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CNN International: Republican Women Rally Around Nikki Haley; Jury to Resume Deliberations in Giuliani Defamation Damages Trial; Advocacy Group: 2,000+ Antisemitic Incidents Since Hamas Attacks; Africa's Automobile Industry Exports Cars Worldwide. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired December 15, 2023 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: DeSantis doesn't even like farmers. He doesn't like farmers. I said, that's not good. He doesn't want to get that word out. And I keep hearing about the surge from Haley. Sir, I'll never vote against you. I'll never run against you. You've been a great president, Sir. I'll never do this. This goes on for a year and a half. Then I hear she's having a news cover. I've decided to run the whole thing. What's with these politicians? Right. DeSanctimonious has been saying for the past six months. Wait for the bounce. You know, he's waiting for the bounce. The bounce is going that way. It's going the wrong direction.
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MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Trump is right when he talks about lack of surging for Haley and DeSantis, at least according to the latest Des Moines Register poll. It puts Trump at 51 percent, DeSantis at 19, Haley at 16. DeSantis is up at 3 point from the paper's October poll, with Haley staying flat.
Haley breaking with many Republicans by defending a Texas woman who's seeking an abortion for a high-risk pregnancy. This comes as her campaign seems to be winning the support of more and more female voters -- as CNN's Jeff Zeleny found out.
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HALEY: That's why I think you need a bad ass woman in charge in the White House.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nikki Haley is trying to break the highest glass ceiling in politics. But you won't hear her say so, at least not directly. And that's just fine with many of her admirers.
THALIA FLORES, NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: I think we're past the point of talking about that. She's the candidate, male or female, she's a strong candidate. ZELENY (voice-over): Thalia Flores has a front row seat to the New Hampshire primary, and to Haley's rise. Whether or not its history making.
FLORES: It will be great to have a female president. But that's not what it's about.
ZELENY (voice-over): As she courts all voters, Haley takes great care to walk a fine line, wielding gender as a humorous shield --
HALEY: I love all the attention fellas, thank you for that.
ZELENY (voice-over): -- and a defensive sword.
HALEY: They are five-inch heels, I don't wear 'em unless you can run in them.
ZELENY (voice-over): Helene Haggar is blunt about her feelings that it's high time for a woman in the White House.
HELENE HAGGAR, NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: It's time to get the testosterone out of the White House and put a woman in there. But I a specific woman, not Kamala Harris, but Nikki Haley.
ZELENY (voice-over): At campaign rallies, it's a sentiment echoing from Iowa --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's smart, she's tough, and she's passionate.
ZELENY (voice-over): -- to South Carolina.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She is levelheaded, and speaks to the issues, rather than a lot of rhetoric.
ZELENY (voice-over): Haley is on the quest to draw suburban women back to the Republican Party, after so many fled during the era of Donald Trump. Her support among that key demographic is a leading reason she fares better in a hypothetical contest against President Biden, polls show, even as a strong majority of Republican women still backed Trump.
POLITICAL ADVERTISING: We know her as crooked Hillary. But to Nikki Haley, she's her role model.
ZELENY (voice-over): Allies of Ron DeSantis are trying to compare Haley to Hillary Clinton in new TV ads, that have been debunked as misleading. Haley is on the air with ads of her own, featuring her husband, a National Guardsman in uniform.
HALEY: American strength doesn't start wars, it prevents them. That's what I'll do as president.
ZELENY (voice-over): As the final chapter of the primary comes into view, Haley now rarely repeats a rallying cry from her announcement earlier this year.
HALEY: May the best women win.
ZELENY (voice-over): She makes clear she's neither campaigning on gender politics, nor identity. But balanced voters like Erin Jorgensen take note of.
ERIN JORGENSEN, NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: Just because you're a woman, doesn't mean I'm going to vote for you. You have to be -- you have to be the right person. And I'm just happy that maybe the right person is finally a woman.
ZELENY (voice-over): Whether talking about abortion --
HALEY: I don't think the fellas have known how to talk about it properly.
ZELENY (voice-over): -- or the economy --
HALEY: There hasn't been an easy time for young families at all.
ZELENY (voice-over): -- Haley often infuses her answers with her life experience, as a woman, and a mother, which draws admiration from her crowds.
VICKI SCHWAEGLER, NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: She's my voice, she speaks for me.
ZELENY (voice-over): But Vicki Schwaegler makes clear that's not why she intends to give Haley her vote.
SCHWAEGLER: I would say it's time for the right resume. We're not looking at somebody, and we're not going to box anybody in, because you're a woman, because your first generation American. That's not who Republicans are.
ZELENY: Of course, not all Haley supporters are women, and not all women support Haley. There is no question that she is reaching out to women voters, particularly independents, moderates as well. There is also a historic nature to her candidacy. Only a handful of Republican candidates have run as women, and she has gotten as far in the process as any of them. Now, six weeks to go before the New Hampshire primary.
Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Keene, New Hampshire.
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FOSTER: Just a few hours from now, a jury in Washington will resume deliberations to determine how much Rudy Giuliani must pay to two former Georgia election workers. The former New York mayor was found liable for defaming the two women after spreading conspiracy theories about their supposed roles in the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. CNN's Katelyn Polantz reports from Washington.
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KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: The jury is out and going to be back first thing on Friday morning to determine how much Rudy Giuliani, the former lawyer to Donald Trump, former mayor of New York, quite a celebrity in the United States, is going to have to pay two women who were unknown before the 2020 election. Those women were Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss.
[04:35:00]
A mother and a daughter who had counted ballots after the election in Georgia. And who Rudy Giuliani pointed out on surveillance tapes quite publicly on social media, on his podcast and elsewhere, accusing them of stealing votes. That was completely untrue. And so, a court in Washington, DC, has already found Rudy Giuliani liable for defaming these two women.
And in emotional testimony over the course of this entire week, these two women have essentially said to a jury of eight people in Washington, DC how much their names have been smeared, how they have lost their identities, how they have feared for their lives, and suffered an immense amount of emotional distress. Not just because of what Giuliani had had to say about them, but how he inspired other people to harass them. People all over the United States, calling them over and over again, showing up at their house, saying racist things to them, leaving them voicemails, accusing them of being frauds, and telling them that they should fear for their lives.
So, the jury in DC is going to be determining how much Giuliani should have to pay. That sum could be into the 10s of millions of dollars, an astronomical amount. The women are asking for at least $48 million in awards, and they also want this jury to punish Giuliani for what he did for this sustained viral campaign.
Their lawyers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss's lawyer, Michael Gottlieb. He spoke to the jury and one of the things he said was he thought they were ordinary and expendable. He didn't see them as human beings. It's dangerous for them to be Ruby Freeman or Shaye Moss because of Rudy Giuliani and his co-conspirators.
Giuliani did not testify on Thursday, even though he had the opportunity and had indicated he wanted to. He has spent some of the week doubling down on some of these false claims. And he wasn't particularly engaged in what was going on in court on Thursday as closing arguments were taking place.
Now it's up to the jury to determine what to do and what sort of message should be sent to Rudy Giuliani and those co-conspirators who include Donald Trump, Donald Trump's campaign and other lawyers who had worked for Donald Trump after the 2020 election.
Katelyn Polantz, CNN Washington.
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FOSTER: Still to come, what's supposed to be one of the happiest times of the year for the Jewish faith is marked with fear and apprehension as the U.S. grapples with an uptick in anti-Semitic incidents.
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FOSTER: Welcome back to NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster. If you're just join us, let me bring you up to date with our top stories this hour.
U.S. National Security adviser Jake Sullivan has wrapped up a news conference in Tel Aviv just a short while ago, after meeting with Israel's President. Sullivan says Israel will transition to a new phase of the war in Gaza in the coming weeks that focuses on precise targeting of Hamas leadership.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, the EU is kicking off the 2nd and final day of its leader's summit. It comes after an historic decision on Thursday, with the bloc announcing it would begin membership talks for Ukraine as well as Moldova. We'll have more on both these stories in the coming hours.
A dark shadow looms over the festival of lights this year, as many Jews in the U.S. struggle to celebrate Hanukkah in the wake of rising anti-Semitic incidents since the October 7th Hamas attacks in Israel. CNN's Omar Jimenez has the details.
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OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The week of Hanukkah is supposed to be a time of joy, but for many Jewish Americans, some of that joy has been replaced with fear.
In Greensboro, North Carolina, a man was arrested for vandalizing a Holocaust monument. It was defaced with graffiti that included a swastika inside of the Star of David at the base of the monument, according to the local nonprofit that built the monument.
In Oakland, California, the city's largest menorah was destroyed and pieces of it was thrown into a nearby lake, according to images and video from the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area. The words free Palestine were also sprayed in Arabic around the edges of an amphitheater, near where the menorah had been standing.
RABBI DOVID LABKOWSKI, CHABAD JEWISH CENTER OF OAKLAND: I don't know why Anyone would do this. I know that it's toxic. The air is toxic these days and it's just it shouldn't Be that way.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): In Ohio, a 13-year-old is facing criminal charges after allegedly crafting a detailed plan for a mass shooting at a synagogue, even weeks before Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel.
In the Los Angeles area, two men were charged Tuesday with hate crimes, one in connection with an alleged December 9th attack on a man wearing a Yamaka. And another in a separate late November incident for allegedly spraying swastikas on a number of buildings, including a temple and a church.
Earlier this week at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, someone placed a Palestinian flag on a campus menorah. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Enough is enough.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): And the little more than two months since the October 7th attacks and ensuing war, there have been more than 2,000 anti-Semitic incidents documented in the U.S. That's a 337 percent increase compared to the same period last year, according to the Anti- Defamation League.
JIMENEZ: And the ADL is calling it all part of a terrifying pattern, they say, began back on October 7th and is currently showing no signs of diminishing. But let's remember this isn't happening in a vacuum. The Council on American Islamic Relations has also reported what they've called an unprecedented rise in the number of anti-Arab and. Islamophobic incidents they've reported. Specifically, they said in the month after October 7th they reported a more than 200 percent increase in requests for help and bias incidents.
Omari, Jimenez, CNN, New York.
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FOSTER: And we'll be back in just a moment.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK) . FOSTER: Bricker has a vibrant automobile industry, some of the biggest
players in the world have plants based in South Africa, which exports high end cars across the globe. As CNN's Eleni Giokos explains.
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ELENI GIOKOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two dates, Mercedes-Benz South Africa says it has exported almost 2 million of their C-Class models to global markets, including the United States, and to countries in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
ANDREAS BRAND, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, MERCEDES-BENZ SOUTH AFRICA: We started at a point where we only build right hand drive. Then we added the left-hand drive which opened up the market space tremendously.
We have been building vehicles for Mercedes-Benz for 65 years now. The C-Class forms part of our so-called home. We are building hybrids since 2016. We were the only and first OEM building hybrids here in South Africa. We are fully integrated member with our plant in Bremen and with our colleagues in China.
GIOKOS (voice-over): The plant, from where more than 100,000 of these luxury vehicles are exported annually, is alongside the port of East London at the mouth of the Buffalo River.
BRAND: We can export to the U.S. Which is a strong, strong market for us. So, we are also exporting to China, which is traditionally a market which built for themselves. We are the only plant who can build that. Korea is quite a strong market and then Australia and Europe. If a car stays in South Africa or it goes to any specific market, we apply Mercedes-Benz product quality to every unit we built.
GIOKOS (voice-over): Human resources, executive director, Abey Kgotle, credits the success of the plant to its people.
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ABEY KGOTLE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES, MBSA: We have just over 3,000 people based in East London building this beautiful car out of Africa for the world. You can look at an operator working at Mercedes-Benz, South Africa, and that colleague will be able to compete favorably with anyone within our network, across the globe. And that's because of the quality of education, the quality of training.
BRAND: What we really have with the C-Class Is a high-end product. We have high-end technology out there in the plant. Without education, you cannot run a facility like that. So, there are 13.5 billion rand invested and the core is education.
GIOKOS (voice-over): The Mercedes-Benz Learning Academy has over four decades trained thousands of people.
KGOTLE: What the Academy does is essentially to prepare the skills that we need today and the skills that we need tomorrow. The Learning Academy is a very, very important part of our story. That is what helps us remain competitive as an organization.
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FOSTER: Next, donning the iconic baseball jersey, the LA Dodgers announced an historic new signing.
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FOSTER: A huge moment for baseball as Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani was officially unveiled as a member of the LA Dodgers on Thursday. The 29-year-old, who's a two-time American League MVP, signed an historic deal worth $700 million. Would you believe? He says he was -- he has one priority, and that's winning, especially given the length of his contract.
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SHOHEI OHTANI, L.A. DODGERS (through translator): As you saw, my contract is 10 years and I'm not sure how long I want to be able to play the game, so I do prioritize winning. That's on the top of my list and that will probably never change and that was why -- one of the reasons why I chose this team.
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FOSTER: Stories in the spotlight. "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is curbing a little more than just that. The hit Show announced it's coming to an end next year. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cheers, cheers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Larry, you can't look me in the eye and toast.
LARRY DAVID: What does it do?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're saying hello. I see you. I connect with you.
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FOSTER: And connect is exactly what many fans have done with the show since it debuted in 2000. Episodes of the 12th and final season will be available from early February on Max. That's HBO streaming service, by the way, not me. HBO, as part of CNN's parent company Warner Brothers Discovery. You can watch the final episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," on April the 17th.
Before we go, it was quite the wild delay for morning commuters in New Jersey on Thursday. That's as a bull started running along the tracks at Penn Station in Newark. Trains to and from New York City were delayed, as you'd expect, for 45 minutes as authorities worked to get hold of him. There were reports the bull could have escaped from a local slaughterhouse. The bull's being moved to an animal rescue sanctuary to live out the rest of his day. So, it all worked out for him. The sanctuary named him Ricardo, and we're wishing him well.
And thanks for joining me here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster in London. "EARLY START" next here on CNN.
