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Trump Leaves Door Open On GOP Strategy To Pass Legislation; Wildfires Raging Out Of Control In Los Angeles County; Judge Blocks Release Of Special Counsel's Final Report. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired January 08, 2025 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: And Trump is waffling a bit on whether or not he wants one bill or two. Take a listen to what he had to say yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I like one big, beautiful bill and I always have, I always will. But if two is more certain it does go a little bit quicker because you can do the immigration stuff early, but it goes through the House first. And the question is whether or not we do the two bills, the one bill. And you know, look, I could live either way. I like the idea of the one big bill, but I could live either way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CONTORNO: Now, it will be a busy day for some Senate Republicans because a couple of Donald Trump's key nominees will be meeting with them on the Hill, including Pete Hegseth, his pick to lead the Pentagon, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who will lead Health and Human Services. They will both be meeting with Republicans on Capitol Hill today -- Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Steve Contorno. Thank you so much for the update there from West Palm Beach, Florida -- Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Military coercion. That is what Donald Trump says he is not ruling out in order to acquire the Panama Canal and Greenland. In a wide-ranging press conference yesterday, as we were talking about, the president-elect went further tan he has before on this foreign policy issue. He's now started with two American allies.

Here's how it played out speaking to David Sanger of The New York Times.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID SANGER, WHITE HOUSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas you are not going to use military or economic coercion? TRUMP: No. You're talking about Panama and Greenland. No. I can't

assure you on either of those two. But I can say this. We need them for economic security. The Panama Canal was built for our military.

SANGER: (INAUDIBLE) you will not use military --

TRUMP: I'm not going to commit to that, no.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Now, he has been talking about taking both foreign territories for years but not going that far, for sure.

Again, a lot going on with that press conference even beyond that, which also means it's time to bring in the fact-check, and that is where we bring in CNN's Daniel Dale.

Daniel, so you have Donald Trump talking about that, as we've discussed. But I want to play for you some -- another topic that the president-elect took on. He's talking about January 6 once again. Let's play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: This would be the only insurrection in history where people went in as insurrectionists with not one gun, OK? And let me tell you, the people that you're talking about have a lot of guns in their home for hunting, and for shooting, and for entertainment -- a lot of -- a lot of good reasons. But there wasn't one gun that they found.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Daniel?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Not true, Kate. In addition to the knives, tasers, batons, axes, chemical sprays, baseball bats, rioters carried guns during that Capitol riot. We've known this for years now. We know it because it's been proven in court over and over again.

I have an incomplete list here. Rioter Mark Mazza brought two loaded handguns onto Capitol grounds. He pleaded guilty and he got five years in prison. Guy Reffitt was convicted for bringing a handgun to the Capitol and got more than seven years. Christopher Alberts also had a pistol on Capitol grounds. Found guilty and got seven years.

And the list goes on. Mario Mares had a gun that day -- guilty. Roger Preacher had a gun that day -- guilty. Jerod Bargar had a gun that day -- guilty. And a man named John Banuelos has been charged for allegedly twice firing a pistol in the air -- so using a gun on Capitol grounds during the riot. He has pleaded not guilty.

So we will likely never get a complete inventory of the guns carried by rioters that day because as we know most of them were able to leave before later being tracked down and arrested. But we know for a fact -- again, proven in court -- there were guns in that angry and violent crowd. BOLDUAN: Another topic -- another major foreign policy issue that the president-elect will be facing and has talked a lot about is what to do about Ukraine and U.S. support for Ukraine. Will it sustain? Will it change? What will happen is a big question mark.

And I want to play one part of -- that part of the press conference where he's talking about comparing U.S. support for Ukraine to that of EU partners.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I said it to President Zelenskyy. Europe is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we're in. Now, whether you like that situation or not, Europe is much more affected than the U.S. We have a thing called the ocean in between us, right? Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: What's the latest on this?

DALE: Trump has said this over and over that the U.S. has provided vastly more aid to Ukraine during the war than Europe has. It is not true. In fact, the opposite is the case.

[07:35:00]

According to one well known tracker, the Kiel Institute in Germany, it is Europe -- the EU and individual countries that has provided significantly more committed aid -- $250 billion for the -- for Europe to $123 billion for the U.S. In terms of allocated aid, meaning aid that's been delivered or basically close to it, it is $129 billion for Europe to $91 billion for the U.S.

And Kate, this was not the only false claim that Trump made about Europe in this press conference. He said they don't take anything from us in terms of trade. Well, the U.S. exported $368 billion in goods to the EU last year. He said the U.S. has a $350 billion trade deficit with the EU -- a significant exaggeration. It was actually $209 billion.

And he said they don't take our farm products. Well, according to the U.S. government, the EU is the fifth-largest export market for U.S. agricultural products.

BOLDUAN: It's good to see the facts and good to see you. Thank you so much, Daniel -- John.

DALE: Thank you.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the breaking news out of Los Angeles. An official at the National Weather Service just told us that the next several hours are critical. One of the worst situations he has ever seen.

(COMMERCIAL) [07:40:37]

All right, breaking news. Critical moments in Los Angeles. Explosive growth in the fires there. The mayor says this will get worse in the next several hours.

Let's get right to CNN's Marybel Gonzalez. She's on the ground for us in the Pacific Palisades. Marybel, what are you seeing?

MARYBEL GONZALEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John, it's very surreal being here. You know, on one hand, we're just several feet away from the beach. We can hear those waves crashing. But on the other side just steps away and across the Pacific Coast Highway you can see some of those flames continuing to blaze here. We're seeing some of those embers falling down.

The smoke definitely so strong we can't take our masks or goggles off. You know, officials are saying that there's toxic fumes from the particles in the area and are asking people to stay away.

Now, this area under mandatory evacuation. We saw tens of thousands of people fleeing their homes even as early as yesterday when officials warned that these conditions could get worse. We saw some of those cars stranded on the roads as people were just desperate to flee the area, and you can definitely see why.

The Palisades fire burning at five football fields a minute, now almost at 3,000 acres. Now, this is just one of two other fires that have also erupted overnight as those dangerous winds are just not letting up and are continuing to spread the fire.

BERMAN: Marybel, you and your team stay safe. Thank you so much for being there. Keep us posted on developments -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: And joining us right now is the president of the Los Angeles City Council, Marqueece Harris-Dawson. He's also serving as acting mayor of the city right now as the mayor is traveling back to L.A. Thank you so much for being here.

People are waking up to seeing just utter destruction. How bad is this?

MARQUEECE HARRIS-DAWSON, PRESIDENT, LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCIL, L.A. MAYOR PRO TEM (via Webex by Cisco): It's as bad as we've ever seen with regard to fires certainly here in the city of Los Angeles but certainly in Southern California as well.

Unfortunately global warming and lots of other factors have made it so that we have big fires every year. Having three big fires at once and a situation where we can't even use aircraft to dump water on the fires is unprecedented.

Fourteen hundred firefighters out on the street and literally tens of thousands of other city workers, whether they're working on power poles, directing traffic, cleaning up debris off of roads so folks can come and go and evacuate where necessary. This is just an unprecedented mobilization that we are fortunately

prepared for, but we have not yet seen.

BOLDUAN: And some of what we're hearing from people as they are evacuating is just the terror of just how fast things change. We know how fast the winds are blowing these embers and how fast these fires are traveling.

Do you have any sense of how -- of injuries? Has anyone -- have there been any fatalities?

HARRIS-DAWSON: You know, there are -- look, it's been night so our ability to investigate is limited. But we have -- do not have a reported fatality. We have one serious injury of a firefighter that we know of. Again, obviously when morning comes we'll be able to look more, and we'll see more.

But folks have done really well. The first responders have done really well protecting themselves and protecting people and property. They've done several rescues. We were rescuing people out of swimming pools and out of garages, and lots of other places while there was still daylight yesterday.

Again, we'll see what the morning brings. But so far, with regard to injury and loss of life, we've done well.

BOLDUAN: And that would be wonderful if it -- if it stays that way.

Do you have a handle -- and maybe the same answer but just -- we need to get the reporting. Do you have a handle on how many homes, how many businesses -- kind of starting to total up what kind of level of destruction you're looking at by the fires even so far?

HARRIS-DAWSON: Impossible to know the amount of structures that have been damaged because again, we cannot get aerial views because of the smoke and the wind. And we can't get into the neighborhoods in many cases.

[07:45:00]

I mean, firefighters are still working to put out structure fires, but we just don't have a count. My expectation is by 8:00 local time this morning we'll have a count and there will be a press conference with the governor and the mayor and all the representatives. We'll have some ideas, but just no idea on structure count now. The fires are growing too fast and too furious in order for us to keep track of that.

BOLDUAN: And that's some of the scariest parts about it. It's unknowable at this moment. You're literally in the middle of this explosion.

HARRIS-DAWSON: It is extremely terrifying. I was at the Pacific Palisades before nightfall. You couldn't -- visibility was less than 15 feet away and the wind was so strong that you couldn't fly aircraft, and it was difficult to even operate an automobile at a very slow speed. That's absolutely terrifying.

This is not to mention the heat that you're experiencing and the intermittent blasts that you hear because one tank is exploding somewhere in a neighborhood that you can't necessarily see.

Also, embers. Embers can fly up to a mile. They are incredibly buoyant. So you may be in an area that you think is not a fire area that may suddenly become a fire area because of the embers. So it is an absolutely unnerving and terrifying situation to be in.

At the same time there are no better people in the world that work on these kinds of emergencies than the ones who are out on the streets tonight. I know you have Marybel in the field. I'm sure she's running into some of our emergency workers who are doing incredible work, which is why we have such a low -- right now, as far as we know, we have no fatalities and very, very few injuries.

BOLDUAN: Yeah, and we're going to have some of the first responders and emergency workers on throughout the show.

I saw that Mayor Karen Bass tweeted early this morning warning that the conditions are expected to get worse before they get better. We've heard that from the weather service as well.

The mayor is facing criticism from people in the city -- in L.A. that she was out of the country when the fires broke out. Given that the weather service has been warning of the extreme danger of what has now happened -- has been warning for days that this could be coming -- and in doing so, putting you in the position of -- I'm very thankful you're here -- a position of serving as acting mayor in this critical time as she traveled back.

Should she have been in L.A.? Should the mayor have been there?

HARRIS-DAWSON: You know, absolutely not. I mean, I think the mayor would answer that question differently. Of course, she would want to -- want to be here. She was on a diplomatic mission and left and was already in the air by the time the reports came out and is getting back as fast as she can.

That said, she's been in constant communication with me, in constant communication with the head of our fire department, police department, the county government, the state government, President Biden. Oddly enough President Biden actually is in Southern California. He had an event that had to be canceled because of the fires this weekend.

And so she -- Mayor Bass is mayoring, as the young people say, in a big way. She is not physically here but her presence is deeply felt. She is on a U.S. military aircraft, so she has full capability to communicate by telephone and internet and has been doing so and providing leadership to all the city departments to get us through this terrible event.

BOLDUAN: Yeah.

And acting mayor and City Council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson, thank you very much for coming on. Good luck today. Thank you so much -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. As the fire danger is predicted to get worse today, overnight it forced the evacuation of elderly residents from a senior living center in Pasadena, California. The flames from one of the three major fires burning came within a block of that center. The Eaton Fire, as it's being called, exploded to more than 1,000 acres in just six hours.

Dozens of elderly residents you see there were in wheelchairs. Some were in hospital beds, many wearing only the thin gowns they had on with no time to put on their shoes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it's tough. It's tough. They can't get up. They're stuck on the wheelchairs. We've got to lift them up and put them in the vans and take the wheelchairs at the same time. So we've got to get everybody out of here.

REPORTER: Everyone got out safely as far as you know?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

REPORTER: Wow. This thing must have been moving toward you guys really quickly out here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's crazy out here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: It certainly is crazy and dangerous. Workers said about 95 people had to be evacuated from that senior living center.

All right. Ahead, the changes Meta has made prompting fears, hate, and misinformation will explode on its social media sites.

[07:50:00]

And it's going to get worse. The Los Angeles mayor warning of unprecedented danger across L.A. County.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPTAIN SHELIA KELLIHER, LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT: I wish you could see -- I don't know if you can see over here but this hillside -- it's probably hard to see with my camera -- is burning and it's just whipping tornado-like columns and spouts. So it's the perfect storm, as they say.

People understand how bad a hurricane is or how bad a tornado is, but you can't stop those. The wind is so strong there's nothing you can do. You wait until it passes through and then you fix what's left, right? Well, add fire on top of that and that's what we're up against.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL)

[07:55:25]

BOLDUAN: Brilliant and tough. That is what President-elect Donald Trump is saying right now about the federal judge who stopped the release of special counsel Jack Smith's final report. Smith had been planning to release two volumes -- one on the investigation into Trump's mishandling of classified documents; another on the investigation in Trump's -- Trump and election interference. Yesterday Judge Aileen Cannon, a judge that Donald Trump appointed, stopped that in its tracks.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz has much more. It's blocked for now at least. What happens now, Katelyn?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well Kate, Judge Aileen Cannon, in Florida, overseeing the classified documents case -- she's essentially handed off the decision on whether this report sees the light of day to the appeals court -- the federal appeals court that oversees Florida and other state around there.

We're going to wait and see this week exactly what that appeals court wants to do. Is it going to allow the release of this report by the Justice Department?

The plan though, Kate, was that this report was basically done, and it was -- it's held by the Justice Department. The attorney general could have released it as early as Friday.

But what Judge Aileen Cannon said yesterday was stop everything. Let the appeals court figure this out. And then once they decide, three days later is when that report could be released. That means there could be further appeals.

And, of course, you know there's only 12 days left in this administration until Joe -- until Donald Trump is the president -- someone who clearly doesn't want this report out there.

So all of this is really coming down to the wire. Do we see this report from the Justice Department about those two criminal cases into Donald Trump?

Two things to watch for though today is that there's going to be a filing from the Justice Department -- we know that -- by 10:00 a.m. We're watching not just for that filing to come in but how the Circuit Court of Appeals responds to the Justice Department. How quickly. If they want arguments. What they decide.

Some of the arguments we've heard so far from Donald Trump and his co- defendants' side is that the special counsel's office doesn't have any authority over this to release it. And his co-defendants -- they would be hurt unfairly if it was made public -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yeah. So that plus-three days could really matter is what you're laying out here with just days to go.

Katelyn, thank you so much. Let's see what comes today -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. In addition to ending fact-checking and changing the way Meta moderates content, the company has also now updated its hateful conduct policy. As a result users can now use offensive terms targeting women and the LGBTQ community without consequence.

CNN Business writer Clare Duffy is here. What kind of language are we talking about here because frankly, there's already a lot of nasty language.

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Yeah, Sara. So they updated this policy. They removed prohibition on things like referring to women as household objects or property. Removing prohibitions on referring to transgender and nonbinary individuals as "it." Previously, those were the kinds of comments that would have been subject to removal on the platform. Now I guess it's fair game.

They also added a number of things to the policy. And I want to pull up one example for you. The company now allows allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation. And is says given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality.

So some pretty striking changes to this policy.

SIDNER: I mean, how does this sort of connect to what we heard yesterday around this sort of larger moderation policy where they're saying we're no longer going to have fact-checkers. We're going to let the community do it.

DUFFY: Yeah. The company had hinted that it was going to roll back some of its content moderation policies around certain topics like immigration and gender. They want to allow more political discourse. The company's top policy exec said on Fox News yesterday that Meta wants it so that if you can say something on the floor of Congress you can say it on its platform.

So we're getting a sense from this policy change of just what exactly they mean by that and how quickly the moved to make this change, which has been lauded by conservatives, including Trump.

But something I heard from online safety experts yesterday that I think is relevant is, like, free expression for whom? Because maybe if you're somebody who wants to make these kinds of comments you feel freer to do that on Meta's platforms now. But if you are, say, a woman or a transgender individual you might actually feel less free speaking up on the platforms because you might be targeted with this kind of ugly language.

SIDNER: Yeah. The fact that they can sort of call women property -- I mean, how long is it before they do that with Black folks? Like, that's the trend. And -- but it is -- the Supreme Court has said hate speech is free speech. So we're seeing sort of a big change here as the political climate also changes.