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Biden Speaks about Reelection; Trump Doesn't Rule out Military Force for Panama Canal and Greenland; Meta Makes Social Media Shift; Answers about Norovirus. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired January 08, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:31:21]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: In a brand-new interview with "USA Today," President Biden said he thinks he could have won the 2024 presidential election, but wasn't sure if he would have had the energy for another term. In that rare exit interview, he also revealed he hasn't decided if he'll join three other presidents in issuing preemptive pardons.

CNN's Arlette Saenz is joining us now.

What did he say that sort of led him to run for a second term in the first place?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, President Biden has said that he was driven by the need to ensure that Donald Trump did not return to the White House. And in this interview with "USA Today," he said that he still does believe that he could have won the election in November. But the president, the 82-year-old president, makes a very stark admission when he said that he does not know if he would have the stamina to serve in a second term.

I want to read you a bit of this interview that he had with "USA Today's" Susan Page where Page asked, "do you believe you could have won in November?" The president said, "its presumptuous to say that, but I think, yes, based on the polling that," and then she asks, "do you think you would have had the vigor to serve another four years in office?" Biden then says he was motivated to run in the first place back in 2020 in order to defeat Trump. But then he says about a second term, "I don't know. Who the hell knows? So far, so good. But who knows what I'm going to be when I'm 86 years old?"

Now, first, it's unclear what polling President Biden was pointing there in his argument that he could have won in November, as most of the polls around the time he dropped out showed a very close race, or potentially Trump as a slight leader in this - that race.

But also, this is really the first time that we are really hearing Biden speak bluntly about the limitations of his age. It comes as many Democrats, many American people, had serious questions about President Biden's ability to serve in a second term. Polling even showed that before he made the decision to run up in 2020. And it comes at a time when there's also been a lot of Democratic finger pointing, blaming, in part, President Biden's decision to even run in the first place for why President Trump was reelected this November.

SIDNER: Arlette, can you tell us who he would give those preemptive, you know, pardons to? There are people who have said, we don't want them because we didn't break any laws. Did he mention any names?

SAENZ: Well, President Biden said that he has not made a decision about issuing preemptive pardons before he leaves office, leaving open the possibility that he could offer these protections to some of his allies in the coming weeks.

Now, we know that there have been discussions among senior White House officials, administration officials, and also some prominent defense attorneys here in Washington, D.C., about the potential for preemptive pardons for those individuals who could be targeted for prosecution once Trump returns to power. In this interview, he was specifically asked about potential pardons for Liz Cheney and also Doctor Anthony Fauci. He said that he isn't sure at this time, but he also revealed that when he met with President-elect Trump in the Oval Office in November, he said he was very straightforward with him and said that he should not try to target some of these people.

The president said in this interview, quote, "I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interests to go back and try to settle scores." Now, Biden went on to say that Trump didn't really respond to this comment, that he simply sat there and listened. But it is interesting to hear that Biden was trying to persuade, trying to influence a Trump in this front. And we will see whether the president does decide to issue any of these types of preemptive pardons in his final 12 days in office.

[08:35:02]

SIDNER: All right, Arlette Saenz, live from the White House for us.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, the new headline in Politico is this, "MAGA meets manifest destiny." And they wrote that after this exchange between President-elect Trump and CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: 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?

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENT-ELECT: No.

SANGER: Are you going to negotiate a new treaty? Are you going to ask the Canadians to hold a vote? What - what is the strategy? TRUMP: Yes, I can't assure you - 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) military (INAUDIBLE)?

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

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: With us now is one of the stars of that exchange, "New York Times" White House and national security correspondent David Sanger, and executive director of the McCain Institute, Evelyn Farkas.

David, that answer that he gave to you with your terrific question there, how did you read that? Did you read that as a genuine threat, that maybe military coercion will be necessary?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, the reason I asked the question, John, was that I had heard that he has considered and raised privately the possibility that he may need to use other elements of American power to force his will here. And you'll remember in the first term he floated the idea of the United States buying Greenland. He's not the first president to do that. Harry Truman suggested it in the 1940s. Greenland said it wasn't interested in selling. And, you know, in most real estate transactions, at that point, you sort of go away and say, let me know if you ever change your mind.

But he has not dropped this. He's expanded it. And now to the Panama Canal. And then with his jokes, which have now taken a more menacing sound, that Canada should become the 51st state. So, I wanted to explore the question of, is he willing to back this up?

Now, you could interpret his answer two ways, John. One is that he's looking for negotiating leverage here, and the other that this time he actually does plan to use it, even though he did not articulate very clearly what the national security threat to the United States was.

BERMAN: Evelyn, our friend Ian Bremmer was talking specifically about Canada, but I imagine you could apply it also to the situation around the Panama Canal and Greenland. He said that Canada, but maybe other countries, are going from irritated to actively pissed off -

EVELYN FARKAS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE MCCAIN INSTITUTE: Yes.

BERMAN: About this type of talk. What are you hearing in the international community?

FARKAS: Yes, I mean, I think that initially there was a tendency to maybe not take it seriously. Obviously, he's not even the president yet. So, the leaders of the world are kind of holding their breath.

But I think you saw Panama come out very clearly and say, no way, Jose, pun intended, you know, you can't have our canal. We control it, not China, not anyone else, and we maintain control over that.

The situation with Greenland is actually quite complex because while Denmark is the sovereign over Greenland, Greenland also has its own government and its own self-government. So, those folks have been very clear in Denmark that the United States has no business interfering with the sovereignty of their, you know, control or their - their governing of Greenland.

The people of Greenland and the government of Greenland, they're happy to make a deal with us. We have a base on Greenland.

BERMAN: Yes.

FARKAS: And in Panama, we have freedom of navigation. There is no threat. There are assets, there are reasons why you would want to have a good relationship with Panama and Greenland, so you could get access to minerals, get your trade flowing through the Panama Canal, make sure that China doesn't get an advantage over us. Certainly when it comes to Greenland, there's also access to the Arctic, which is now opening up to trade to, frankly, military lines of transit. So, we want to make sure that we have the upper hand over China, over Russia, over our adversaries.

But, hello, these are allies and partners. We can negotiate this.

BERMAN: Yes, to that end, David, what - what are the actual national security threats from China and Russia in regards to Greenland and the Panama Canal? And how do they compare to other threats from China and Russia around the world?

SANGER: Well, you know, Evelyn gets a very good point here. I mean, obviously, we have interests in minerals. We have interest in minerals in a lot of places around the world that we're not trying to take on as part of the United States. We have interest in free transit. And there's no question that the Russians and the Chinese are competing with the U.S. in the Arctic, and that China has had for many, many years two ports at either end of the Panama Canal.

[08:40:03]

But as you just heard from Evelyn, they don't control the canal.

So, then the question is, where does this fit in the hierarchy of national security threats that were facing that the president might want to address in his first six months or year in office? Well, he made no mention of the Chinese cyber intrusions, Salt Typhoon, Volt Typhoon into our utility grid, into our telecommunication system, which has been really the big shock to the American national security community in the past six months to a year. He made no mention of Taiwan. He made no mention of the cutting of cables around the world by Russia and by China. Telecommunications undersea cables that could cut off the internet. These all seem to me, John, to be issues that might be higher on the threat agenda than Greenland and the canal.

BERMAN: Evelyn, we have to go, so it's got to be ten seconds or less. But if you're Russia or China, do these threats scare you, or are you actually glad that he's doing this?

FARKAS: Love them because he is taking us back to manifest destiny, the 19th century, when there was no rule of law governing sovereign states borders, the international order. So, you know, dog eat dog. The most powerful can take what they can take, which is what Russia and China would like to do.

BERMAN: Interesting. Unintended consequences possible.

Evelyn, David, thank you both so much for being with us.

Sara.

SIDNER: It's a great conversation.

All right, while Facebook and Instagram get rid of fact checking, there now allowing more hate speech against women and the LGBTQ community without consequences. We will discuss that coming up.

And the fire disaster getting worse by the minute. The conditions expected to get worse still. We head back to Los Angeles for an update as several fires are raging.

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[08:46:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE GUTTENBERG, ACTOR: I got out of my car and I started to try to help people because people were just coming down the road. I was helping people in wheelchairs and there were people that didn't have - their feet were dragging on the floor. There were mothers who were hysterical.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: That was actor Steve Guttenberg describing what he saw and how he helped people who had to abandon their cars as they fled the Palisades Fire there in Los Angeles County.

And you're looking at one of the dump trucks and one of the trucks that is pushing all these cars all over the place. This bulldozer making room so that the emergency teams can get in there.

Gutenberg also said that he was watching as this fire just raged and the community was - was overtaken.

Look, this is happening right now. We know from the mayor now that this is expected to get worse before it gets better because the conditions for fire are going to get worse with the winds whipping up. We will check back in on this fire in just a bit.

All right, in addition to firing fact checkers 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, like being suspended or banned for instance.

Donald Trump praised Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said the recent election feels like a, quote, "cultural tipping point towards prioritizing free speech."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO, META: After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U.S.

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SIDNER: Joining me now, CNN media analyst Brian Stelter, and Sara Fischer.

Thank you both for coming on. There's a lot of changes happening here with Meta.

Sara, you interviewed Meta's CMO, Alex Schultz. What did he say about this latest decision?

SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: Well, I asked him about this sort of pivot, you know, to the center, away from being super progressive. And he said that's not the case. He claimed that this is Meta going back to its original roots of prioritizing free speech.

Now, the question there, Sara, is, if this is really Meta going back to its original roots, if a progressive president and administration were to come back in, would they remain committed to this philosophy of not doing a lot of fact checking, of not investing in news content, and allow people to put whatever they want on its platform, even if there's more misinformation?

I am skeptical. I believe that most corporations that stay true to what their core beliefs are do end up winning consumer trust. But I think Meta has shown in the past few years that if it's true north star is free speech, that it can swing wildly from it all the time, depending on political motivations.

SIDNER: Brian, I find it somewhat confusing, for lack of a better word, that they're singling out people who can be targeted now with hate speech, women and members of the LGBTQ community. Why do you think Meta is doing this now?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: This is a MAGA makeover to appease Donald Trump. That's what it is. And for every - every consumer who's thrilled, like "The Wall Street Journal" editorial board this morning calling this a welcome decision, there's another group of people saying, wait, do I belong on Facebook anymore? Should I stay on Instagram? Right. I'm seeing LGBTQ groups. I'm seeing immigrant groups saying, maybe we should quit this platform. So, that is the reality of these changes. It's a MAGA makeover to appeal to conservatives, but it might turn off others.

And some of these fact checking changes are going to have real effects. For example, on newsrooms that are going to have to lay people off because Facebook and Google have historically, for the last five, six, seven years, been big funders of fact checking.

[08:50:06]

Overnight, we spoke with Jesse Stiller of Check Your Fact who said, this is a blow to our website and the work that we do. We're going to be impacted greatly, and our operations will be grounded to a halt. He said this is not good for discourse and dialog, right?

Ultimately, Mark Zuckerberg is saying to the audience, you all go fact check yourselves. We're getting out of this. And maybe that's going to create a more freewheeling, better environment online, but it will also probably create a more poisonous, ugly environment online.

SIDNER: I mean, we've seen what happened with X. The "n" word was used quite a bit when Elon Musk took over. I certainly noticed that. And you have to wonder, when you say free speech, which, you know, look, the Supreme Court has said hate speech is free speech. Why single out two groups? Why not just go wild and let people say whatever the heck they want to say? It's just interesting to see what they're doing and how they're trying to couch this.

Sara, I want to quickly move on to TikTok, because you have a scoop on how TikTok is preparing for a potential ban. What did you learn?

FISCHER: Yes. So, TikTok's parent company is a company called ByteDance, a Chinese company. And they don't just own TikTok. They own a ton of apps, including ones in the United States. One of those apps is an app called Lemonaid. It's very similar to Instagram, but it's a little bit more focused on esthetic photos.

We've found that Lemonaid is promoting advertising on TikTok to TikTok creators, urging them to download Lemonaid amid a pending ban threat. Now, the challenge there, Sara, and where we're a little bit confused, TikTok did not address our questions about this, is that technically the way that the law is written, Lemonaid would also stand to be banned.

So, it's unclear why they are doing this, why TikTok is allowing them to promote ads on its platform, encouraging creators to go there, and why Lemonaid is even bothering. It could be that they think that lawmakers will be so focused on banning TikTok that they're not going to focus on some of ByteDance's other apps, but they do technically also apply to the ban.

SIDNER: Yes, I mean, Congress has been talking a long time about how to deal with social media companies, and if they should put guardrails in there. And here we are taking all the guardrails off.

Brian Stelter and Sara Fischer, thank you so much. I wish we had more time to discuss this. There's a lot to talk about.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up, we're going to return to our continuing live coverage out of Los Angeles County. These wildfires that are burning still out of control, zero percent contained, devastating communities and thousands being told to evacuate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're on Sunset, just above PCH, and you see the westside Waldorf School now burning. We've been on both sides of this property, and you can see building after building in flames, just tearing through the property.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[08:56:56]

BERMAN: This morning, the norovirus is surging in the United States. So, how does it spread? How can you protect yourself?

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta here to answer your questions.

We got some good ones, Sanjay. Stephanie from Aurora, Colorado, says, "the virus is nasty. Only Gatorade and acetaminophen got me through while I lived on bananas and applesauce for three days. It took me over a week to get back to normal." She says, "please tell me I can't get it again." So, can she?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Yes. Stephanie, I'm sorry you got so sick. I mean this is a pretty typical course that you just described. It can be a pretty miserable few days.

The answer about immunity here is an interesting one. So, the short answer is that you do develop some immunity because you got sick. The problem is that that immunity is pretty short lived. Weeks to months. And also there are many different strains of norovirus. Norovirus isn't just one virus, it's lots of different viruses. So, you may have some protection against the one strain, but there are other strains out there that are circulating.

One thing also, Stephanie, you pointed out, you did a good job of staying hydrated. Every year there's about 900 people, roughly, who die of norovirus infections in the United States, primarily as a consequence of dehydration. So, more than anything else, during those days of misery, stay hydrated as best you can.

BERMAN: So, Stephanie, good job by you there.

GUPTA: Yes.

BERMAN: All right, Sanjay. So, Dana, or Dana, maybe it's a Dana we know, asks, "does hand sanitizer kill the virus on your hands?" GUPTA: Yes, the short answer to this is - is no. This is a really

tough little virus. I think we have some images of this virus. When you look at this, when you look at flu viruses, for example, they're surrounded by this fatty membrane. Not so with the norovirus. It is more of a tough protein shell around the virus.

And, as a result, alcohol-based sanitizers, they're not going to really do a good job of taking care of this. So, soap and water is going to be your best bet for your hands. And you'll remember yesterday, John, we talked about cleaning supplies for the house. Things like Lysol spray, they say they kill 99.9 percent of viruses and germs, but not norovirus. Again, because it has that tough protein shell.

You want to use things like hydrogen peroxide or bleach to kill surfaces in your home. So, soap and water and then hydrogen peroxide or bleach for your - for your house.

BERMAN: I was so into that tidbit of information with the Lysol. I got home and showed my wife immediately just because I wanted to seem smart to her. It was one of the first times in a while.

All right, Sanjay, David from Phoenix asks, "I'm going on a Caribbean cruise on Saturday. What over-the-counter meds should I bring in case of infection?"

GUPTA: Well, first of all, have a great time on the cruise. That sounds fantastic.

A few things. A couple things. With norovirus, there is no - there is no antibiotic. This is a virus we're talking about. Antibiotics are for bacteria. There's no singular medication. So, the medications that you should take along are to treat symptoms.

Taking something for nausea, like Dramamine, always a good idea for cruise ships.

[08:59:59]

But specifically with norovirus, having things like Pepto-Bismol, ibuprofen, because people develop chills and body aches and things like that.