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Trump's Popular Vote Lead Shrinks; Trump Not Reconsidering Gaetz for A.G.; Trump Names Whitaker as NATO Ambassador; Funeral for Liam Payne Held in England. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired November 20, 2024 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. And we do want to show you some video that just came into CNN in the last several minutes up on Capitol Hill. Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz -- I guess a photograph I should say. There he is with J. D. Vance, the vice president-elect, and I believe behind that Secret Service officer is the pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio. We're monitoring Gaetz up on Capitol Hill, talking to senators, making the rounds as he tries to salvage his bid for attorney general.

And we should, I mean, Republicans have repeatedly said that President-Elect Donald Trump has a, quote, "mandate" after he won the presidential election. But take a look at the numbers. Trump has just under 50 percent of the popular vote. Now, as of now, his margin of victory is under 1.7 points. That's the thinnest margin since Al Gore's popular vote victory over George W. Bush 24 years ago. Of course, Al Gore did not become president. He lost in the Electoral College.

Let's discuss with CNN senior political commentator, a former Trump adviser, David Urban, and CNN political commentator and former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, Jamal Simmons.

Jamal, let me start with you first. I mean, when you take a look at the blue wall states, I just think folks need to see this because they have memories of what took place on election night and the day after and how the votes looked at that point. But if you look at the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that Trump won, Kamala Harris lost by just 232,000 votes combined. Democrats were pretty darn close, Jamal, and I don't know if that is really discussed enough. I mean, what do you think and what is your view of Trump having a mandate? If -- I mean, if Kamala Harris wins those three states right there, she's president-elect, not Donald Trump.

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR VP HARRIS: Yes. You know, I was also a deputy communications director for Al Gore during the 2000 race.

ACOSTA: There you go.

SIMMONS: So, I've been around for a while. Yes, I know what it feels like to get that popular vote narrowly. Listen, we -- Kamala Harris lost. The Democrats lost. We lost the House, which we didn't have. We lost the Senate. We lost the White House. It's time for Democrats to sort of own up to that. I don't think it was a landslide by President Trump, but you know, it was a decisive victory.

I think the question now for the Democrats is what do we do now? And I think accepting defeat and then going ahead and making the pivot to what the next part is, it's what's going to help make this better. So, this isn't necessarily a left versus right conversation that you're starting to hear break out in the Democratic Party. It's really a conversation about outsiders versus insiders. And the Democrats too often have been put in the position of defending institutions that people don't necessarily think are looking out for them. So, we've got to take big ideas to go after some of these big institutions and say, here's how we want to reform them.

Don't just sit back and let the Republicans define it. Democrats have to have their own ideas for how we reform the institutions that Americans want to see so that their lives are better. That will help get Democrats back on the path to being in the majority in this country again.

ACOSTA: You know, David, I mean, Trump and his team are trying to muscle through these cabinet nominees and some of them are pretty darn controversial. And part of the rationale you hear from the Trump folks is that they have a mandate, they have this clear mandate. But if you look at the numbers, I mean, it was closer than perhaps it was advertised around Election Day. What does that say about the mandate?

DAVID URBAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND TRUMP 2016 AND 2020 CAMPAIGN ADVISER: I think -- look, it's -- it is a mandate. The Time magazine, Bill Clinton had less, you know, popular vote numbers and Trump, a big cover of Trump, you know -- Clinton mandate. Whether it's a mandate --

[10:35:00]

ACOSTA: I'm just looking at these numbers right here.

URBAN: That's a spread though. That's not the raw numbers. Look, at the end of the day, Donald Trump's president won pretty decisively. Nobody's going to argue that. The question is what you do with that mandate, right? Do you use -- you have -- so much political capital. And you're going to burn a ton of political capital on the hill, jam it through nominees, are you going to use that political capital to do other things, right, such as, you know, closing the border and getting efficient -- government of efficiency? You only have so much you get to burn and the question is how do you use it?

ACOSTA: And I mean, that brings me to this question, David, and that is, I mean, do you like the idea of burning through political capital for somebody like a Matt Gaetz?

URBAN: Listen, the president gets -- the president's entitled to his nominees, right? I'm -- you know, I think that a lot of them are going to get through. I think some are going to have difficulty. The Senate is very distinct. They believe that they are, right, a co-equal branch of government, that they're not subservient to the president. They -- they're equal to the president and they're going to let that be known throughout this process. I guarantee you.

ACOSTA: That was not a ringing endorsement from David.

URBAN: Listen, Matt Gaetz deserves his day before the committee, just like anybody else and he'll rise and fall in his merits.

ACOSTA: And, Jamal, I suppose you would like Matt Gaetz to have his day. You like the idea of having this confirmation?

SIMMONS: Well, I would like Matt Gaetz to go back -- I'd like Mike Gaetz to go back home to Florida and give us all a break, is what I would like. But if he's not going to do that, if President Trump is going to put him in the middle of this, we got to get access to the information.

Here's what I'm concerned about. I've spent my entire career in politics worried about the competitiveness of this country and making sure that we're able to go out into the world and really compete and beat some of our adversaries. The problem though is if you put an attorney general on the line, if you put a DNI on the line, if you put some of these people who haven't been vetted, their vulnerabilities are people -- maybe the American people don't know what Matt Gaetz did at the freak offs that he was in Florida or whatever you want to call them, if it was Puffy Combs, that's what we'd say. But maybe he was doing that, that we don't know about. But our foreign adversaries know about it.

ACOSTA: Yes. I mean --

SIMMONS: Yes, but whatever happened, whether it was legal or not, our foreign adversaries know what he was up to. So, the question is, will the American public know what he was up to? Will the Senate know what he was up to? And then we can make a decision whether or not he should be trusted in the leadership and have the most secrets of our country.

ACOSTA: Yes. And I -- those answers are coming and we'll see if he even gets to his confirmation hearing process. I mean, there's that question looming out there as well. David, I do want to ask you about this. Throughout the election, Trump said he knew nothing about Project 2025. Let's listen to some of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it, purposely. I'm not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together. They came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it makes no difference. I have nothing to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: That was then, this is now, some of the people he's selecting for his administration were directly involved in Project 2025. His pick for FCC, Brendan Carr, wrote Project 2025's chapter on the agency. Borders czar Tom Homan was a contributor. ABC is reporting that the architect of Project 2025, Russ Vought, is being considered to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget.

David that was all BS, wasn't it?

URBAN: No, listen, I had --

ACOSTA: I had nothing to do with Project 2025.

URBAN: -- first hand discussions with the president, literally, I asked him about it. I talked to him about it directly and he read it. He didn't know about it. Are there people -- it's a huge document. Are there certain people that worked on it? Yes, those people have been in the administration before. Brendan Carr's FCC Commissioner, Tom Homan was in the administration. Russ Vought was in the administration. They offered chapters, they offered insight into it and they put things in it. That didn't mean that Donald Trump had his hand in drafting it all.

ACOSTA: OK. But I'm not saying that Donald Trump had a hand in it, he was sitting there writing it with his sharpie or whatever, but I mean, he is implementing -- he's going to be implementing parts of Project 2025, and he's using the people who are writing the chapters on Project 2025. Isn't -- I mean, isn't it time to just admit the jig is up?

URBAN: No, no.

ACOSTA: This is going to be a Project 2025 administration, right?

URBAN: No. Because a lot of those things are just basic core tenets of the Republican Party. It's been in the platform for the Republican Party for years, a lot of the Project 2025 pieces of it, right? Getting rid of the Department of Education, downsizing government, doing certain things. That's been a part of the Republican Party for a long time. Just because it happens to be in this document it doesn't mean that now we're wholesale embracing the document.

Listen, in the document --

ACOSTA: I would encourage our viewers to go -- I mean, you can go online and look this up. David, I mean, it's -- if you go through the authors of the various parts of Project '25, it's a who's who, and now he is selecting people from that who's who to be in his administration.

URBAN: But it doesn't mean you're taking that -- it doesn't mean you're taking the document, using it as the blueprint for how the government's going to run. Completely two separate things, Jim.

ACOSTA: Project 2025 talks about tearing down the administrative state.

URBAN: Yes, exactly.

ACOSTA: Firing -- URBAN: But those are --

ACOSTA: -- federal employees en mass.

URBAN: Yes, but those are the things that have been part of the Republican platform for years, not just a part of Project 2025. They just happen to be in this document moving forward.

ACOSTA: Right. But when Donald Trump was out there saying I have nothing to do with this, I know nothing about it.

URBAN: He didn't. He didn't. He didn't.

ACOSTA: Really?

URBAN: He didn't. I'm telling you, I talked to him several times about it.

ACOSTA: It's a Wednesday. I could use a good laugh and I just got one.

[10:40:00]

URBAN: Come on.

ACOSTA: Jamal, put the last word. All right. Go.

SIMMONS: Yes, look Howard Lucknick, who just got appointed to be perhaps commerce secretary has said he wants to go back to an America around 1900 is when America was great again. I think Donald Trump, who's got all this assembled power to look at 1901 when Teddy Roosevelt became president of the United States and he used his power to go after the trust, go after the oligarchs. This isn't a time where we need to be going back to a time of big monopolists and oligarchs. We need to use that power to bust up these oligarchs and take on the institutions that Americans elected Donald Trump to take on.

ACOSTA: I'm just pointing out, he said he didn't know anything about it.

URBAN: How we just -- how about we take care of the government? It's too gigantic. Let's get -- let's shrink the government. I think we can all agree on that.

SIMMONS: It's not just the government. It's not just the government, guys. It's not just the government. These big companies are also squashing --

URBAN: Jamal and I will solve this up. We'll solve this --

SIMMONS: -- innovation. We've got startups that can't sell because these companies are squeezing them out of the marketplace.

ACOSTA: All right. Last word there. Thanks a lot, guys. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:45:00]

ACOSTA: All right. Breaking news into CNN. Donald Trump has chosen Matt Whitaker to serve as ambassador to NATO. This is a critical role and a liaison to an alliance that Trump has questioned over the past several years. It's also another reward for a loyalist who served as former acting attorney general in Trump's first administration.

Joining me now to talk about this and other matters as they pertain to Ukraine is John Herbst. He was ambassador to Ukraine under president George W. Bush. He's also senior director for the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center. Mr. Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. What do you make of -- we're just getting this in, so forgive me for throwing you a curveball right off the bat here, but it sounds as though Donald Trump is throwing a bit of a curveball for his NATO ambassador, Matt Whitaker. What do you think?

JOHN HERBST, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINE: Well, it hasn't happened maybe in 30 plus years, but there have been times in the past when the president has selected a distinguished person who had no major foreign policy experience to be our ambassador to NATO. For example, a very young Don Rumsfeld. was made ambassador to NATO in the early '70s by Richard Nixon. Before that David M. Kennedy was also named ambassador to NATO by Nixon. So, we've seen such appointments before.

But it is true over the last 20 or plus years, our ambassadors to NATO have had significant national security experience or significant political experience like former senators.

ACOSTA: And what does this say about how much importance Donald Trump puts into maintaining the NATO alliance if he selects somebody like Matthew Whitaker? I mean, this is a moment, as you know, Ambassador, when U.S. allies, major U.S. allies in Europe and around the world are very concerned about the future of NATO, especially with what's happening in Ukraine right now.

HERBST: Well, having as an ambassador, someone who has a direct line to the president of the United States is usually a big advantage for the countries or the organizations where they serve. The key question is what -- you know, what is Whitaker's views going to be? And I'm not in a position to answer that now. I'm not sure he has much of a public record on our national security policy and/or relations, our leadership in NATO.

ACOSTA: I mean, it doesn't sound like -- I mean, forgive me for just positing this, but it doesn't sound like this is much of a moment to put somebody who is kind of a novice on the world stage in such an important role.

HERBST: I can -- I understand your point, but the question is, how competence is individual? I mean, he was acting attorney general, a major, major job. And again, I'm sure he has his views on these things. It's just, we don't know them publicly. The confirmation hearings will give him a chance to make clear his views. ACOSTA: Yes. And, Mr. Ambassador, I do want to ask you about some of the developments coming out of Ukraine. The U.S. embassy, I should say, in Kyiv has been closed along with the Greek, Italian, and Spanish embassies after warnings of a massive attack on Kyiv, warnings that Ukraine now says were fake and spread by Russia. What do you make of all that?

HERBST: Well, we know that Putin is unhappy with the latest decision by the Biden administration to let Ukraine use American missiles, the ATACMS, on targets in Russia. That's why he was once again throwing around nuclear threats, which he's done regularly and which we have always paid too much attention to, and we finally overcome them. We find the threats are just threats, not real steps to be taken.

So, he's unhappy about that. And I don't think he's going to attack any NATO country because now Ukraine can use American weapons and British weapons to strike into Russia. But he is trying to find some way to express his unhappiness. So, there have been even more bombings, you know, larger aerial bombardments of Ukraine over the past couple of days. And maybe this was -- as it turned out to be a false alarm, but he's been doing substantial damage with these attacks.

ACOSTA: And just very briefly, have you had any conversations with the incoming administration, the transition team about perhaps going back to that post in Kyiv or something along those lines or perhaps not?

HERBST: There was a story in Ukraine that's saying I was being considered, but no one in the incoming administration has talked to me and I would be frankly surprised if I was offered that job.

ACOSTA: All right. John Herbst, thank you very much for joining us, weighing in on the breaking news of Matt Whitaker, the former acting attorney general under Donald Trump being selected to be NATO ambassador for the United States. Thanks for playing, even though that was kind of a curve ball there coming out of the break. We appreciate it so much. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:00]

ACOSTA: Funeral services were held in England today for Liam Payne. The singer died last month after he fell from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires. And CNN's Salma Abdelaziz joins us now. Salma, what more can you tell us?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim. So, those funeral services have just wrapped up. We do have images to show you of this very private, very somber event. Picture is showing that casket, Liam Payne's casket coming in just about a month after he died, falling off a balcony, as you mentioned in Argentina, but it was the details of that death that sent shockwaves around the world. His body was riddled with alcohol and drugs according to a toxicology report.

[10:55:00]

You can also see in those images, that I believe were playing out for you now, his parents standing by that casket. His mother was so emotional, breaking down in tears, bearing her head in her husband's chest. At one point, his former band mates from One Direction were also all in attendance. We saw them filing one by one to this church. Just behind me here, it's this 13th century Stone Church in this very quiet sleepy town. A stark contrast, of course, Jim, to his very public and fame ridden life.

ACOSTA: And we -- and, Salma, we still don't have all the details. We still don't know everything about Liam Payne's death.

ABDELAZIZ: We don't still know all the details. What we do know at this time is that there is an investigation underway in Argentina, of course, where he fell off that balcony from his hotel window, and that three people have been preliminarily charged with crimes related to his death. But that investigation is still very much underway. For now, authorities are ruling out self-harm, Jim.

ACOSTA: All right. Salma Abdelaziz, thank you so much. Very sad story. We appreciate it.

Thanks for joining us this morning. I'm Jim Acosta. Our next hour of Newsroom with Pamela Brown starts after a short break. Have a good day.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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