheriff described it. Now, they had about ten teams yesterday throughout the day assessing homes, and they visited about 300 homes. And of those, they found that 132 look like what you see here behind me, it is gone. And the families that are going to come back to this area are going to have a very hard time looking through their belongings because they no longer have any. It's hard to even identify what's left of this property. It is, again, just heartbreaking for the people of this community.

We were told that about 800 homes evacuated on their own essentially, about 400 others had to get the help from authorities to get people out quickly and about 250 homes where authorities visited, well, people chose to stay. This was an extremely dangerous condition because of the Sta. Ana winds. And like you mentioned, people just did not have any time to leave.

My colleague, Nick Watt, spoke to someone who lost everything. Take a listen to that conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GALANTE: I am going to rebuild.

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You are?

GALANTE: Where the (BLEEP) am I going to go? Where am I going to go? The view was incredible. The house was full. It was a dead bear from my den right there laying over a flat. You see him burnt?

WATT: Yes. That was your den there.

GALANTE: Yes.

WATT: With the views out across.

GALANTE: Yes, yes, yes.

WATT: How's your wife holding up?

GALANTE: Barely. Because it's all her mother's, all her jewelry, all her -- we walked out with nothing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERNAL: And fire officials describe this as a significant 36-hour firefight. This was with little breaks, dozens and dozens of firefighters working around the clock. And we have seen some progress. We're now at 5 percent containment. It might not sound like a lot, but fire officials saying that they were taking advantage of the overnight hours. They had helicopters up in the air throughout the night and more is expected throughout the day today.

The conditions, in terms of the weather, they are improving. We had red flag warnings in all areas, high and low, and now what we're being told is that those red flag warnings are only in effect in the mountain areas with wind gusts of 25 to 35 miles an hour, maybe sometimes even 50 miles an hour. But, surprisingly, that is an improvement from 60 miles an hour wind gust that we were seeing over the last couple of days where it was nonstop, making it just extremely difficult for those firefighters.

[07:10:07]

And in addition to the dry conditions, just making it a perfect weather and terrain condition for this fire to spread so, so quickly, Cal Fire even saying that those embers that were picked up by the wind could travel up to two miles. That is a huge distance and that's why you saw that fire spreading so quickly, Sara. SIDNER: Yes, you can really see that wind in some of that video from Ventura County and it was heartening to hear the candor and the heartbreak from that resident who lost everything.

Camila Bernal, thank you so much. I appreciate it. John?

BERMAN: All right. A new interest rate cut, but will it be the last? Reading the tea leaves from pretty expansive comments from the chair of the Federal Reserve.

And a new immigration setback for the Biden administration, what does this mean for immigrants married to U.S. citizens with just months? Before the incoming Trump administration.

And monkeys on the lam, dozens in dozens after a brazen breakout.

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BERMAN: All right. New this morning, the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates this time by a quarter point.

[07:15:01]

The central bank is now preparing for this second Trump administration after a tense relationship between the Fed chair and the president- elect the first time around. Remember, though, Trump appointed Jerome Powell.

CNN's Matt Egan is with us. Good morning to you, sir.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Good morning, John. Look, it just got a little bit cheaper to borrow, which is nice to hear right as widely expected. The Fed cut interest rates by a quarter of a point. This was a unanimous decision. Rates are not low. They're still kind of high, at almost 5 percent but moving in the right direction. So, this is good news for borrowers, especially people who are struggling to pay off credit card debt because we have seen credit card rates come down. It's good news if you're trying to get a car loan, a home equity loan.

What's interesting though is that mortgage rates have not come down, right? Mortgage rates are actually controlled by the bond market, not as much by the Fed. And as you can see on that chart, even since the Fed has started to cut interest rates, we've actually seen mortgage rates go the other direction from just over 6 percent to nearly 7 percent.

Of course, that is very frustrating, and that's because the bond market is getting more optimistic about the economy, pricing in a soft landing, not a recession, also because there is some growing nervousness about the potential for the incoming Trump administration to add trillions of dollars to the national debt.

Now, the Fed has signaled they're not done cutting interest rates, but there is some growing uncertainty about how many more rate cuts there will be.

BERMAN: Jerome Powell has asked a lot of questions about Donald Trump.

EGAN: He was. He tried really hard to stay out of politics again and again. He was asked about the impact of the Trump policies and what that could mean to interest rates. Because, remember, mainstream economists have warned that the Trump economic agenda could be inflationary, perhaps very inflationary, mass deportations, tax cuts, and, yes, this very aggressive trade agenda. I mean, Trump has called for 10 to 20 percent tariffs on all $3 trillion of U. S imports, 60 percent tariffs on China. There's some research out there that these tariffs could hit cost the average American family $2,600 a year in extra cost.

But Powell, he would not take the bait. He stressed again and again that the Fed would wait until policies are actually implemented. At one point he said, we don't guess, we don't speculate, we don't assume. And that makes sense because the Fed doesn't know what the president-elect is going to do. I don't think the president elect knows either because he just got elected.

One person who might know is Steve Mnuchin. Jake Tapper asked the former Trump treasury secretary yesterday about this issue of tariffs and inflation. And Mnuchin told Tapper that he thinks that Trump will be very careful not to reignite inflation.

One other point here is Powell was asked about what would happen if Trump told him to step down. He was asked about this during the press conference. Take a listen to that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Some of the president-elect's advisers have suggested that you should resign. If he asked you to leave, would you go?

JEROME POWELL, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL RESERVE: No.

REPORTER: Can you follow up on-- do you think that legally, you're not required to leave?

POWELL: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EGAN: Yes. So, that was a terse exchange. There was another terse exchange where Powell was asked if Trump could fire or demote him or other senior leaders, and Powell simply said not permitted under the law.

Now, this could be a moot point because Trump has previously said he would let Powell stay out his term until May 2026. But, look, this relationship has been very complicated. We should watch this space really carefully. We have this collision of a president who is not afraid to speak his mind and get in the middle of Fed policy and a Fed that is fiercely independent and really wants to stay out of politics. I don't see what could possibly go wrong here, John.

BERMAN: Look, that was an example of good media trading there, Jerome Powell. I'm just going to give a one word answer.

EGAN: Yes.

BERMAN: I'm not going to elaborate. No.

All right, Matt Egan, thank you very much.

EGAN: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Kate?

BOLDUAN: If only more people would answer questions that way directly.

Authorities in several states are investigating a wave of racist text messages that were sent out after the election, some referring to picking cotton. What the FBI is doing now about it.

And three people are now facing preliminary charges related to the death of One Direction star Liam Payne.

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[07:20:00]

BOLDUAN: The FBI says it is investigating reports of a wave of racist text messages hitting young black people in multiple states. Now, these messages are being reported in at least eight states as of now. Many of the targets seem to be middle school, high school, college students. All of the messages following a pattern and sharing similar language, including racist rhetoric, telling individuals that received the text that they had been, quote, selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation.

CNN's Gabe Cohen has the details. And, Gabe, the FBI is now getting involved. What is going on here?

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Kate, not only are these texts obviously upsetting, but they are extremely alarming because, as you mentioned, they appear to be very targeted and very widespread. They're on the radar at this point of law enforcement in at least close to a dozen states. We're talking from New York all the way west to Nevada, down to Georgia, Alabama, really all over the country.

And a lot of these texts specifically, as you mentioned, went to black individuals, some of them students, some of them children, and maybe most alarming of all, many of the messages specifically had the recipient's name written in it. Like the one that went to Talea (ph) Jones, if you take a look, a black woman from New Jersey who shared a copy of the text she received.

[07:25:06]

It's on your screen right now. It starts, greetings, Taleah J., and I'm not going to read the whole message. You can see it for yourself. It's frankly vile harassment, but it references her picking cotton, it references slave catchers and plantations. And so, as you can imagine, as you can imagine Taleah was, was shocked when she got this message, as was the mother of a black student at the University of Alabama who also said her daughter received one of these and now her daughter's so scared, she and other students are coordinating when they're walking to class together just because they want to stay safe.

And then there's a mother in Colorado who says her 16-year-old son received a similar message and this was her response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNIFER GREEN, MOTHER WHOSE SON RECEIVED RACIST TEXT MESSAGE: It's very tense. It's very scary for a lot of individuals. The fact that it happened the day after Election Day, it really speaks to what I think is going on here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: And, Kate, in some cases, if people replied to the messages, they actually got back a response, which begs the question, of course, who is on the other end of that back and forth.

And so now these investigations are underway all over the country. We got a statement from New York Attorney General Letitia James, who called the messages disgusting, called them unacceptable and said these texts appear to be targeting black and brown individuals.

We also heard from the FBI. They put out a statement saying they're aware of the messages and are now in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter, Kate. So, authorities really taking this seriously, trying to figure out who's doing this all over the United States.

BOLDUAN: Yes, and what they can do about it is the question now to make it stop. Gabe, thank you very much. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Just ahead, the first vacancy in the Trump White House has been filled. Donald Trump has made his choice for chief of staff and it's a historic first.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Susie, come, Susie. Come here. Come here, Susie. Chris, come here, Chris. Susie likes to stay sort of in the back, let me tell you. The ice baby, we call her the ice baby.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: And the FDA is moving to pull a popular cold medicine from shelves. Ahead, the problem with that medication.

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[07:30:00]