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Lebanon: At Least 46 Killed By Latest Israeli Strikes; Federal Judge Unseals Special Counsel's Motion on Immunity; Ravaged Areas of North Carolina; 33 Days Until U.S. Election; U.S. Dockworkers on Strike. Aired 4:00-4:30a ET

Aired October 03, 2024 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), U.S. REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm focused on the election of 33 days from now because I want to throw Kamala Harris out of office.

GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), DEMOCRATIC VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm a veteran, I'm a gun owner, I'm a hunter. We can protect the Second Amendment, but our first responsibility is to our kids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They want to come into America and build fully automated terminals and get rid of American jobs, good paying jobs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This group has as its mission to plan attacks against racial, ethnic, religious minorities. We are not going to wait for the next tragedy to take action.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN NEWSROOM with Max Foster and Christina Macfarlane.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to all our viewers joining us from around the world. I'm Max Foster. It is Thursday, October the 3rd.

It's 9 a.m. here in London, 11 a.m. in Beirut, where Israel has struck at the heart of the Lebanese capital for the first time since the two countries were at war in 2006. At least six people were killed, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. A resident of the Beirut neighborhood says the building was home to the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Authority and the area is known to be dominated by Hezbollah's Shia allies.

Lebanese officials say at least 46 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes in a 24-hour period, and the Israeli military says eight soldiers were killed in combat in southern Lebanon on Wednesday. U.S. President Joe Biden says he plans to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relatively soon, and Israel is weighing how to respond to Iran's missile barrage on Tuesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We'll be discussing with the Israelis what they're going to do, but all seven of us agree that they have a right to respond, but they should respond in proportionally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: CNN's Paula Hancocks live for us in Abu Dhabi with more on this. Just take us through what's happened overnight, Paula.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Max, we've been seeing more strikes overnight, as you say, that one just after midnight in central Beirut killed six. And also put a city that's already on edge even more so, because you consider there are up to a million people who are displaced at this point, many of them having left southern Lebanon to avoid fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Many of those are now in central Beirut.

Now, when it comes to the southern Lebanon part as well, we do know from the Israeli side that they have suffered their first losses, saying that eight soldiers were killed. They say that they have been carrying out close-range engagements with Hezbollah fighters, claiming to have taken out about 150 sites.

Hezbollah, for its part, is saying that it managed to fight and push back Israeli troops from three different villages, the Israeli military not specifying the exact fights at this point. But we know that the fighting is ongoing.

And it feels a very different scenario to just a week ago when we were listening to the U.S. and the President, Joe Biden, talking about a potential 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Now, the Lebanese foreign minister spoke to CNN's Christiane Amanpour about that, suggesting that even the head of Hezbollah had agreed to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Are you saying Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a ceasefire just moments before he was assassinated?

ABDALLAH BOU HABIB, LEBANESE FOREIGN MINISTER: He agreed, yes, yes. We agreed completely, Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire, consulting with Hezbollah. The speaker, Mr. Berri, consulted with Hezbollah, and we informed the Americans and the French that that's what happened. And they told us that Mr. Netanyahu also agreed on the statement that was issued by both presidents.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANCOCKS: Now, that last part does tally with what Biden administration officials had said just a week ago, that they believed it did have a green light, or at least optimism from both sides. But that feels like a world away now. When you see the fighting that is ongoing, Israel is still insisting that its operation is limited, it is targeted.

[04:05:00]

But it has added another battalion to the fighting. We know that that's potentially thousands of soldiers that has been moved to the northern border to support the Israeli troops in what they are doing at this point. So there are concerns that Israel's claims of limited may not be limited for much longer -- Max.

FOSTER: We're looking at these live images from Beirut, an absolutely frightening situation. I know that in countries like the U.K. where people have been returning to, British citizens from Beirut have been talking about the atmosphere in the city right now and how frightening it is. I'm just wondering, you know, what the speculation is about how Israel may respond.

We've heard talk, haven't we, about them possibly targeting oil installations to cripple the Iranian economy. But the other option is also the nuclear facilities.

HANCOCKS: Well, that's right. I mean, when you consider the Iranian attack in its entirety was unprecedented, the sheer number of ballistic missiles, Iran says some 200, that targeted Israel. We've heard from the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, saying that the response will be very strong, it'll be a painful response, and it'll be soon.

He does also, though, say that it will be a calculated response, saying that Israel doesn't want full war with Iran, and Israel believes that Iran doesn't want that either. Now, the U.S. president was asked about whether Israel could go after the nuclear facilities in Iran, and he disagreed with that being a tactic. So certainly that is not something that's being publicly supported by the Biden administration at this point.

But what we're also hearing from senior U.S. officials is that they're not giving as much pushback to Israel as they did back in April, when Iran carried out those cruise missiles and drone attacks on Israel. There was definitely a pushback from the Biden administration asking Israel to be restrained, which it was. There doesn't appear, at least according to what officials are telling CNN, there doesn't appear to be that call for restraint as much behind the scenes, certainly not telling Israeli officials that they should take this as a win because there wasn't too much damage in Israel.

There is still this very strong support from the U.S. saying that Israel has the right to self-defense, but also calling for the response to be proportionate -- Max.

FOSTER: OK. Paul Hancocks in Abu Dhabi. Thank you for that.

The fighting in Lebanon hasn't stopped Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza, again, with civilians paying the price. More on that ahead this hour.

The judge in Donald Trump's 2020 election subversion case has unsealed a document filing details about the government's evidence.

It's offering the fullest picture yet of the prosecution's case against the former president. The 165-page document from the Office of Special Counsel, Jack Smith, was previously filed under seal and was only made public with some information redacted. CNN's Paula Reid has more.

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PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: This filing is the first time the public is getting to see Special Counsel Jack Smith's full argument for why he believes former President Trump was acting in his private capacity when he allegedly tried to undermine the 2020 election.

Now, this is important because the Supreme Court ruled in July that Trump cannot be prosecuted for things he did in his official capacity or for official acts. So prosecutors in this filing emphasizing things that Trump did as an office seeker, not an office holder.

Saying, quote: At its core, the defendant's scheme was a private one. He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.

This new filing also includes some never-before-seen evidence, including conversations he had with then-Vice President Mike Pence and his White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. It's unclear, though, if the prosecutors will be successful in using that because the Supreme Court also said you can't use anything you do in your official capacity as evidence, and those are, of course, two of the president's top advisers.

Now, this is all coming out because the judge overseeing this case, Judge Tanya Chutkan, is allowing this to be released. The special counsel submitted nearly 200 pages detailing his argument, but it was up to the judge to allow this to be released. Lawyers for former President Trump have objected to the release of this evidence, especially so close to the election, and after it was disclosed today, they started shifting to political arguments. Trump arguing that this was, quote, a political hit job, and then the campaign framing it as an effort to interfere with the election.

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Now, they write in a statement, quote: The release of the falsehood- ridden, unconstitutional January 6th brief immediately following Tim Walz's disastrous debate performance is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine American democracy and interfere in this election.

Now, this is similar to the arguments we've heard across all of Trump's four criminal cases. They have repeatedly argued that he is somehow the target of some effort to interfere with the November election, but it is important to note that it was up to the judge to release this, not the special counsel. Paula Reid, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Earlier, CNN anchor and chief legal analyst Laura Coates discussed the motion and how the legal process is supposed to work.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: White House counsel is not the private attorney of Donald Trump or any particular president. It's for the office of the presidency. They're concerned with what's happening in the current administration and in the prospective administrations.

Why? They want to preserve things like what would be the conversations, presidential privileges and the like, things that would go to the very heart and core mission of the office. And so if you exclude that particular person and say, I want my personal attorney instead, you really undermine your ability in the future to say, no, no, no, I was asking because I'm the president of the United States.

Yet and still, they'll likely say, well, counsel was counsel, and perhaps Donald Trump was not essentially knowledgeable about the distinction. He had an attorney present. That's what he was trying to do. But then later go back to White House counsel. What we see in this filing, though, does not suggest that they will be able to have a successful argument.

This comes down to one very basic thing. But either you were acting as somebody in pursuit of an office or you were an office holder. If you were an office holder, you have to abide by the parameters of the office, and you cannot sort of have these frolicking detours into personal behavior.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday met with officials in North and South Carolina facing monumental recovery from Hurricane Helene. The neighboring states have governors from different political parties.

But the president noted, quote, in a moment like this, we put politics aside. There are no Democrats or Republicans. There are only Americans.

President Biden later took an aerial tour of the devastation. North and South Carolina, the two of the states hit hardest by Helene, and the president assured leaders the federal government has their back and support would continue.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris toured some of the damage in nearby Georgia. She updated officials and the public on FEMA's disaster relief efforts and announced that President Biden had approved Georgia's request to be 100 percent reimbursed by the federal government for storm damage costs. Harris promised that states would receive continued support amid the immense loss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We are here for the long haul. There's a lot of work that's going to need to happen over the coming days, weeks, and months. And the coordination that we have dedicated ourselves to will be long- lasting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Senator Isabel Rosales and her team gained access to some of the hardest-hit parts of North Carolina. Following a FEMA team, they were able to see damage previously unseen since Helene passed through. Here's their exclusive report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Rare and exclusive access. CNN guided up the Blue Ridge Mountains by one of FEMA's 24 deployed urban search and rescue teams. We're deep in hard-hit Avery County, North Carolina.

ROSALES: It just collapsed on the sidewalk.

ROSALES (voice-over): Portions of Beech Mountain, a remote ski resort town, left unrecognizable by Helene's wrath.

ROSALES: Signs of the road just like washed off.

ROSALES (voice-over): These winding mountain roads made further difficult to navigate by obstacles.

ROSALES: We are entering an area that's closed off to regular people. Only first responders are allowed. And it is because it's so treacherous. We're seeing it for ourselves like thick mud all over the place, trees that are down, portions of the road has crumbled down. So I'm really concentrating here. This is difficult to drive.

ROSALES (voice-over): And even when debris and fallen trees are cleared by chainsaw and manpower to make way for rescuers, another major barrier.

ROSALES: This FEMA supervisor who's been on his cell phone trying to get in touch with his team to figure out where they're at.

ROSALES (voice-over): Division Group Supervisor Colin Burress pulls us over.

ROSALES: Can't get a signal? We're seeing for ourselves everything that the governor has been talking about.

COLIN BURRESS, FEMA DIVISION GROUP SUPERVISOR: Right.

ROSALES: Officials have been talking about. How big of a challenge communication is, not just for civilians, but you guys trying to do these rescue operations?

BURRESS: It is. You know, when you don't have cell service, e-mail, text, all of that becomes a challenge and it kind of slows things down.

ROSALES (voice-over): Then by pure luck, a few of his men spot us.

[04:15:00]

ROSALES: They found him just out of the blue. So this is great. We're being reunited and here's a command post right here.

ROSALES (voice-over): This 80-member FEMA team assisting the North Carolina National Guard now on day six of rescuing survivors stranded and cut off from help.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So he's just trying to find live people and of course they're trained to find human remains.

ROSALES (voice-over): They huddle over maps.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beech Mountain and Seven Devils is kind of a priority.

ROSALES (voice-over): Working out the next day's urgent search.

ROSALES: How does this work? You guys are doing grids? I see this black line right here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's just easier for us to keep up. So we'll send squads. We'll send, you know, get to grid one or grid two, grid three, grid four.

ROSALES (voice-over): Before sunset, we roll out.

ROSALES: We came up about three miles, but honestly, it feels like 10.

ROSALES (voice-over): Back down the mountain, a second look at what Helene laid to waste. Before we can make it down, another danger getting through these torn and treacherous roads.

JASON STUART, TASK FORCE LEADER, TENNESSEE TASK FORCE 1: This is a special case. Typically, the roads washed out in a mountain atmosphere like this, you know, hurricanes usually happen, you know, towards the coast. But this is definitely more challenges for us that we haven't faced before.

ROSALES (voice-over): Regardless, first responders across the state push on. More than 400 people rescued so far, says the governor's office, but the work nowhere near done until all the missing are found.

Isabel Rosales, Avery County, North Carolina, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE) FOSTER: Starlink, the Internet service provided by SpaceX is offering 30 days of free service to those living in areas affected by Hurricane Helene. Those who may qualify just have to enter their address on the company's website to activate the offer. Starlink says it will continue to reevaluate the need based on conditions in the affected areas.

And for more information about how you can help Hurricane Helene victims, be sure to go to CNN.com/impact to find a list of relief organizations that have been vetted to help those in need.

More than 43 million people in the U.S. Watched Tuesday's vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and J. D. Vance. That's a significant drop from the 2020 debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence, which had 57 million viewers.

But Tuesday's debate was still one of the most watched single telecast of the year in the U.S. At a campaign rally in the swing state of Michigan on Wednesday, Vance was asked about a key moment during that debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why didn't you answer the question last night during the debate about who won the 2020 presidential election?

VANCE: Well, look, here's the simple reason. The media is obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago. I'm focused on the election of 33 days from now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Well, Vance said he believes this will be the safest and most secure election yet, though his running mate continues to tell election lies and has been laying the groundwork to dispute the results, should he lose.

Meanwhile, Tim Walz visited battleground Pennsylvania on Wednesday. The Democratic vice presidential nominee criticized Vance for dodging his question about Donald Trump's 2020 election loss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALZ: Mike Pence did his duty. He honored his oath and he chose the Constitution over Donald Trump.

Understand, in that 88th minute last night, with that damning non- answer, Senator Vance made it clear he will always make a different choice than Mike Pence made. And as I said then and I will say now, that should be absolutely disqualifying if you're asking to be the vice president of the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Well, former first lady Melania Trump has come out in support of abortion rights, putting her at odds with many in the Republican Party. In an excerpt from her upcoming memoir, obtained by "The Guardian."

Trump says: A woman's fundamental right of individual liberty to own her own life grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.

The self-titled memoir is expected to detail her early life in relationship with Donald Trump. It's due out on Tuesday.

Experts say there's no need to stockpile toilet paper, but you may want to get a bunch of bananas ahead. How the U.S. port strike might affect your grocery list.

Plus, it's been a bumpy year for two companies owned by Elon Musk. Warning signs for Tesla and X straight ahead.

And later, the NBA travels to Abu Dhabi for some pre-season games and players for the Denver Nuggets making the most of the adventure.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FOSTER: President Biden is urging striking port workers and shipping executives to come to an agreement soon to avoid significant damage to the economy. The dockworkers began their strike at ports along the eastern Gulf Coast on Tuesday. A research firm estimates a one-week port strike will cost the U.S. economy more than $2 billion.

Biden spoke to reporters before taking an aerial tour of the areas hit by Hurricane Helene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: This natural disaster is incredibly consequential. The last thing we need on top of that is a man-made disaster that's going on at the ports. We're getting pushback already, and we're hearing from the folks regionally that they're having trouble getting the product they need because of the port strike.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Dockworkers are demanding higher wages and assurances that they won't be replaced by robots such as driverless trucks that move goods from ships. More now from CNN's Karin Caifa.

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KARIN CAIFA, CNN REPORTER (voice-over): There's a big gap between demands of the International Longshoremen's Association and the latest offer from the United States Maritime Alliance, or USMX, which represents the major shipping lines, all foreign-owned and terminal operators and port authorities. At issue, wages and automation at the ports.

HAROLD J. DAGGETT, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S ASSOCIATION: They want to come in to America and build fully-automated terminals and get rid of American jobs. Good paying jobs that support families with medical, pensions, annuities, and pay taxes.

CAIFA (voice-over): Some of the 14 ports involved, the massive port of New York and New Jersey, as well as Boston, Baltimore and Charleston, South Carolina.

[04:25:03]

HENRY MCMASTER, SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR: I'm confident that everyone that is involved in that on either end or aware of it and did whatever they could, but we cannot settle the strike between the carriers and the union.

CAIFA (voice-over): Also Wilmington, Delaware, which declares itself America's largest banana port. That means bananas could come up short at the grocery store.

And even though domestic farmers grow cherries, certain berries and other fruits, they can't meet all of the nation's demand without imports to boost supply prices could push higher. Raw ingredients like sugar and cocoa imports also at risk, as well as imported chocolate and alcohol. The good news for holiday shoppers, things like apparel, toys and other gifts don't have a shelf life like food imports and can park in a warehouse for months. So when retailers saw a potential strike on the horizon, they rushed to get products delivered before the strike began.

CAIFA: Despite recent reports on social media, any shortage of toilet paper and other paper goods at stores has nothing to do with a port strike and everything to do with panic buying. Most paper goods that are used here in the U.S. are produced here in the U. S. Therefore, no need to import them.

However, exports could soon become a problem for these companies, meaning there could actually be a glut.

In Washington, I'm Karin Caifa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: It's been a rough year for Elon Musk and two of his companies. Tesla reported an increase in sales for the first time this year, though it's still lagging behind in overall sales compared to last year. The automaker delivered more than 460,000 vehicles worldwide in the third quarter, up 4 percent from Q two. But deliveries are down 2 percent year to date as the company faces increased competition.

And nearly two years to the day since he bought Twitter and turned it into X, the social media platform has plunged in value, losing nearly 80 percent of its worth, according to investment firm Fidelity. CNN's Clare Duffy has details from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Yes, not a good year for the value of these two Musk companies. Let's start with X. Investment giant Fidelity publishes regular updates on what it believes its shares in X are worth.

When Musk first acquired what was then Twitter in the fall of 2022, Fidelity estimated its shares were worth $19.6 million. Today, it says those same shares are worth just $4.2 million. What that means is that Fidelity believes the value of X has fallen by around 80 percent since Musk's takeover. Musk paid $44 billion for the company. Fidelity believes it's now worth just $9.4 billion, less than two years later.

Now that's just one estimate, but it is a stark reminder of how much Musk's changes to the company have hurt its value by allowing more controversial content, hate speech, conspiracy theories and Musk promoting some of these conspiracy theories himself. The platform has turned off advertisers and Musk's own taunting of advertisers hasn't helped either.

Now on Tesla, the company actually reported its first quarterly sales increase this year this morning. Its sales were up 6 percent from the same quarter a year ago, but year to date sales figures are still down year over year because the prior quarters were so rough. Tesla is facing steeper competition from other traditional automakers who have gotten into the EV business and Chinese automakers.

And Tesla shares fell another 3 percent today despite the sales jump reported this morning, which seems to be an indication that investors think the hard times are not yet over.

Clare Duffy, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: There's more legal trouble coming for Sean Diddy Combs. Dozens of people are accusing the music mogul of sexual abuse and other sex crimes. Here what their attorney told CNN about the allegations coming up.

Plus, a powerful typhoon makes landfall in Taiwan and threatens to inundate some areas with heavy rain.

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