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CNN International: Biden Says It's Clear Trump Will Be Republican Nominee; Haley Loses New Hampshire to Trump, Vows to Stay in Race; Federal Appeals Court Rules Mexico Can Sue U.S. Gunmakers; Oppenheimer Leads Oscar Contenders with 13 Nominations. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired January 24, 2024 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

BIANCA NOBILO, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Bianca Nobilo.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Max Foster. If you're just joining us, let me bring you up to date with the top stories this hour.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron will visit Israel and neighboring countries starting today. He's expected to push for a ceasefire and raise concerns about the rising death toll in Gaza.

Donald Trump cruised to victory in Tuesday's New Hampshire Republican primary. The win makes him more likely -- well, makes it more likely, that he'll eventually secure his party's presidential nomination. But rival Nikki Haley has vowed to stay in the race.

NOBILO: On the Democratic side of things, President Joe Biden won his party's New Hampshire primary. Maybe you didn't even know that was going on. Despite not even having his name on the printed ballot. Democratic voters made him a write-in candidate after the National Party opted to skip the New Hampshire contest in favor of having South Carolina hold the first nominating contest of the year.

With no serious challenger, it seems pretty much inevitable that Biden will be the one to face the Republican nominee on November the 5th.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY, U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A Trump nomination is a Biden win and a Kamala Harris presidency.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONAL TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have beaten Biden. You could almost say, who can't? Who the hell can't?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBILO: Senior White House correspondent MJ Lee has more now on what's next for the Biden campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WITNESS CORRESPONDENT: The Biden campaign is making it fully clear tonight that they are making the full pivot, the hard pivot to the general election and that they expect that the November race is going to be between President Biden and former President Donald Trump.

President Biden saying in a new statement tonight: It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. And my message to the country is the stakes could not be higher. Our democracy, our personal freedoms, our economy, all of those things, he says, are now going to be at stake come November.

To that end, we are also learning about some big changes that are coming to the Biden campaign. We are learning that two top advisers that are in the West Wing to the president, they are going to be moving over to the campaign full time.

This is Jen O'Malley Dillon, who, of course, ran the president's campaign back in 2020. She is currently the deputy chief of staff at the White House. She is going to be moving over to the campaign to be the campaign chair. And mostly is going to be focused on overseeing the campaign's efforts to get to 270 electoral votes.

We also have news of Mike Donilon. He is one of President Biden's closest advisers. He, too, will be going over to the campaign in the coming weeks to be the campaign's chief strategist and focusing on issues like messaging and the campaign's paid media strategy.

Now, another clear data point that we are also seeing from the Biden campaign, they have put up on their website for sale the first merchandise from the campaign that explicitly mentions Trump.

There's a T-shirt that says the words "Together We Will Defeat Trump Again."

Now, as for what the campaign will be doing in the coming days, for starters, they have announced that they are going to be holding a press call. This is going to be a call, I'm told by officials, where they lay out what they see as their path forward. And just describing a little bit more in detail now that they have acknowledged that they see Donald Trump as being their general election competitor, how they see the path going forward for the Biden campaign. Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: So where do things go from here? Let's talk about that with Natasha Lindstaedt, professor of government at the University of Essex.

I mean, it played out exactly as everyone predicted, which is why it's probably not resonating as a story as much as Iowa did. But what do you think about Nikki Haley and her strategy now? NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX:

Well, she's trying to remain optimistic. This, of course, is really annoying Trump that she is still in the race. And she was trying to point out to her supporters that back in August in the state of New Hampshire, who only had about 4 percent support. And then she ended up getting about 43 percent support in New Hampshire.

She's trying to appeal to moderates, to disgruntled Republicans who don't like all the chaos that Trump brings. And she does resonate better with independents, with more fluent and educated voters in New Hampshire. And she's hoping that's going to play out in the rest of the primaries.

But she has a real uphill battle. She doesn't do very well with more conservative voters or with evangelical voters. And, you know, the next primaries are going to be really tough. And she's going to her home state of South Carolina, but she's down by 30 points there. So, she's going to have a very difficult road ahead because primary voters tend to be more extreme voters and you have lower turnout there.

And that's really Trump's base. And they've shown a great willingness to come to the polls, even in inclement weather.

So, I think that it's really unlikely that she has any chance of winning. And honestly, no Republican candidate has ever won the nomination and not won Iowa and New Hampshire.

NOBILO: Natasha, I understand Haley's tenacity in not wanting to drop out.

[04:05:00]

She's also shaping the debate to some extent and also her reluctance to drop out before her home state of South Carolina. But as you say, she is trailing in the polls there. And is there a real strategic issue of if she does stay on to that point, gets trounced in her home state for her own personal brand, potentially running in the future or a position if there is a Republican government? Does that make things difficult for her?

LINDSTAEDT: I mean, it would be incredibly difficult for her to keep on with the campaign if she doesn't do well in South Carolina. And nothing is really aligning there. She doesn't have the endorsement of Senator and previous presidential candidate Tim Scott. And just the way the demographics are there, they just don't work for her.

Even though she was a somewhat popular governor, she really has no path to victory. I think that she has, though, tapped into something that should be a little bit worrisome for the Trump campaign. She did win 73 percent of moderate voters, moderate Republican voters in New Hampshire.

And there is a bit of a rejection from moderate voters of Trump's agenda, Trump's all the chaos that he brings, of course, that Nikki Haley has talked about. And I think she's needling him a bit. I mean, rather than him thanking New Hampshire voters for voting for him in the primaries, he decided to go on the attack, calling her an imposter and saying that she was delusional.

So, she might be relishing the national attention that she's getting and getting under his skin a bit. I'm not sure what her next steps are. He sees her as disloyal. And loyalty is very important for him in bringing people into his cabinet if he decides to do so and if he was able to win.

FOSTER: It's interesting, though, isn't it? Because she has actually got under his skin a bit. If you look at -- I mean, you could interpret that from his comments, couldn't you? He seemed quite annoyed that she was still staying in the race. So, she's had some success there. Perhaps that could be something she can capitalize on.

LINDSTAEDT: I think that's what she thinks she can do based on the fact that she was so far behind in the polls in the beginning and she was viewed as someone that had almost no chance of winning. And now there is a little bit of excitement around her, although I think people know that she has no chance of getting the nomination.

But maybe there's something personal here that she just personally doesn't like him. And he can get into these tete-a-tetes with people very easily when someone is disloyal to him.

So, she might be enjoying the fact that he is focused on her. She said that when he feels insecure, this is when he goes on the attack. This is when he becomes a big bully. So maybe she's sensing some insecurities there and she's playing up on that.

NOBILO: And Donald Trump is breaking some records in the sense that he's a non incumbent who has just won Iowa and New Hampshire. What does this tell you? You know, if we forget the normative discussion about Donald Trump for a minute, what does it tell you about American politics and Republican voters that somebody who has this number of indictments against them and is so deeply controversial and polarizing as a figure having what is a very impressive level of success at this point?

LINDSTAEDT: It just tells you that U.S. politics is in complete disarray, particularly the Republican Party. Trump has established control over the Republican Party and a personality cult that that's very, very frightening in fact. He's able to get people to vote for him no matter how many indictments there are or legal issues that he faces or the fact that he is being accused of instigating a coup to overturn an election. No matter what he says, if he has racist attacks on people like Nikki Haley and others, they're willing to turn the other way.

And there's also a little bit of amnesia amongst Republicans, independent voters about the chaos that happened about January 6th, or maybe they're not even paying attention to the news. But it seems very, very -- that there's a large number of people that are willing to vote for someone that did bring in so much chaos, that is going to have to deal with all these legal headaches.

And I think it also shows that U.S. electorate, there's a lot of angst. People are really upset about a lot of different things and the fact that they think that maybe Trump's going to be able to come back and return the U.S. to what they view as good economic times when inflation wasn't so high. When they could go to the supermarket and not have a massive bill after buying their groceries.

So, it's a bit of a mix of this personality cult and huge levels of angst of the way the U.S. economy and the direction of the U.S. economy at the moment.

[04:10:00]

FOSTER: OK, Natasha Lindstaedt, thank you so much for joining us as ever with your insight.

LINDSTAEDT: Thanks for having me.

NOBILO: A federal appeals court has now ruled that Mexico can sue a group of U.S. gunmakers. The lawsuit names include brands like Colt, Smith & Wesson and Glock, and it claims that they design, market and distribute and sell guns in ways that aim to arm drugs cartels.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has called the lawsuit misplaced. The complaint was dismissed back in 2022, but Mexico then appealed.

FOSTER: Mexico says up to 597,000, more than half a million guns from the defendants in the case are trafficked into the country every year. The U.S. ambassador to Mexico says this is a top priority for the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEN SALAZAR, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO MEXICO (through translator): Reducing the flow of weapons from the United States to Mexico is a priority for President Biden. We know that 70 percent of weapons that cause violence here in Mexico and in the U.S., but 70 percent come from the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBILO: And officials say an investigation is urgently needed to look into why some guns made exclusively for the U.S. military are also being trafficked into Mexico. CNN's Patrick Oppmann has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're asking for 10 million dollars from the gun makers. So, that probably should give those gun makers who thought this case was over with essentially some pause.

No one is denying that a flood of weapons sometimes bought legally on the U.S. side of the border then find themselves brought illegally into Mexico. The question is how to stop that flood. What's become a very lucrative business of arming these cartels in the majority of the weapons the Mexican government says it finds in drug related crime come from the U.S. And more troubling in the last several days, they've said that they

found U.S. military grade weapons, weapons that are meant for the U.S. military in the hand of cartels. And how those weapons have ended up in Mexico is something of a mystery. Whether they've come through third countries or there's some sort of black-marketing ring going on here.

But Mexico has called on the U.S. to investigate this immediately because often this means that the cartels are simply better armed than the Mexican government, that the Mexican government, when it tries to bring the cartels to heal, simply does not have the gun power to do so. And until they can bring this flood of weapons to a halt, until they can stem that flood of weapons, they simply don't have the hope of stopping either the drugs that flow north or the massive amount of weapons that come back south into the hands of those cartels.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Patrick Oppmann reporting for us there.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun is expected to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill in the coming hours. Almost three weeks after a door plug blew out mid-flight on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 aircraft. Boeing, the company that makes 737s, will pause production, delivery and support teams so that employees can attend sessions focused on quality.

NOBILO: The quality stand down will take place at Boeing's facility in Washington State on Thursday and at all its other commercial airplane factories over the next few weeks as well.

The nominations are out for this year's Academy Awards. The biggest contenders are no surprise really, but some of the snubs may leave you throwing a popcorn, depending on your preferences.

FOSTER: There are a few here.

[04:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOBILO: Welcome back to you all. The 2024 Academy Award nominations have been announced. And Oppenheimer is the film to beat. Leading the pack with the most nominations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know if we can be trusted with such a weapon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBILO: The Christopher Nolan film scored 13 nominations overall. Including best actor, best original score, best cinematography and best picture. Oppenheimer is joined by some heavy hitters in the category.

Including Killers of the Flower Moon, Past Lives, American Fiction and Barbie.

FOSTER: Barbie garnered eight nominations overall. Including one for director Greta Gerwig for adapted screenplay. But not, crucially, best director. Margot Robbie also didn't get a nomination for her leading role in the film. But Ryan Gosling's performance as Ken did.

He highlighted the snub in a statement writing, quote, there's no Ken without Barbie. And there's no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie. Their work should be recognized along with the other very deserving nominees.

NOBILO: So, let's discuss this further.

FOSTER: Well, I'm with him. Because I thought --

NOBILO: Well, we've got a guest to discuss this with. Let's bring in Clayton and then we can hear from your thoughts. Clayton, hello. You are senior awards editor at Variety. Co-host Max here is extremely impassioned about this.

FOSTER: I'm not impassioned. I'm impassioned because you disagreed with Ryan Gosling.

NOBILO: I don't agree with you. So, Clayton, I'll put this to you. I didn't think this was that surprising. It's very magnanimous of Ryan Gosling, of course. And that's a characteristic of how we've seen him behave before. But his performance was a bit more layered and interesting and comedic, wasn't it? Than Margot Robbie's, I'd say.

CLAYTON DAVIS, SENIOR AWARDS EDITOR, VARIETY: Yes, I think by nature of their roles, it was what Gosling's strength was. He was hilarious. He had a lot of the most memorable moments of the movie, as did America Ferrera, which is likely what led her to her nomination, not more so with comedy, but how it became a cultural phenomenon, pop culture. Every student aspiring actor is going to memorize that monologue for years to come. Gosling was on the circuit. It's so funny, so elusive. And now he's in.

I wasn't that surprised that Gerwig and Robbie had missed. By the nature of the genre, comedies just typically have a harder time at the Academy Awards.

FOSTER: But Gerwig's direction, particularly in the first half, was pretty amazing, wasn't it? The way she recreated that world and made it human.

NOBILO: Max watched the first half last night.

FOSTER: I did. And I also thought Margot Robbie was really good because she's playing Barbie, and she was perfect as Barbie. And you might not say that's layered, but you couldn't have got anyone better, could you?

DAVIS: Yeah, no. And I think she is going to be cemented for all time with Barbie. She is Barbie. No one will ever be able to think of anyone else that could have played this role. I think what we need to remember, and what I have had to even remember

myself, how much of a miracle it was that Barbie got this far in the Oscar race.

Even five years ago, let alone 10, 20 years ago, a movie like Barbie would never be a serious contender to receive Oscar nominations. It still received eight. However, when I was speaking with voters leading up to the final nominations being revealed, I heard a lot of similar notes of, it was good, but at the end of the day, it's still a movie about a toy doll.

I don't agree with that, but I think it was that minimalization -- minimalizing what the movie was. I think for a lot of voters, they look for that harrowing drama, that you know, about a period of time, or that really moves you in more traditional ways that we've seen. And the fact that it got this far was a big deal.

And Margot was a part of a very heavy conversation. Greta Gerwig, comedy directors have a hard time by nature, add this to the mix. I think it was just hard to imagine that she would sneak into this packed lineup of directors.

NOBILO: Has it changed at all what influences the decisions of the Academy in your view? For example, is it still truly contained to the piece of cinema itself, the quality of the acting and all the other elements?

[04:20:00]

Or do you think the impact on public consciousness, marketing campaigns or conversations and to what extent it becomes a phenomenon, does that play a role? Or is it still just about the movie?

DAVIS: I would say it's all of the above. It is about the movie. But I think what everyone has to remember when it comes to the Academy Award nominations, the nomination portion, each branch votes on their respective discipline.

So, the directors are the ones that nominate directors. If anyone remembers, a little more than 10 years ago, Ben Affleck was left off for Argo, which led to that film being a frontrunner to then win a Best Picture.

Sometimes the branch want to have you wait a little while. They feel like, you know, you're too new on the scene. They want more established veterans. Or what we see now is a large international presence.

We had 93 countries vote on the Oscars this year, more than any time in history. Academy CEO Bill Cramer shared that in an email to all members before the nominations. This is a very international voting. That's why we see Justine Triet in there for Anatomy of a Fall. We have Jonathan Glazer in there for The Zone of Interest.

So, it wasn't only that Greta Gerwig was passed over due to populist nature. They felt more passionate or more connection to the auteur visionary works of others.

Now, box office does matter, but James Cameron was nowhere near getting in last year for Avatar, The Way of Water. And that was the highest-grossing film of the year.

Sometimes, you know, the Best Picture nomination is a reward. But I think what caught a lot of people off guard is that she had been nominated by so many different groups. And Barbie was breaking so many records at different award shows that it came up short here. I think kind of caught people off guard.

FOSTER: OK, Clayton Davis, really appreciate your insight today. Thank you.

DAVIS: Thank you.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

NOBILO: We have some breaking news for you. Reports out of Russia say a Russian military plane has crashed in the southern Belgorod region with 74 people on board.

FOSTER: Nowhere yet on what caused that crash or any casualties. We'll continue monitoring this and bring you the latest developments here on CNN as soon as we get them. Because that's, you know, it's quite a significant event.

NOBILO: J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the scientists who created the Doomsday Clock, counting down the minutes until humanity is likely to destroy itself. We'll check the time on this metaphor next --

FOSTER: If we've got enough time.

NOBILO: -- on CNN, if we do have enough time.

FOSTER: Yes, we might not be back.

NOBILO: Dramatically.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOBILO: The U.S. is putting together quite the basketball team to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

[04:25:00]

LeBron James and Steph Curry headline the pool of 41 players revealed by USA Basketball on Tuesday. That list will have to be trimmed to 12, though. Jimmy Butler and Kevin Durant are among the all-stars to make the initial cut.

The Golden State Warriors' Steve Kerr will coach the team. The U.S. men have won four consecutive Olympic gold medals, including at Tokyo in 2020.

FOSTER: That's got to be one of the big highlights, isn't it? The Olympics.

Stories in the spotlight this hour.

Scientists in charge of the Doomsday Clock, which symbolizes how close humankind is to destroying the world, will reset the clock to a familiar time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is 90 seconds to midnight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Created in 1947 during the Cold War, the clock was meant to warn the public about how close humans were to self-annihilation. And the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists say right now it's very close to the end. They cite climate change, artificial intelligence and the ongoing potential for nuclear war as the reasons for the ominous trend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX GLASER, PROFESSOR OF MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: There's now talk in Washington that the U.S. nuclear arsenal will have to increase also in order to match the arsenals of Russia and China combined. So, in many ways we're setting ourselves up for a three-way arms race, which is unprecedented.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Good morning, everyone.

NOBILO: Well, exactly. Let's try and focus on a little bit more good news now to remind us why we should take care of our wonderful planet. I don't know what it is, though.

So former -- Oh, it's going to be good. Former Super Bowl champion Eli Manning presented a service dog to its new handler in the first ever guide dog draft. The yellow Labrador retriever is named Ten after the retired quarterback's jersey number.

FOSTER: Hello. Ten the pup was drafted by the president and CEO of the Guiding Eyes for the Blind organization and was clearly unfeasible by the cameras. Manning is one of the nonprofit -- nonprofit's board members.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELI MANNING, FORMER NFL QUARTERBACK: Well, it's been important to me for a long time. His number I wore in college when I came to the New York Giants, a number they made available for me to wear and wore 16 years here. It's been retired by the New York Giants.

And so, in that honor, Guiding Eyes named a dog number, you know, "Ten."

THOMAS PANEK, PRESIDENT AND CEO, GUIDING EYERS FOR THE BLIND: He will help me navigate the world walking, jogging, running and my everyday life. He's going to be at my side. He's my teammate, my partner.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Well, last year, Guiding Eyes for the Blind matched 150 guide dogs to people with vision loss.

NOBILO: Returning to our breaking news reports, out of Russia, say a Russian military plane has crashed in the southern Belgorod region with 74 people on board. Russian news agencies quoting Russia's defense ministry say 65 Ukrainian servicemen were on board. They were being flown to Belgorod ahead of a prisoner swap.

FOSTER: No word yet on what caused the crash or any casualties.

We'll continue monitoring this and bring you the latest developments here on CNN as soon as we get them.

But thank you for joining us here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster.

NOBILO: And I'm Bianca Nobilo. "CNN THIS MORNING" is up for you next.

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