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Trump Says He And Hegseth Didn't Know About Second Strike On Boat; Polls Open In Tennessee Special Congressional Election; Dems Aim To Flip Tennessee District Trump Won By 22 Points Last Year. Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired December 02, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We had a president that thought it was brilliant to blow them up and they blew them up. And all of a sudden, instead of having a power that was basically equal to Iran, they had Iran ruling the Middle East for a long period of time.

But Iraq, from the day we hit them with those B-2 bombers and knocked out and obliterated -- because CNN said, well, maybe it wasn't total obliteration . Well, it turned out was totally obliteration. It was every single one of those missiles hit its target. It was actually amazing. But, it was wiped out, totally wiped out. I will tell you, Iraq has been a much friendlier place. They talk to us.

The prime minister actually nominated me along with about 78 other countries for the Nobel Prize. I'm the only one that was nominated by almost a hundred countries that didn't get it. But that's OK. But I saved a lot of lives. I saved a lot of lives. But Iraq nominated us for the Nobel Prize, and that was great honor. We didn't expect that from Iraq. Iraq has been a much different place since the taking out of Iran, the nuclear capability. Yeah. Let's get to --

(CROSSTALK)

Here we go. This guy's a beauty. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Secretary Rubio mentioned your meetings on (inaudible) Russia today. Do you have any update from Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner?

TRUMP: No.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: No, because I've been spending too much time with you. I mean, we're spending a lot of time here. We wanted to do this very -- you talk about being open and transparent. This has to be the most transparent administration in history. We spend a lot of time answering your questions and giving you a lot of good results. I mean, I think everybody here gave you good results. But no, I don't, I will have after I leave here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you hope for a breakthrough or is it not (inaudible)? TRUMP: I don't -- I don't know. Look, I don't know. All I can tell you is that we're trying very hard to get to save 25,000 to 30,000 people, mostly men, mostly soldiers every month. 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers, it's impossible, that's half a stadium. Take a big football stadium. Let's take half of those people in a stadium and they're wiped out. They're killed every month. It's crazy. That war is crazy and would've never happened with me. And it would've -- and it didn't happen for four years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you just mentioned some potential land strikes. Can you elaborate on anything on that? You talked about (inaudible)?

TRUMP: Yeah. I will. If they come in through a certain country or any country, or if we think they're building mills for, whether it's fentanyl or cocaine -- I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia is making cocaine. They have cocaine manufacturing plants, OK? And then they sell us their cocaine. We appreciate that very much. But yeah, anybody that's doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So not necessarily just Venezuela?

TRUMP: No, not just Venezuela. No. Venezuela's been very bad. Venezuela has been really bad in something else, and probably worse than most, but a lot of other people do it too. They would send murderers into our country. They would empty their jails into our country. They send people into our country that we don't want. They send their drug dealers and their drug people into our country. They send people from their mental institutions into our country and we're getting them out. That was bad. That was real bad. And they also send drugs. Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On Tim Walz, Mr. President, do you think he should resign over the fraud scandal in his state?

TRUMP: Who should?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tim Walz, over the fraud scandal in state?

TRUMP: Look, I think the man is a grossly incompetent man. I thought that from the day I watched J.D. destroy him --

(LAUGH)

TRUMP: I was saying, who is more incompetent? That man, or my man?

(LAUGH)

TRUMP: I had a man and he had a man. They were both incompetent. And I had a man and a woman. I thought she was very incompetent too. But now, she's leaving the field and I think she's leaving the field and the nomination. Anyway, look, that's up to them. That's up to the Democrats. The problem with them is they have really bad policy. And I'm not going to say what it is because I don't want them to change it necessarily because I want to run against it, whether it's -- it's not going to be me. It's going to be somebody that's going to probably sitting at this table, could be a couple of people sitting at this table, could be a couple of people running together sitting at this table, you know?

But, I want them to win because we've done a great job for this country. And I want that to be carried forward. And I think we have -- I think we have a tremendous bench, really a tremendous bench. But, no, I think that Walz is a grossly incompetent man. There's something wrong with him. OK? There's something wrong with him. And when you look at what he's done with Somalia, where Somalia, which is barely a country, they have no -- they have no anything. They just run around killing each other. There's no structure.

[14:05:00]

And when I see somebody like Ilhan Omar, who I don't know at all, but I've always watched her for years. I've watched her complaint about our constitution, how she's being treated badly. Our constitution, the United States of America is a bad place. Hates everybody, hates Jewish people, hates everybody. And I think she's an incompetent person. She's a real terrible person. But when I watch what is happening in Minnesota, the land of a thousand lakes or however many lakes they have, they got a lot of lakes. But this beautiful place, and I see these people ripping it off.

And now, I'm understanding, and you're going to look at that Scott, I hear they ripped off -- Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars, billions every year, billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88 percent, they contribute nothing. I don't want them in our country, I'll be honest with you. OK? Somebody would say, oh, that's not politically correct. I don't care. I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks and we don't want them in our country. I can say that about other countries too. I can say it about other countries too.

We don't want them to help. We got to -- we have to rebuild our country. Our country is at a tipping point. We could go bad. We're at a tipping point. I don't know if people mind me saying that, but I'm saying it, we could go one way or the other, and we're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren't people that work. These aren't people that say, let's go, come on, let's make this place great. These are people that do nothing but complain. They complain. And from where they came from, they got nothing.

If they came from paradise and they said, this isn't paradise. But when they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don't want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it. Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

(CROSSTALK)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We've been listening to President Donald Trump at what will be the last cabinet meeting of the year. The president there making quite a bit of news, a number of headlines. First, the president and his Pentagon Chief defending the legality of the September attack on a boat in the Caribbean, in which the administration has acknowledged there was a follow-up strike, one that reportedly killed survivors on the vessel. And critics charge that that is effectively a war crime.

The President there saying that this is part of a process of protecting the United States, making a moral argument about the dangers of fentanyl and drugs, saying that each of these strikes are saving American lives. Though he did say that he's not gotten a lot of information on exactly what happened, that Pete, his Defense Secretary, is handling that. Notably, just a day or so ago, the president said that, he did not believe that a second strike was needed. Now, he's saying that he just sees it as one attack and not a separate strike.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": And talking to Pete Hegseth, or listening to what Pete Hegseth said there, it sounds like he wasn't around to see the second strike, right?

SANCHEZ: Right.

KEILAR: So he watched this live, but he didn't watch. Let's bring in Jim Sciutto to this conversation. He didn't watch the whole thing live. He's saying that he did not personally see that there were survivors. He said the thing was on fire, it had exploded. There was smoke. He described it as kind of the fog of war. But he basically said he went on to his next meeting. So he didn't see the entirety of this. And then we should also note, the president saying they're going to start hitting on land soon, which is huge.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Listen, all these things would be quite reasonable subjects of discussion for an actual investigation of what happened, right? I mean, there are questions clearly still to be answered here. I'll say that the administration has been inconsistent on so many things. Remember, they started after the first Washington Post report calling this all fake news. Of course, now they've acknowledged that this has taken place.

But what they've become consistent on, and it was again in these last few minutes, is who made the -- who made the call, right? The president says, I didn't know about the second strike. I hear the gentleman that was in charge of that is extraordinary. He's referring to Admiral Bradley. Pete Hegseth, while he did offer words of support for the Head of Special Operations Command, made it clear it was his decision. That's the one consistency here, right? That we didn't make that call. We justify it, all fully within legal bounds, but it was his call. And that's what I'm hearing.

I heard it from a Senator and a member of Congress today, both on House Armed Services -- Senate Armed Services Committee, who said that what they read into those comments is a passing of the buck to Admiral Bradley.

[14:10:00] SANCHEZ: And there are questions also about what this portends for the future, given that Secretary Hegseth said that this was just the beginning and now the president is vowing that there will be more strikes on land. Let's go to Kaitlan Collins, who's at the White House for us. Kaitlan, what did you make of the president's remarks there?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR: Well, I think, what was most striking to me is what Jim was just referencing there, which was the comment by Secretary Hegseth when he was directly asked if he was aware that there were survivors after that first initial strike happened, during this boat strike that happened on September 2nd, the one that has generated so much controversy here in Washington and even has Republicans on Capitol Hill now demanding answers about how this exactly went down.

And I thought what was really telling there was he was asked about a comment that Secretary Hegseth had made in the aftermath of this strike. Remember, at that time, the administration had released about 30 seconds of a video that the president had posted of this strike. That is something that did not show the second subsequent strike that happened there. And Secretary Hegseth was asked, given he said at the time that he watched this strike happen live from, obviously, his situation at the Pentagon, if he had seen that second strike actually take place. And I want you to listen to what the Secretary had to say about the timeline here, because I think this is critical information and is also something that we have not heard yet from the Defense Department.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, (R) UNITED STATES DEFENSE SECRETARY: -- not based in any truth at all. And then you want to throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made. I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to war fighters. President Trump has empowered commanders, commanders to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people. We support them and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Mr. Secretary, on the second strike, you said it happened more than an hour out?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: OK, so let me just read you what exactly Secretary Hegseth said because that's part of the soundbite in terms of him defending the call here. But also he said that he did watch the boat strike on September 2nd. He said that he did not stay around for the entirety of it. He cited his busy schedule at the Pentagon and said there was a lot going on. And he said that it was Admiral Bradley who made the call, as he put it, to sink the boat and eliminate the threat.

And then Secretary Hegseth was also asked while he was inside the cabinet room by reporters as he sat next to the president, whether he personally saw the survivors. Because obviously, as we now know by the chain of events here, the first strike happened, there were two survivors as The Washington Post reported, clinging to the wreckage of that boat. And then the second strike occurred, that's what is at the center of all this controversy. And he said, Boris and Brianna, "I did not personally see survivors." He said the thing was on fire. And then he went on to talk about the fog of war and criticize the reporter there in the room for not having been in war before. But that was a critical, I thought, part in that answer session where he was saying that he did not personally see that there were survivors inside that second strike when that was obviously occurred here.

And then again, put the onus back on Admiral Bradley while defending him, but saying that it was Admiral Bradley who made the call, as he put it, to sink the boat and eliminate the threat. Obviously, that's going to prompt a lot of questions from Congress given Secretary Hegseth had said he was watching this happen live as it happened.

KEILAR: Certainly. And let's bring in Rafael Romo to talk a little bit about this. Because Rafael, this comes down to I think the administration knowing that people are really upset about drug deaths, right, in the country. They certainly are. And they're -- I think a lot of them have a very visceral reaction and a lot of them are going to support doing whatever has to be done to stop that. At the same time, we saw the president pardon a former Honduran president who was in, according to the DOJ, cahoots with El Chapo and had just begun a 45-year prison sentence for trafficking, helping to traffic hundreds of thousands of kilos of cocaine toward the U.S.

A lot of mixed messages coming in here on what is a big day of news, just in general, from what we watched as the president is now -- I mean, that's the former president of Honduras. President Trump is now talking about hitting Venezuela by land. He just said that. He's talking about that happening soon and saying that hitting by land would be easier.

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, that's right. And there were many things that the press conference at the availability there at the -- in the White House, Brianna, something that caught my attention was the president saying that fentanyl is coming from Venezuela, which is demonstrably not true. We have covered the stories about where drugs that make it into the United States come from.

[14:15:00]

Venezuela is not a producing country. It may be a transit point, that is true, but it's on the smaller scale. Producing countries that we can talk about when it comes to cocaine are Colombia and have historically been, and Peru, as well as other countries in South America. Fentanyl itself comes mainly from Mexico, Brianna and Boris, with raw materials that are illegally shipped from China.

And so, when you put those things together, conflating Venezuela and fentanyl, it doesn't make sense, especially to many of the analysts and experts in the legal field that we've talked to over the years that say, no, fentanyl comes through Mexico. And by the way, it's not by the ocean, it's not by water that it makes it into the United States. It is through ports of entry in the United States. It is through other means. So it's very specific -- it is very important to specify what the reality is.

Now, on the other question that you were asking me about Juan Orlando Hernandez, a former president of Honduras, I had an opportunity to meet him when he was in power. And I've been thinking about the reason why he might have been pardoned by President Trump. The only reason that I can think, because there's a very big disconnect between why he did it, given that he has launched these operations against drug trafficking and what the administration calls narco terrorists, is because President Juan Orlando Hernandez is a known evangelical Christian.

And I can only imagine that someone in the administration or outside the administration might have told the president that because of his belief and because he is a right-wing leader in Central America, he deserved a presidential pardon. But again, there's a big disconnect there when you think about Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years behind bars for drug trafficking, and him being pardoned by President Trump, and then what we just heard about Venezuela and drug trafficking, Brianna and Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. There are also questions about whether the president is trying to weigh in on an upcoming Honduran election, and this may be a factor in all of that. Let's bring in Colonel Cedric Leighton, who's with us. Colonel, I want to play the sound for you, of President Trump specifically threatening to take land action against these alleged drug traffickers. And he mentions Colombia by name, let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're going to start doing those strikes on land too. The land is much easier. It's much easier. And we know the routes they take. We know everything about them. We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live, and we're going to start that very soon too.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Yeah, he specifically said, the president, that they would go after anywhere where drugs that are meant to be transferred to the United States are being manufactured. What did you make of those comments, Colonel?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Boris, one thing is that the land aspect is going to be much more difficult than the president seems to think. It's one thing to interdict drug operations at sea. It's completely a different matter to go on land and actually conduct operations. Now, if you're just going to conduct a bombing campaign or something like that, that's one aspect of it that could be a fairly simple thing, except it won't be long lasting.

If you mean by a land operation that you're going to put boots on the ground, which is antithetical to a lot of the positions that President Trump has stated in the past, that is going to be a completely different issue. And it could result in a much more longer-term effort in Latin America than we're currently expecting. So if that is going to be the case, then that would require a commitment of troops that is far larger than what we have right now.

Those 15,000 Marines and sailors predominantly that are operating off the Venezuelan coast and in the Caribbean, that force would have to be augmented with Special Operations Forces, Army Forces that could actually go on land. And the question is, what exactly are the targets? If we know where they live, as the president said, that would require normally a special operations entity to go in. That's much more of a law enforcement operation.

That usually is conducted with the help of host nations such as, for example, the killing of Pablo Escobar back in the '90s. He was the head of the Medellin Cartel, the Colombian National Police, the Colombian Military. They were the ones that went in and did that with U.S. assistance. But that kind of aid, that kind of help is probably not possible given the current diplomatic climate that we're in right now.

KEILAR: Yeah. Let's bring in Natasha Bertrand, our Pentagon Correspondent, to talk a little bit about some of what we heard. We keep hearing now the name Admiral Bradley coming up. So Natasha, can you talk a little bit about this, because this is someone who is well respected, formally headed up SEAL Team Six, was the head of Joint Special Operations Command at the time that this operation was carried out.

[14:20:00]

But as we sort of understand the dynamics, I think of this actual moment as this strike was happening, maybe you can kind of explain this to us. Obviously, the president has signed off on this. The defense secretary was there to witness it, but he wasn't there for the whole thing. He wasn't the one calling the individual shots. They're saying that it was Admiral Bradley here. And certainly, there'll be a lot of questions for him.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, and I think that's all really important just to lay out the timeline of what we're told happened here, which is that Secretary Hegseth, of course, authorized this first strike, the first of what would be a series of strikes on these drug trafficking boats, alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. And essentially, he gave a verbal order to the chain of command saying that he expected that all of those people onboard the vessel would be killed because it was going to be a lethal kinetic strike.

And ultimately, Hegseth now says that he personally did not see survivors after that first strike was ordered and was conducted. But according to our sources, Admiral Bradley interpreted that directive from Secretary Hegseth to mean that there should be no survivors from that attack. And that's important because they're essentially arguing here that these are terrorists, right? And that if they're clinging to a boat, if they're able to call for rescue, if they're able to in some way or another salvage the drugs they're trafficking into the United States, then they are still a fair target. They're still in the fight.

Legal experts would say, actually, there are very specific laws of war that apply to shipwrecked survivors in instances like this. And the DOD Law of War, it basically says that they should be spared in these instances. So I think part of the question here is going to be, well, Secretary Hegseth may not have given the order to kill survivors, which we should note neither we nor The Washington Post ever reported. But the question is then did he know about it after the fact, even if he wasn't there when it happened, was he briefed on it afterward? Admiral Bradley was then promoted to the Head of Special Operations Command.

So clearly, Hegseth has a lot of confidence in him and he's not exactly disappointed by what he saw there.

KEILAR: No, standing by him certainly. Natasha, thank you so much. Thank you so much to everyone on what was certainly a very eventful cabinet meeting, especially as we were watching these alleged boat strikes here, narco boat strikes, I should say.

Still to come, polls open in Tennessee where a special election is raising fears of an upset among Republicans. Hear what one voter says drove them to the polls after they had planned to sit out.

SANCHEZ: Plus, he's admitted to disposing of his wife's body. But can prosecutors prove that he actually murdered her? We are following day two of testimony in the Brian Walshe trial. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:27:44]

SANCHEZ: Right now, voters in Tennessee's Seventh District are heading to the polls in a key special election. It's a congressional seat Republicans have held for more than 40 years, but now are scrambling to hold onto. President Trump carried the deep red district by 22 points last year. But today, Democrats believe they have a real chance at pulling off a major upset. Polls are showing that Aftyn Behn is in a surprisingly tight race with Republican candidate, Matt Van Epps, as she campaigns on affordability and the skyrocketing cost of living.

CNN's Eva McKend joins us now live from Nashville. So Eva, set the scene for what is at stake today.

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, this is a race that should not be this competitive. This is a heavily Republican congressional district and it largely was flying under the radar. But we have seen a steady stream of voters here all day at this polling site in Nashville. And what has happened is that Democrat Aftyn Behn largely running on an affordability message, feeding kids, fixing roads, funding hospitals, has excited the Democratic base of her party and made them feel as though they have a real chance here.

Now, Republican Matt Van Epps, he has the affection of Republican voters. They believe that he better fits the character of this district with his military background, the Trump endorsement, and running on the America First agenda. But it is surprising how much money has been spent in this community. More than $3 million on the Republican side, more than $2 million on the Democratic side. Take a listen to how the voters here are thinking about this race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a Democrat and I feel like we need to do something. And typically, in Nashville, we don't have a chance to win many Democratic elections. So, I felt the need to come and vote today.

ANTHONY BORDONARO, REPUBLICAN VOTER: I probably wouldn't have voted if it wasn't for all the calls and texts I got from her campaign. But that really kind of pushed me to vote against her. I kind of started seeing more comments and things like that, that I didn't really agree with. So it really motivated me to come and make sure I supported the other candidate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKEND: So you heard that Republican voter talking about all the ads that he has seen. Take a listen to the ads that voters in this district have just been bombarded with the last couple of weeks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AFTYN BEHN, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE, TENNESSEE SPECIAL ELECTION: I'm a very radical person.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): On December 2nd, you can stop this radical disaster. The Democrats' radical agenda -- opposing tax cuts, pushing higher taxes and higher prices, and new taxes that would crush working families.