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South Korean President Declares Martial Law, Says He's Protecting Country from Communist Forces; Hegseth Meets GOP Senators Amid New Misconduct Allegations; Delta Refusing to Fly Russian Stowaway Back to U.S. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 03, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

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JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. You are live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

We do begin with breaking news. A stunning move by a critical U.S. ally, the president of South Korea has declared martial law in that country. He made the announcement in a late night T.V. address saying it's needed to protect the country from, quote, communist forces.

Let's go to CNN's Mike Valerio in Seoul. Mike, obviously startling news here in the U.S. What more can you tell us?

MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jim, it is a stunning move, and we have an unpopular president who, in an unplanned televised address, said that he needed to implement martial law across this bastion of democracy here in East Asia in order to preserve the rule of law.

So, going back to this speech that happened just about two hours ago, televised to the nation, President Yoon Suk Yeol writing that he is taking these measures to, quote, safeguard a liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea's communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements.

Now, Jim, at this hour, as we now cross over 12:01 A.M., Wednesday local time here in the heart of Seoul, it is unclear what exact measures this president will take here to implement martial law. South Korea hasn't been under this kind of rule, this kind of situation since it was under the rule of military dictatorship in the 1980s.

But I can tell you, just living very close to here, our CNN bureau in the center of Seoul, police officers are on their phones, Jim, asking their superiors, what is going on? Family members are getting to loved ones homes as fast as they can, at least in my neighborhood. And we have protesters who are gathering at the National Assembly a couple miles away from here who are trying to bring this to a stop. We have lawmakers in the middle of the night from the opposition party who are saying, in so many words, paraphrasing, Jim, hey this is supremely illegal, was done without any consent and needs to be stopped immediately. So, what we are probably going to see over the next couple hours are members of the Democratic Party, the opposition here, trying to meet in the National Assembly to cancel this stunning move.

In terms of what we have been able to figure out, Jim, information just crossing over the Reuters wire before we go, all media apparently will be under control of martial law command starting immediately. We are trying to figure out what, if anything, that means for us here at CNN, what that means for democracy in South Korea, but truly an unsettling situation here as we cross midnight in Seoul, Jim.

ACOSTA: Yes. I've traveled to South Korea to travel to Seoul with multiple U.S. presidents, and, I mean, obviously it's a bastion of democracy in that part of the world. You mentioned a few moments ago that the South Korean president is unpopular. What is the opposition saying at this point?

VALERIO: Well, the opposition is saying that they are using their legal means to try to get him out of power. They've been trying to impeach this president for months, I would say even years now. So, we have, Jim, a president whose approval rating is in the low 20s right now. The opposition leaders have been trying to get him out of office, have been trying to get people who lead his government out of office, impeach ministers as well.

So, that seems to be the prelude to what is happening now, the opposition trying to impeach the president and other members of his government. And the president of South Korea reacting in this way, declaring martial law when there have been protests echoing through the streets of South Korea for weeks now to try to get him out of office.

ACOSTA: All right, very unsettling situation emerging in Seoul, South Korea. Mike Valerio, please keep us posted if there are any new developments. We appreciate it.

Meanwhile, here in Washington today, Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host, tapped to be Donald Trump's next defense secretary, is again meeting with Republican senators as he tries to get confirmed amid multiple controversies. There are startling new allegations from The New Yorker. It reports that Hegseth was pushed out of his roles at two veterans' organizations.

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Among the claims are financial mismanagement and repeated incidents of public intoxication. A Hegseth adviser said they wouldn't comment on what they call the outlandish claim laundered through the New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate. Those were their words. Hegseth himself stayed mostly silent on Monday when those allegations were making the rounds up on Capitol Hill.

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MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Mr. Hegseth, can you respond to these allegations in The New Yorker article that came out of misconduct allegations in your time as a veteran?

REPORTER: Sir, that article suggests you have an alcohol problem.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Okay, guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks, guys. Let's go, guys. Let's go guys. Actually, right here behind you. Let's go, guys. All right, thanks guys.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: All right. As for those senators, some are signaling their support.

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SEN. DAN SULLIVAN (R-AK): The Pentagon needs a serious course correction. So, I'm going to have a lot of questions for him, but I think, you know, he's the kind of guy who can do that.

RAJU: You're going to have questions about these allegations that have come out?

SULLIVAN: I mean, but there's a process for that.

Sometimes you got to take these allegations seriously. Sometimes even when you take them seriously, they turn out to be inaccurate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: And Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming telling reporters, quote, they're throwing disparaging remarks at someone who has earned a great deal of credibility. She says, are soldiers, sometimes wild childs? Yes, that can happen, but it is very clear that this guy is the guy who at a time when Americans are losing confidence in their own military and our ability to project strength around the world that Pete Hegseth, she says, is the answer to that concern, end quote.

CNN's Manu Raju joins us now up on Capitol Hill. Manu, what else are you hearing?

RAJU: Yes. This is very much an exercise by the Trump team to try to get Republican senators in line. They're not even trying to reach out to Democrats because next year, remember, they have to get someone confirmed along straight party lines. It really needs a simple majority of Republican senators. That means losing no more than three on any party line vote. So, they are getting those folks in the Republican conference in line, but there's still a number of Republicans who are holding their cards very closely to their vests.

Now, in these closed door meetings yesterday, I'm told that the questions about those misconduct allegations really did not come up in a lot of those meetings, including with Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, someone who's very much in line with Donald Trump, said he did not ask him about those allegations and The New Yorker article, but he also indicated that he would support him on the floor of the Senate. I asked him about why those issues did not come up.

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RAJU: Really serious allegations that were in this New York article in particular saying that he got pushed out essentially, stepped aside from two organizations that he ran because of concerns of his personal misconduct, about sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement. Doesn't any of that concern you?

SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL): Well, I'm going to leave that to his explanation of all that. I can't comment on that. Obviously, if it's, to a certain degree, people are not going to vote to confirm it. But what I know and what I've talked to him about, what I've read, what I've studied and being around him, I'll vote for it.

RAJU: How did he explain it?

TUBERVILLE: I don't want to explain it to you because I don't want to get it wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: There, Tommy Tuberville saying that Hegseth had discussed a separate incident, the 2017 sexual assault allegation that he had faced. That's something that Hegseth has denied. But as you can hear from there, Jim, that Republican senators are supporting him in large measure, but there's still enough that potentially could scuttle the nomination if they decided to break ranks here, which is why his confirmation process at the moment seem to be a bit dicey, especially if more and more of these revelations come out. But at the moment, Trump team pushing ahead and trying to lock down that Republican support. Jim?

ACOSTA: Yes, can't lose too many votes in this process. Manu Raju, thank you very much.

Let's discuss more now with CNN Political Commentator Jamal Simmons and former Trump administration official Matt Mowers.

Matt, I do want to talk about some of the other nominees, but you worked on the Trump transition the first time around. How does this compare with the first time around, Pete Hegseth, you know, some of the controversy swirling around him right now?

MATT MOWERS, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. I mean, you've got to remember eight years ago, there was what folks thought were controversial nominations as well. I mean, I was working with --

ACOSTA: Jim Mattis was not?

MOWERS: Well, Jim Mattis wasn't one of them, but Rex Tillerson was, right? Remember, you had Democrats in the U.S. Senate saying that Rex Tillerson was a controversial nominee because he had, you know, done business dealings as CEO of Exxon in Russia, and that's all they wanted to focus on. And you had nearly a party line vote on his confirmation process, which actually delayed the ability for the secretary of state to get into the office on day one of the administration.

And so, in some ways, different personalities. different issues, but it's not all that different of a scenario, and I think you're actually going to have a very similar outcome where just about all of these nominees, including Pete Hegseth, I believe, will get confirmed at the end of the day, and it's in large part because Republican senators are going to look at him and say, address the allegations, but if there's no actual proof to it, right, no charges have been brought, nothing else we're going to look to other issues.

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ACOSTA: (INAUDIBLE) concerned, though, if you're a Republican senator, that there might be a more there, there, that you know, another shoe could drop?

MOWERS: Yes. But, see, unlike a political campaign where you're only looking at snippets of what a candidate says, as a U.S. senator, you have the ability to sit down with these nominees and ask very detailed questions, have -- we get long answers in return. And that's why Pete Hegseth is up on the Hill right now.

And I think more of the conversation is going to be, how do you actually drive up recruitment for the military? Because right now we have some of the lowest recruitment levels in American history. How do you make sure we're prepared for whatever the Pentagon reforms need to happen to move the ball forward?

ACOSTA: Jamal, what do you think? Do you think Democratic senators are in a block going to vote against Pete Hegseth for defense secretary? Should they?

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm sure most of them will, but I got to tell you, we are kind of living in this era of soft resignation to low expectations to paraphrase the George Bush, George W. Bush phrase, right? We all kind of just accepted the fact that we're not going to get the best people.

You know, at the time when Rex Tillerson was being considered, the kind of conflicts he had were things that people would rightfully raise questions about. You know, we all had questions about ethics. I think now, ethical concerns are almost at the lowest end of the list. We're concerned about whether or not these people can, one, actually do the job, two, if they have background check problems that make them liabilities to foreign influence, or, three, are they just people who we want to have our kids and families look up to and our troops look up to when they go out and give a speech or talk about what we ought to do as a nation?

So, this isn't just about whether or not Pete Hegseth can impress the Republicans, it's about whether or not he's somebody who ought to actually have this job.

ACOSTA: And, Matt, I do want to talk about Trump's pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel. He's written a book called Government Gangsters. In the appendix for it, we want to put this up on screen, he lists members of the executive branch deep state who need to be targeted. Those names include current Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, former President Biden's -- President Biden is listed, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, and the list goes on and on. Are you disturbed by this, Matt?

MOWERS: I'm not, because I think, look, first of all, I was in Palm Beach a couple weeks ago, had the chance to spend some time with Kash. I mean, he has the type of background you would actually want. As far as his pedigree, right, former public defender, former prosecutor --

ACOSTA: It sounds like an enemies list.

MOWERS: No. I mean, look, what he's doing is he's creating a list of people who aren't going to have jobs in the Trump administration. And if you look at that list these are folks (INAUDIBLE).

ACOSTA: Can you imagine if a Democratic president was coming into office and was putting out a list of people they want to take out of the government? What would be the response from Republicans?

MOWERS: Well, if you look at the names on that list, I think it'll be shocking to no one that those folks will not be having jobs in the Trump administration. I don't think anyone thought that Hillary Clinton was on the short list for a job in the Trump administration. So, look, if he's out there laying out the folks who are not going to be hired in the Trump administration, I don't think that's going to be much of a shock to anyone.

ACOSTA: Jamal, what do you think?

SIMMONS: You know, I think we've got to be super careful when we put somebody in charge of law enforcement. You know, my grandfather was a lawyer back in the 1930s and 40s who was harassed by the federal authorities because of his political affiliations. My father was an anti-war protester in the 1960s and he was followed around and harassed by the authorities because of his political affiliations. And then we also know about COINTELPRO as the FBI ran against Martin Luther King and a bunch of civil rights activists.

I think this is something that we got to be super careful about. We can't get the genie back in the bottle easily when we allow the FBI to be politicized by somebody who said he has an enemies list, like Richard Nixon, and he wants to use that enemies list to go after domestic opponents. I think this is something that we just -- we got out of this mess 40 years ago or so after Watergate. I don't think we want to get back into it that easily.

ACOSTA: Jamal, just a final question. I mean, are Democrats up against a situation where they, you know, they're looking at multiple picks that they need to try to block at this point? And does it become sort of a game of whack-a-mole for the Democrats?

SIMMONS: Well, I think Democrats have to be disappointed and not get not get pulled off down rabbit holes. But I do think that this is something -- when you ask why did Joe Biden pardon his son for 11 years is because his son is targeted by this new administration and he's concerned about it. And so we'll talk about whether or not he was going to be -- we'll talk about whether or not somebody is going to be not held politically accountable or they're above the law.

You know, who's above the law? Donald Trump was convicted of 34 counts of felony, and he is not going to be sentenced because of that. He's above the law. Justice Clarence Thomas has ethical problems in his ruling on cases involving his wife, and nobody can hold him to account. He's above the law. So, are we concerned about a president trying to protect his son politically, or are we concerned about another president, a former president, coming into office, who's not going to be held accountable for times and ways that he has violated our public trust?

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ACOSTA: All right. Guys, I appreciate it. Jamal Simmons, Matt Mowers, thanks a lot. Thanks so much.

Coming up, breaking news on the Stowaway case, the new information coming in from Delta Airlines. They're not so sure they want that passenger back on the plane. We'll have that after the break.

And next, the man behind a widely debunked election conspiracy movie admits some of the claims in the film don't add up.

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ACOSTA: We have some more breaking news. CNN has learned that Delta Airlines is refusing to fly a Russian stowaway back to the U.S.

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You might have heard about this. She was scheduled to return this morning from France, escorted by U.S. Marshals. The 57-year-old woman somehow took a flight last week from the U.S. to Paris without a ticket.

CNN's Polo Sandoval joins us now. Polo, I mean, this is probably the most famous airline passenger in the world right now, but the woman was already on the plane when Delta said it would not fly her back to New York. Tell us more.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Remember, Jim, we're talking about a woman who holds a U.S. green card, a permanent resident of the United States who has been repeatedly denied entry into France. So, the next logical step would be to return her here to the United States. And it seems that was the plan.

Today, French authorities had planned to put her on another New York bound flight, the same one that she actually boarded on Saturday, where she caused a disturbance and had to be taken off before departure. However, now, airport officials in Paris telling CNN that once she boarded this morning's flights, the Delta Airlines refused to fly her. So, consequently, she was taken off of that flight now and obviously would remain in Paris.

Delta telling our colleague, Pete Muntean, that they are not commenting at this point. There's still obviously a lot of questions here. You recall this all started a week ago today when this 57-year- old managed to clear a security checkpoint, however, bypassed two identity checkpoints that are meant to basically control who boards a flight, particularly for an international flight.

So, there's still so many questions about why that happened. And here we are now, Jim, seven days later, and there is still no resolution with this U.S. resident who has a Russian passport, continues in France. Now, French authorities have to figure out how they get her back to her country, in this case, where she's a permanent resident, which is here in the United States.

ACOSTA: Yes. I guess you could take a different airline, but Delta is saying thanks, but no thanks. All right, access denied.

All right, Polo Sandoval, thank you very much.

In the meantime, a far right activist is now admitting some of the claims in his 2020 election conspiracy movie were wrong. Dinesh D'Souza wrote and directed 2,000 Mules, a movie that falsely claims so-called mules were stuffing voter drop boxes with ballots. But now he's pulling back on some of those allegations and apologizing to one man in particular, a Georgia man, who was portrayed this way in the film.

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DINESH D'SOUZA, DIRECTOR, 2,000 MULES: What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: That man later sued D'Souza, saying the bogus claim had severely damaged his reputation and put his family in danger. In a statement, D'Souza apologizes to the voter and writes, I now understand that the surveillance videos used in the film were characterized on the basis of inaccurate information provided to me and my team. If I had known then that the videos were not linked to geolocation data, I would have clarified this and produced and edited this film differently.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan joins me now from West Palm Beach, Florida. Donie, Trump and his allies have repeatedly used this movie to boost their false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. I remember they held screenings, they held up Dinesh D'Souza in this film as like, aha, we have proof. Here it is. And then it turns out, we find out after the 2024 election, sorry, guys, nothing to this here, or a lot of this isn't what meets the eye.

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim. I mean, this was held up really as the Holy Grail, as the absolute proof of all those bogus election lies in 2020. The movie actually premiered right by here in Mar-a-Lago back in 2022, where Trump himself attended and all the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and others.

And, look, for those of your audience, Jim, who haven't had the pleasure of watching this so-called documentary, in short, it used mangled data from geolocation, from people's cell phones along with video surveillance footage to try and claim that people who are dropping off ballots at voter drop box locations across the country, that they were some of them were mules, people who were stuffing them with hundreds of ballots or many ballots in a way to steal the election.

Nobody's been able to stand up the claims in this movie, multiple investigations across the country, election officials in Georgia, of course, as you mentioned. Nobody's been able to stand it up. It is bogus. But I got to say, I mean, even up to this day, two and a half years later after that movie was released, I still hear it all the time. It still percolates through the MAGA universe as something -- as proof that people point to, to try and prove the bogus conspiracy theories from 2020.

ACOSTA: Yes. And Dinesh D'Souza should be ashamed of himself, but I assume he's not. To be clear, is he denouncing the entire premise of this film? Is he pulling the whole thing back?

O'SULLIVAN: No. It's a very specific --

ACOSTA: Shocker.

O'SULLIVAN: This gentleman -- the gentleman in Georgia who was wrongly accused, as you saw in the clip you played there of doing something nefarious when he was just voting, he has brought this lawsuit.

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Salem Media Group, which runs a lot of right wing talk radio, had to apologize earlier in the year because they were distributing this film. So, this apology from D'Souza comes -- you know, it also comes -- by the way, he posted it last week during a holiday weekend, but he says in that statement that he stands by the other bogus claims that are made in this movie. I don't think it's going to be the last we'll be hearing of this, Jim.

ACOSTA: Yes, it doesn't sound like it. All right, all I can do is shake my head.

Donie O'Sullivan, you and I have been reporting on this disinformation for years now. The truth has started to come out about the untruths. Donie, thank you very much.

Coming up, after the Hunter Biden pardon, Donald Trump is doubling down on his idea to do the same for people convicted in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. What would that mean for the country?

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