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Flurry Of New Picks Announced For Key White House Roles; Interview With Representative Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) About Trump Picks; Israel Escalating Strikes On Lebanon Amid Possible Ceasefire Negotiations; Russia Hit Ukraine With New Ballistic Missile; If Confirmed, Trump's Defense Secretary Pick Hegseth Could Oversee America's Role In The War In Ukraine; Questions Remain Over Hegseth's Confirmation Chances; Wisconsin Kayaker Accused Of Faking His Own Death; New Storms Threaten To Disrupt Thanksgiving Travel For Millions. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired November 23, 2024 - 16:00   ET

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

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FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: This Thursday join us for the ultimate Thanksgiving morning watch party featuring celebrity appearances and a live view of parades across the country, hosted by John Berman and Erica Hill. "THANKSGIVING IN AMERICA" starts Thanksgiving Day, 8:00 a.m. right here on CNN and streaming on Max.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. The CNN NEWSROOM with Jim Sciutto starts right now.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington. Jessica Dean has the weekend off.

We begin with a flurry of new cabinet picks as President-elect Trump quickly builds a team of tight loyalists to carry out an ambitious, quite conservative agenda. The new picks include billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to lead Treasury, Russell Vought, an author of the controversial policy blueprint Project 2025, which Trump repeatedly denying any knowledge of, to lead the White House Budget Office, and two new health picks that sources say Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had a hand in choosing.

There are now just a few cabinet posts left to fill, including secretary of Agriculture. Sources tell CNN the job is now expected to go to Brooke Rollins, a Trump policy adviser passing over Kelly Loeffler, a Trump campaign fundraiser whose name had been floated earlier.

CNN's Alayna Treene covers Trump. She's outside of Mar-a-Lago in West Palm Beach.

Alayna, so tell us where we're going to go from here particularly with those remaining picks.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, I think the main one is looking out now for Brooke Rollins to be named as the secretary of Agriculture. We broke some news earlier today about how she is now the top candidate for that role, and that Donald Trump is expected to announce her at some time in the near future.

Now, a key thing to keep in mind about Rollins, one is that she has very close ties to Donald Trump. She has been loyal to him for several years. During his first term, she was the director of the Domestic Policy Council, and then in the years after, she is the president of America First Policy Institute, a name I mentioned because many people in Donald Trump's orbit have been connected to that.

It also was kind of viewed as one of the top policy shops in D.C. that has been working to kind of frame a potential agenda should Donald Trump win again. And of course, he did win the 2024 election.

Now one thing to keep in mind about Brooke Rollins is, one, I was told that her and Donald Trump spoke this week and he is expected or he has already offered her the job, but also what she will be doing as the secretary of Agriculture. One is that, you know, Donald Trump has promised throughout his campaign trail that he would or throughout his campaign that he would impose sweeping tariffs on U.S. imports.

That is expected to hit the agriculture industry pretty hard, and particularly farmers. We know a lot of economists have warned of that, and this is something that Brooke Rollins would be overseeing.

Now, another thing to keep in mind about her is that she was actually one of the candidates, one of the names that Donald Trump had been considering initially for his White House chief of staff role. We were later told that she had withdrew her name from consideration once it was clear that Susie Wiles, Donald Trump's 2024 campaign manager, had really been pushing for that role and was likely to get it.

So she is no -- you know, she's quite a close friend of many people working on the transition. She's very well known in Donald Trump's orbit and now she's expected to be his secretary of Agriculture.

SCIUTTO: I want to talk about Russell Vought, who's going to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Russell Vought, co-author of Project 2025. Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail he knew nothing about Project 2025 and yet several of those who built that very document are now going to serve in senior roles in his administration.

When his spokespeople are challenged on that fact, how do they explain that contradiction?

TREENE: Right. I mean, yes, there's no secret that Donald Trump sought to distance himself from Project 2025 repeatedly. But now, ever since he won the election, has been naming top people, authors of that role, to key positions in his second term.

Look, when I talked to Donald Trump's team about this, they say that he is not going to be adopting the policies but that they will be using the personnel lists of candidates that they have been, that the Project 2025 team had been compiling and vetting for him. But there's no secret that there is going to be some influence from that Project 2025 in his second term.

I mean, Russell Vought was one of the key architects of that conservative blueprint, and really, I think when it relates to him, the man who is going to be Donald Trump's new White House budget chief. He really is someone who has been focused on bringing back power and centralizing it more in the executive branch, you know, turning agencies that have traditionally been independent and bringing them underneath Donald Trump's or the president's control.

That has been a key thing that he had been working on as he was helping with Project 2025 of really looking at some of the executive orders and other executive actions Donald Trump could take in his first six months in office.

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I will also just quickly note that Russell Vought was someone who served in Donald Trump's first term as his White House budget chief as well, and we really saw him try to take similar action then. And so I don't think there'll be any surprises to see him try to do the same if he is confirmed for a second term -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Alayna Treene, thanks so much.

So new details tonight about Trump's pick to lead the nation's intelligence agencies. Sources say that Tulsi Gabbard briefly was put on a government watch list prompting extra TSA screenings before she could fly. This after her overseas travel earlier this year. She was then quickly removed from the list. It's called "Quiet Skies." It's not a terrorism watch list we should be clear.

Gabbard called it a secret terror watch list anyway and claimed she was targeted because she criticized then presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Federal officials flatly deny that. Gabbard has been known to spread and repeat Russian propaganda and talking points including on the war in Ukraine and has often cozied up to some of America's adversaries, including Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, whom she met face to face during the midst of a deadly civil war there in which Assad was killing many of his own citizens.

Joining me now, Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez of Florida.

Good to have you on, sir. Thanks so much for taking time this Saturday afternoon.

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): My pleasure.

SCIUTTO: So first, I want to ask you about the Gabbard situation because I've spoken to a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill who have concerns not just about her lack of experience in the intelligence field certainly compared to previous holders of that post, but also to the fact that she has expressed positions in public that contradict U.S. assessments of who America's adversaries are, right, where the threats are coming from.

First question is just a general one. Do you think she should lead the DNI and in fact be the nation's senior most intelligence official?

GIMENEZ: Well, that really is up to the conversations that she had with President Trump and her views on the world, and do they align with President Trump's view on the world. People have been known to change their positions. Kamala Harris changed a whole bunch of positions from 2019. And so it really is important about what Tulsi Gabbard feels about the world and the reality of the world as it is today.

Some of her comments and actions in 2019 frankly concern me but she may have altered those views now that she's going to be the director of National Intelligence.

SCIUTTO: I hear you. Certainly politicians have changed their positions on policy questions and we certainly saw a lot of that from the vice president during the campaign. But it is unusual, to say the least, to change positions on whether, for instance, it's Russia's fault that it invaded Ukraine. You may remember that she tweeted around the time of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, blaming the Biden administration, blaming NATO for it, which is, of course, something that you hear often from the Kremlin, denying responsibility for sending tanks across the border.

On those issues, shouldn't they be clear to someone who's going to serve at this level?

GIMENEZ: Yes, I think so. I think they need to be clear. Just as it was kind of unusual for Kamala Harris to say that she was against fracking and would ban fracking and then say, no, she wasn't against fracking four or five years later. And so, you know, you want to equate that one somehow you can change your mind on one subject and not on the other. I think, you know, I'm going to give her -- I'm going to cut her some slack.

Again, it's up to what conversations did she have with President Trump? Does President Trump feel that she's secure enough in her judgment to give her that position and then that's up to President Trump. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt right now. Do I have some concerns about her past positions? Absolutely. But let's see what her positions are now concerning those same issues.

SCIUTTO: Well, one might expect that in terms of countries who have established its in their strategic interest to weaken the United States as many of your own colleagues believe Russia has, but let's talk about China for a moment. You're on the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and as details come through as to the extent of China's penetration of telecommunication systems in this country to capture the texts and phone calls of U.S. lawmakers, senior officials, secretary -- Senator Warner, rather, has called it arguably the worst telecom hack in our country's history.

Can you explain to us what you know about just how far this penetration went?

GIMENEZ: Apparently it got all the way. It's possible that they were intercepting and listening into what President Trump, Vice President Vance, were talking to, who they were talking to, and what they were talking about. That's pretty serious.

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You know, the Chinese didn't hack into our telecom system in order to be able to send, you know, seasons greetings to everybody here in the United States. So it's -- look, I sit on the China committee. They are by far the greatest threat to American security and our future. I've been saying for a long time we need to decouple from China. They are our enemy. They wish us harm. They are not our friends. And the sooner that we realize that then the sooner that we can get on with the task of confronting our greatest challenge and the greatest challenge that I think our children or grandchildren are going to be facing.

SCIUTTO: How concerning is it to you, and how concerning should it to be at people at home that China not only managed to penetrate these systems and therefore gain access to the communications of senior U.S. officials, but that it managed to do so undetected for so long? That that appears to be part of the problem here, right, was that we didn't know as it was happening and therefore these communications continued with China listening and watching and reading and acting on that intelligence. How does that happen today?

GIMENEZ: It happens because they are relentless. And for every cybersecurity individual that we have here in the United States, they have 10 that are trying to penetrate, you know, our security here in the United States. It's a matter of resources and manpower. And they are relentless in their quest to obtain as much information as they can, to gain as much information on our systems as they can, so that when it comes time to do us harm, they can do so.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GIMENEZ: You know, one of the things that they do all the time is that they probe and they probe and they probe and they probe, and then, you know, you blunt them, you blunt them, and then all of a sudden they find that that weak spot, and then they go in and really take advantage of that weak spot. And you know what? Since they are relentless and now we're in IA it's going to be even tougher to keep them out.

You know, it's just a very dangerous world. Cybersecurity isn't very secure. And if you think that somehow you've got a locked down system I've got a bridge I want to sell you in Brooklyn.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Listen, Russia, of course, a very active, active participant in that field as well.

Given that, I want to talk about just some of the domestic moves the president-elect is considering because Christopher Wray, FBI director who Trump, of course, appointed in his first term, has been very much at the forefront of the FBI's efforts to root out Chinese spies in this country, other Chinese penetrations, including in intelligence, telecommunications systems.

Given he has done a lot of work in that space, but we're hearing that the president wants to fire him, is that the right move at this time, given the state of relations between the U.S. and China and the state of the threat from China? Should he go? GIMENEZ: I think that the FBI director has to have the full and

complete confidence of the president of the United States. And I'm sorry, but Christopher Wray doesn't have the full and complete confidence of the president of the United States. And so the president of United States needs to put somebody in there who can thwart China, thwart Russia, but also has the confidence that he's playing -- he's not playing politics.

And there has been a lot of accusations leveled against Christopher Wray that his agency was involved in partisan politics. That's the last thing that we need out of the FBI. And justice needs to be blind. And there are allegations, too, against DOJ that it hasn't been blind, that justice has been dished out on a partisan level. And again, that's not the America I grew up in. So we have to put people in there that all Americans say, yes, that person is going to dish out justice blindly.

It doesn't matter who you are. It matters what you did, and so, again, like I said, I don't believe that Christopher Wray has the president's confidence.

SCIUTTO: OK.

GIMENEZ: I think he needs to get somebody that does.

SCIUTTO: If that's your criticism then of the current FBI, the current DOJ, and you have the president-elect, and by the way, several of the people he's appointed to senior law enforcement positions saying they intend very much, they've said this publicly, to go after the president's political opponents to, in effect, use the levers of power, right, to go after folks. And you heard the president's descriptions on the campaign trail, the enemy within. Is that what you want to see in a second Trump term?

GIMENEZ: No, what -- no. No, absolutely not. What I want to see is rooting out of people that are partisan within those particular agencies. Partisan, and have been conducting partisan investigations, et cetera, and have been acting as partisans and not as employees of the Department of Justice and the FBI, not to go after your political enemies. That's the last thing that I want to do.

Look, I'm from Cuba, I, you know, I know what it is, what political persecution is all about, you know, see what happens in Nicaragua when somebody is running for president. If you announce that you're running for president, one way that they elect Mr. Ortega is to arrest all his opponents.

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No, that is not what America is about. And I don't believe that that's what -- and I know that's not what President Trump is about. He just wants to make sure that our justice system, that everybody in this country, all of us in this country, feel that the American justice system is just and that it is blind and it doesn't matter who you are, it matters what you did. And once we get back to that, America will be in a much better shape. SCIUTTO: But then why has he said, for instance, Liz Cheney should be

investigated for -- is it a crime to criticize Trump during the campaign and say she doesn't support him? Does that --

GIMENEZ: No --

SCIUTTO: Does she deserve that kind of scrutiny?

GIMENEZ: No, not for saying that. I don't know what he was talking about as to why she needed to be investigated.

Look, we should be able to speak our minds any time that we want. Yes. Look what happened in in Florida with FEMA. If you had Trump signs out, people were saying, hey, hey, don't go to don't go, don't give them service the people that have Trump signs out because, you know, they could be a little bit vocal. That's not the America I grew up in and that's not the America that President Trump wants to see. Everybody, you know, deserves to be serviced by -- deserves the right to speak their mind.

Everybody, you know, it's about freedom of speech. Nobody needs to be censored in this country. And we've seen too far, too much of that in the last four years, unfortunately.

SCIUTTO: Well, we'll see if the president acts on his own very public threats.

Congressman Carlos Gimenez, thanks so much for your time.

GIMENEZ: It's my pleasure.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead, at least 15 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike which flattened the building in the very heart of Beirut, Lebanon. What we're hearing about that strike. Plus the possibility of a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon?

Also, Russia is vowing to keep testing a new hypersonic ballistic missile. See those pictures there? That's what it looked like when it struck Ukraine just a couple of days ago. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says the war, however, could end next year. Why?

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SCIUTTO: Israel's escalating attacks across Lebanon today with deadly consequences for civilians. An Israeli strike on Central Beirut flattened a residential building. Lebanese health officials say at least 20 people were killed. Dozens more injured. A Lebanese security source tells CNN there was no senior Hezbollah member in that building.

The attacks and fighting have been intensifying despite ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

CNN's Nic Robertson is live for us in Jerusalem tonight. Nic, you know, we've been seeing Israeli tactics in Beirut even mimic

its calculations in Gaza in that if it feels that there's a target in a building that it's worth going after, you know, civilian deaths be in effect here.

What more do we know about this particular strike?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, it certainly has the hallmarks of what the IDF typically does when it's going after a high value target. It's no notice in the southern suburbs of Beirut recently and other areas, they've been warning civilians in certain areas, certain buildings, get out, move away 500 yards, we're going to hit the building. And we see the videos, people standing down the street the buildings get hit, but there's no one in there and no one gets hurt in those strikes. The IDF says that they're targeting there Hezbollah infrastructure, command and control, weapons storage.

The strike in the middle of Beirut last night was different. No notice, according to eyewitnesses, several bunker busting bombs dropped the size of the crater. All of that point to that this looks like it was an effort at taking out a senior Hezbollah commander. The IDF not commenting on that, but as we heard from Lebanese official, as you mentioned it there, there was no senior Hezbollah figure there.

And again, multiple other strikes in other areas across the country. But absolutely, the IDF clearly, even while negotiations are ongoing, still trying to take out the senior leadership.

SCIUTTO: So tell us where those negotiations stand. We've heard increasing hope in recent days that a deal might come together and that a deal might come together during this lame-duck period here on the U.S. side, given that the negotiators, of course, working under the Obama -- sorry, the Biden administration. Is a deal within reach?

ROBERTSON: Amos Hochstein, right, has been the intermediary. He was in Lebanon earlier in the week, here in Israel just a couple of days ago, went back to the United States. There's a sense that the gap is closing. The sort of big picture is clear. 60-day ceasefire, Israeli troops pulled back inside Israel out of Lebanon, Hezbollah go north of the Litani River, 30 miles north of the border. That sort of military vacuum gets filled by the Lebanese army and the U.N.

But there's a lot of smaller details in there. We don't know, some of the indicators that point to this may be getting closer. We've heard from Hezbollah really indicating that they are de-linking their fight with the Hamas fight in Gaza. They're not -- they've indicated that they would end before that fight ends. That's new.

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Let's see if they carry through with that. They've indicated that they'll keep fighting, but also they'll keep talking at the same time. The pressure is high from the Israeli military, as we have seen at the moment. So these are sort of conducive to believe that we could be getting close to a ceasefire, but it's that detail, and we don't have sight on that detail at the moment, and thats where we stand. SCIUTTO: Yes. To linking the two, de-linking the two, Hamas and

Hezbollah, the war in Lebanon, the war in Gaza. That would be significant.

Nic Robertson, in Jerusalem, thanks so much.

So turning from one ongoing major conflict to another, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy today said the war with Russia, following Russia's full scale invasion in 2022, could end, in his view, next year. And he is awaiting proposals from President-elect Trump for when he takes office in January.

But that is a starkly different message than what we've heard coming from Russia right now. Putin has been escalating threats against Ukraine, the country he invaded, and the nations that are supplying weapons to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia. This after Russia hit Ukraine with a new and quite threatening medium-range ballistic missile with multiple warheads. Those are those blips you're seeing dropping from the sky there, which Putin claims cannot be intercepted by Western missile defenses.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh joins us now from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Nick, what have you seen in the wake of that ballistic missile attack? Have the air attacks, the missile attacks, et cetera, maintained the same pace?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No, I mean, I think it's fair to say while Sumi, other areas around the frontlines have had the strikes that we've seen over the past months continue, certainly the capital Kyiv, has been strangely quiet over the past five nights. That's not the same as I say for the nightly onslaught we see in other areas around the country.

But we've had no indication of a repeat of the use of that experimental ballistic missile that hit I think it's fair to say a relatively well-known industrial site in the Dnipro a few nights ago. Increasing details about what that missile was. I think consensus really for most points of view, it was hypersonic, that it clearly had multiple warheads from one singular device but was non-nuclear.

And I think the Kremlin's way of trying to say they have some kind of technological prowess that they haven't indeed reached for, and ultimately the Kremlin saying, look, you know after the U.S. escalation of allowing ATACMS to be fired by Ukraine, that's longer range missiles, into Russia, that is them finally trying to suggest that a red line has been crossed and they took an escalatory measure back.

Not potent in terms of what it's done on the battlefield, but a potent signal, they think -- I think it's fair to say Russia thinks of what it's capable of doing going forwards. But Zelenskyy today, interestingly enough, suggesting there could be an end to the war, also that he wants to go and see Donald Trump in January and discuss how there might be some sort of peace settlement here, maybe even hear the president-elect's plans. And we also learned, too, that Donald Trump has met the NATO chief in

Florida recently. So clearly the effort is building around the president-elect to work out what direction he wishes to take U.S. support here. There's a multiplicity of different ideas as to exactly whether he's going to maintain aid, cut it drastically, suit a middle path to try and push everyone towards some kind of negotiated settlement.

But put all that aside, Jim. The frontline is a dire situation now for Ukraine on multiple different points of the compass. It's clear that they are losing, losing at times slowly, at times quicker. Pressure on them in the Kursk region that they've occupied and the border areas of Russia. And so with all this backdrop of talks of negotiation, clearly the Kremlin feels that it's winning when it comes to the frontline and that will clearly dictate how negotiations move forwards -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Nick Paton Walsh, in Kyiv, thanks so much.

Still ahead this hour, Donald Trump's pick for Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is under scrutiny over an allegation of sexual assault. We're going to speak to former Defense secretary William Cohen about several questions, including whether he believes Hegseth has the qualifications for the job, is he fit for the job, and how he may be tasked with dealing with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

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SCIUTTO: If he were confirmed to lead the Pentagon, one of Trump's cabinet picks, Pete Hegseth, would oversee a number of things, including Americas role in the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia's ongoing invasion of his country could end next year. He says he's awaiting President- Elect Donald Trump's proposals on how to resolve the conflict. Lots of questions.

Joining us now, former defense secretary under President Clinton, William Cohen.

Mr. Secretary, thanks so much for joining us this Saturday afternoon.

WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY UNDER PRESIDENT CLINTON: Good evening, Jim.

SCIUTTO: I have a lot of questions about Pete Hegseth as potential secretary of defense.

First, I want to begin with a big-picture question. He came from FOX News. He did serve in the military prior. He's worked with some veterans organizations.

But he would be leading, as you know, because you've done it, the more than two million people in the U.S. military. Does he have the qualifications, the leadership and credibility to do so? COHEN: Well, those are the issues certainly that are going to be

contemplated by the United States Senate as they review his nomination and give their consent or withhold it.

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But I would say that he certainly is highly educated. He certainly has served well and honorably in the military. And those are two very important factors in his favor.

There is the other issue dealing with the event that has been described recently in terms of a sexual encounter some years ago. That will factor, I assume, into the Senate's confirmation hearings in the sense of what is his position on women in our military, but more specifically about women in combat.

And there, I think there will be some difficulty because women in combat today, they are vital to our defense. And it's not as if we're having Gladiator II types of confrontations.

But rather we have women who are high performing aircraft pilots, who are performing - they're sailing our ships, they're flying our helicopters, they're engaged in combat in every sense of the word.

And I think to pull them out would be something that would be of concern to the United States Senate during the confirmation.

(CROSSTALK)

COHEN: Those are some of the issues I think we'll have to confront, along with his attitude toward members who are black, who he feels have been promoted simply based upon the color of their skin.

Those are issues that will have to be openly discussed.

SCIUTTO: Listen, on the women's issue, they're going to be -- there are women Senators serving today who served in the U.S. military. And they will be part of the --

COHEN: Tammy Duckworth.

SCIUTTO: Tammy Duckworth, Joni Ernst.

Let me ask you about his intention to go after -- because he has two categories of generals he wants to go after quite aggressively.

One are those who he says have pursued a Woke agenda in the Defense Department.

But others, and perhaps let's begin here, are those who served in senior positions during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Now, I've spoken to Republican lawmakers. I spoke to Don Bacon yesterday. himself a veteran, who said, yes, the Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster in his view. But those generals we're serving under the commander-in-chief who ordered them to carry out the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

And he believes they should not be punished or removed for their role in that. I wonder if you agree.

COHEN: Well, I think certainly the Senate and the House should investigate how it all unfolded. It was not well executed, to be sure.

You'll remember, there were a number of factors involved they'll have to take into account in deciding how rapidly we should have come out and whether or not we should have retained a force there.

But nonetheless, I think it's an issue that needs to be examined and -- but I would be absolutely opposed to trying to target those officials who are carrying out the orders of our commander-in-chief and those at the Pentagon, and to hold them in some way responsible.

Not responsible, but criminally liable or to charge in a court martial. I think that would be a big mistake. But that's something that should be explored by the committees.

SCIUTTO: And we should note, as a matter of fact, that -- that the president ordered the withdrawal over the recommendations of many senior military commanders, including then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley.

How about on the issue -- this is quite a popular thing, as you know, particularly on the right, particularly in the right-wing media atmosphere, about this sense that the -- the whole military has gone Woke. And Pete Hegseth has been quite vocal in that space, including from his perch as a FOX News host.

And he said that if he we're in charge, he would seek to remove perhaps as many as a third of senior serving officers in the military. You ran the Pentagon. What would the reaction be in that building to a purge along those lines?

COHEN: Well, I'm trying to think back. Was Harry Truman Woke when he desegregated the military to allow black members to serve alongside side the white community as such? Was that being Woke?

Is it being Woke to say that we need to have women assume critical areas of responsibility in our war-fighting capability when the wars now are fought more on Apple computer boards than they are in terms of on the battlefield itself. That is the battlefield.

As you pointed out in your book, "Shadow War," that we're fighting a different kind of war today, and women are critical to that.

The other issue is, are they Woke in trying to provide instruction in terms of, we have a history in this country of deep-seated racism.

And so you have a number of minorities serving, black, brown, Asian, Hispanic and others. To try to make sure that they are part of our fighting force and they are recognized and we recognize the difficulties they have had historically and even to this day.

And to take those into account as you're building the fighting force, which I still believe is the best in the world.

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So the, the -- the effort to take that away and say, you shouldn't be concerned about those differences, you should be concerned about history.

We may take our books out of the schools, but we need to read our history to understand how you build a fighting force, what you need to take into account to make sure morale is high, readiness is high, and you're prepared to go and fight the battles you can't deter.

That's the primary mission of the -- the secdef and chairman of the Joint Chiefs and others.

SCIUTTO: Well spoken, well said.

Secretary William Cohen, we do appreciate you joining us this Saturday afternoon, and we wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving. Thank you.

COHEN: Thanks so much, Jim. Great to be with you.

SCIUTTO: And we'll be right back.

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SCIUTTO: A Wisconsin man who faked his own death and fled overseas, left his family, as you'd imagine, with a whole lot of questions.

Authorities now say he's alive and well, but whether he'll ever come home to his wife and kids and face consequences for what has been a costly and emotional search is still unclear.

CNN's Whitney Wild has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN BORGWARDT, MISSING KAYAKER: Good evening, it's Ryan Borgwardt. I'm in my apartment. I am safe, secure, no problem.

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ryan Borgwardt speaking barely above a whisper in this video he says was recorded November 11th. These are his first comments since disappearing in August.

Police now believe the husband and father of three is alive and living in Eastern Europe with no plans to come back to the U.S.

Though Green Lake, Wisconsin Sheriff Mark Podoll says Borgwardt talks to investigators regularly.

SHARIFF MARK PODOLL, GREEN LAKE COUNTY: Our biggest concern that we had was that he was safe and well. We asked him a number of questions that pertained to him and his family that he would only know. And then we asked him for a video of himself.

WILD: The search for Borgwardt began this summer after he failed to return home from a day of kayaking and fishing. Law enforcement found his capsized kayak, car and other belongings, but no trace of him.

PODOLL: While we might have stopped the search on Green Lake, that didn't stop our search continuing to look for Ryan.

WILD: The Green Lake County Sheriff now says he planned an elaborate escape. Borgwardt told investigators he paddled his kayak and a child- sized boat out into the lake, overturned the kayak and dumped his phone in the water.

Paddled the inflatable boat to shore, got on an e-bike and rode through the night to Madison. There, he boarded a bus, went on to Detroit and eventually crossed into Canada and hopped on a plane to Europe.

PODOLL: In our communications, we are expressing the importance of his decision to return home, clean up the mess that he has created.

WILD: A digital forensic search of Borgwardt's laptop revealed that he replaced the hard drive and cleared his browser history on the day of the disappearance.

Podoll says investigators found that the 44-year-old moved funds to a foreign bank, changed his email, communicated with a woman in Uzbekistan, purchased airline cards and took out a $375,000 life insurance policy in January.

Now that Borgwardt has been found alive, law enforcement is laying out potential charges.

PODOLL: The information that the Green Lake County has at this point leads us to an obstructing charge.

Whitney Wild, CNN, Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: That's quite a story.

Still ahead, millions of people making moves for the Thanksgiving holiday. Perhaps you, like me, are among them. We're going to be tracking the weather and travel trouble spots. It's news you can use.

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You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

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[16:53:09]

SCIUTTO: The Thanksgiving travel rush may set another record this year. AAA expects nearly 80 million Americans to travel this holiday, surpassing even levels from back before the pandemic.

Airlines expect more than 30 million people will fly. I'm going to be among those folks. Making this the busiest Thanksgiving ever for airlines.

Weather, however, is already causing trouble, with snow, wind and storms disrupting travel across the country.

CNN Meteorologist Allison Chinchar is tracking it all -- Allison?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Your travel plans in the northeast earlier today may have been dicey in a few spots thanks to this overachieving storm.

This video coming from aptly named Mount Storm in West Virginia dumping several inches of rain there. We had several spots in the northeast just coming up with incredibly high snow totals.

High point, New Jersey, topping out at just under two feet. But other areas including Pennsylvania and New York, at least getting one foot of snow in about the last 36 hours.

Now, most of that snow is likely going to melt in the next few days as those temperatures begin to increase. You'll start to see them warm up in the Midwest first before gradually seeing that warm air spread into the Mid-Atlantic as well as the northeast, where much of that snow was dropped.

Take Memphis, for example, going from 58 from that high today back into the low 70s by Monday. Takes a little bit longer to see that warm up. But New York and Richmond will finally get there once we get towards Monday and Tuesday of the upcoming week.

If you had travel plans today or even perhaps tomorrow, the southeast and much of the central portion of the country had absolutely no problems whatsoever.

The only other rough spot really is going to be much of the west. Now that main bomb cyclone that we had earlier in the week has finally exited the area, but we still have moisture coming in to a lot of these areas, albeit not as much.

[16:55:00]

It's on top of what we've already had. So because that ground is saturated, it's not going to take much to trigger some flooding in a few spots.

Just over the next several days, still looking at, at least, one to three inches more of rainfall along the coastal regions. And snow likely to be measured in feet. Looking at an extra one to three feet, specifically in the Sierras, over the next couple of days.

Then fast forward to Thanksgiving Day itself, we've got some maybe local last-minute travel you're going to do. The only really concerned areas are going to stretch from Pennsylvania back down into portions of Louisiana. That's where you're going to encounter some of the heaviest rain.

But then it begs the question, OK, what about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade? Many folks not only go to see it, but also watch it on TV. The rain is expected to really spread into New York City once we get into the back half of the day and especially Thursday night.

So the question becomes the front end likely is going to be OK, but you may start to see some of those isolated showers beginning to pick up towards the back half of the morning.

Regardless, it's definitely going to be a chilly one with temperatures at the time of the parade only in the upper 30s.

SCIUTTO: Looks like a tough one.

Allison Chinchar, thanks so much.

But there's still some good things. Join CNN for the ultimate Thanksgiving morning watch party. Celebrity appearances, a live view of parades around the country. John Berman and Erica Hill host "THANKSGIVING IN AMERICA" starting at 8 a.m. Thanksgiving morning on CNN and streaming on Max.

Still ahead, new details emerging about the suspected China-linked hack, a broad one on U.S. telecommunications. What we know about a Situation Room meeting at the White House regarding the potential damage, big damage to U.S. national security.

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