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Russia Reacts to Zelenskyy Visit to Washington; Agreement Reached on Budget Bill; New January 6 Committee Transcripts Released; Deep Freeze Hits Country. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired December 22, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:37]

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Hello, and thank you so much for joining us. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York.

We have a lot of news to cover today. A once-in-a-generation weather event is playing out across the country right now, as a frigid and potentially deadly arctic blast sweeps across the country, shatters cold records. Even President Biden is issuing a warning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's not like a snow day when you're a kid. This is serious stuff. Please, take this storm extremely seriously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: More than 110 million people are under winter alerts coast to coast for snow and icy conditions that are bad and getting worse.

Planning a holiday road trip? You might want to reconsider. This is what it looks like trying to drive in Cheyenne, Wyoming, right now, where it was minus 42-degrees Fahrenheit this morning, zero visibility.

Oh, and, by the way, parts of that state saw temps drop 70 degrees in just 18 hours. And take a look at this in Cambridge, Minnesota, just north of Minneapolis, as millions tried to hit the road for some of the busiest travel days of the year, officials warn that driving in parts of the Midwest, in particular, will become difficult to near impossible.

And flying is an increasing wild card as well. Airlines have canceled at least 1,800 flights so far.

Our CNN team is covering all the bases, but let's start with Derek Van Dam, who is tracking the latest from the Weather Center.

Derek, we can't overstate the danger this storm is posing, can we?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, we knew that this arctic blast was coming on, Ana. But when you start breaking all-time record low temperatures, like in

Casper, Wyoming, negative-41 degrees, that was the outside air temperature overnight. That is a record that has stood for over 30 years. Your ears start to perk up, you really start to listen, and you know that this storm means business.

I want to show you this important graph behind me. We tried to simplify it as much as possible. If you get windchill -- that's what it feels like on your exposed skin as you step outside -- negative-35, negative-45, it only takes roughly 10 minutes or five minutes or so to receive frostbite as you step outside into those conditions.

Now I'm going to advance to the next graphic to show you how cold it got last night across Montana, South Dakota and other various places over the Western and Central U.S. You can do the math. That is exceeding that threshold for dangerous frostbite on exposed skin.

Here's a current live picture. This is Jackson, Wyoming. Yes, there's blue skies, and many locations where it's coldest now have blue skies overhead. But it is deceiving. That sunshine is not going to warm you up. It is the windchill that is so dangerous with this system with windchill alerts stretching from Canada all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

And this isn't really talked about that frequently, but with these warnings extending all the way to places like Houston, Jackson, Birmingham, Dallas, you name it, these areas don't typically get this cold. So you have to put your house and your family into consideration to keep things like your pipe, safe, for instance, because temperatures are actually going to be below freezing for over three days in Jackson, Mississippi, over two days in Birmingham and Houston.

You want to bundle up, but you also want to keep your pets safe and you want to keep your pipes from freezing as well. Look at this. You can see right where the cold front is located. I will draw it on this map. That is the dividing line between the milder air to the southeast and the cold, arctic air that's frankly dangerous.

Oklahoma City, it is only three degrees right now, when you factor in the wind, negative-21, snowfall starting to pick up in intensity across the Great Lakes, blizzard conditions, deteriorating road conditions as well -- Ana.

CABRERA: I just can't get over how quickly the temperature dropped and how far it went.

VAN DAM: Record-breaking territory.

CABRERA: I mean, we're talking three degrees in an hour in some places?

VAN DAM: Yes. Yes, 43.

CABRERA: What does that do when it comes to, like, the atmospheric pressure, barometric pressure?

VAN DAM: It bombs out. That is a -- it's a bomb cyclone.

And we use that term not to be sensational, but it is an actual meteorological phenomenon to kind of characterize the strength of a developing and strengthening storm, like the one we have on our hands right now.

CABRERA: It's just crazy.

VAN DAM: Yes.

CABRERA: Let's go to Lucy Kafanov bundled up in Denver, Colorado.

Temperatures dropped there like a rock yesterday, more than 65 degrees, in fact, in a matter of hours. Tell us what's going on and how people are coping.

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, it was like 50 degrees when you and I spoke yesterday. Ana, it is negative 11 now.

[13:05:03]

People are not on the street because they're heeding the advice of authorities, unlike us. We have to be on TV with you.

Because the human suffering of a correspondent in the elements is no longer enough,I'm going to show you what happens to this cup of boiling water when I toss it in the air. It turns to snow. And since I have no more self-respect, we will take you to exhibit number two.

We have purchased this lovely bottle of 2020 chardonnay. We put this in a glass about two hours ago, Ana. I don't know if you can see it is frozen solid. So, that is the visual demonstration of just how cold it is.

CABRERA: Wow.

KAFANOV: Folks are really being asked to stand -- stay indoors, stay inside. We are obviously lucky enough to be able to get out of the cold to go warm up after this live shot.

But a lot of folks, as you know, in Denver are experiencing homelessness. There's also an influx of migrants. Those people have been taken to shelters. But authorities are very much urging people to stay inside. It's not going to warm up until Friday. We are expecting to get back to like 50 degrees by Christmas Day.

But this is unprecedented dangerous conditions, the temperature dropping to negative-24 near Denver Airport earlier. It feels, with the windchill, like negative-24 right now. So I am looking forward to getting inside. I am jealous of you guys in the studio -- Ana.

CABRERA: When it's that cold, I remember being in your shoes, and my mouth would literally start freezing. I don't know how you were able to articulate as well as you just did there.

Thank you, Lucy. Go get warm. And to your crew as well, thank you for being out there with...

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: I have some new science experiments to do with my kids now. Thanks for that.

Pete Muntean is tracking the flight cancellations for us.

Pete, it's busy, obviously, at the airport today, tomorrow, throughout the weekend. This system has already caused cancellations in the hundreds of flights. What can we expect now moving forward? And what's happening? Is there a big wrinkle?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is going to be a nationwide wrinkle because of the storm.

The crowd has themed here a little bit of Chicago O'Hare. But the delays and cancellations only keep going up. In fact, the FAA just imposed a ground delay program for flights leaving O'Hare here. The average delay now for flights on the ground, two-and-a-half-hours, according to the FAA.

Look at the latest numbers from FlightAware. I just checked. We are up to 1,841 flights canceled nationwide so far today. The number keeps going up every time we refresh the page. Chicago O'Hare here is number one for cancellations. Denver is number two. Chicago Midway is number three.

This is going to have a nationwide ripple effect, because Chicago O'Hare here is one of the biggest hubs for American Airlines, one of the biggest connecting airports for other airlines, the biggest hub for United Airlines. A quarter of all flights here have been canceled so far today.

Now, I talked yesterday to United Airlines at its network operation center about how it's just trying to unravel this and make it so that these trips don't fall apart for fliers connecting here at Chicago O'Hare, rerouting them, scrambling to reroute them through some of the different hubs in United's network.

The airline was frantically e-mailing passengers earlier this week, telling them they should simply rebook their flights and find earlier flights.

I want you to listen now to one of the passengers who did exactly that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGELA LOFTUS, TRAVELER: Be patient. Plan ahead. They're doing the best they can. Honestly, so far so good for us. We came early enough to hopefully make it. And, hopefully, our plane will take off today before, and we will get out, and get to Orlando to see our family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: United Airlines says the snow is not the problem. That's what they usually deal here at Chicago O'Hare. It is the biting cold temperatures tomorrow, the high year, two degrees Fahrenheit.

And the cancellations tomorrow keep going up, Ana. We have seen 900 cancellations so far tomorrow, a big winter weather travel meltdown for your last show.

CABRERA: So much out of our control, right? What can we do?

Thank you for the update, Pete Muntean, Lucy Kafanov, and Derek Van Dam. Appreciate all of you.

Let's go to Washington now, where we have brand-new transcripts from the January 6 Select Committee, in which a pivotal witness details how Trump allies allegedly tried to pressure her to keep quiet.

Let's get the details from CNN's Sara Murray in Washington and CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig here with me in New York.

Sara, Cassidy Hutchinson was a key witness for the Select Committee. We all remember that stunning testimony. But now we're learning there was an apparent pressure campaign to prevent that from happening.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

CNN had actually first reported that her original attorney, Stefan Passantino, who was a former White House ethics lawyer, had encouraged her to mislead the committee with her testimony.

So, now that we have these transcripts, we're really getting into the details of that. She says her relationship with Passantino really broke down when he essentially told her to stop cooperating with the committee. At one point, she told the committee in one of these September interviews that Passantino told her: "Contempt is a small risk, but running to the right is better for you."

[13:10:07]

She says that really broke down their relationship in which she details the pressure. She talks about having this lawyer from Trump world and feeling like Trump was always sort of watching what she was doing around the committee, even though she wanted to be forthcoming.

She says at one point: "It was almost like I felt like I had Trump looking over my shoulder, because I knew, in some fashion, it would get back to him if I said anything that he would find disloyal. And the prospect of that genuinely scared me."

She recalls how Passantino and other Trump allies dangled these job offers from her, said she would be taken care of as long as she stayed loyal to the former president. She also made a point to tell the committee that, while Passantino had encouraged her to mislead the committee, he didn't straight up tell her to lie. This is what she said: "I want to make this clear to you. Stefan never

told me to lie. He specifically told me: 'I don't want you to perjure yourself, but 'I don't recall' isn't perjury. They don't know what you can and can't recall.'"

Now, she went on to get a new legal team. She testified publicly before these interviews that we're now reading the transcripts from. And we also got a statement previously from Passantino saying he believed that he represented Cassidy Hutchinson ethically and that she was honest with the committee -- Ana.

CABRERA: Elie, your reaction to this? Did her lawyer cross the line?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Ana, "I don't recall" is a very common refrain, unfortunately, in legal proceedings, whether it's trials or this kind of testimony.

And it's important understand, though, that is not an automatic do whatever you want for free card. It can be difficult to disprove. But if you're a lawyer, and your client does know or does recall something, and you tell them just say you don't recall, that crosses a line.

All these other pressure tactics, they happen. It's not OK. But the line is crossed if he tells her to testify falsely, and that would be false, if that's the way it proves out.

CABRERA: Is there an impact on Cassidy Hutchinson's credibility?

HONIG: Absolutely.

So the committee is going to argue that if she gave incomplete or even incorrect testimony in the initial phases, which it appears she might have, they're going to say, that's because she was being pressured or she felt pressured by these lawyers. Trump's lawyers are going to say, look, she wasn't fully truthful the first time. Why can you trust her later testimony?

That's the battle that we're going to see here.

CABRERA: Sara, the committee's final report was set to drop yesterday, now planned for today. We're still waiting on all of it.

Do we know why the release has been delayed?

MURRAY: I was just checking my e-mail, Ana, to make sure we hadn't missed it while we were chatting.

It still is not out here. We are still waiting. We know this is a pretty huge report. It's eight chapters. It's going to be hundreds of pages. We know that they have talked about how they really needed to get it off to the printer earlier, but they were still tinkering.

So they haven't given an official explanation. But I think what we saw is sort of a deluge of news yesterday, and there were sort of continued efforts to put the final touches on it. So we are hoping that it comes any minute now, certainly hoping earlier, rather than later. But, at this point, we're still waiting.

CABRERA: And so we do have some transcripts that came from the committee, Elie.

They interviewed more than 1,000 people, as we understand it. So we will have more and more. But based on what's come out, and, if you're a prosecutor, getting your hands on this with the DOJ, what exactly are you looking for? Will they be going through looking to corroborate testimony that they maybe already have, get new lines of questioning, perhaps new witnesses?

HONIG: So they're thinking offense and defense here.

Offensively, they want new witnesses. They want new information. They want to corroborate the testimony they have. But you're also thinking defensively, because all these materials are going to go over to anyone who you might charge. And so you're looking, are there inconsistencies? Are there things that witnesses said that are not borne out?

Are there pieces of evidence in here that may be favorable to Donald Trump or anyone else? You have to know both sides of that as a prosecutor.

CABRERA: But, if there are those issues, then what do you do?

HONIG: Well, you have an obligation as a prosecutor to turn over information that might be helpful to anyone who you charge, might be helpful to a defendant.

So you have to deal with it, you have to make the best of it, and you have to make the assessment, is this something I can deal with, that I still believe the witness, or not? And, if not, then you can't rely on that witness.

CABRERA: And, Sara, we're also learning a lot more about what wasn't discussed in these interviews, because so many Trump allies simply refused to answer questions.

MURRAY: Yes, I mean, we heard from lawmakers on the committee that they were not able to make headway with some of these witnesses.

And then we saw that in the transcripts that were released last night. We saw the transcript from Roger Stone's interview. This is someone who, previously, during the Russia investigation was convicted of lying to Congress and was later pardoned by Trump. He took the Fifth on everything that was asked of him.

John Eastman, who is a Trump legal attorney, he took the Fifth even when he was asked about legal memos that he had authored by the committee. And Jeffrey Clark, who is a former DOJ official, apparently showed up at one of his interviews with a 12-page list of objections. And then, in another interview, he took the Fifth more than 120 times.

But even as you see these witnesses kind of stonewalling the committee, you can see in investigators' questions, they are referring back to e-mails these people are copied on, text message chains they're involved in.

[13:15:01]

So, you sort of get an idea of how much evidence the committee has, even with witnesses that were unwilling to answer the committee's questions.

CABRERA: Elie, can the DOJ force those witnesses to perhaps answer similar questions? Or will they get stonewalled as well?

HONIG: No, DOJ can if they want. It's a strategic decision you can do.

If someone takes the Fifth, you can do what's called give them immunity, meaning now you have to testify, but we're not going to use your testimony against you. And we're essentially not going to prosecute you. That's a strategic decision.

Ana, I have to address one other story here. This is your last day at CNN, your last show.

CABRERA: Yes.

HONIG: On behalf of all the people who've worked with you and been your guests, let me just say, thank you. You are someone who lifts people up. You have lifted me up. I know that for sure. You are a fantastic journalist and a wonderful person.

We will miss you. And thank you so much.

CABRERA: Thank you.

(LAUGHTER)

CABRERA: You're a dear friend and such an incredible resource. Thank you...

HONIG: Thanks, Ana.

CABRERA: ... for being there for me and for all of us. I know CNN will get to continue to benefit from your great counsel.

And, Sara, thanks for joining us and for being such a wonderful, inspiring colleague.

MURRAY: Thank you, Ana.

CABRERA: I just appreciate you both so very much. Thank you.

OK, much more to come in this hour. Time running out for lawmakers to vote and avert a government shutdown on Friday. Where the talks stand, that's next.

And a wartime hero takes his message to Washington, but Russia heard it loud and clear. How the Kremlin is reacting to Volodymyr Zelenskyy's monumental trip to D.C. Plus, if you're caught fudging the facts on your resume, you would

probably be out of a job, right? But what happens if you were just elected to Congress? And the new twist in this bizarre story.

You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM. Stay right there.

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[13:21:55]

CABRERA: After months of punting and a few last-minute hurdles, a $1.7 trillion deal to fund the government has been reached.

Soon, the Senate votes. Then the House gets the bill. And there's no room for error. A shutdown happens tomorrow night if this doesn't pass.

CNN's Manu Raju has been talking to lawmakers, joins us live on the Hill.

Manu, this $1.7 trillion question here, is the path clear?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is at the moment.

And this is pretty remarkable how quickly now the Senate is moving. They could move to final passage of this bill within the next hour. Now, this is remarkable because of the size and the scope of this 4,100-page measure, $1.7 trillion. That funds all aspects of the federal government, including more than $45 billion in aid to Ukraine, a range of whole other policy issues, such as an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act.

And this plan was only unveiled on Tuesday morning at about 1:20 a.m. Here we are, just a couple of days later, and they're going to push it through the Senate and potentially even the House later tonight. But that doesn't mean everybody's happy.

In fact, Republicans are divided over this measure, a number them sounding off at Republican leaders in the Senate for signing off on this bill, arguing and said this should have been punted until the new year, when Republicans take control of the House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ROGER MARSHALL (R-KS): I think, whenever we're adding a trillion dollars of debt, borrowing money from my grandchildren, of course, I'm horribly disappointed. I think that we could have got a much better deal done if we went over to the House side, and then went back to a situation where we address one bucket at a time.

SEN. MIKE BRAUN (R-IN): McCarthy was clear publicly, and he was at our lunch yesterday, that he would welcome the opportunity to do some real work in the House.

RAJU: You don't like the spending deal. Why didn't you object to it?

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): Well, I mean, they have got the votes for cloture. So it's going to pass. So, what can you do?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Yes, that last comment is key, because some Senate conservatives and Republicans who oppose this measure could have dragged out this process, could have pushed this out into the weekend, but the recognition there the votes are there to pass it.

So, they agreed to speed this up, get to final passage later today, in big part, Ana, because of this major snowstorm coming. Senators and House members want to get out of town, one reason why they're finally getting this bill done, even though the initial deadline was September 30. Nearly three months later, the government will soon be funded -- Ana.

CABRERA: OK, Manu Raju.

Better late than never, I guess. Thank you so much for that reporting.

Now to Russia's war on Ukraine. The Kremlin today firing off new threats after Ukrainian President Zelenskyy's remarkable 10-hour trip to Washington. Russia is now saying the U.S. is waging a proxy war and warning a long confrontation lies ahead.

CNN's Will Ripley is in Kyiv with the reaction there -- Will.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Ana, here in Ukraine, despite a lot of pride in President Zelenskyy's performance in the United States and gratitude for the fact that billions of dollars in new assistance and weapons are going to be headed back after his trip, certainly, there is just the reality that people are struggling right now to get through what's going to be a very difficult winter, with millions of people out of power, plunged into the dark and cold, Russian airstrikes continuing.

[13:25:07]

And no indication from the Kremlin that this show of support from the U.S. president is going to have any difference in terms of their strategy to try to weaponize winter, as President Biden put it, and make life miserable for people here, try to grind them down.

The Kremlin responding, saying that the U.S. supplying Patriot systems to Ukraine will only prolong people's suffering, also saying that neither President Biden nor Zelenskyy showed potential willingness to listen to Russia's concerns during that U.S. visit.

The Russian Foreign Ministry warning that the collective West is setting itself up for a prolonged confrontation with Russia, that language certainly echoed by Vladimir Putin when he talked about the need to modernize his nation's military, to give them all resources that they need, to train the hundreds of thousands of conscripts who have been mobilized to prepare for confrontations, not just here in Ukraine, but potentially other front lines as well -- Ana.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Will Ripley, thank you.

A stunning new report on life expectancy in the U.S. And with all the medical advancements over the years, why are Americans now expected to live shorter lives?

That's next.

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