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Djibouti Struggles To Handle Surge In Evacuation Flights From Sudan; Countries Worldwide Scrambling To Get Citizens Out Of Sudan; Biden Expected To Announce Re-Election Bid Tuesday; New Details On Former VP Pence's Testimony; Head Of NBC Universal Ousted For Inappropriate Relationship; SpaceX's Starship Lifts Off For Test Flight But Explodes Midair. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired April 23, 2023 - 18:00   ET

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

[18:00:52]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: You're back live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

We begin with the crisis in Sudan. About 100 Americans are safe this evening after being rescued from a warzone and a daring mission. Thousands remain behind. U.S. Special Operations Forces personnel carried out the emergency evacuation of U.S. government employees and their families earlier this morning. Today the U.S. embassy in Khartoum is closed, at least temporarily.

The decision to evacuate U.S. personnel comes after a week of heavy fighting between Sudan's military and a rival paramilitary group. More than 400 people have been killed, including one American. The State Department says there are about 16,000 Americans in Sudan, most are dual nationals. And there are no immediate plans, the administration says, at this point to help evacuate them.

We have CNN correspondents and a military expert here to break it down for us in this unfolding story that's developing hour by hour. Let's begin with CNN's Sam Kiley live from Djibouti.

Sam, the sudden worldwide evacuations from Sudan is apparently overwhelming the airport where you are in Djibouti, crowding that airspace. It's not just Americans trying to get out of Sudan obviously. What more can you tell us?

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, first of all on the American evacuation with which really was in the vanguard of a multinational series of evacuations began overnight with the American special forces, about 100 troops of three chinook helicopters involved in that, taking off here from Djibouti, which is very much the international hub for this evacuation. A series of operations.

The Americans flew in to Ethiopia and then on low and slow into Khartoum over many hundreds of miles. Very dangerous operation, spending about an hour, less than an hour on the ground, officials say, rescuing some 70 plus Americans and other nationalities.

Now these Americans who were working for the embassy and their dependents and a handful of other internationals that they were able to take out. They're leaving behind many thousands, 16,000 to 19,000 is the estimate of Americans, many of them dual nationals, remaining in Sudan. This is all going on whilst the ceasefire that had been agreed between the warring factions in Khartoum was failing to hold.

Almost simultaneously, an hour or so after the American operation, British and French and other special forces were going in on the ground. The British special forces having to move people 18 miles, 30 kilometers from a collection point in Khartoum to an out-of-town airstrip that they had identified in operation that was actually flown mostly out of Cyprus, or those special forces again staged, that British special forces out of Djibouti here.

Now here in Djibouti, local officials are saying they've got at least 11 foreign militaries involved in this operation. That is causing a degree almost of congestion at the international airport. And of course, their airspace is getting a bit more congested, too, because no civilian aircraft are flying over Sudan because the Sudanese government forces there are flying combat missions against their enemies, even in the capital.

And it's that level of insecurity, which means that many countries are now looking at making ground moves. The Emiratis, the Egyptians moved nearly 500 people due north into through the Sahara Desert into their country over land. That's relatively easy inadvertent commerce for the Egyptians, but very much harder for other foreign nationals.

And in the future there is likely I think to be a great deal of international focus on trying to figure out a way of getting people out, not just of Khartoum, but this is a civil war that is spreading around the whole of Sudan, the biggest country in Africa, causing a great deal of tension and dismay among the international community whilst the warring factions there promising but unable to deliver, it would seem, ceasefires to try to facilitate these movements -- Jim.

ACOSTA: All right, Sam Kiley, thank you very much for that report, very late there in Djibouti. We appreciate it.

CNN's Oren Liebermann is over at the Pentagon for us.

[18:05:00]

Oren, what details are you learning about this mission, and I guess picking up off of what Sam Kiley was talking about a few moments ago, I'm curious, was the American operation to extract those diplomats and their families from Sudan, was that at all complicated by the fact that you had these other evacuations taking place in Djibouti, all these other countries? It sounds like there might have been quite a logjam, potentially, for getting people out of that region.

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Potentially, but we also know there was some level of coordination at least between the United States and other countries, President Joe Biden and others thanking, for example, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Saudi Arabia, which already begun its own evacuation operations. So there was at least some coordination between all of these countries trying to get their citizens and others out.

But is there also a potential for a logjam? Certainly, based on what we heard Sam saying in the business of Djibouti's airport, which has become the hub for these essentially evacuation operations. The mission itself incredibly long. It's some 750 or 800 miles from Djibouti into Sudan to Khartoum. Then, of course, you have to get on the ground. Secure the embassy in some fashion, get everyone out. That is the diplomatic staff, their family, and some other nationals that the U.S. evacuated.

And then you have the same long trip back. A trip that as you see on this map here required a refueling stop in Ethiopia right around the halfway point. So an incredibly long operation. And complicating that or at least making the decision difficult is the fact that this is the middle of a fight between two warring factions. They had both at least openly committed to the ceasefire, the Sudan armed forces and the rival paramilitary RSF, but we had already seen those violations.

As Sam pointed out, the ceasefire does not appear to be holding in any important significant way. And yet there was enough of a critical need to get the American citizens out that the U.S. and as you see so many other countries have decided that it was enough of a situation, enough of a window that the U.S. decided to act, sending in three large chinook helicopters, three of the largest in the U.S. inventory in fact.

Heavy lift helicopters to get about 100 troops on the ground and then bring out, of course, the troops and about not quite 100 others, including, again, those diplomatic staff, their family members and some others. So a long mission, a complicated mission, but one that was pulled off successfully in the dead of night -- Jim.

ACOSTA: All right. And thank goodness for that. All right. Oren Liebermann, thank you very much.

Let's dive into this a bit further with CNN military analyst, retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton.

Colonel Leighton, you were with us last night as this thing was getting going. We were able to go on air and talk about this, but let's talk. Let's start with this evacuation. U.S. forces spent less than an hour on the ground in Sudan, that is pretty remarkable. This is the kind of mission as you know that can go sideways in a hurry. What kind of planning do you think goes into an operation like this?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Jim, it's really one of those most intricate of military planning events and the special operations forces that conduct these kinds of operations is noncombatant or neo-evacuations. They train on this stuff all the time, so it's very important not only to get the training right but also to get all the logistical pieces right. So every single aspect of the logistics train, the fuel, the supplies for the helicopters, for other aircraft that would be used, the intelligence preparation for the area.

All of those things go into this, and all of this really means that to the military units coordinate with a lot of different agencies in order to make all of this stuff happened, both civilian and military, and in the case of a situation like this, they're also coordinating with partner nations, such as those from the European Union who are also evacuating (INAUDIBLE) as well as nations in the region and the Sudanese forces on the ground, either from the army or from the RSF, the Rapid Security Force, there that is fighting the regular army.

ACOSTA: And there are an estimated 16,000 Americans left in Sudan. Sam Kiley was saying the number could be as large as 19,000, but the State Department says they don't foresee coordinating another evacuation. You know, I suppose one of the factors that these Americans might be dealing with is, it sounds what Sam Kiley is talking about over there in Djibouti is that it might be a bit of a logjam.

You know, the air traffic control in Djibouti must be quite busy these days because it's not just the United States trying to get out of this region and Americans trying to get out, folks all over the world I suppose they're heading -- who are there in Sudan are heading to Djibouti to get out.

LEIGHTON: Yes, that's absolutely right because Djibouti is really the most convenient place, maybe with the exception of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Those are the most convenient places to extricate people to from a place like Khartoum. I would suspect that the American military is helping the air traffic controllers in Djibouti with the landing and takeoffs that need to happen in a situation like this because it's really an intricate dance between all of the different factors when it comes to air traffic control and aerospace deconfliction as we would call it.

[18:10:16]

That becomes a really important aspect of this because you don't want there to be an accident, either on the ground or in the air, and you certainly don't want to run into any civilian aircraft that might be flying in the area as well.

ACOSTA: And Colonel Leighton, do we know -- for those Americans who are still in Sudan, are they getting caught in the crossfire of this fighting that is going on between these rival factions or are these rival factions essentially just concentrating on themselves?

Are they taking shots at NGOs, humanitarian workers, that sort of thing, to make things even more complicated? It doesn't sound like it's that kind of a situation. It's just the potential for things to get very violent and being caught up in the wrong place at the right time. How much do we know about that?

LEIGHTON: Yes, so there are some unconfirmed reports, I think for the most part, that say that there has been some firing by some of the RSF elements on NGOs and some of the convoys that are associated with them. So that, you know, could be a very difficult situation. You know the most part, though, it seems as if the RSF and the Sudanese army are concentrating on firing on each other, but it's really easy to get caught in the crossfire especially in a place like Khartoum, which is a pretty crowded city. And that really is the danger right there that even an inadvertent

strike on a U.S. person could result in, you know, serious injury or even sadly death. At least one American I know of has been killed so far in this, so there are certain situations where, you know, anybody could get caught in the crossfire, and it really speaks to the danger of the situation and does require another truce I think before the majority of these people who want to get out could get out.

ACOSTA: All right. And then that sounds very critical, no question about it, at this hour.

Colonel Cedric Leighton, thanks very much. Appreciate it. Thanks for being with us. Late last night as well. Appreciate that as well. We appreciate it.

LEIGHTON: You bet, Jim, anytime.

ACOSTA: All right. This week, President Biden is expected to launch his bid for a second term in office. But this campaign might be a lot different from the one he went through four years ago. And since the 2020 election, former Vice President Mike Pence has been urged to testify about what happened in the aftermath. One grand jury will finally get the chance to question him. And the most powerful rocket ever built blows up months after its first launch.

Was that a success despite coming down in a gazillion pieces? I'll talk to a man who knows a thing or two about the difficulties of space. It's coming up later here in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:17:01]

ACOSTA: Unofficially we've known for some time now that President Joe Biden intends to run for reelection. Plans are now in motion, though, at the White House to make that 2024 run official, possibly as early as Tuesday. Tuesday also just happens to coincide with the anniversary of Biden's 2019 presidential campaign announcement.

CNN's Kevin Liptak is over at the White House for us.

Kevin, I guess we could have just circled this date on the calendar. I didn't realize it would have been that easy.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, certainly. And it does have that symmetry that President Biden is known to appreciate and we do expect it would come in the form of a video, and I am told that that video has mostly been shot. They're just working on some of the final edits now, but, Jim, we do have to include all those caveats that you always include with President Biden.

You know this better than anyone, Jim. He can be fickle when it comes to these decisions, and we saw that in 2016 as well. We do know he's up at Camp David this weekend. He's talking to his team making some of these final decisions on staffing operations. That sort of thing. If he does make this announcement, I think it does two things. One, kind of the nuts and bolts of it, it unlocks this new fundraising potential for the president, and that's no small thing.

This could be potentially a $2 billion campaign, and we do also expect the president to meet with some of his biggest donors at the end of this week. But the other thing that this would do is sort of put to rest this ongoing speculation about whether or not he would run and the president has been saying, you know, for almost two years that he does intend to run, he said. As recently as a week ago that he planned to run, but that hasn't necessarily put all of those doubts to rest.

And you know, the main issue with President Biden is his age. That is the reason why a lot of people around this country, a lot of even Democrats have wondered whether he would go for a second term. If President Biden does run for reelection, he will be asking Americans to get behind the idea of a president serving well into their 80s. That is contributing to what you see in this poll today. And what you've seen in polls recently is this lack of enthusiasm really for a second Biden term.

This NBC poll today said that 70 percent of Americans think that Biden should not run for office. That included 51 percent of Democrats, and that is in line with a lot of other polls. Now we should say that poll also included a majority of Americans who said that President Trump should also not run for president again, so really, not a lot of enthusiasm for a rematch between these two men. But we will see how this plays out as this week unfolds -- Jim.

ACOSTA: All right. But we might get that rematch. All right. Kevin Liptak, thank you very much.

Let's discuss a possible Biden 2024 run, likely it sounds like at this point, with CNN contributor Evan Osnos. He's the author of "Joe Biden: The Life to Run and What Matters Now."

Evan, a bunch of new polls out over the last few days indicate Americans may not be happy with a Biden-Trump rematch, but Democrats seem to want Joe Biden to be there on the ticket if it's going to be going up against Donald Trump because he's beat him before.

[18:20:02]

And Evan, you know this all too well better than anybody. Joe Biden has been down in the polls before. He's had shaky poll numbers to deal with in the past, so I suppose, I mean, it's not too different for him this time around.

EVAN OSNOS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. You know, I suppose any of us, Jim, have the -- run the risk of sort of over reading our own lessons in life. But for Joe Biden, it is a strong one. I mean, his self- narrative, his self-identity is really baked in pretty deeply. The idea that he has been the underdog. He had all the way back to when he was a kid, you know, and I think sometimes we like to write it off as a cliche of politics when he talks about things like overcoming a stutter.

But I can tell you, and you know this well, Jim, it is an essential piece of how he sees himself in the world and extends all the way through his political career. Moments when people didn't expect him to win, when he managed to turn it around after the '88 campaign when he had such a disastrous campaign, and came back and sort of found his footing again in politics, so I think in the White House, look, they are not unaware of these polls. They know this.

He keeps close track on politics, watches a lot of TV, but he also knows that he has an idea why he wants to run and he's not going to be deterred from doing it. If in fact he chooses, and we have to add that a very serious caveat here, is we don't know if he will.

ACOSTA: And Evan, the latest Associated Press poll released Friday shows 47 percent of Democrats want Biden to run for reelection. 52 percent don't. Generally not because they think he's doing a bad job, most like how he's handled the economy, foreign policy, but many Democrats are worried about his age. Kevin Liptak was talking about this few moments ago. Biden is 80 right now, he'd be 86 at the end of his second term if he wins.

A lot can change for a person when they are going from 80 to 86. Biden himself has said that he knows this is a legitimate issue. What are your thoughts on this? I mean, did you ever think that Joe Biden would be running for the -- you've followed him for a long time. That he would be running for the presidency at this stage in his life?

OSNOS: I will tell you, Jim, you know, I had a conversation with him about age and about whether he was going to continue in politics nine years ago. It was 2014, in fact. I mean he was in the West Wing, in the vice presidency, and already at that point, people were wondering how many more acts he might have in this play. But you know, at that time, and I think this idea is -- has maintained a part of his thinking, he said, look, and you hear it today, he says, don't just judge somebody on the basis of the number. Watch me.

You know, and that's become his mantra, and I think that's really also an indicator of his own self-perception. I mean, there is a degree to which in his own mind, he is built a team around him that can support him. He knows he's not the same person that he was 40 years ago. None of us are at the age of 80, but he also has people around him. He has the Office of the Presidency, which is in its own way, an apparatus of support.

He gets to go on his own schedule. Go to places he wants to go. Doesn't have to go places he doesn't. But I think the most important piece of this ultimately when it comes from a pure political perspective is if in fact he runs, he's going to be running most likely against the Republican who is 76 years old, already been the oldest president in office. And so in some ways, it diffuses the age issue in a one-on-one contest because the Republicans are going to have a particularly strong leg to stand on if they've got Donald Trump as their nominee.

ACOSTA: And the president is reportedly set to announce this on Tuesday. Apparently that's the four-year anniversary of him launching his 2020 campaign. But I was saying to Kevin Liptak, I guess we could have just circled this date on the calendar. How important is the timing of this announcement to the president? One of the things that I always look for with Joe Biden is what his family is saying. He always seems to lean on his family in moments like this.

How critically important is the family input, Jill Biden, his sister, others in the family, in making this decision to run for reelection?

OSNOS: It goes all the way back to his very first campaign for office. I mean, if you go back to 1972, the people who were running that campaign with him, you know, it was his sister, Valerie, who was his campaign manager. His late wife, Nelia Hunter, was an essential piece of that process. And that is very much true today. You saw it even back in 2015, 2016 when he was making that difficult decision about whether to run for office, then whether to run for the presidency.

You know, they had been through the agonies of the death of their son Beau. It was Jill Biden, ultimately, who was in the room, making those kinds of difficult conversations, but the decision is his. He surrounds himself with people he trusts, go back a long way. But he will not do this this time if he doesn't think, and she doesn't think, Jill Biden, especially, that he has enough gas in the tank to do it.

So, look, they are -- when he talks about my word as a Biden, this is more than just a sort of political brand. It goes back to his whole sense of himself. As, you know, part of a kind of an Irish Catholic clan that is going to go through this process together, and he's not naive about the impact it has on his family members.

[18:25:08]

So, look, if we get the announcement, and I think it is worth being serious about the fact that this could slip, there's no reason to assume it has to be on that Tuesday. As he sometimes likes to say, hope and history rhyme, but that doesn't require that it's on any specific day. I don't think they're in a terrible rush about it. And, yes, they're going to do this on the schedule if they think it makes sense.

ACOSTA: My time is tight here. But if they delay this on Tuesday, or if it doesn't happen on Tuesday, isn't that going to start up a fresh round of speculation?

OSNOS: Sure. And I think they're aware of that, too.

ACOSTA: OK.

OSNOS: You know, this is -- they've had a lot of opportunities over the last week, over the last four or five days to tamp this down. They haven't done it, so if it's going to be tamped down, it's going to be a late inning decision. So I think at this point there's going to be a lot to watch for on Tuesday, and I think that, yes, a lot of Americans have questions about it, but nobody is not going to be watching. It's important.

ACOSTA: Yes, I remember being in the Rose Garden back in 2015 when he announced he wasn't running. He likes to keep us waiting in suspense. I have noticed that about Joe Biden.

Evan Osnos, thanks so much. I appreciate it. All right. Still ahead, new details on former Vice President Mike

Pence and when he'll sit before the grand jury investigating what happened during the run up to January 6th, what he said about testifying about conversations he had with president -- then President Donald Trump.

You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:30:54]

ACOSTA: Former Vice President Mike Pence said his legal team has worked out a date for his testimony before a grand jury investigating the 2020 election fallout. Pence, however, did not elaborate beyond that nor would he provide a specific date.

We're joined now by former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. He's also the host of the "It's Complicated" podcast.

A fitting title for this subject as well, Renato. In an interview that aired today on CBS, Pence said he was grateful the court recognized specific constitutional protections unique to the vice president. What is he referring to there? Do they have any merit? And I guess how critical do you think is Mike Pence's testimony in all this? It seems like he is one of the last folks that really need to be heard from in all this.

RENATO MARIOTTI, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Yes, really good questions, Jim. I think just to go to your first one, when the specific privilege that he was evoking was actually from the speech and debate clause of the Constitution, which protects members of Congress from having to be hauled in for testimony regarding their official duties as legislators. Essentially his argument was, hey, during that ceremonial role I played on January 6th, I was acting as the president of the Senate, and so you can't ask me questions about what I was doing that day.

But, you know, it's very narrowly construed, right. It's about what he was doing in connection with, for example, you know, essentially the scripts he was reading, you know, how he was discharging those duties, it wouldn't really go to an unrelated crime. Let's say, you know, threats or pressure that Trump was putting on him for, you know, to overturn the election. Something separate from that.

So I think it was really more of a signal that Pence was trying to send to his potential voters. Obviously, he's running for president against Trump, basically saying, look, I'm not 100 percent on team special counsel. But I think I think his testimony is going to be very important because, you know, Jim, there was a lot of pressure that was put on Mike Pence by Donald Trump trying to get him to essentially overturn the election and decertify the electoral votes in certain states and, how we characterizes that, his testimony, I think will be very important to Jack Smith as he tries to make a case.

ACOSTA: And when asked if he'd be able to testify about these private conversations with Donald Trump, this is what Pence said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think I'm limited about what I can say about the proceedings of the grand jury or the decision of the judge, but people can be confident that we'll obey the law, will comply with the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: And it sounds like he's going to talk. He's going to, I guess, spill some tea.

MARIOTTI: I think so. And I think if he didn't, Jim, that he would end up back in court, which is where he doesn't want to be. He already kind of put on a show. He has a moral victory. I think now he's going to testify. I think the question is, how does he testify? What does he say?

And one thing that he said publicly, Jim, is he tries to characterize what Trump did as him listening to bad legal advice, right, essentially suggesting that, you know, Trump was being advised. You know, I don't know, to, you know, take one legal action, and he, you know, he followed that legal action.

But, in fact, I mean the advice he was getting from people like John Eastman was not really I would say advice that was it all -- I wouldn't characterize it as bad legal advice. In fact, I think Jack Smith is investigating whether that was a crime and Pence's own advisers said that it had nothing to do with, you know, the laws as it's been interpreted.

So, you know, I think that, you know, he may try to have it both ways. It will be interesting to see whether his private testimony under oath matches his potentially self-serving testimony to the public, right, and in a news proceeding where he's trying to woo the Republican base.

ACOSTA: All right. Well, it's going to be very important what he has to say. It will be interesting to see if any kind of tea leaves come out of that, any kind of tidbits come out of that, that indicate what exactly he said to the special counsel.

[18:35:03]

We might have to wait for the outcome of that investigation. But, Renato Mariotti, thanks as always for your expertise. We appreciate it.

MARIOTTI: Thank you.

ACOSTA: All right. In the meantime, the head of NBCUniversal, Jeff Shell, ousted today amid an outside investigation into an inappropriate relationship, according to the company, with a female employee. Shell's departure from NBC is immediate.

Let's discuss this now with Mediaite editor-in-chief Aidan McLaughlin. Aidan, this was pretty abrupt. I mean, this just came out of nowhere.

Earlier this afternoon, what do we know about this?

AIDAN MCLAUGHLIN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, MEDIAITE: Right. Really abrupt. So I just want to put this into context here. This is one of the most powerful people in the media business as CEO of NBCUniversal. From what we know from the reporting so far is he was still working last week as this investigation was ongoing. Basically NBCU received a complaint from a female staffer who's complained about an inappropriate relationship with Jeff Shell.

There was an investigation that lasted several weeks. He continued to conduct his duties as CEO in that time, and then over the weekend, the decision was made for him to leave the company over this inappropriate relationship, which he admitted in a pretty short statement he issued alongside Comcast. So it's a pretty shocking development at the top of one of America's biggest media companies. And it's certainly an abrupt one.

NBCU did not name a successor to Jeff Shell. It doesn't sound like from the statements they made to the press that they're anywhere near naming someone to that position. And right now, the people that reported to Jeff Shell are going to be reporting to Mike Cavanagh, who is Comcast's president, and who has been involved in NBCUniversal for some time now.

ACOSTA: Well, in a memo to employees today, Comcast president and CEO wrote this, "You should count on your leaders to create a safe and respectful workplace. When our principles and policies are violated we will always move quickly to take appropriate action as we have done here." Then the company added in the statement that the company is performing extremely well operationally and financially.

What did you make of all that?

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, I do think that at least as far as NBC News and NBCUniversal is concerned that there have been -- there has been some turbulence, like at all media companies given the economic climate in the last couple of months. There was a shakeup at the top of NBC News with Noah Oppenheim, the president, leaving earlier this year and there have been layoffs, so I think there's some issues there.

As far as NBC handling these kind of cases urgently, that's certainly true. In fact, the sort of interesting thing to note here is that the last major executive to leave NBC News under allegations of misconduct was Ron Meyer, a top executive at NBCUniversal, who was fired by Jeff Shell for an inappropriate relationship he was having with a woman who did not work at NBCU but that relationship was deemed to be inappropriate.

So certainly, that is something that's happened recently at the network that Jeff Shell was involved in. Um we're we don't really know the details of this particular case yet, but certainly Comcast deemed it to be inappropriate enough to let the CEO of NBCUniversal go.

ACOSTA: Let me ask you about the FOX defamation lawsuits. Dominion in the end did not demand an apology from FOX News. We all saw that. It sounds as though the CEO of Smartmatic says they're not going to settle this bigger $2.7 billion lawsuit without some kind of an apology, and one of the things, Aidan, that we saw throughout this process of Dominion going all the way up to the point of a trial, essentially starting there in Delaware, you know, there was leak after leak after leak, all of this information came out.

Might we see the same thing happened with the Smartmatic case? Might we start to see damaging leaks starting to trickle out?

MCLAUGHLIN: Right, well, I certainly think that in Smartmatic, we will get new evidence. I'm not sure how much new evidence we'll get because when you go back and look at Smartmatic's complaint against FOX News, a lot of the statements that they're claiming are defamatory, or statements that were linked with Dominion.

Remember one of the big conspiracy theories that was on air at FOX News at the time was that Smartmatic owned Dominion and that the two companies were working in tandem. So it's a lot of the same evidence and I expect that to be part of the discovery that we're going to see in the Smartmatic case.

As far as Dominion not getting an apology from FOX News, I actually would defend them a little bit here. We got an enormous amount of evidence in discovery in the Dominion case that made exceptionally clear that FOX News hosts promoted these claims about a false election despite privately knowing them to be true, so in addition to the $787 million settlement that Dominion got, which is a staggering number, a historic number for a media settlement like this, we also got that extra layer of accountability in knowing the facts of the case.

And I don't know that a trial necessarily would have gotten us much more of that, so I actually would defend him in, you know, on the fact that they didn't get this apology from FOX News. They got this sort of mealy-mouthed statement that admitted that the court found that some of those claims were false, but I think the number, that big settlement number is a concession from FOX News that they really messed up here.

[18:40:04]

And I suspect the Smartmatic number will be similar, at least according to all the First Amendment experts that I've spoken to on this case.

ACOSTA: All right. Yes, there's no question Dominion did do a huge public service in getting that information out to all the viewers out there. Even FOX viewers.

All right, Aidan McLaughlin, thanks so much. We appreciate it.

MCLAUGHLIN: Thanks, Jim.

ACOSTA: Yes. Still ahead, the most powerful rocket ever built blew up this past week? Did you see this? This was the historic launch. But was it really a bust? A retired NASA astronaut is here to put it in perspective. It would be interesting to talk to him about this. That's coming up next.

You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ACOSTA: The most powerful rocket ever built did not travel very far. SpaceX's starship blasted off its launch pad in South Texas on Thursday soaring 24.2 miles over the Gulf of Mexico. But about four minutes into its first test flight, the rocket exploded.

[18:45:02]

According to SpaceX some of the rocket's 33 engines failed and the rocket lost altitude and began to tumble, causing the flight termination system to trigger a mid-air explosion. SpaceX says the teams will now review the data for the next test flight.

And retired astronaut with NASA and former International Space Station commander Leroy Chiao joins me now.

Commander, thanks so much for being with us. We really appreciate it. I guess what did you think of what took place there? Musk and SpaceX, they said that this test was a successful failure. Do you agree?

LEROY CHIAO, RETIRED NASA ASTRONAUT: Well, absolutely. I mean, you have to take in -- you have to put this into context. This rocket was more than twice as powerful as the Saturn moon rockets. It was almost twice as powerful as NASA's space launch system Artemus One launched just a few months ago. And so for it to get off the pad, had a few issues with some of the 33 engines not burning, but it went through a full duration first stage burn.

Three minutes is what that first stage is supposed to do, and that's when it got there was a problem with Separation Starship. Did not separate, did not light its own engines. And that's why you saw the stack tumble out of control. But the fact that it got off the pad and burned a full duration burn without any issues, except for a few engine shutdowns, that's a pretty significant success for a first flight test.

This is a very aggressive development program. This rocket has not been in development that long and, you know, the philosophy of build, test, you know, find out what the issues are, modifying test again. That's what gets you going more quickly.

ACOSTA: And it seems that the failure comes down to the engines. Correct? What could SpaceX do differently in this next text test flight to fix this? I assume they're going to go back to the drawing board here to some extent.

CHIAO: Well, the engines, the issue was that not all 33 engines were burning. And so we -- I'm not sure, we haven't seen any announcement yet whether they didn't ignite on liftoff, or whether some of them were shut down in flight. Those are different scenarios. Maybe it's a combination of the two, but the fact is, most of the engines were burning and got the booster to where it was supposed to go. It's somewhat tolerant of engine failures.

The biggest issue is, why didn't the Starship separate? It could have been something as simple as -- or not simple but something as common as a software glitch, which we're all aware of, or it could be a different, you know, some kind of a different system failure. That will all come out. You know there was a lot of data, a lot of telemetry coming down from the flight test. No doubt SpaceX engineers have been poring over that over the weekend, trying to figure out the root cause.

But I think we'll see them fly sooner rather than later. They've got several other Starships built, ready to go. Once they find the root cause of this, you know, and repair the launch site, I think they incurred more damage to the launch pad than they had expected.

ACOSTA: Right.

CHIAO: They've got to get all that figured out so hopefully it could fly again soon.

ACOSTA: And had you heard that term before? Just very quickly. Rapid unscheduled disassembly. Was that just a term that came out of nowhere this past week or was that -- is that a term you're familiar with?

CHIAO: No. That is actually a term that is used in the industry. It's somewhat unfortunate because I think it -- I think it does a disservice to the industry. But that's not something that SpaceX came up with.

ACOSTA: Yes.

CHIAO: That is something that has been used for many years.

ACOSTA: All right. I've been eager to ask that one. All right, Commander, thanks so much for your time. We appreciate it.

CHIAO: My pleasure. Thank you.

ACOSTA: All right. And we'll be right back.

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[18:53:09]

ACOSTA: Actress and activist Eva Longoria is proud of her Mexican roots and deeply connected to the country she calls her second home. Now in the new CNN Original Series "SEARCHING FOR MEXICO," Longoria is taking us on a journey across the country to see how Mexico's people, cultural landscape, and history have shaped its diverse cuisine. I spoke with Eva about this week's episode focused on Jalisco and why the region embodies Mexican culture.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EVA LONGORIA, HOST, "SEARCHING FOR MEXICO": Every stereotypical export that comes out of Mexico. Tequila, mariachi, ballet folklorico comes from Jalisco. And so they claim the soul and identity of Mexico very proudly. You know, that's why they say Jalisco is Mexico and Mexico is Jalisco. And it's a beautiful state, and it's very diverse as well.

ACOSTA: Jalisco is the birthplace of tequila.

LONGORIA: Yes.

ACOSTA: Now it says here that it is a true favorite of yours.

LONGORIA: It is. I'm a tequila girl.

ACOSTA: Tell me about tequila.

LONGORIA: Well, tequila, first of all, a lot of people don't realize tequila is much like champagne. It cannot be declared tequila unless it's from the tequila region in Jalisco.

ACOSTA: OK. Very good. OK.

LONGORIA: And tequila can only be made with blue agave. So that's the blue weber agave, which is really the sweetest. It's beautiful when you go to the highlands in Jalisco. It's just like see of this blue agave. It's the most beautiful thing you see. And they still make it in the ways and the traditional ways. We went to a distillery that uses the horse to grind down the cooked agave, the cooked pinas. You know, did you see agareros (PH) cutting down by hand each agave plant and it is, it is really like I said, the identity of Mexico.

I got to meet the charros which is those guys that dress in the trucks with all of the beautiful decor and all of these things all over that you look like a mariachi, but the mariachi is actually mimicking them.

[18:55:05]

They're the ones that came up with this (INAUDIBLE), the sombrero, and we got to do the rodeo. And then there's all this typical food you eat at the rodeo. So that was, I mean, it was just so fun.

ACOSTA: Yes, what kind of food is that? They're not doing burgers and hotdogs.

LONGORIA: No, no. They're sopas, taquitos, what we call flautas that, you know, the rolled-up taquitos. There's amazing sauce on it, different sauces, different salsas, different cremas. We sat and shared a meal and to hear them speak about their love for Mexican culture and their love for their country. It really brought tears to my eyes. And I said, what do you want people to know about Mexico? And they said, that we matter. I know that Mexican people matter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: There will be tequila. Be sure to tune in an all-new episode of "EVA LONGORIA, SEARCHING FOR MEXICO." It airs tonight at 9:00 Eastern and Pacific only on CNN.

Up next, we'll take you inside the successful mission to evacuate U.S. diplomatic staff and their families from Sudan. Stay with us.

You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

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