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McCarthy Wins on 15th Ballot; Officers Honored for Defending Capitol; Six-Year-Old Shoots Teacher; An Economic Look at 2023; U.S., Germany Sending More Firepower to Ukraine. Aired 4-5a ET
Aired January 07, 2023 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): A warm welcome to all of our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Paula Newton.
Coming up this hour.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you're about to enter, so help you God?
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: Yes, I do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations and Godspeed.
NEWTON (voice-over): And Godspeed indeed. With that, Kevin McCarthy finally becomes Speaker of the House. Hear what McCarthy had to say as he takes over that gavel and how Democrats are already responding.
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NEWTON (voice-over): All this comes as Washington marks a dark day in its history. How the January 6th insurrection was commemorated and the latest prosecutions against those involved.
And a school shooting in Virginia leaves a teacher badly wounded, parents shocked and a 6-year-old boy in police custody.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Paula Newton.
NEWTON: Four days of marathon voting have finally ended with Kevin McCarthy as the new speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Right up until the last round, I mean the last round of voting hours ago, McCarthy's quest for the leadership had seemed in doubt. But in the end, he did prevail.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The honorable Kevin McCarthy of the state of California, having received a majority of the votes cast, is duly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives.
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NEWTON: So in case you missed it, this was not a pretty process, going into the 14th -- yes, 14th round late Friday, McCarthy believed he had the votes but Republican Matt Gaetz and five others on the far right blocked him, setting up a tense showdown. We mean tense.
What followed was extraordinary political theatre rarely seen on camera. You are seeing it there. Tempers flared among Republicans and one member, Mike Rogers, had to be restrained as he moved toward Gaetz. I feel like these were sports highlights.
But McCarthy was not done. He and his allies made a beeline to the key holdouts. On the sixth ballot, all holdouts, including Gaetz, voted present, that ensured the gavel went to McCarthy. Here's what the new speaker had to say after the dust settled.
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MCCARTHY: We're going to pass bills to fix the nation's challenges, from wide open southern borders, to American last energy policies to woke indoctrination in our schools.
We'll also address America's long-term challenges, the debt and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party. Congress must speak with one voice on both of these issues. This is why we will end wasteful Washington spending. From now on, if a federal bureaucrat wants to spend it, they will come before us to defend it.
As for the Chinese Communist Party, we will create a bipartisan select committee on China to investigate how to bring back the hundreds of thousands of jobs that went to China and then we will win this economic competition.
Now speaking of committees, we will hold the swamp accountable.
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MCCARTHY: From the withdrawal of Afghanistan to the origins of COVID and to the weaponization of the FBI, let me be very clear, we will use the power of the purse and the power of the subpoena to get the job done.
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NEWTON: For more on the dramatic conclusion to this epic political battle and we mean epic, here's CNN's Melanie Zanona.
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MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: After four days, 15 rounds of voting and one ugly floor fight later, Kevin McCarthy has become the next Speaker of the House. But the victory came after a dramatic moment on the House floor after congressman Gaetz cast a present vote. That surprised leadership and everyone on the floor. Some people came
up to Gaetz in anger. At one point Mike Rogers got into a heated confrontation with Matt Gaetz. Someone had to step in, hold him back, restrain him.
But cooler heads prevailed and Kevin McCarthy was able to go to the next round and become speaker. It's unclear how he was able to flip those remaining holdouts from the last votes, but he did credit Donald Trump. Take a listen.
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MCCARTHY: I do want to especially thank President Trump. I don't think anybody should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning. Somebody wrote the doubt that whether he was there, he was all in.
He would call me and he would call others. He really was -- I was just talking to him tonight -- helping get those final votes.
What he's saying for the party and the country, we have to come together, we have to focus on the economy, we have to focus, make our borders secure. We have to do -- so much work to do and he was a great influence to make that all happen so thank you President Trump.
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ZANONA: Kevin McCarthy gave away a number of concessions throughout these negotiations. That was another key part of his strategy to win over some of the conservative holdouts.
Because of that Kevin McCarthy had to negotiate away some of his own power. So the position of speakership is going to be a little bit more weakened than he perhaps envisioned.
He made promises that could potentially hamstring him as the speaker. So governing is going to be difficult. As we saw, he won't have a lot of votes to lose on any given subject. It's going to be a difficult two years ahead for Kevin McCarthy. But for now he's reveling in the victory -- Melanie Zanona, CNN, Capitol Hill.
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NEWTON: Now President Joe Biden has congratulated McCarthy for being elected speaker and called on both sides to work together in the months ahead.
He said, quote, "I am prepared to work with Republicans when I can and voters made clear they are expecting Republicans to work with me as well. Now that the leadership of the House of Representatives has been decided, it is time for the process to begin."
We're getting reaction from former President Trump in a post he congratulated McCarthy after what he called a crazy process. A source says he spoke directly with Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz, two of the holdouts. And this picture now of Marjorie Taylor Greene, it shows that she also
received a call from someone with the initials DT. We'll assume it might have been Donald Trump. Good call there. She was a McCarthy supporter from the beginning and was clearly trying to lend a hand.
Julie Norman teaches politics at University College of London and joins us now.
I'm breathless from the last few hours. I don't know about you. I don't know how much you've been observing it from there. They've been extraordinary, what's gone on there. But more so because this perhaps may not be a one-time thing. It seems Republicans realize governing could be a bruising spectacle for the next two years.
JULIE NORMAN, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON: That's right. There's certainly a huge sigh of relief today. And McCarthy will try to frame this as a comeback victory. I think what's interesting about this is it underscores a lot of what's happening in the party right now.
This really came down to seeing who could grow their personal brand as being the most anti-establishment, most willing to disrupt the system. I think this is going to be a challenge for McCarthy and the party and Congress going forward when you have a sizable part of your party, who that is their brand, who can upend the system the most and be the most disruptive.
How do you actually govern?
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NORMAN: McCarthy is going to have to deal with that. He has a very slim majority. We knew that going into this week. This week has just shown how much some of that party will try to leverage that for votes like this and those that really matter for policy and for Americans.
NEWTON: To pick up your point on that, what did you make of Gaetz saying, look, the GOP leadership saw our line in the sand. And it seems they're saying they got what they wanted.
NORMAN: Exactly. Gaetz, I think, has really set himself out as the leader, if you will, of this rebel kind of faction and forced McCarthy's hands in some significant ways.
We heard about some of the concessions coming out over the course of the week, allowing one single member to call for a vote to oust the Speaker, which makes McCarthy vulnerable.
Concessions such as allowing for unending amendments and debates on spending bills. Getting a third of the Freedom Caucus on the Rules Committee. So Gaetz and his allies got a lot out of this battle that allows them to put a lot of pressure on McCarthy and hold him hostage for the next two years.
NEWTON: Depending on who you believe on this, Former President Trump helped sway here.
What did you make of the fact that McCarthy thanked Trump but clearly said, in his words, that he was all in?
NORMAN: So Trump's position in this has been interesting from the start. Trump has been backing McCarthy. He was backing him from the beginning of the week. And what was more interesting to me was the fact that Trump did not sway that group of 20 for multiple days.
It came down to the last vote and we heard about the one or two phone calls he may have made. But it shows the Trump rubber stamp of approval wasn't enough for this group.
But we still see McCarthy knowing he cannot alienate Trump and Trump supporters and voters and walking that line is going to be difficult for McCarthy for the next two years and definitely going into 2024.
NEWTON: Yes, the political season has already started here. Notable is that January 6th, the anniversary two years ago of that insurrection.
How do you think when people are around the world are viewing this from the outside looking in?
What do global leaders, what do they expect from the United States, given as you said this is going to be a tumultuous few months and years coming up?
NORMAN: I think leading up to the midterms, most of the world was holding their breath to see which direction was American democracy going to go?
I think there was easing with the midterms with the sense that some of the most extreme candidates who went into the election denial narrative were defeated.
But I think it's clear around the world, the U.S. is not out of the woods yet. People watched the dysfunction playing out this week and know that Trump is already in contention for 2024.
With all of that going on, I think the world is watching this very closely. A lot of how democracy around the world is thought about, how authoritarians as well as allies frame democracy, is based on how it's going in the United States and that's important.
NEWTON: Before I let you go, you don't want to read too much into this in the sense that Congress can be full of surprises and that includes at times bipartisanship.
And yet, as we get closer to that 2024 period, do you expect actual gridlock, meaning we are going to have problems passing a budget even?
NORMAN: I definitely think so. There is not much room for error here. As we've seen this week, this slim majority is going to use all the leverage they have. If they did it for the speaker vote they'll do it on things like the debt ceiling, budget, defense spending, things they can get real concessions policy-wise as well.
I think we're headed into that direction. Also expecting investigations that will be everything the GOP can do to make Biden and the administration look bad going into 2024.
NEWTON: That's something that so many Republicans were actually united about and anxious to get into those committees. Thanks so much. Appreciate it, Julie Norman from London.
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NEWTON: Now as we were saying, Friday's drama on the House floor came exactly two years after the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Democrats and one Republican, just one, marked the anniversary by honoring the officers who defended the building on that day.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: David Sicknick.
NEWTON (voice-over): The names of the officers who died after the riot were read at the ceremony outside the Capitol. President Joe Biden also recognized the efforts of those officers by awarding them medals.
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NEWTON (voice-over): As well as others who resisted efforts to overturn the election. He said history would remember courage.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A violent mob of insurrectionists assaulted law enforcement, vandalized sacred halls, hunted down elected officials, all for the purpose of the attempt to overthrow the will of the people and usurp the peaceful transfer of power.
All of it, all of it was fueled by lies about the 2020 election. But on this day, two years ago, our democracy held because we, the people, as the Constitution refers to us, we, the people, did not flinch. We, the people, endured. We, the people, prevailed.
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NEWTON: So earlier on Friday, police arrested the mother of a woman who died during the Capitol attack. Police say Micki Witthoeft was protesting on Capitol grounds Friday without a permit. She was charged with two violations.
One of the first rioters to enter the Capitol two years ago has been sentenced to 46 months behind bars. Jerod Hughes has pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding when he breached the building.
And he was behind other rioters who chased Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman up several flights of stairs. In his hearing, he apologized.
A former state lawmaker convicted of storming the Capitol said he will run for U.S. Congress. In June Derrick Evans was sentenced to 90 days after pleading guilty to a felony charge for his role in the riot.
On Friday he said, quote, "My name will be part of it. We should also use it as a chance to remind ourselves about why democracy is so important."
He will run for West Virginia's first congressional district.
Now ahead for us, court records are shedding new light into the investigation of the killings of four college students. We're getting details about evidence that led police to the suspect.
And later, the Buffalo Bills player who suffered cardiac arrest is breathing on his own. We'll have the latest on Damar Hamlin.
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NEWTON: Newly released court documents show the suspect in the murder of four University of Idaho students was near their home at least a dozen times before they were killed.
Now on Friday, people were seen removing furniture from the house and loading it into several vehicles. Veronica Miracle has more on what we're learning about this investigation.
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STEVEN GONCALVES, KAYLEE'S FATHER: He was stalking them, he was hunting them.
VERONICA MIRACLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The father of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the four University of Idaho students killed, believes his daughter and her friends were hunted after authorities laid out the case against Bryan Kohberger.
GONCALVES: He was just a person looking for an opportunity. And it just happened to be in that house. And that's hard to take.
MIRACLE (voice-over): Kohberger, charged with the murders, may have cased the scene of the crime four months before the murders, according to new court documents. An affidavit released Thursday reveals police started to look for a white Hyundai Elantra like this one around Thanksgiving, two weeks before asking the public for information about the car.
JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: On December 23rd, they get the cell phone records showing the owner of that car has been, what appears to be from the record, staked out in the area of that murder house a dozen times since August.
MIRACLE (voice-over): Still no details about why the 28-year-old suspect chose this house and whether he knew any of the four victims, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.
The affidavit also revealing around 4:00 in the morning, one of the surviving roommates heard crying coming from Kernodle's room and a voice saying, "It's OK, I'm going to help you."
That roommate then opened the door and saw a dark figure in black clothing and a mask walk past her, raising the question, why did no one call 9-1-1 until noon on Sunday?
GONCALVES: I do know she was petrified. And I think people respond a little bit different. I think she was just scared, very scared. And it's not like Hollywood where everyone behaves like people think they would.
MIRACLE (voice-over): According to the affidavit, DNA evidence also led police to the suspect. A knife sheath was left on one of the victim's beds that contained DNA similar to Kohberger's father's DNA, found in the family's garbage.
A law enforcement source tells CNN, as authorities were surveilling the Kohberger family home, they witnessed Kohberger putting trash in a neighbor's bin and were able to extract it for DNA.
MILLER: The surveillance team, that's watching from a great distance, sees him come out and clean the car, from top to bottom, inside and out, using surgical gloves.
MIRACLE (voice-over): In court on Thursday, Kaylee Goncalves' father was in the front row and pointedly staring at Kohberger.
MIRACLE: Since the beginning there were questions about why a 9-1-1 call wasn't made sooner. And this affidavit raises even more questions. But I want to mention, I spoke with the coroner right after this incident happened and asked her.
If a 9-1-1 call had been made sooner, could lives have been saved?
She said no -- Veronica Miracle, CNN, Moscow, Idaho.
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NEWTON: In Virginia, a 6-year-old boy is in police custody after an elementary school teacher was shot. It happened on Friday at a school in Newport News, Virginia. Police say the child shot a female teacher inside a classroom.
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CHIEF STEVE DREW, NEWPORT NEWS POLICE DEPARTMENT: The individual is a 6-year-old student. He is right now in police custody as we're working it the best way through our partners and different resources to address that situation.
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DREW: We have been in contact with our commonwealth attorney and some other entities to help us best get services to this young man.
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NEWTON: Child, I would say.
Police do not believe the shooting was an accident and that there had been an incident apparently, between the teacher and the student. The incident, of course, as you can imagine, shocked parents.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why is there a 7-year-old with a bloody gun?
Come on, think about it.
How does a 7-year-old have a gun?
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NEWTON: Parents later learned that the alleged shooter was actually just 6 years old. Meantime, school officials are investigating the incident.
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GEORGE PARKER III, SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT: I'm in awe and I'm in shock. And I'm disheartened. And I really feel that we need to educate our children. And we need to keep them safe. And that's what our school division is about.
That's the whole mission of our school division. So today was really a breakdown in what our values are as a community, what our values are as a city and what our values are as a school division. We need to make sure we never see instances happen like this again.
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NEWTON: Now the police chief said the teacher is in critical condition but thankfully is showing some signs of improvement.
The Buffalo Bills player who suffered cardiac arrest live on TV during a game is breathing on his own again. Good news. The team confirmed that Damar Hamlin's breathing tube has been removed and as a surprise Hamlin appeared on screen on Friday.
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SEAN MCDERMOTT, BUFFALO BILLS COACH: The thing that makes me laugh is he did this to the guys, you know, right away. He flexed, he flexed on them, I guess. And he's just got some staple things that they know him for and he does.
And he made the heart symbol probably more than anything. And he gave them a thumbs up. And some were in the midst of that. It was a little bit hard to hear but as you imagine, he said, I love you, boys. And, of course, I think that got the guys.
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NEWTON: Good news there. Teams will now show their support for Hamlin during games this weekend. Bills players will wear his number 3 on their jerseys and the number will be highlighted on the warmup shirts and on yardage markers on fields.
After four days, 15 votes, the U.S. has a House speaker.
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MCCARTHY: That was easy, huh. I never thought we'd get up here.
NEWTON (voice-over): A little humor there. How Kevin McCarthy went the distance and outlasted the Never Kevins.
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NEWTON: Welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and around the world, I'm Paula Newton and you are watching CNN NEWSROOM.
U.S. House Republican Kevin McCarthy now wields the Speaker's gavel following days and days of failed votes. He finally secured the speakership on the 15th ballot early Saturday.
The final vote coming after McCarthy confronted key holdout Matt Gaetz on the floor. The hardliners holding up the process were ultimately swayed by phone calls, apparently from former president Donald Trump, and a series of concessions.
Among the promises, the ability for any member to call for a motion to vacate the speaker's chair, requiring any debt ceiling hike be paired with spending cuts and the creation of an investigative committee to probe the so-called weaponization of the federal government.
With a new Congress underway, Hakeem Jeffries is officially House minority leader. He is the first Black lawmaker to lead a party in Congress. He marked the moment by laying out the objectives of Democrats.
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REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY), MINORITY LEADER: Let us continue to fight in this Congress for economic opportunity in every single zip code. And let us continue to fight in this Congress for reproductive freedom --
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JEFFRIES: -- because, as Democrats, we do believe in a country for everyone.
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JEFFRIES: We do believe in a country for everyone, a country that provides for the poor, works for working families, makes sense for the middle class, stands up for senior citizens, innovates in the inner city, strengthen suburban communities, helps out in the heartland and revitalizes rural America.
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NEWTON: With us is Caroline Heldman.
I want to thank you for being up with us as we witness history on the House floor there. It's hard to believe this happened in the Republican Party, it doesn't even involve Democrats yet.
What do you make of the chaos that unfolded?
CAROLINE HELDMAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, I think it probably is an indicator of what's going to happen for the next two years. I don't know why Kevin McCarthy would want this job, given what is happening in the rank and file of his own party.
Also, the fact what's going to happen the next two years is not about policy. The only power that Republicans have, because they control the House, but Democrats control the White House and the Senate, the only power Republicans have is the power to subpoena.
So lots of committees and also the power to say no to policy. So Kevin McCarthy is taking the gavel of the speakership at a time when his party is in disarray and, frankly, the Republicans don't have the power to actually pass policy.
NEWTON: You know, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer had a warning right out of the gate for the speaker, saying, "Speaker Kevin McCarthy's dream job could turn into a nightmare for the American people. To get the votes, he surrendered to demands of a fringe element of the Republican Party.
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"Kevin McCarthy's concessions to the extremists in his party make it far more likely that the MAGA Republican-controlled House will cause a government shutdown or a default with devastating consequences to our country.
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NEWTON: Now for the fun part, Caroline. Some Republicans actually agree with him there.
HELDMAN: Yes, because that's absolutely what's going to happen. So what we should expect is a lot of wasted taxpayer dollars on investigations of a Biden administration that shouldn't be happening, laptops and such.
We'll see some decent investigations like, hey, what happened with the withdrawal in Afghanistan? We do need to get to the bottom of that. And we're also going to see a lot of obstructionism when it comes to the debt ceiling increases, which happens about once a year.
They're all of a sudden going to become politicized and used as a weapon against Kevin McCarthy. Also the concession of moving from having five members possibly unseat a speaker to one member gives individual members inordinate power over the speakership.
It's not a good position for Kevin McCarthy and, I would argue, for the Republican Party.
NEWTON: But perhaps it's not a good position for Democrats, either though. I think we need to make clear the GOP holdouts, they had great success. To some of their voters, they look like heroes. We know they raised a lot of money for their campaigns.
Is this something Democrats should worry about, not just because of conduct of Republicans but perhaps more radical elements even within the Democratic Party at this point?
HELDMAN: I couldn't agree more. This is bad for the American public because these are essentially folks who don't think that government should be working. And they're in government.
And we or some members of the U.S. have elected them. So, yes, these are people who are fundamentally against government doing what it should be doing.
And I think the Biden administration did a fantastic job showing us how government can work for good, in fact a paradigm shift from Ronald Reagan talking about starving the beast and government is the problem.
Somewhere in the middle, a lot of moderate Republicans, who want to govern -- and yes, Kevin McCarthy in seeking the speakership and having to make those concessions, has emboldened and empowered obstructionists, who don't want to work for the American public the way our founding fathers devised the system to work.
NEWTON: The phrase, burn the House down, they're not kidding. They don't want government to work at this point, that's your opinion.
HELDMAN: Absolutely. Look at how many tens of thousands of dollars have we wasted in the past week, four days of negotiations for something that we think is going to happen anyway. I think that's a sign of what's to come, which is the business of the entire government.
Not just the House will be shut down or will grind to a halt because of a small number of obstructionists who shouldn't be in government, frankly, because, if you're not there to govern, what are you there to do?
NEWTON: This will be up to the voters, though, in at least two years, who get to decide this. Many people have said it, the 2024 cycle has already started. Caroline Heldman, thanks so much. Appreciate your insights. HELDMAN: Thanks, Paula.
NEWTON: The U.S. has capped off a strong year of economic growth after adding more than 200,000 jobs in December. Those latest numbers are the lowest monthly gains in two years. But economists say things are moving at a sustainable pace now.
Friday's job report brought the unemployment rate down to a record low of 3.5 percent and pushed this year's job creation total up to 4.5 million.
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NEWTON: Joining me now is Ryan Patel, a senior fellow at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont University.
Good to see you. As we try and yet gain a lot more information from one data point, let's give it a shot because the markets thought this was great.
What did you think of that jobs report?
And does it mean maybe, just maybe, that as the economy is downshifting that it will reach that sweet spot, right?
Lower inflation without that collateral damage to the labor market?
RYAN PATEL, GLOBAL BUSINESS EXECUTIVE: I agree, Paula. One thing, the market wants to pick one data point to be happy about. And the data point I think they're looking at isn't the unemployment rate, because the unemployment rate went the other way -- Fed chairman Jerome Powell wanted it to go the opposite direction.
It was the average hourly earnings that continued to kind of soften. And that's what you saw the market react, hoping it will be a softer landing. That word to me is not in the vocabulary. A soft landing would be ideal but there's more variables than just one data point.
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PATEL: We're talking about 1.7 job openings for every available worker. The labor force participation is 62.3 percent, a full percentage point below February 2020. So there's still a lot of room. One data point to be happy with but lots to be there.
NEWTON: Yet the markets did like it. I want to get to what the IMF has been saying the last few weeks, because they're not optimistic about global growth. Most economies remain more vulnerable than the U.S. economy. You see what's going on in China or Europe.
Some economists believe a good U.S. labor market and a confident U.S. consumer can help lift the global economy.
Do you think that's too optimistic an outlook for 2023?
PATEL: I love the keywords "most of them think" help. How much help is the question. Yes, if the U.S. is in a better
position, will that help?
Sure, it will. But I have to be honest here. We are more interconnected than before. The U.S. is having its own issues trying to get there. Doesn't mean it's going to lift everybody out of one- third of recession that the IMF said.
So I would be careful. It will help but we are deep-rooted in many of these issues, especially when you think about the E.U. going to have the economic spillover in that region as well as Asia with China. So the U.S. by itself will not be able to uproot all of that.
Will it be helpful?
Sure. I can say that. But we don't know how much.
NEWTON: I want to talk to you about something that so many people have been fearful of as we get further from the pandemic and the pain seems the same. There is a fragility and dysfunction to the global economy that's alarming. It's alarming because it has not dissipated.
Do you expect that we will eventually get out of this phase, maybe in 2023 and if not, 2024 or do you think this is here to stay?
PATEL: I hope we're not here to stay. I think the hope is, by the end of 2023, that's the hope, best case scenario, the second half of the year will feel it.
Think about this for a second. All the central banks around the world is facing this pressure. They're doing -- attacking inflation, doing monetary policy. That takes time. You make a decision now, it's not going to turn and make things better. Like you said, we're going to feel a little bit more pain over the next six months.
Hopefully this goes to transitions quickly. But I think it's going to take a little while. Supply chain is getting better. Look at the travel industry and their jobs, starting to recover.
It's not like 15 years ago, switch on a button and everything is fine in two months. I think it takes longer. And hopefully at the end of this, we're going to recover faster because countries and companies will learn from some of the things over the last two years to create more opportunities.
So that's my hopefulness there will be more there and the consumer growth and spending will provide more jobs and obviously more wealth to be put around into the places we need it.
NEWTON: And before I let you go, energy prices have come down quite a bit and that was the fear about what would happen this winter.
Do you think that was also something that would be good in 2023, if it continues over the next few months, give everyone the economic boost they need? PATEL: Absolutely. It was a must to get this end of fourth quarter, first quarter, it was easier to have that in the past. But I think that will be a hot button to be talking about over the next couple of months, because you can feel the consumer, the average person, feels that their in their billing, in their monthlies.
And that's something not going away when it gets more expensive. You have to have that. So it's interesting to see where that's going to go, because that's going to play a major factor in earning results for companies, end of quarter one, quarter two, to signal to the rest of the market as well where everybody is at.
NEWTON: A lot to mull over with the one data point. But first week of 2023, we take what we can get at this point.
PATEL: Take anything at this point.
NEWTON: Exactly. Ryan Patel, thanks so much, good to see you.
PATEL: Good to see you.
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NEWTON: More heavy military hardware will soon be headed to Ukraine. Still ahead, the U.S. weapon that Ukraine's president calls the right tool at the right time.
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NEWTON: Ukraine says a peaceful orthodox Christmas Eve promised by Russia was anything but.
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NEWTON (voice-over): That was a Ukrainian tank opening fire as Russia reportedly launched new attacks in eastern and southern Ukraine. Kyiv says at least some of the attacks happened after a unilateral cease- fire ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin for orthodox Christmas Eve went into effect.
But Russia is accusing Ukraine of launching attacks, even though Kyiv never agreed to the cease-fire.
Some Ukrainians spent their Christmas Eve in bomb shelters. These children and their families took cover during an air raid alert in Lviv on Friday.
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NEWTON: Meantime, the U.S. and Germany are sending more fire power to Ukraine. The U.S. aid package includes Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, which the Ukraine president said are coming just at the right time.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): For the first time, we will receive Bradley armored vehicles, which is exactly what we need. We will get new guns and rockets, including high precision ones. New missiles and new drones. It is both timely and robust.
This package of support from the United States totals nearly $3 billion.
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NEWTON: Nina dos Santos is in London to us.
This boost to hardware is coming later than Zelenskyy would have wanted.
But how consequential could it be in this stage of the conflict?
NINA DOS SANTOS, CNNMONEY EUROPE EDITOR: It reflects a couple things. One there's a growing confidence in the Ukrainian military's ability to make use and make a difference with this weaponry.
And it reflects there's a changing nature in the battle as we head into the new year here, as this battle rages on now for 11 months and prepares to head into the 12th month.
Another thing that Western observers say and the Ukrainian government itself acknowledges is that this aid may well be needed pretty soon.
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DOS SANTOS: Military experts expect Russia to mount a new offensive potentially as early as next month or the month thereafter. So this is a big installment of military aid, about US$3 billion, the biggest one so far from the United States.
And it comes on the heels of another package announced at the end of last year, just under $2 billion that included the Patriot missile defense system that will help Ukraine keep the skies free as well at a crucial time when the Iranian drone attacks are coming thick and fast.
This package includes 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. They made such a difference in battles like the Gulf War for the United States. But it includes 80 self-propelled howitzers and 36 towed howitzers.
And what's crucial about this, it is not just the United States doing this. We had announcements over the last few days of Germany deciding to have an about turn on its military policy and saying it is now going to be sending more lethal aid to Ukraine.
In particular, announcing 40 Marder vehicles will be shipped to Ukraine as soon as possible. And France as well started off this raft of military announcements a few days ago, saying its version of these types of infantry vehicles are going to be sent to Ukraine, too.
The next phase will involve training. And the Pentagon has made it clear they're going to start training Ukrainian troops as soon as possible, maybe even on the ground inside Ukraine -- Paula.
NEWTON: Nina dos Santos for us in London, appreciate it. Thanks.
California meantime is bracing for another round of severe weather. Just ahead for us, a look at the cleanup from storms this week and what communities are doing to try and prepare for the next one.
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NEWTON: California is preparing for another round of storms after it was hit earlier this week by a bomb cyclone of strong winds, rain and snow. Now more heavy rain is expected today in northern California, spreading into the central part of the state.
The region has already been hit hard. Two people died during severe weather this week and 50,000 homes and businesses are still, at this hour, without power.
Now lava is still flowing at Hawaii's Kilauea volcano. Authorities say they expect this eruption to stay confined to the summit area. Kilauea has been erupting on and off since 2021.
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I'm Paula Newton, I want to thank you for your company. I'll be back in a moment right after the break with more CNN NEWSROOM.
