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Biden to Meet Trump Wednesday for Transition Meeting; U.S. Military Leaders Prepping for New Trump Presidency; Economic Concerns Helped Trump Win the White House; Israeli PM Netanyahu Has High Hopes with President-Elect Trump; Ukraine, Russia Trade Massive Drone Attacks Over Weekend; COP 29 Climate Change Summit Set to Begin; Rome's Trevi Fountain Undergoes a Makeover. Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired November 10, 2024 - 23:00   ET

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

[23:00:37]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, thanks so much for joining me. I'm Jim Sciutto live in Washington where it's 11:00 p.m. on the East Coast, 8:00 out West.

Right now the eyes of the political world are focused squarely on Florida and Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. That is where the president-elect is seeing a stream of visitors now, including many seeking jobs in his new administration as well as those looking to influence his choices for those top spots.

Trump is expected to announce several key positions in the coming days as he prepares for inauguration. A source tells CNN Trump has offered New York congresswoman and campaign surrogate Elise Stefanik the job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Trump is expected to bring back as well Tom Homan who served as acting director of ICE, Immigrations and Custom Enforcement, during his first administration.

Sources say that Homan may serve in a czar-like role fulfilling Trump's campaign promise to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. This week Trump will travel to the White House for an Oval Office meeting with outgoing President Joe Biden.

Sunlen Serfaty has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: This is a big moment for the incoming and outgoing president when the two men are set to meet here at the White House on Wednesday. And this is a tradition that notably was not afforded to President Biden when he beat Donald Trump in 2020 as Trump then really was challenging the election results.

So the White House going into this meeting being very clear and explicit that Biden is going to emphasize the smooth transition of power, emphasize that the transition should be peaceful, and also talk about the importance of working to bring the country together after the election season.

Here's National Security adviser Jake Sullivan.

JAKE SULLIVAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: President Biden made clear when President Zelenskyy was here in Washington a couple of months ago that we would spend all of the resources that were provided to us by the Congress on time and in full. And of course President Biden will have the opportunity over the next 70 days to make the case to the Congress and to the incoming administration that the United States should not walk away from Ukraine, that walking away from Ukraine means more instability in Europe.

SERFATY: And that's certainly notable there that President Biden plans to really push incoming President Trump on some of his top domestic and foreign policy issues. Many issues where the two men certainly have divergent viewpoints. Most notably on Ukraine aid, the White House telling us that this is something that Biden will make the case about the future of Ukraine, especially making sure that Ukraine continues to receive aid from the U.S. Certainly President Biden's legacy at stake here as he deals with what he focuses on both domestically and on the world stage in the last 70 or so days he has in office.

Sunlen Serfaty, CNN, at the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Great deal at stake for Ukraine, as well.

Well, as Donald Trump works on building his next administration, career government and military employees are bracing for how his presidency will impact them. Officials at the Pentagon are said to be gaming out various scenarios, quite serious ones, as they prepare for the return of a familiar, yet quite controversial commander-in-chief.

Natasha Bertrand reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Pentagon officials have begun to have informal and preliminary discussions about just how the department would respond if President Trump issued an unlawful order to the military or if President Trump deployed active duty U.S. troops to American cities for domestic law enforcement purposes as well as to help with his mass deportation plan that he has promised to enact when he is in power.

Now top of mind for Defense officials here is, of course, just how the future president plans to deploy the U.S. Military domestically, something that is highly controversial here within the Pentagon. And, you know, Trump has hinted many times, and he has outright said at times that he does intend or that he would support the use of the U.S. Military to conduct domestic law enforcement here in the United States.

So the U.S. Military officials that we have been speaking to say that they are gaming out scenarios under which that would occur and how they would respond. [23:05:03]

For example, what that chain of command would look like and how they would push back or accommodate other requests made by Trump that were deemed more controversial. Another aspect of this, of course, is Schedule F, which is an executive order that Trump issued during his first term that essentially would reclassify a huge swath of apolitical government employees to make them easily -- more easily fireable. And that is something that the Pentagon is also bracing for and has been scrambling to try to address before President Trump takes office on January 20th.

So the bottom line here is that given the very hostile relationship that the Pentagon had with Donald Trump during the first Trump administration and the fact that so many of Trump's former senior military officials have spoken out against him in recent weeks, months and years, with John Kelly, his former White House chief of staff and a retired general, going as far as to call him a fascist, Pentagon officials, largely at the senior level here, are bracing for a potentially similar relationship with the incoming White House.

Natasha Bertrand, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Joining me now to discuss CNN military analyst and retired Air Force colonel Cedric Leighton.

Good to have you on. You know what's interesting, look at the picture that we showed there during Natasha's report. You have those folks surrounding the president-elect in his first administration, Esper, Pence, Milley, none of whom supported him in this election, and some of whom had quite public and critical comments about his -- how he plans to exercise power.

So I want to drill down on one of the scenarios that the Pentagon is preparing for, and that is that Trump issues potentially an unlawful order such as using troops against U.S. citizens. First of all, how seriously do you take that possibility?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Oh, Jim, I take it very seriously. And it's one of those areas where there are two different sets of laws, well, at least two different sets of laws that one can look at. One is the Posse Comitatus Act, that is an act done in the 1870s that basically prohibits the use of the military in a law enforcement capacity.

Now, there's an exception to that. There's actually several exceptions, but the one most commonly cited would be the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection Act would allow the president to use the military in an emergency, say a riot situation or something like that. In fact the last time it was used was with the Los Angeles riots in 1992 when they did deploy active duty troops in that area.

Turned out that the local law enforcement and the California National Guard had to actually taken care of that situation at that particular moment in time. But this is a very serious issue, and it should not be taken lightly because the way the military is set up here in the United States, it's a professional military designed to deal with outward facing threats, not inwardly perceived threats. And that's a major difference between us and many other nations.

SCIUTTO: Trump is currently building an administration that his team says is quite, you know, intently focused on loyalty and not just at the cabinet level, but right down into the civil service. And he talked quite publicly about changing the bipartisan or the nonpartisan civil service that's been the tradition of this country for, well, for many decades and longer.

Let me ask you this. Inside the Pentagon, what is to stop the president-elect from appointing folks to senior positions who would not disobey an unlawful order, who would just, well, do the president's bidding?

LEIGHTON: Well, it's certainly a big risk. And of course when you look at loyalty as being one of the criteria, that's one thing in a private business. But in this particular case, the thing about loyalty is that it is also -- should also be the kind of loyalty that speaks truth to power. And if that is not the kind of loyalty that they're seeking, if it's blind obedience that they're seeking, there is a considerable danger in that because then you get into scenarios where there's no adult in the room, and everybody just does what one individual, in this case the future president, is actually saying and is actually ordering.

So if that happens, what that does is it de-professionalizes not only the civil service, but also the military forces. And when those forces are de-professionalized, then it becomes a real problem because those forces then are considered to be the instruments of that individual and not supporting the Constitution, which in fact they are sworn to uphold, and that is the danger in that.

SCIUTTO: You of course served in the military, you speak to a lot of folks who did and who currently serve in the military. Would you describe this concern about a President Trump overstepping the bounds of the law and norms as serious or do they view it as an outlier?

[23:10:12]

LEIGHTON: Most of them view it as serious because, you know, once you get into a senior position whether it's in the civil service or in the armed forces, you understand some of the ramifications. You're made to understand some of the ramifications of various scenarios. And scenarios such as the ones that are being discussed in the Pentagon are ones that, you know, are kind of the nightmare piece where you have somebody who is potentially doing something that is just in their own personal interest and not in the interest of the nation, and not in concert with the laws of the nation.

And if that's the case, then there are some significant issues that basically could lead to a constitutional crisis, and that's the kind of thing that a lot of people in the military try very hard to avoid. And I think the same is true for the civil service. Certainly for the civil servants that I know.

SCIUTTO: Right.

LEIGHTON: It's extremely true.

SCIUTTO: Do you see President-elect Trump as president as employing the military in some capacity along the border to carry out his border policy, but also potentially deportation, mass deportation plans?

LEIGHTON: Well, it's certainly possible, but there are a lot of law enforcement agencies, in particular the Border Patrol and of course ICE that would be better equipped to handle that kind of thing. The U.S. Military has had a role on the border for several decades. They've provided intelligence about border crossings and transnational threats along the border. There's an intelligence center in El Paso that is manned in part by the military that does help with those kinds of things.

And that's the role that the military, you know, likes to have in a situation like this, one of support and not basically be the mission lead in a case like that. So when you're looking at law enforcement type actions, with the exception of the National Guard, which is a big exception to all of this, the basic rule should be that the military stays out of it because it's not the kind of threat that the military is designed to deal with. The military is designed to deal with a major war contingency or counterinsurgency. None of those situations exist at the border.

SCIUTTO: Well, we'll see if that's a norm that survives or does not survive.

Cedric Leighton, thanks so much.

LEIGHTON: You bet, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Coming up after the break, we take a closer look at how economic woes may have propelled Donald Trump's return to the White House. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:17:27]

SCIUTTO: Donald Trump's decisive victory was about many things, but voters have repeatedly said the top issue for them in this election was the economy.

By several major metrics, the U.S. economy is strong, yet poll after poll shows Americans have a largely negative view of the state of the economy. It's not surprising, for example, home prices have reached new record highs for 15 straight months. And although inflation has come back down to earth, prices on goods are roughly 20 percent higher now than they were when Joe Biden took office. Those price rises they make a difference over time.

Ultimately a significant amount of voters blame Biden and Trump's political opponent, Vice President Harris, for not doing enough to change all that.

Joining us now out of New York is Rana Faroohar. She's a CNN global economic analyst, columnist, and associate editor at "The Financial Times."

Good to have you on, Rana. Set the election aside, it's happened, the results are in, Trump is the president-elect. Trump's policies, though, tax cuts, stopping tax on tips, for instance, et cetera, those are by all accounts inflationary ones.

So first of all, do you share that view? Second of all, I mean, how does this then play out? If he follows through on those policies, are buyers going to see prices going up again?

RANA FAROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: Well, Jim, one of the things you have to start from is the fact that we actually have a very strong economy. I mean, that's one of the great ironies. There is an inflation issue. As you pointed out, it's been cumulative over time. It hurt working people in important ways. And it's very rare for an incumbent to be able to come back after a big inflation hike during their tenure. And if you think about the Biden-Harris administration as one, that's the case.

Now, how did Trump's policies look going forward? Yes, they are inflationary. What's interesting is that it's possible that you could see now this good economy that we have start to overheat because of some of the things that Trump wants to put into place.

Let's assume he were to put his tariff proposal into place. That's immediately inflationary. It hits consumers right in their pocketbook. It makes goods more expensive. Unlike the Biden administration, the Trump administration doesn't really have an industrial strategy to bolster American exports, which would be the whole point of having a tariff. To try and make American goods for competitive. But there really isn't that kind of growth plan.

[23:20:00]

On the other hand, there is a plan to use debt and deficit spending to bolster kind of what I would call a saccharin sort of a growth, a bit of a sugar high. The markets like that, they like the idea of tax cuts. But again, that just kind of creates a stock bubble, it creates an asset bubble. And to be honest, that's one of the things I think that really is in play with working people in this country being so angry.

If you make your money from the stock market, you're doing great. If you make it from a paycheck, you're not. And so this terrible irony for me is that swing state voters that thought Trump was going to make inflation better, their lot may really end up being worse in the next year or two.

SCIUTTO: Yes, listen, pumping sugar into a stock market that's already at a record high does seem risky by historical standards. I wonder, do you see potentially a repeat just in different form of the mistake, one could argue, the Biden administration made at the beginning of its term which was adding too much stimulus money --

FAROOHAR: Oh, no.

SCIUTTO: Right? At that point, and in this case, the stimulus would be at a very different form.

FAROOHAR: Yes. Very different form, though, Jim, because, you know, stimulus is all about the productivity that it increases. And I would argue that, you know, the Biden administration's plans were working. We have the best recovery in the post-Covid era in the world, in rich countries.

SCIUTTO: Right.

FAROOHAR: I mean, it was working. Now, it wasn't working perfectly for everybody, but there was a lot of facts to back that up. If you pump money into the stock market, that's not building a new bridge. That's not creating new chip factories in America. That's not helping us make the clean energy transition. That's making the top 10 percent of the population that owns 85 percent of the stock richer.

It's also creating a lot of fraught in the market at a time when we are due for a big correction. You know, if you look historically, we're six years overtime for a recession if you discount that COVID, you know, blip that we saw. So if you pump more money into the market at this time without actually doing anything in the real world, on the ground, you know, really, you know, fixing main street, boy, you could be in for a real, real trouble. A market collapse and a recession at the same time.

SCIUTTO: Anybody I talk to in the markets, economists, et cetera, say, listen, the number one issue for this country is skyrocketing national debt. Historical highs, 130 percent I believe of GDP. And any reasonable, you know, discussion of that would involve both raising revenue and cutting spending. Of course, the Trump approach seems to be to decrease revenue via tax cuts. Is there any -- I mean how concerned are you about the bill coming due in effect on the U.S. national debt?

FAROOHAR: Oh, very concerned. Very concerned. And, you know, I mean, I have been sounding this alarm for some time. It's particularly dangerous if you think about what's happening in the rest of the world right now. China has just launched its own fiscal stimulus program which is designed to pull capital back into China and out of dollars. You have the Europeans who are completely freaked out about Trump being elected. They're going to start bolstering their own industrial strategies.

I expect that they're -- you know, one silver lining if there is one of Trump's election is that the Europeans may finally say, you know what, we have to really pull together here because the Americans are not going to necessarily save us.

SCIUTTO: Right.

FAROOHAR: They're not going to support Ukraine, they're not going to, you know, continue to support our defense spending. So the rest of the world would be moving on at a time when the U.S. needed dollar assets and needed that sense of like the dollar is the global reserve. That's not a good time to be running high debt and deficit because then you start to look like an emerging market that can't pay its bills.

SCIUTTO: Rana Faroohar, thanks so much.

FAROOHAR: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, speaking of Europe, at least 10,000 North Korean forces, troops are now in Russia with some deployed in the Kursk region in western Russia ready to engage, ready to fight against Ukrainian forces there.

We're going to have that story right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:28:52]

SCIUTTO: You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington.

It has been yet another deadly weekend in Lebanon and Gaza. Lebanese media report Israeli strikes have claimed at least 80 lives there. This is video from the town of Almat in central Lebanon. Almat is a Shiite Muslim majority village, outside of Hezbollah's usual strongholds in the south and east. On Saturday alone, Israel struck more than a dozen separate locations in Lebanon.

Israel also continues to strike Gaza. The IDF hit two homes there killing at least 41 people. This is video there the aftermath of a strike in central Gaza. Another home struck in Deir Al Balah. An NGO says parents, children, and grandchildren were among those killed. The IDF says it was targeting terrorists, but as so often happens civilians killed as they do so.

The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is eager to turn the page on his sometimes difficult relationship with the Biden administration and see Donald Trump, a close ally, back in the White House.

[23:30:07]

As Matthew Chance reports, the prime minister and president-elect have already been speaking about what lies ahead for the U.S. and Israel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says he and President- elect Trump have spoken three times in recent days, a sign of just how closely the two figures are now collaborating.

Netanyahu described the conversations as very good and important and, quote, "aimed at strengthening the alliance between Israel and the United States." He added that he and Trump see, quote, "eye to eye" on the Iranian threat and the dangers that it poses. Well, Netanyahu was among the first leaders to congratulate Trump

after his U.S. election victory last week, calling it the world's greatest comeback. Many Israelis expect the new Trump administration will offer full-throated support to the Jewish state, especially amid an ongoing Israeli confrontation with Iran and its allies in the region.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Another regional war we're watching closely the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia launched a record number of 145 drones on Saturday night in the port city of Odessa. Those strikes hit residential buildings, shops as well. As so often happens, civilians are the targets of Russian bombardments.

Zelenskyy says in the past week Russia has launched more than 800 guided bombs, 600 drones, 20 other missiles. Ukraine launched its largest drone attack on Moscow overnight. Russia's Defense Ministry says its forces shot down all 34 of those drones. It blamed shrapnel for the damage you're seeing there. The attack also disrupted flights from two Moscow regional airports on Sunday.

A massive number of Russian troops are now preparing to launch an assault on Ukrainian forces in the coming days. This in an attempt to push those forces out of Russia's Kursk region in Western Russia along the border with Ukraine. That according to a U.S. official who says joining those Russian forces will be many thousands of Korean, North Korean troops.

Will Ripley is following that story from Taipei.

I mean, this is quite a remarkable moment. We already have the largest war in Europe since World War II, perpetrated by Russia since its full scale invasion in 2022, now we have North Korean, an Asian power, deploying forces to deadly effect in Europe as well. And I wonder what the reaction is in Asia to see North Korea, a nuclear power, already considered a threat by so many of its neighbors, principally South Korea, to see them deploying forces for a war in Europe.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kim Jong-un has not only been deploying thousands of troops to Russia where they're going to be gaining real-time combat experience, hypothetically, also intelligence about how the North Korean weapons that have been supplied to Russia are operating on the battlefield. So they're gaining all of this tactical experience which makes their army, in the long run, more experienced, and perhaps a greater threat on the Korean Peninsula where tensions have ratcheted up to their highest level since the Korean detente that was orchestrated under the first Trump administration but that ended somewhat dramatically in Hanoi with a huge loss of face from for Kim Jong-un when President Trump and his team decided there was no deal to be had so they walked out and left the lunch table set and the food uneaten.

Kim took his train back to Pyongyang fuming. Heads rolled after that happened, and Kim regrouped and has now made a pivot to Vladimir Putin where you've had high-profile meetings between Kim and Putin. You now have these thousands of North Korean troops, around 10,000 estimated right now. Some reports that there could be huge numbers of additional North Korean troops deployed to assist Russia with its war in Ukraine.

And so even though President Trump has claimed that Kim Jong-un misses him, they have had a personal relationship and exchange of letters, but that relationship also, towards the end of it, Kim Jong-un's letters expressed some real frustration with President Trump at that time. And now the question is going to be, will President Trump try to reengage with the North Koreans? Would Kim Jong-un even be willing to do that?

And how much leverage does the United States have towards this long stated goal of denuclearization that now, according to most observers, seems almost completely off the table. Even a freeze deal might be difficult to orchestrate at this point.

SCIUTTO: Yes, listen, I mean, North Korea's nuclear arsenal grew during Trump's presidency, it's grown during Biden's presidency, and now you have this growing alliance among China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. I mean, it's a different world, is it not, in a second Trump term than it was in his first term particularly in Asia?

[23:35:08]

RIPLEY: It's a very different world particularly here in Asia, which, you know, let's not have this fact lost on any of our viewers, this is a heavily nuclear armed region as well. So all of this uncertainty, this potential volatility, it does have a lot of nerves rattled.

You also have South Korea, one of the world's largest weapons suppliers in and of itself along with, of course, the United States. South Korea talking about sending its own weapons over to Ukraine and assisting in the fight there. So you could have a dynamic with North Korean troops, South Korean weapons, and North Korean weapons, and the United States and President Trump who, you know, has been known to make decisions on the fly, to say things without necessarily giving too much thought as to the implications of those words.

You know, words are very important and they're very cautiously spoken out here, but that's not going to be the case as we know, during the second Trump term. And so there is -- look, what could happen next, Jim, is really anyone's guess, but people are buckling up for what is likely to be a very bumpy four years ahead.

SCIUTTO: Will Ripley, in Taipei, thanks so much.

Well, in the coming hours the COP 29 climate summit will get underway. When we come back, I'm going to speak with an expert on what a Trump presidency means for the U.S. and the global fight against climate change. Trump himself has questioned whether human action even contributes to climate change.

Please stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:41:22]

SCIUTTO: The U.N. climate change conference gets underway soon in Azerbaijan. This year's COP 29 summit is overshadowed by Donald Trump's election victory. Trump has called climate change a hoax, and you'll remember he withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. President Biden reentered that agreement. Trump, though, has vowed to withdraw the U.S. once again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARJEET SINGH, FOSSIL FUEL NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY INITIATIVE: Trump winning election is a huge setback to not only climate talks but global cooperation in general. We know he's likely to reverse all clean energy policies and incentives in the U.S. He's going to go for fossil fuel extraction much more which is going to be devastating for the planet, and he's not going to provide any climate finance which is so vital for developing countries to transition away from fossil fuels.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: 2024 will almost certainly end as the hottest year on record. And some climate experts say without cooperation from the U.S., of course, the world's biggest polluter, pushing for more investment in climate action will be difficult to negotiate.

Joining us now is Leah Stokes, associate professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, host of "A Matter of Degrees" podcast. She joins us now live from Santa Barbara.

Good to have you on.

LEAH STOKES, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UC SANTA BARBARA: Thanks so much for having me on.

SCIUTTO: Tough time to have a summit given Trump, I mean, he denies the science behind climate change despite the facts and has vowed to pull the U.S. once again from the Paris Climate Accord. I mean, this was meant to be a deadline for nations to provide updated plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What does that mean for the summit?

STOKES: Yes, you know, this isn't the world's best news going into the summit. The fact that we have a president-elect in the United States who was on the record as recently as a few months ago in saying that climate change was a scam in the wake of these, you know, hurricanes. And, you know, he previously when he was president did remove the United States from the Paris climate agreement, and I have no doubt that he will do that again.

So this is not exactly great news for the global leaders around the world and also the activists, frontline activists who are trying to make progress on the climate crisis given that, as you said, this is the warmest year on record. SCIUTTO: Yes. Not great news. I like the way you managed the

understatement there, perhaps for diplomatic effect. We already know that the course -- that the world is already on course not to meet that one and a half degree goal to keep the earth from heating beyond one and a half degrees by the end of the century. Currently it's on the path to a 2.6 to 3.1 degree rise by 2100. So what does that mean for the goal? I mean, is the world just going to throw its hands up in the air in effect?

STOKES: Look, we'll see what future President Trump is able to do in the time that he has. You know, right now he's likely to have the United States Senate, and we don't yet know the House, but it's likely to be Republican controlled by just a few votes. And the fact is that these landmark policies that the Biden-Harris administration passed, many of which were done in a bipartisan way with votes from Republicans, like the bipartisan infrastructure law, those laws are sending billions of dollars into Republican districts.

So, for example, you know, 75 percent to 80 percent of the funding for things like electric vehicle plants and battery manufacturing and solar manufacturing is going to red districts, Republican districts.

[23:45:05]

And so are those Republicans in the House who may have, let's say a five-seat majority, are they actually going to be able to get everybody to vote to punish their own constituents? And I think that they're going to have a really hard time repealing a lot of the climate progress that's been made over the last four years.

SCIUTTO: So let me ask you a business question, both big and small picture. Start with big picture. There's a lot of business behind this. I mean, folks are making a lot of money on solar panels and electric vehicles. The markets are growing. Renewable energy is growing as a source of electricity. Even a place like Texas, right, deep red Texas, I think it's about a third of its power comes from renewable sources. And that's because the economics work more today than they did in the past.

Is the economic momentum strong enough to overcome the political pushback from someone like a President-elect Trump?

STOKES: Well, we have to break down these policies in the kind of different categories. I think that when it comes to subsidizing the oil and gas industry, we should expect that Trump will be full steam ahead. So he has said, for example, he wants to be a dictator on day one to drill, drill, drill. His words, not mine. So we should expect him to do that.

I also think that when it comes to regulations, you know rules about how much pollution can be put into the atmosphere from power plants, he's going to work to roll those things back. The thing is that environmental groups have a very good track record of taking him to court. And even under these, you know, federal judges and the Supreme Court that have moved so far, you know, radically to the right because of Trump appointments, they're still losing those cases. The Trump administration under the first administration lost 90 percent of cases almost.

And then there's the third bucket which is really funding for companies like you're talking about. You know, incentives to build manufacturing in the United States. And that's the thing that I think the Trump administration is really going to really struggle to do. Just think about the fact that you have Elon Musk, a person who has made billions of dollars in the electric future.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

STOKES: Do you really think that he, in Trump's ear, is going to support repealing all of these investments? I doubt that.

SCIUTTO: Well, the question is, right, does Elon Musk seek benefits for electric vehicles in general or just for Tesla's electric vehicles is the question.

STOKES: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Leah Stokes --

STOKES: Well, there are so many different investments, though, right?

SCIUTTO: Right.

STOKES: That's just really one of them so maybe he repeals that because he doesn't want other car companies to get subsidies. What a world we live in where we're discussing Elon Musk's personal opinions on government policy.

SCIUTTO: Well, you read my mind there, Leah Stokes. Thanks so much for joining. We'll continue to follow it closely.

STOKES: Thank you for having me on.

SCIUTTO: All right. A little bit of fun now. Rome's famous Trevi Fountain is getting a makeover, and tourists can get a bird's eye view of the restoration from a walkway over it. Coming up, what visitors are saying about that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:50:50]

SCIUTTO: Another story we've been following this Sunday evening, nearly half of the 43 monkeys, you heard that right, that escaped from a South Carolina research facility have now been successfully return unharmed. Police say 18 monkeys remain on loose with a sizable group seen jumping back and forth over the facility's fence. Local residents are being asked to keep their doors and windows closed to prevent the monkeys from entering their homes.

If you are planning a trip to Rome anytime soon, one popular tourist site can look a lot different. Rome's famous Trevi Fountain is now under restoration. The water is out of it. While workers painstakingly clean the masterpiece, tourists will get a bird's eye view from a metal walkway installed over the fountain.

CNN's Barbie Nadeau is in Rome with more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBIE LATZA NADEAU, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Trevi Fountain is normally gurgling with water into which millions of tourists throw coins each year. But thanks to a massive renovation project worth more than $300,000, that includes cleaning and scrubbing up of calcium, rust and dirt, this iconic fountain is dry.

You know where the water should be is this metal walkway that is going to offer the tourists who come here a rare opportunity to take an intimate look at this 18th century masterpiece.

(Voice-over): The walkway will also allow the city to study a proposed ticket system by tracking the ebbs and flows of the tourists through the day.

ROBERTO GUALTIERI, MAYOR, ROME: By improving the experience of visitors to make a unique experience to admire the fountain to avoid overcrowding, that's why there is a limit on people that can stay on this walkway, but also after the end of the maintenance working, there will be a cap on the people that could at the same time be inside the fountain to admire it in order to avoid the fact that overcrowding make the experience worse.

NADEAU: Rome sees some 35 million visitors a year and around four million are believed to visit this site. The city believes that by eventually charging a small entrance fee, they can better control overtourism and protect the ancient stone.

[23:55:01]

ARLENE SPELLING, FLORIDA TOURIST: It was one of the things I couldn't wait to see and I'm sort of disappointed, but I still get to see the beauty of it, you know. So yes, I would pay.

NADEAU: The fountain's last cleaning and repair began in 2014 and took more than a year, but increasingly hot temperatures and a steady growth in tourism traffic have also led to the erosion of some of the basin.

The Trevi project is one of many conservation and renovation projects slated to finish in time for the kickoff of the Vatican's Holy Jubilee Year of 2025 which will draw millions more visitors than usual to the Eternal City's popular sites.

And for those who have come during this Roman construction season, all is not lost. They can still throw their coin into this smaller basin for luck. And they're getting an opportunity of a lifetime to see this fountain up close.

Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN, Rome.

(END VIDEOTAPE) SCIUTTO: A lot of great movies shot there.

Thanks so much for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington. I will be back with more right after this.

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