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Trump Calls Biden Destroyer Of Democracy; New Strikes Hit Gaza; Elon Musk To Advertisers Fleeing X, "Go F Yourself"; Federal Judge Rules Trump Does Not Have Absolute Immunity; "Chowchilla" Premieres Tonight. Aired 6-7p ET
Aired December 03, 2023 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[18:00:00]
JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington. Good evening.
We begin the hour with Donald Trump turning to increasingly dark and extremist rhetoric as he makes his case for the Republican nomination. This weekend in Iowa, the former president said his campaign is a, quote, "righteous crusade to liberate our republic from Biden and the criminals in the Biden administration," end quote. Trump, who has been charged with attempting to overturn the 2020 election, engaged in election projection during his weekend rallies, accusing President Biden of being the biggest threat to democracy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have a lot of opponents. But we've been waging an all-out war on American democracy. Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: This is the latest Trump defense against accusations that he is being anti-democratic. Yesterday, the Trump campaign handed out these signs to supporters during a rally in Iowa. The "I know you are but what am I" playground retort is a familiar response from the former president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: From everything I see has no respect for this person.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States.
TRUMP: No puppet. No puppet.
CLINTON: And it's pretty clear --
TRUMP: You're the puppet.
CLINTON: It's pretty clear, you won't admit that the Russians -- TRUMP: No, you're the puppet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: Now with eyes on his next shot at the Oval Office, Trump is previewing a foreboding message for 2024 telling supporters to, quote, "guard the vote."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The most important part of what's coming up is to guard the vote. And you should go into Detroit and you should go into Philadelphia and you should go into some of these places, Atlanta, and you should go into some of these places and we got to watch those votes when they come in.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: The litany of anti-democratic comments has former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney issuing a stark warning to the nation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LIZ CHENEY (R), FORMER WYOMING CONGRESSWOMAN: He's told us what he will do. One of the things that we see happening today is sort of a sleepwalking into a dictatorship in the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: And joining me now to talk about this is former Democratic senator Al Franken.
Senator, great to see you. Thanks for coming back on the program. We appreciate it.
AL FRANKEN (D), FORMER U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA: My pleasure.
ACOSTA: What do you make of all this talk from Trump this weekend that Biden is the destroyer and he is coming after your democracy and everything? I mean, this is obviously projection. But what's your sense of it? Is it going to work?
FRANKEN: I don't know. Things that we -- you know, we have like two sets of information in our country. And one -- you know, you remember when Kellyanne Conway said we have alternative facts. And Trump said that, you know, there's fake news. And so what they're basically saying is, it's all up for grabs. There's no truth anymore.
This is a guy who -- when talking about democracy, he's a guy who had a crowd storm the Capitol. He is the guy who won't respect the -- he still says that he won the election when we all know he didn't in 2020. This is a guy who has said that he will put people in the Justice Department who will go after the people who went after him. He is a classic autocrat. And so this is just one of the things where he's saying the opposite of what's true. But his people will believe him. ACOSTA: How worried are you, Al, that Trump could get back in the
White House?
FRANKEN: I'm extremely worried because I think that's kind of the ball game. I do believe that if he gets in that he will basically get rid of as much of the bureaucracy as he can, what he called the deep state, to place people who are professionals and know how to run the government, and replace them with people who are MAGA loyalists and Trump loyalists. And he will do that in the Justice Department.
He has said that he is talking about using the military domestically. I'm extremely worried that if he wins, that our democracy will, in very strong terms, will cease to exist.
ACOSTA: And I believe it's --
FRANKEN: That's a pretty scary thing to say, but that's what I'm afraid of, certainly.
[18:05:06]
ACOSTA: Yes, and I believe it's the journalism professor Jay Rosen who has been saying that we in the media, Democrats, folks who care about this, need to explain the election in terms of the stakes, not the odds. And do you think that the White House, the president, Democrats, your party, are doing enough in that regard to warn the country about what you feel to be a very serious threat to American democracy?
FRANKEN: I hope they will. I hope that we will. I think that we have a year to go, or almost a year. And I believe that that will be a focus of the campaign. I mean, people care about, what are you going to do for the economy, and I don't think an autocracy helps the economy either. And I don't think it helps average people in their households.
But I think that in 2022, that at the end of the day, that in a lot of the battleground states you had people running for secretary of state who -- on the Republican side who were -- who said that the election in 2020 wasn't valid. And all those kind of -- all those people lost in those battleground states. And I think that's -- those are the states that I guess will matter again. And I think that Americans rose up partly -- in large part because of the fear of losing our democracy.
ACOSTA: I did want to ask you, Al, about the situation in Israel, the war between Israel and Hamas. As you know, there are opinions on all of this that are really splitting the Democratic Party right now. Even progressive lawmakers are divided on this issue. I want to play a little bit of sound and get your response on the other side.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): The United States cannot be backers of this kind of indiscriminate bombing. That is my firm belief. We should have conditions on military aid in the same way that we do to -- for every other country. SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): There shouldn't be any kind of limitations
or conditions at all. I can't believe we're talking about a cease-fire long term until Hamas is destroyed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: You have Pramila Jayapal in the House, John Fetterman in the Senate, different viewpoints on this. What's your sense of it? What are you hearing from folks in Minnesota?
FRANKEN: Well, I'm hearing from people all over, which is people are very distressed about this obviously. And this has been just a horrible period for people since October 7th. And it is heartbreaking to hear the figures of the number of people in Gaza, innocents, who have been killed. And so many of them children. And it's really hard to make this call. Because we don't know how Israel eliminates Hamas, and we know that Hamas, you know, uses people as -- they live with them and make sure that they don't really give a heck about their civilians dying.
So it's very hard to make this judgment. And I can see actually -- we do want them to not bomb indiscriminately. And we're hoping they aren't. And we want them to go in and destroy Hamas. And I don't know, I'm not a military expert, and I don't know how they do that.
ACOSTA: And is this going to be a problem for President Biden heading into the campaign? There have been a lot of warnings from Arab Americans, Muslim Americans. Is this going to be a problem for President Biden? What do you think?
FRANKEN: Well, I think it probably has divided some people. I hope not. You know, we -- I think he is someone who knows the region. I think a lot of what he is doing there in terms of getting some hostages out, I think a lot of the diplomacy that Tony Blinken is doing is preventing this from going wider. I think that's a big, big deal of trying to prevent this from expanding in the region. And let's see how this develops. No one knows how this is going to develop.
[18:10:06]
ACOSTA: And Senator, let me circle back to politics a little bit. Both Trump and Ron DeSantis have said if elected, they would repeal and replace Obamacare. Of course Trump tried to do this when he was president. Never came up with a plan to replace Obamacare. Your thoughts on that.
FRANKEN: That is really -- I hope he keeps talking about that. Remember, he said that -- when he ran in 2016, that he was going to repeal and replace Obamacare and replace it with something terrific, as I remember him saying. And it was a complete failure. The Republicans -- I had thought, you know, they had been vowing to repeal and replace Obamacare since we passed it in 2010.
And I thought, well, OK, they've had six, seven years to figure out what they want to do. Let's see what you got. I mean, I don't know. There might be a market-based way to do this. And what they came up with, 20 some million Americans would have lost coverage. And you weren't guaranteed, depending on your state, whether you would be covered if you had a pre-existing condition.
And the American people saw this and said, oh, my god, this is terrible. And thank God for John McCain and his thumbs down. But when they saw what they were going to do, I would go around red areas of Minnesota and people were screaming about this because they knew the Medicaid expansion had really helped in red areas and helped the rural hospitals and helped these families. And what they were doing was just awful. And he doesn't -- and then when it went out, he said who knew health care was so complicated?
ACOSTA: Yes. And Al, I do want to wrap things up by asking you about a politician who was in politics about 48 or 72 hours ago but no longer, George Santos. He came up on "Saturday Night Live" last night. I want to get your thoughts on this. Let's play it and we'll talk about on the other side.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOWEN YANG, ACTOR, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE": So I'm no longer Congressman Santos. I'm just regular old professor, major, general, reverend, astronaut Santos, protector of the realm, princess of Genovia.
(Singing) And it seems to me like I live my life like an evil Forrest Gump. I'm the guy who lied even too much for Donald Trump. And you all got to laugh at me and I say lucky you. A candle burned out long before I could flee to Peru.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: Al, as a veteran of "SNL," I got to get your thoughts on George Santos. Does he make you miss being on "SNL" where you could poke some fun at the former congressman or maybe make you miss being up on Capitol Hill?
FRANKEN: Well, actually George Santos didn't make me miss either. But --
(LAUGHTER)
FRANKEN: It was kind of hard to make fun of a guy who is so ridiculous.
ACOSTA: Yes.
FRANKEN: And I think probably they did it right. They got the Ethics Committee went through the stuff. You know, it's -- he was a spectacularly awful, nutty, you know, he took money from -- he got people -- people contributed to him. He took their credit cards and stole from them. He's as bad as you get and sick. He's a sick man.
ACOSTA: Yes. Not a lot positive to say about it. That's how his former constituents feel about it as well.
Senator Al Franken, great to talk to you. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
FRANKEN: Great to talk to you, Jim.
ACOSTA: Thanks a lot.
All right, still to come, we'll turn back to the Middle East. Israel has been bombing Gaza after a temporary truce expired on Friday. Now the Israeli military is telling Gazans to evacuate many areas in the south where thousands of people are sheltering after they fled from northern Gaza. Now they have to move again. We'll talk about all that in just a few moments.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:18:59]
ACOSTA: The Israeli military says it's expanding its ground operations across most of Gaza. Today the IDF urged civilians of both parts of both northern and southern Gaza to evacuate. This comes as a barrage of air strikes continue to target what Israeli officials say are Hamas strongholds.
This is the aftermath of an Israeli strike in southern Gaza earlier today. A devastating scene of innocent people carrying the injured out of damaged buildings and rubble. The Hamas-run Ministry of Health says the death toll inside Gaza is now more than 15,000 people killed since the war began in early October.
And CNN's Matthew Chance has the latest on the fighting inside Gaza.
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, Israel is continuing to carry out strikes across Gaza, hitting what it says are Hamas targets, up and down the densely populated territory.
There are dramatic images of another Israeli strike on the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza after strikes there on Saturday killed dozens, according to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Health Ministry.
[18:20:00]
Israel, which is, of course, vowing to destroy Hamas and secure the release of more than 130 hostages still held in Gaza, says that it's identified and destroyed hundreds of Hamas tunnels. It's also started focusing its strikes on southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of people have fled in recent weeks to escape the intensive military operation in the north.
In a bid to limit the mounting civilian casualties, estimated at more than 15,000 people by Palestinian officials so far, Israel has issued these maps dividing the Gaza Strip into what it calls evacuation sectors, multiple blocks, each assigned a number from which Palestinian civilians are ordered to leave ahead of an Israeli military action. But poor internet and communications in Gaza means it is unclear frankly if the warnings are getting through.
Amid international concern, Israel has also been allowing aid trucks carrying humanitarian relief into the Gaza Strip with essential supplies of food and water and medicine. But the Israeli military is vowing to keep up its pressure on Hamas, saying it will wage its campaign as strongly and as thoroughly in southern Gaza as it did in the north.
Back to you, Jim.
ACOSTA: All right. Thanks to Matthew Chance in Tel Aviv. Really appreciate it.
For more analysis on this, let's bring in my next guest, former State Department Middle East negotiator and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, Aaron David Miller.
Aaron, as Matthew Chance just reported, Israel is expanding its fight across most of Gaza, pushing into the south. Your thoughts on what we are seeing develop now. I mean, the Israelis are moving forward. This ground operation sounds like it is just getting going.
AARON DAVID MILLER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I think that's right, Jim. And I think the ground campaign in Rafah and Khan Younis where the Israelis are persuaded most of the Hamas senior leadership, maybe including the hostages, I might add, has not yet ramped up. And look, I think the Israeli military objectives are ambitious. Eradicate Hamas' military capacity above ground and below ground. Kill its senior leadership.
And doing the impossible, to pressure Hamas into resuming I suspect a negotiation at some point for a hostage-for-prisoner exchange. The cruel reality, however, is that the administration is now in a bind. The president has tethered himself to Israel's war aims, which he shares. But in the face of mounting Palestinian casualties, deaths, and humanitarian catastrophes in Gaza, the administration really faces a sort of crossroads.
Advise the Israelis, maybe even warn them, just don't know whether the administration has any better alternatives to give the Israelis in terms of how to -- to use the secretary's words -- minimize Palestinian deaths. It's a real tragedy.
ACOSTA: And, you know, we had a report from Ben Wedeman in the previous hour, and we were just showing some images a few moments ago that really indicate that a lot of the devastation that we saw before the truce, we are going to see again now after the truce. And in that Ben Wedeman report, we were showing children who had just pulled themselves out of rubble, losing a brother, losing a father. And it is just awful for people around the world to watch in their living rooms.
How much is that going to affect world opinion in terms of what the Israelis are doing as they ramp things up? And what can the Biden administration do? You were just saying a few moments ago that it puts the White House, puts the president in a bind. But it doesn't sound as though the Israelis are really heeding a lot of those cautions coming out of Washington.
MILLER: Look, Jim, I don't know at what point, probably it was weeks ago, the Israelis lost the international credibility and support in the wake of the Hamas terror surge on October 7th. I think the issue now is not the international community. It's not even Israel's key Arab partners in the region. It's the Biden administration.
The president, because of who he is, because of the savagery and brutality of October 7th, because he knows that Hamas has embedded its military assets in and around and proximate to civilian structures and populations, that this is a cruel dilemma. They've warned the Israelis. The Israelis have taken, I gather, what seems to be some performative steps in an effort to create these maps and these zones.
But as we know, the temple of Israeli operations, you have to provide sufficient warning. There's got to be strong band of internet connection, the Palestinians have to be willing to move. Is it a kilometer? Is it two kilometers? Is there assistance and aid? I don't think there's an answer to these questions.
[18:25:01]
The key is at what point, if there is a point, that the Biden administration's patience, the fact that they've supported the Israelis from the beginning, runs out. I think "The New York Times" reported this morning that the administration is pressing hard to resume hostage-for-prisoner negotiations. They want the hostages out. But the administration also understands the best way to pause and deescalate is to get this track started again.
ACOSTA: Well, and Aaron, I mean, you know this all too well. I mean, I picked up on this in my interviews with former Israeli officials in the last couple of days. The prevailing view among a lot of folks inside the government right now is that they have achieved the goal of getting Hamas at the negotiating table to talk about hostages through this bombardment, through this military campaign. And I think that they feel as though that will gain them leverage in this next offensive.
Your sense of that? I mean, you know, there's no shortage of hard feelings. I mean, they're still talking about how sexual assault has been used as a weapon by Hamas. I mean, the feelings are very hardened inside the government and people who are speaking on behalf of the government from time to time.
MILLER: Yes. I mean, it worked for seven days and Hamas needs time. And they are prepared to trade hostages for time. I suspect in the days ahead that there will be resumption of these negotiations. The question is, how deep and how severe will the Israeli response in southern Gaza be before the next pause?
ACOSTA: All right. Aaron David Miller, thank you very much for your time tonight. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
MILLER: Thanks for having me here.
ACOSTA: All right. Elon Musk in the meantime says he has no problem being hated. And when the billionaire was asked about companies pulling their ads from his platform Twitter now X, he had words for them, four-letter words. That's next.
You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:31:10]
ACOSTA: Tonight, the fallout is growing for Elon Musk as more and more companies pull their advertisements from X, formerly known as Twitter. Walmart is the latest big advertiser to quit X for now. The exodus started after Musk agreed with an antisemitic post on X. A couple of days ago, the tech billionaire appeared at a high-profile corporate conference hosted by the "New York Times" reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin.
So Sorkin asked about the companies bailing on Elon Musk. And this was Musk's reply. Bear in mind this is just after Musk apologized for what he had to say. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELON MUSK, TECH BILLIONAIRE, X CEO: If somebody will try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go (EXPLETIVE DELETED) yourself. Go (EXPLETIVE DELETED) yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: CNN senior media correspondent Oliver Darcy joins us now with more.
That sums things up, I suppose, in terms of Elon Musk's feelings on this. But our colleague Kara Swisher called this a meltdown. What did you make of it? What do you think?
OLIVER DARCY, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: It's certainly a meltdown. And it's a problem -- manic meltdown for Elon Musk, because he really needs those advertisers, Jim. According to Elon Musk himself, you know, later at the summit, he said that these advertisers that boycott, that they're doing right now, the staging, is going to eventually kill Twitter. It's going to lead to the death of his company. And so he needs them.
But instead of trying to woo them back, Jim, you see him there telling them to go F off. I'm not sure that's a winning strategy. And what was really interesting, Jim, I thought about his remarks at this conference was, he is not taking any responsibility for what's happening. He is blaming the advertisers saying they're the ones who are going to kill his company. They're the ones at fault, not really acknowledging that he's made this platform really untenable for them. They can't associate with it whether it's because of him endorsing an antisemitic post on the platform, whether it's a result of his repeated promotion of conspiracy theories.
You know, in the past few weeks he's boosted the crazy pizza-gate conspiracy theory, or whether it's the result of those decisions he's made that have led to a massive surge of hate speech and conspiracy theories on the platform. So he is really responsible for what's happened. This is a self-inflicted wound. But he doesn't want to take any responsibility, Jim.
ACOSTA: Yes. X has become a real sewer. I mean, there's just no doubt about it. Under his leadership. And I mean, he has talked about this as being sort of an issue of free speech. But this is a business. X is a business. And there are these other businesses, these other corporations who don't want to advertise on it if he is going to agree with antisemitic posts. That's their business. That's their prerogative.
DARCY: By the way, Jim, he gets away with saying that he's this free speech absolutist way too often.
ACOSTA: Right.
DARCY: This is the same guy who banned a handful of journalists last year from X because he didn't like what they posted. And then he only reinstated their accounts if they deleted the thing -- the offending post that he didn't like. This is a guy who's also cooperated extensively with foreign governments who have asked him to censor users who are posting things they don't like. And so he can call himself whatever he wants but he's certainly no free speech absolutist when you look at his actions.
ACOSTA: Yes. Well, I also wanted to ask you about something else that was in your "RELIABLE SOURCES" newsletter. Great newsletter this past week. This really unusual debate between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is running for president, and California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is not. A lot of people watched it. What do you think was behind all of that?
DARCY: Yes, it was almost like you were getting a glimpse of the future there, Jim. Maybe the 2028 race. Because I think it's pretty clear, at least at this moment, that none of those candidates, neither Newsom nor DeSantis, are probably going to be the nominees of their party in 2024.
[18:35:08]
But maybe in 2028 if you look at it. And so you had a lot of interest for watching this debate, which is surprising. You know, 4.5 million people tuned in to this debate -- I'm sorry, 4.7 million people tuned in to this debate. And to give you a sense of context. 7.5 million tuned in to the last GOP debate on NBC News. So it's not quite at the same level, but it's certainly a huge audience turning in to watch a debate between two people who are probably not going to be the candidates this year.
ACOSTA: Yes. And it was kind of DeSantis debating -- excuse me, it was kind of Gavin Newsom debating DeSantis and Sean Hannity, the host, at times during that debate, it seemed to be.
But I wanted to ask you one last thing, Oliver, and that is the most streamed artist on Apple and Spotify has been revealed. Not a huge surprise. Tell us about it. DARCY: Not a huge surprise. It's Taylor Swift's world and we're all
living in it. She's the most streamed artist on both Spotify and Apple Music. And Jim, just to give you a sense of the numbers, Spotify has had 26.1 billion streams this year for Taylor Swift.
ACOSTA: Wow.
DARCY: Billboard says that she's going to make $100 million just off of Spotify alone. And, you know, people often put Beyonce in the same category as Taylor Swift. I thought it was really interesting, Beyonce had her concert film out this weekend. And it's projected to earn about $22 million in opening weekend, which is still a great number, but nowhere near what Taylor Swift posted when her concert film opened earlier this year.
She was hovering at about $100 million. And so Taylor Swift is really the queen of pop or queen of all music in 2023, Jim.
ACOSTA: Yes. Oliver, it's making me think, if I just sign off all of my newscasts like this, I don't know if you can see this. Maybe that might help us a little bit over here. But, anyway, Oliver, and having you on helps as well.
Oliver, thanks so much. Oliver Darcy, we really appreciate it.
DARCY: Thank you, Jim.
ACOSTA: Good to see you.
And be sure to sign up for Oliver's "Reliable Sources" newsletter. It's a must-read. Go to CNN.com/reliablesources. Maybe Oliver will heart you back. We'll be back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:41:30]
ACOSTA: This week, former President Donald Trump's son Eric is set to take the witness stand again in New York. That's in the $250 million civil fraud trial against his father and the Trump Organization. Trump himself will also likely take the stand in the coming days.
It's the latest in a web of legal entanglements surrounding the former president. This week two separate federal courts rejected Trump's claims of presidential immunity, ruling instead that Trump can be sued over the January 6th insurrection and can be criminally prosecuted in the federal election interference case.
And here to help break down all of this is CNN legal analyst and former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen.
These immunity rulings, what did you make of that? I mean, it was sort of a double whammy, one after the other.
NORM EISEN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Friday was a monumental day in the Trump litigation wars, Jim. ACOSTA: Yes.
EISEN: Because the day started with the D.C. Circuit, the Court of Appeals, holding that the lower court judge had correctly said, hey, law enforcement officials, members of Congress who were injured or impacted on January 6th, can sue the former president. And he had said this included official action by me as president and therefore you can't sue me. There is a doctrine like that.
But now the courts have said, what you did was political. It was all about staying in office, not official. So that was a blow. Then the real one-two punch, the second blow was landed when Judge Chutkan in the criminal trial said, hey, there's no defense that you are undertaking official action.
ACOSTA: Right.
EISEN: Because in a criminal case, you have even less of an argument. There's never been American immunity in the Constitution, history, precedent, or law. We just don't have that for a president because in America no one is above the law.
ACOSTA: Well, and the judge said, you don't have the divine right of kings.
EISEN: That is the idea.
ACOSTA: Yes.
EISEN: That is the founding idea of our nation, that if you are accused of breaking the law, that from the most important American, a former president, to just average folks, you have to show up, DOJ make a case to a jury and your jury of peers will decide. That's the American idea. And that's what the judge pointed to.
ACOSTA: Let's talk about the civil fraud trial in New York. An appeals court just reinstated a gag order against Trump. Trump and Eric are going to testify again. I have to think he's going to be tempted to pop off outside the courtroom or post on Truth Social. We didn't see a whole lot from him this weekend. But I assume he's going to test these gag orders.
EISEN: The judge had repeatedly sanctioned Donald Trump. Judge Engoron had hit him with fines for attacking the judge's law clerk.
ACOSTA: Right.
EISEN: Jim, the most normal thing in the operation of courts is that judges have clerks who help them with the cases. And --
ACOSTA: I still can't figure that one out. I've been in a lot of courtrooms over the years covering stuff and the clerk just sits there and does their -- I --
EISEN: Well, they --
ACOSTA: It's one of the strangest things. But anyway.
EISEN: They needed something because what's happening beneath all that drama and hullabaloo and the gag order was off, then it was on, now it's on again, is that the attorney general of the state of New York is very methodically proving her case that Donald Trump and his associates and his businesses put forward false, fraudulent, phony financial information across a variety of properties.
[18:45:16]
The classic example now has become famous is he said Trump Tower was -- his apartment in Trump Tower was over 30,000 square feet, when it actually was a little over 10,000 square feet.
ACOSTA: Right.
EISEN: And there's a pattern with 40 Wall Street, with the Seven Springs Country Club, with Mar-a-Lago, his other properties, similar pattern. She's proving that case. So what is Trump going to do? He's got to find something else to talk about. And that has been the smokescreen.
ACOSTA: Yes. That accusation reminds of when I was looking for an apartment in New York, and they would tell you, it's palacios, it's so spacious. Look at it, it's number of square feet, and you find out, OK, maybe, they were counting the closets or what was under the bathtub. I don't know.
But, Norm Eisen, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
EISEN: Thanks, Jim.
ACOSTA: We'll be watching.
In the meantime, we are learning more about escalating attacks in the Red Sea involving drones going after cargo ships and possibly a U.S. Navy destroyer. We'll talk about that just ahead. Be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:50:39]
ACOSTA: Later tonight, CNN brings you the new CNN film "Chowchilla," which tells one of the most shocking true crime stories you've likely never heard. It's about the 1976 kidnapping of a school bus full of children and their driver, who were then buried underground for more than 12 hours before orchestrating their own dramatic escape.
The incident captivated the nation at the time and became a turning point in our understanding and treatment of childhood trauma. Here's a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chowchilla was a wonderful place to grow up.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were little innocent children.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Never did I think that something like this could happen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How does a school bus show up missing? I did not want to go down there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was like somebody just took them up off the planet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was it a thrill crime?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your guess is as good as mine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a mystery, you had no answers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They recovered a journal encrypted in unusual writing. I'd never seen anything like that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The kidnappers hit this town right in its heart by taking those children.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the way through, they thought that they had thought of everything.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're being buried alive. And I thought to myself, if we're going to die, we're going to die getting the hell out of here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When we got home, I thought life would be OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The kids were not OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: God forgive him because I won't.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was possibly the story of the century.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: The director of "Chowchilla," Paul Solet, joins us now from Los Angeles.
Paul, as we said, this made national news at the time, but I mean, I will admit, I guess I was young at the time when this happened, but I was not familiar with this. And I suppose when you dug into this material, you must have found, wow, this is quite the tale.
PAUL SOLET, DIRECTOR, CHOWCHILLA: Yes, I was shocked. I mean, I was shocked that I hadn't heard of it before. It really is one of the most bizarre and troubling crimes I think in American history. When I started looking into prior research, I think one of the things that was really striking to me was in all of the previous reporting, very little detail about the escape that had taken place. It was just incredible.
There was very little follow-up with the kids over the years. And I just, you know, I was very curious how they were doing. I reached out, started to get to know them, and as I did, I was just incredibly moved by what they had been through, the story of survival that day and also, I think, up until now, as they sort of tried to reclaim what was taken from them all those years ago.
ACOSTA: It's incredible that they're alive and able to tell this story. And the details of the kidnapping are truly shocking. Tell us a little bit more about what happened to these kids.
SOLET: One July day in 1976, 26 kids and their bus driver were on their way home from a summer school program. They stopped to help what they thought was a driver in distress. And they found themselves boarded by men wearing masks and carrying guns and the bus was taken. They were off-loaded on to a pair of vehicles that had been made for that day and they were driven for about 11 hours in the blistering heat, no water, no food.
And they were off-loaded in the dead of night and instructed at gunpoint to climb down a ladder into a chamber in the earth. And I think the incredible thing is that that's really where the story begins.
ACOSTA: And so what happened? I mean, I know you don't want to give up the whole thing because we want to watch tonight, but the kids were quickly reunited with their families after they escaped. I mean, it sounds like an incredible story of survival.
SOLET: It is an incredible story of survival. You know, I think, they were reunited with their families quickly afterwards, but I think at the time, we had a much less sophisticated understanding of childhood trauma and what an event like this would do to children who would experience it. A lot of focus was given to the physical harm, you know? And physically, they were doing OK. But in the aftermath, you know, the parents were instructed, for instance, to ignore their nightmares, you know, and sort of just let it dissipate.
And of course, we now understand that that's exactly the opposite of what children who have been through something like this need.
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They need integration. They were taken to Disneyland, which I think was a lovely gesture, but, you know, again, indicative of the sort of lack of sophistication and understanding around childhood trauma at the time, that you could sort of supplant, you know, a memory like this with Mickey and Minnie, just sort of tragic and naive.
ACOSTA: Yes, you have to deal with it. No question about it. And that's what you do with this film.
Paul Solet, thank you very much. Really appreciate it your time. We'll be watching tonight.
Be sure to watch "Chowchilla" tonight at 9:00 right here on CNN.
Straight ahead, a U.S. Navy destroyer among a group of ships involved in an attack in the Red Sea. What the Pentagon is saying tonight. We'll be right back.
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