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Egyptian Officials Trying to Jump Start Cease-Fire Talks; Hamas Receives Israeli Cease-Fire Counterproposal; College Demonstrations Across The U.S. and Europe; Trump Hush Money Trial Resumes Tuesday; South Africa's 30th National Freedom Day. Aired 4-5a ET

Aired April 27, 2024 - 04:00   ET

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

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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Welcome to all of you watching us around the world, I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

Hamas says its reviewing the latest Israeli ceasefire proposal as Egypt raises concerns about a possible Rafah offensive. We'll look at efforts to restart talks.

Meanwhile, protests on universities in the U.S. and abroad are spreading. We'll look at the political fallout that could come with them.

Plus Trump's first week on trial wraps up. Who took the stand to testify and what we can expect heading into next week.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from Atlanta this is CNN NEWSROOM with Kim Brunhuber.

BRUNHUBER: We're following new signs of possible movement in ceasefire and hostage talks involving Israel and Hamas. On Friday, Hamas said it's received Israel's response to its proposal and plans to review it.

We're also getting a sense of the damage Israel's strikes and attacks in Gaza have done. On Friday, one United Nations official said it could take 14 years to remove the rubble and unexploded munitions.

In Israel, Egyptian officials are trying to jumpstart the ceasefire talks. Egypt is said to be concerned about a possible IDF ground offensive in Rafah that could push Palestinians into Egypt.

Meanwhile, Israeli demonstrators aren't letting up the pressure on their government. They were on the streets of Tel Aviv this week, demanding the hostages be released. CNN's Jeremy Diamond has more from Jerusalem.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, over the course of the last couple of weeks, those ceasefire and hostage negotiations really have been stalled, backsliding even in certain respects.

But on Friday, there appeared to be an effort to try and revive these negotiations. An Egyptian delegation traveling to Israel to meet with Israeli officials, to try and come up with a new framework for a potential ceasefire and hostage release deal.

That new framework, if indeed they are able to put that together, is expected to be presented to Hamas in the coming days. And it will be critical to determining not only if a deal can be achieved in the coming weeks but also potentially whether or not an Israeli military offensive in Rafah actually moves forward.

There's no question that that is indeed the kind of time pressure element that is hanging over these negotiations and also very much influencing this last ditch effort, a full court press of sorts being put forward by the Egyptian government.

Rafah is right on the Egyptian border. Egyptian officials have long held serious concerns about the possibility of Palestinians flooding across that border, if indeed a Rafah offensive took place.

That's something that Israeli officials say will not happen. They say the population will instead be evacuated north. But it nonetheless is a factor influencing Egypt's thinking at the moment.

Now, it's not clear if these talks will actually result in a breakthrough. But there is some very cautious optimism, once again, beginning to pick up, including from the U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.

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JAKE SULLIVAN, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: If you would ask me a week ago, I would've said I felt we were in a deadlock. Not that this was hopeless because we will get this done but that we were at a bit of an impasse.

Today, I believe that there is a renewed effort underway involving Qatar and Egypt, as well as Israel, to try to find a way forward.

Can I guarantee that will happen in the near term?

I cannot.

But do I think that there is new momentum, new life in these hostage talks?

I believe there is. And it is our job to try to take that new life, push it forward and get to an end game, where every one of those hostages, including the American hostages, is home safe with their family.

(END VIDEO CLIP) DIAMOND: And look, there's no question that Israel and Hamas remain very far apart in these negotiations.

But there has been some movement. A U.S. official saying that this latest framework allows for the unrestricted return of Palestinians to northern Gaza. That is something that Hamas has been pushing for, refusing to budge on over the course of the last several weeks.

And now seemingly something that Israel is prepared to potentially agree to. But there are other sticking points of Hamas that haven't -- we have not seen the same kind of movement. Hamas still insisting on the total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza on a permanent end to this war.

Those are elements that Israeli government officials have not been willing to agree to up until now. So major questions about the fate of these negotiations, potentially decisive days ahead.

And we've also seen, of course, the Israeli military beginning to put things in place to carry out that ground offensive in Rafah.

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So all of that very much hanging in the balance.

Meanwhile, the war in Gaza is still continuing. We've seen airstrikes over the course of the last week. And a milestone once again, another grim milestone of Palestinians killed, more than 34,000 killed since the beginning of this war -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Jerusalem.

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BRUNHUBER: The United Nations says, lack of evidence prompted it to close some investigations into claims that staffers from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency took part in the October 7th attack.

The original claim in January was that 12 members of UNRWA took part in the attack. For context, that's out of 13,000 people UNRWA employs in Gaza.

Now on Friday, the U.N. said it closed one case because Israel provided no evidence. It's suspended three others because it says Israel didn't provide enough evidence. It's still investigating the eight remaining cases.

The U.N. says seven other cases were brought to its attention in March and April. It has suspended one of those, pending additional evidence and is investigating the six others.

U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken says, it's possible to roll out a two-state solution proposal for Israel and the Palestinians before a ceasefire in Gaza, along with a framework to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Here's what he told CNN earlier.

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ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: We've been clear about what the vision is and, beyond that, we've been working intensely to flesh it out, working with our partners, working with European partners on this as well.

And I think the more concrete it becomes and the more it moves from the hypothetical and theoretical to something that's actually possible, that's real, then everyone involved is actually going to have to make decisions and make choices.

And so we're doing this work and we're trying to make it as real as possible so that people do decide.

ATWOOD: And maybe share it before a cease-fire is in place?

BLINKEN: I think certainly that's possible.

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BRUNHUBER: Blinken sat down with CNN's Kylie Atwood for a wide-ranging interview after wrapping up a three-day trip to China. He defended some of the pro-Palestinian protests that have swept across college campuses in the U.S.

He said, while there have been some instances of clear anti-Semitism, quote, "protests in and of themselves are not anti-Semitic."

And those pro-Palestinian protests that have gripped college campuses here in the U.S. have spread to schools in Europe. In the U.K. on Friday, students gathered outside University College London to protest the school's ties to Israeli academic institutions and other groups staged a pro-Palestinian protest in Warwick, in central England.

In Paris, dozens of students remained at the prestigious Sciences Po University well into the evening. There was a strong police presence but the scene was peaceful.

In the U.S., widespread protests on Friday that were mostly peaceful but now the University of Illinois is warning of consequences if demonstrators don't leave an encampment there.

Columbia University's Senate has voted to create a task force to investigate allegations that the administration violated the privacy and rights of students and faculty when it called police to intervene. About 40 people were arrested in Denver after they tried to set up an encampment at the joint campus of three universities.

Some Jewish students have joined the protests against the war in Gaza but others say they no longer feel safe or welcome on their campuses.

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SARAH BORUS, BARNARD COLLEGE STUDENT: The Gaza solidarity encampment is a reflection of the Jewish tradition of togetherness and liberation. I have never felt more proud to be Jewish and more in line with the

values of my faith than when I was being taken out of Columbia's lawns with my hands ziptied behind my back alongside 107 other students, risking safety and suspension in order to push our university to divest from genocide, apartheid and occupation in Palestine.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That Zionism, as I'm walking to class, feels as though the protesters on my campus want my Judaism to cease to exist.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I, like many students, fear that the extremist rhetoric could, at any moment, become real violence.

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BRUNHUBER: And joining us now is Tim Naftali, CNN presidential historian and senior research scholar at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Just to start, what do you make of where things stand right now at your university?

Some would consider it the epicenter of the protests. The tensions are rising, the standoff between the students and the administrators continues.

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Indeed. I think what happens at Columbia University will be a bellwether for where the demonstrations go in the rest of the country.

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NAFTALI: At the moment, apparently, I have read that negotiations are ongoing. The situation on campus is such that students can get to class. But understandably, a number of students still feel unsafe of the demonstration was -- at least what I saw today was quite quiet.

But the pro-Palestinian students continue to occupy a portion of the lawn.

BRUNHUBER: Put this into historical context for us.

I mean, many of us associate, say, the '60s and '70s with protests over civil rights and the Vietnam War.

Are there any parallels here?

I'm thinking specifically of a president facing protests from young people over an unpopular war in an election year. NAFTALI: I want to talk about one of the differences and then we can explore some of the similarities.

One of the differences is that unlike the anti-apartheid divestment demonstrations of the 1980s, the expression of free ideas, that free expression did not create a sense of unease among other students. There were very few, very few, who opposed the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s.

And those students didn't feel threatened by the language. And in the 1960s, the situation on campuses was actually more tense and, in some cases, much more violent. In fact, indeed, there was violence.

And the student movements at some universities in the 1960s sought to stop what was going on at the school. They had to shut down the school to make it difficult for students to attend classes. We have not seen that now. What we have seen, though, is these crosscurrents in a very difficult period for many students.

This is a post-pandemic student body, a student body that is particularly -- has been led to be very sensitive about secure spaces, where universities have been talking about micro- and macroaggressions.

At the same time, some of the language that students are using to express their moral outrage of what they're seeing in the Middle East is understandably troubling and concerning for their fellow students in a way that was not the case in the student demonstrations of the 1960s and the 1980s.

So university administrators are facing this very troubling and complicated situation where, on the one hand, universities must stand for freedom of expression. On the other hand, universities are intensely sensitive and have been more sensitive, I would argue, in the last 10 years or so about creating safe spaces for students.

And this is, I think -- there's a combination of concerns that makes these demonstrations a bigger challenge for university administrators than certainly the demonstrations of the 1980s.

BRUNHUBER: A challenge for politicians as well and, politically, it may be easier for Republican presidents of years past -- Nixon, for example -- to face down student protests. President Biden faces losing support from a key demographic here.

Any lessons from the past for the president?

NAFTALI: Well, in 1969, when President Nixon gave his silent majority speech, in a sense, the Vietnam War became his war. Richard Nixon, people easily forget, was the anti-war candidate.

So Nixon comes into office promising a secret plan to get out of the war. Well, he doesn't get it out of the war as we know. And the public came to understand that. And by 1969, the Vietnam War was Nixon's war.

And so when students were out demonstrating against the war, they were demonstrating against Richard Nixon. Right now, we're in a bizarre situation, because this is Israel's war against Hamas. This is not the United States' war against Hamas.

And Israel would conduct its war pretty much the way it wants to, regardless of what the United States tells Israel. Joe Biden's effort to stay close to Netanyahu, prime minister Netanyahu, a man who was no friend of his, in order to have some leverage, I believe, over the Israeli government's conduct of the war has not succeeded.

There are many Americans who fault Joe Biden for not having either more leverage over Netanyahu or for not having distanced the United States from Israel's choice in how to deal with the terrorist attack of October 7th.

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This doesn't make it Joe Biden's war but Joe Biden is now facing backlash from parts of the Democratic coalition that he desperately needs to win what is likely to be a very close election in November.

Joe Biden is going to have a very hard time persuading those folks to come to the polls for him in November unless there is some substantive change in the nature of the war in Gaza.

This is a problem for Joe Biden and there is not much he can do, unless he can somehow persuade Israel to conduct the war differently. And unless he can somehow persuade Hamas to release the remaining hostages.

BRUNHUBER: Something he's been unable to do so far. We'll have to leave it there. Really appreciate your analysis, Tim Naftali. Thank you so much.

NAFTALI: My pleasure, Kim. Kim, thank you.

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BRUNHUBER: The U.S. Defense Department is pledging $6 billion in long- term military aid for Ukraine.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made the announcement on Friday, calling it the largest security assistance package to date. It'll include interceptors for Ukraine's air defense systems, counter drone systems and other critical equipment.

Austin's announcement comes days after U.S. President Joe Biden signed off on a massive foreign aid package that included nearly $61 billion in assistance for Ukraine. Here's what Ukraine's foreign minister told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

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DMYTRO KULEBA, UKRAINIAN MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS: it's good to have America back. It's better when good things happen later than do not happen at all. We all know what follows when we lose.

And therefore, we will keep fighting. What we -- what we do need is our partners to believe, firmly believe, that Ukraine's victory is attainable and, second, to have no fear toward Putin because Putin is a political animal who can sense fear.

And when he does, he becomes more aggressive.

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BRUNHUBER: And you can see Christiane's full interview with the Ukrainian foreign minister later today on "THE AMANPOUR HOUR." That starts at 11:00 am in New York, 4:00 pm in London, right here on CNN.

Donald Trump's hush money trial wraps for the week as his former assistant takes the stand and defense works to discredit a main witness. Details and a preview of what's next ahead on CNN. Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: Jurors in Donald Trump's hush money trial have a three-day weekend to reflect on what they heard during the first full week of testimony. On Friday, David Pecker, the former publisher of the "National Enquirer," wrapped up four days of testimony.

Trump's former assistant also took the stand. CNN's chief legal correspondent Paula Reid has the details.

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So we have another day of court in a freezing courthouse. It's very cold in there.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Former President Donald Trump's still not warming up to the reality of being on trial in the New York hush money case.

Today in court, David Pecker, the former publisher of the "National Enquirer," was back on the witness stand, tying Pecker's non- prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors to an agreement he made to sell the "National Enquirer," a deal contingent on the investigation into his company being resolved.

From a timing standpoint, it would have added onto the stress of the transaction, Pecker testified.

They also tried to show how Pecker had other reasons beyond just helping Trump win the White House for running negative stories about Trump's opponents. Pecker testified that his magazine ran stories about Bill and Hillary Clinton prior to the 2015 Trump Tower meeting, where an agreement to help Trump was allegedly breached.

Running those stories was beneficial to AMI, Pecker testified.

After his testimony wrapped up, prosecutors used the last few hours of the day to call two additional witnesses. The first was Trump's longtime assistant.

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TRUMP: Rhona, let me have the calls, please.

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Reid (voice-over): Rhona Graff was a fixture in Trump's office for decades. She testified how, before Trump became president, she was his gatekeeper, keeping close track of his contacts, emails, phone calls and meetings.

She told the jury it was a very stimulating, exciting, fascinating place to be.

REID: Court is not in session on Monday but the trial will resume on Tuesday, likely wrapping up a banking associate who worked closely with Michael Cohen to build the shell company he used to pay Stormy Daniels.

And then it's unclear who the prosecution's next big witness will be -- Paula Reid, CNN, New York.

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BRUNHUBER: With six months to go before the U.S. presidential election, it's unclear if Donald Trump and Joe Biden will actually debate each other before voters go to the polls. But on Friday, both candidates said separately, that they were ready to go.

First, President Biden talked with radio host Howard Stern about it.

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HOWARD STERN, TALK RADIO HOST: I don't know if you're going to debate your opponent.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am, somewhere. I don't know when. I'm happy to debate him.

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BRUNHUBER: And then Donald Trump responded a short time later outside the New York courthouse, where his hush money trial is being held. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: I've invited Biden to debate. He can do it anytime he wants, including tonight. I'm ready. Here we are. I invited him to the courthouse.

We're willing to do it Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night or Friday night on national television. We're ready. Just tell me where. We'll do it in the White House. That would be very comfortable, actually.

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BRUNHUBER: It's a momentous day in South Africa, a country celebrating 30 years of democracy. But some of its citizens say, there are new problems to face. A live report coming up next on CNN NEWSROOM, please stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: South Africa is celebrating today, 30th anniversary of the historic election that made the former political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, president. The nation's first all-race democratic election was a huge milestone in post-apartheid South Africa.

The country is marking the event right now with a ceremony in Pretoria. But with evidence that inequality still exists, the once hopeful promise of democracy may be losing its appeal ahead of next month's critical elections.

Those elections pose a serious threat to Mandela's party, the African National Congress, holding onto power.

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Our David McKenzie is live from Johannesburg.

So David, politicians are using this anniversary as an occasion to mark how far the country's come. But given the country's current troubles, it's not lost on many voters, how far there still is to go.

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right and also many of the voters or potential voters in the election were born after 1994, the so-called born free generations. I think that euphoria of that moment, 30 years ago, is lost on a large percentage of this country, because they weren't there to witness it.

But it is a very significant moment here in South Africa. If you cast your mind back to 43 years of apartheid and even legislated racism before apartheid, the country is peaceful. It has put more kids into school, though the quality of education is a serious concern.

And so yes, the government will be celebrating this anniversary but many are, in fact, looking to the elections in roughly a month's time -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, and, David, there's plenty of disillusionment and frustration.

Any sense that the government might lose a significant amount of support here?

MCKENZIE: Well, that's the going estimation at this point from pollsters and also political analysts, that the ANC will face -- the African National Congress, Mandela's party, will face its biggest challenge yet.

And certainly this could be the most interesting election to watch since the 1994 first democratic election. Polls are sometimes tricky to assess in this country.

But the trend is important and the trend is that the ANC is losing support. There has also been a splintering of the party, with its former youth league leader, in Julius Malema, a left-wing party, gaining ground as well as former president Jacob Zuma, likely to also contest the election and potentially bleed votes away from at least one key province.

So if the ANC loses its simple majority or over 50 percent it could be forced to form a coalition and many feel there could be tense or at least interesting times ahead for South African democracy. And that the next few years or few months at least, could be important to watch -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, momentous election. We'll be watching. David McKenzie, thank you so much.

That wraps this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber. "INSIDE AFRICA" is next on CNN and I'll be back with more news in half an hour.