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Government Funding Passes Without Trump's Key Demand; Biden Stays Out Of Public Spotlight Amid Shutdown Negotiations; Vigil For Victims Of Deadly German Christmas Market Attack; Health Care CEO Murder Suspect Set For Monday Arraignment; Mangione May Face Death Penalty With Federal Murder Charge; Biden's Approval In Final Stretch Of Presidency; Sen. Durbin Accuses Justices Thomas, Alito Of Disclosure Law Violations; "Luther: Never Too Much" Premieres New Year's Day at 8PM ET/PT. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired December 21, 2024 - 18:00   ET

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

[18:00:06]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jessica Dean in New York.

Lawmakers catching their breath after a chaotic 48 hours of bargaining on Capitol Hill. While a deal was struck to avoid a government shutdown. The events over the last two days raise a few questions about what governing may look like during President-elect Donald Trump's second term.

CNN's Steve Contorno joins us now from West Palm Beach with more on this.

Steve, what did we glean from the last 48 hours or so?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Well, Jessica, we saw that there are limitations to the electoral mandate that Donald Trump believes that he won just a month ago.

We saw 38 Republicans on Thursday vote against a plan to raise the debt ceiling all the way through 2027, and then 170 Republicans siding with House Speaker Mike Johnson and the entire Democratic Caucus in support of a continuing resolution to fund the government without that debt ceiling extension that Trump desperately wanted and was pushing for.

And this is not the first time that we have seen Trump suffer some defeats at the expense of his own party. In recent weeks, he had Senator Rick Scott, the Trump aligned candidate to lead the Senate as a Majority Leader, he lost his bid to Senator John Thune, who didn't even endorse Trump in the primary last go around.

We also saw Matt Gaetz falter in his nomination to be the attorney general, a job that Donald Trump views as integral to his Cabinet. Now he is forced to go to a fallback option and also, he abandoned a push to get his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, named to the US Senate in Florida to replace Marco Rubio after it became clear that Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis did not want to go along with the plan to appoint her.

So look, obviously, Donald Trump still has incredible command of his party, but it shows that in a very narrow majority in his House, there is little room for him to lose any support and that goes for the Senate as well.

And so even though we will have a Republican House and Republican Senate and a Republican White House, and they will surely push through a lot of conservative and pro-Trump legislation, there are certain lines that maybe some Republicans aren't willing to cross and we have seen several individuals like House Representative Chip Roy of Texas, become targets of the MAGA right already for being willing to stand up to Trump.

How far is Trump willing to take this now to challenge his own party? Will we see primary challenges? Last go around, Trump did threaten that for anyone who supported a bill that didn't raise the debt ceiling, well, 170 Republicans ultimately did in the House and dozens more in the Senate. Is he really going to primary all of those individuals?

So it is just an interesting opening round in what was going to be a Republican House, Senate and White House and see how they govern going forward?

DEAN: Certainly. All right, Steve Contorno in West Palm Beach, thank you for that reporting.

And joining us now, Maria Cardona, CNN political commentator and Democratic strategist, and Pete Seat, Republican strategist and former White House spokesman for George W. Bush.

Good to see both of you.

Pete, I want to start first with you. Under the threat of being primaried, we still saw a number of Republicans breaking with Trump on this. Do you think there was a bit of a reality check for the president-elect and Elon Musk?

PETE SEAT, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: There certainly should be a reality check after the last couple of days. A couple of reasons why. One, there are members, particularly in the House of Representatives, Republicans who consistently vote against these Continuing Resolutions, against omnibus spending bills. They are fiscal hawks who are principled in their stance and they don't care if Donald Trump says jump, they're not going to respond with how high. They're going to vote the way they want to vote.

The other reality is this sweeping mandate that is being claimed is being misread. And I am a Republican, but I am a realistic Republican. It is being misread and cannot be misconstrued.

The margins will be incredibly tight for John Thune in the Senate and Mike Johnson in the House. There is not a lot of room for error and rank and file want to be at the table. They don't want leadership negotiating behind the scenes. They want to be part of this process. And had they been, it could have turned out differently.

DEAN: Yes. I actually talked to a member who said almost exactly that in our first hour of the show.

Maria, for Democrats, this was also an interesting moment. What did you make of Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership? And do you think, look, they started with a bipartisan bill that had some priorities for Democrats and that all got tossed out. Do you think they got enough?

[18:05:10]

MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, certainly, because what Democrats have always have as their priority, as their true north, is to do what is right by the American people, and that's why they put things in this bill, even in the bipartisan bill that was negotiated and that then was blown up by a couple of tweets by Elon Musk. And then as he wagged the dog and Trump followed suit, everything fell apart.

But I think Hakeem Jeffries, what you saw was somebody who actually knows how to legislate, who actually knows how the government works, who actually can keep his caucus together. Democrats were unified for the most part in this. And frankly, at the 11th hour, Johnson had to come to Democrats for help to make sure that the government wasn't shut down, to essentially save his skin.

And Democrats, of course, did not want the government to shut down, but also was not going to give Donald Trump and Elon Musk a blank check in getting rid of the debt ceiling when the timing wasn't even right, when, as you know, debt ceiling negotiations take months and all of this came at the 11th hour when no one was expecting it.

And so Democrats are going to move forward into this new Congress, strong, unified, and Pete is absolutely right, the mandate that Donald Trump thinks he has is not the mandate that Donald Trump thinks he has.

I am sorry about that.

DEAN: Pete, that's okay.

CARDONA: My dogs agree with me.

The Congress that was just elected into office, Jessica, there is only a separation of about 7,000 votes, and the Democrats would be in power. So it is razor thin and Donald Trump has got to learn how to negotiate and how to compromise.

DEAN: And so, Pete, Maria is talking about Democratic leadership. We look to Mike Johnson. We see -- you know, do you think he is going to be the Speaker of the House as of January 3rd; and assuming he is, if you're a Republican member of Congress, who are you looking to for leadership here? Is it Trump? Is it Speaker Johnson? Is it Elon Musk?

SEAT: Well, I want to mention the one name that has not come up yet, and that's Joe Biden. Remember him? He is currently president of the United States and was not part of any of this.

DEAN: Yes. And I do want to get on -- we are going to talk about that, too. Go on.

SEAT: Okay. Fair enough. Okay. Then I will pivot directly to your question and answer it. So, I think Mike Johnson is going to be fine in the end. I would be more concerned if the vote took place after January 20th, when folks like Mike Waltz and Elise Stefanik join the Trump administration, and that margin gets even smaller. But I think there is enough padding for him on January 3rd.

I think Donald Trump will stick by him. You already saw Elon Musk put out a supportive post, I believe, last evening about Mike Johnson. Remember he was in the box at the Army-Navy game. He is very close to the president-elect. They were on the phone just last night as these votes were happening. I think he is going to be fine in the end.

But members of Congress are separately elected. They are a co-equal branch of government, and each member is going to make a decision that they believe is in the best interest of their constituents.

DEAN: And so what you're saying then is you think they're going to be making their own decisions, not looking to Trump, Musk or even Johnson.

SEAT: Well, some will. Some view themselves, and I think of Tommy Tuberville, views himself as an extension of the executive branch, and he will do whatever Donald Trump asks him to do.

But there are other members, and we've heard them on this network and elsewhere say, I was elected by the people in my district, and I am going to do what I think is best for them and what they want me to do, and not necessarily what the executive branch wants me to do.

DEAN: And so, Maria, look, I did want to ask you about President Biden of all of this, and the role that he did or did not play. He was really quiet. And as I said in an earlier hour, the White House likes to say that he really understands Congress. He doesn't want to meddle. He wants to -- that is what they typically say. And yet we had a president-elect who is not sitting in the Oval Office playing a huge role in all of this.

While we really didn't hear much from President Biden at all, and he was the one signing the legislation.

CARDONA: That's because, Jessica, we didn't need to. You know, the White House is right, President Biden knows exactly how Congress works. President Biden knows exactly how to legislate effectively.

He presided over one of the most effective and accomplishment-laden Congresses that we have had in a generation.

[18:10:10]

The massive amount of legislation that got done under President Biden's watch is going to be hard to match by anyone in either party in the near future, so I am not worried at all about the fact that we did not have President Biden trying to hog every single camera or every single media moment because he knew exactly what he was doing.

And he and Hakeem Jeffries were tightly coordinated, not in public, behind-the-scenes, because he knows that this gets done in the House. And again, we saw that unification by what was coming out of Democrats.

DEAN: Pete, what are your thoughts?

SEAT: Well, it does get in the House. Spending bills originate in the House, and the Republican-led House of Representatives passed all 12 appropriation bills through committee. They passed five across the floor. And guess what? Chuck Schumer and Democrats did in the Senate? Zero. Nothing. They didn't even look at them. They collected dust somewhere in a drawer. They were never considered.

So if we want to work together, we want some bipartisanship. We want to get these spending bills done. Everyone has got to play ball, but I would say with President Biden, my sense and I think the sense of a lot of Americans is he didn't really care if the government shut down at midnight last night.

If he did, he would have spoken up. He would have said something. He would have engaged in this conversation. But he was silent.

CARDONA: He didn't need to. No, that's not true. That's not true, Pete, come on, you know better than that. President Biden and Hakeem Jeffries were joined every step of the way. He knew exactly what was happening. He knew that Hakeem was doing the right thing and legislating with power, with strength, with unity, with the Democratic Party behind him and we ended up where we ended up because of that.

And so just because Musk and Trump have no idea and are clueless and maybe don't even have any "umph" in terms of wanting to govern effectively, President Biden does. He has proven time and again that he can do it.

DEAN: Maria, I do want to ask about this "Wall Street Journal" reporting that came out this week that got into President Biden's health, a reported decline. One of the quotes from the piece was if the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a National Security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled, "He has good days and bad days and today was a bad day, so we are going to address this tomorrow."

What do you say to that reporting?

CARDONA: You know, these are the things that are going to continue to come out as people try to again negate and knock down this president's phenomenal record of accomplishments, because they don't want to give him his due. So I am not going to give that report or any others that are going to be coming out on this, and we know they will because everyone wants to knock down this current president, but he will be remembered historically and by historians as one of the most effective presidents and one of the most effective leaders that was able to legislate for the American people in a bipartisan way, by the way.

A lot of the legislation that was passed in these last four years that was most effective was done in a bipartisan way when everyone was saying he couldn't get this done, he wasn't going to be able to do this in a very divided Congress, in a very divided country, and look at what he was able to do.

Trump was not able to match him last four years. Trump is not going to be able to match President Biden's legislative accomplishments in these next four. So Republicans are going to do what they can to try to knock him down.

DEAN: And, Pete, I will give you the last word on that. Do you think that President Trump can match President Biden's legislative accomplishments?

SEAT: He will not only match, he will surpass it. If Joe Biden was so successful, his hand-picked replacement to be the Democrat nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, would have won.

The American people sent a very strong message and what you see is not governing effectively, Maria. The other half of the country sees as governing differently. They appreciate the appeal of transparency and negotiating in public, as opposed to negotiating behind closed doors and it is a little messy and chaotic along the way, but it gets the job done in the end.

DEAN: All right, Maria Cardona, Pete Seat, our thanks to both of you. Have a great Saturday night.

CARDONA: Thank you, Jessica. Happy holidays.

SEAT: Thank you.

DEAN: You, too.

Ahead, warning and an urgent search for answers in Germany tonight after a Christmas market attack left a child and four others dead, along with hundreds more injured. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:19:32]

DEAN: Tonight, the German city of Magdeburg is holding a vigil near the site of a deadly Christmas market attack. Five people were killed when a car plowed through the crowd on Friday night. One of those victims, a nine-year-old.

More than 200 others were hurt, including 40 with critical injuries. Officials saying the suspect is a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia, who has lived in Germany since 2006.

Earlier, I spoke with Matthew Chance with an update on the investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I mean, this is a city in Eastern Germany that is in shock. I mean, the whole country has actually gone through, you know, kind of convulsions economically and politically.

[18:20:08]

The government recently fell. There are elections here that are going to be held next week. There is a whole kind of debate about immigration in the country. And then into that, a few days before Christmas, you had this horrific attack which has left at least five people dead, according to the latest figures, about 200 injured, according to local officials.

And people in this town are absolutely bereft. You can see behind me all of these candles that have been laid out and there are people here still, at nighttime, it is half past 10, nearly at nighttime local time in the evening, and people are still coming, paying their respects, lighting candles, remembering what took place.

This is the scene behind me. It is Its cordoned off. You can see the tape right here by the police. There are still forensic teams right down there, just out of sight. Because this is the road down which the driver plowed through that busy Christmas market.

It is one of the kind of Christmas market you see all over Germany at this time and so, it has been sealed off by police to collect forensic evidence to try and build their case, and of course, to clean the area up, the whole area was strewn with bodies as a result in the aftermath of that attack.

The suspect, well, he is in police custody, after being detained shortly after the attack took place here in Eastern Germany -- Jessica.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DEAN: And our thanks to Matthew Chance for that.

Joining us now is former CIA counterterrorism official, Phil Mudd.

Phil, thanks so much for being here with us.

I want to get just your general thought. We know a little bit more today than we did yesterday when this horrible incident happened.

What are you gleaning from the new information we've got?

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: That we are too quick to believe that we can come to a determination about motive that will make sense to us.

Every time I've seen these for decades now in my career, probably 35 years of watching stuff like this, people who watch this think that they're going to see someone like this individual who conducted this attack and that that individual might have a thought process that we all can understand.

Some of the first reports suggest that this individual was trying to oppose emerging German immigration policy. That makes zero sense, how you, as an immigrant, oppose immigration policy by killing Germans. Zero sense.

So I think we are looking for a lot of motive. And in some of these cases, you'll find a motive and it turns out, it does not make a lot of sense. I think that is very interesting.

DEAN: Yes, and it can be deeply unsatisfying for people who would like some sort of explanation for this horrific incident that left a child and others dead just days before Christmas. But to your point, it doesn't always -- we don't always get that explanation.

I do want to ask, sources are telling CNN that Saudi Arabia sent multiple warnings to German authorities about this suspect that went ignored. What do you think about that?

MUDD: I have to confess, I have worked for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia about 13 years ago, so it has been a while, but I will say that up front, I would say, despite my employment with the Saudi government after I left the US. government, I would handle that information from Saudi Arabia with a lot of caution.

I am sure there are people listening to your report saying, how could that happen if you were warned about this guy, why didn't you pick him up? Let me tell you the reason why. The Saudis can be vicious about political opposition. When you get information from the Saudis saying this guy is of concern, your first question has to be not whether we should pick him up, your first question has to be, are they trying to get us to pick up somebody they don't like, because this person is a political oppositionist? That story seems very simple.

Behind-the-scenes, I am telling you that is not a simple story how you handle Saudi information like that.

DEAN: And that's kind of the layered piece of this. It is very nuanced and that is an important point to consider when we do get those kind of data points about this. What do you think about the potential for any sort of copycat attack like this? Obviously, just to remind people this happened, there was a similar situation back in 2016 in Berlin. In that case, it was ISIS, that somebody drove a car through a Christmas market.

And since then Germany had put a lot of security measures into place around these kind of soft targets, these Christmas markets where people are walking around.

Do you -- are you worried about that? I know there is always a concern that that can happen, these copycats.

MUDD: I guess this isn't the right answer. As a former practitioner, I wouldn't say I am worried. I would say the expectation has to be there in Christmas markets like this. There is no way you can secure these. Think of the parades we have in this country on holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas. You can have police around, you can put physical security around. But if that group of people is gathered for a mile or two, there is no way you can secure all of that.

So I look at this and think about copycats. But if this person is, maybe not quite psychologically all there, the copycat is more likely going to be an ISIS copycat and not somebody who is motivated by some weird immigration philosophy that we can't really understand.

[18:25:10 ]

DEAN: And just in terms of politically, in Germany, we are watching a lot happen there right now in terms of what is happening domestically there in Germany, with their politics and including this rise of this far right political party.

What do you make of the politics surrounding this, if anything?

MUDD: The politics surrounding this, to my mind, are very simple, and that is increasingly around the world, whether it is the United States, whether it is the UK, whether it is Germany, people who have seen waves of immigration, especially in Europe, waves of immigration, for example, after the war in Ukraine, are saying enough. Whether you agree with that or not, the German centrists who are in favor of immigration are being hammered by people saying, we've had enough.

Again, you see that in this country, you see it in the UK. So there is a wave of people saying, we like immigrants, we like them in the past, but we've had too many and they've got to go. This will feed that narrative that says we can't accept more people like this.

DEAN: All right, Phil Mudd, thank you so much. We appreciate your analysis here.

MUDD: Thank you.

DEAN: Still to come, we are talking with a prison consultant about what the healthcare CEO murder suspect, Luigi Mangione can expect from his stay at an infamous Brooklyn detention facility.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:30:47]

DEAN: The suspect accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson could be arraigned as early as Monday on state murder charges. Luigi Mangione is currently in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center. It's a notorious federal lockup, which is also where Sean "Diddy" Combs is being detained and where Jeffrey Epstein died.

Meanwhile, Mangione is facing four federal counts, including one murder count, which carries with it the possibility of the death penalty.

Joining us now is prison consultant Sam Mangel.

Sam is in touch with members of Mangione's legal team and staff attorneys from that detention center, but has not been retained by the defense.

Sam, we wanted to make sure everybody was all on the same page there. Nice to have you here with us. I just first want to know from your perspective what it's like in this facility and how Mangione might be treated.

SAM MANGEL, PRISON CONSULTANT: So first, thank you for having me back. I've described this facility and it's kind of caught on as a catchphrase as the worst facility. I mean, it's worse than hell. Where he currently is, is in a protective custody unit, so it's similar to a shoe, and he's being held there for evaluation until they can clear him psychologically, physically, emotionally. They're not going to put him into a general population environment.

Even though he won't be in theoretical general population, he'll most likely be on what's called unit 4H, which is where your high-profile inmates are. It is not a pleasant place to be. However, it is much better than the alternative, which would be a state facility where (ph) Rikers for a number of reasons.

DEAN: And why is that?

MANGEL: Under - when you're in a federal facility, you tend to not only get better - and I use this term very generously, accommodations. But the food, the ability to access counsel and also the nature of the prisoners tend to be a little bit different.

Certainly, when he leaves protective custody and gets into the floor he's going to, which is where Sean Combs is, Sam Bankman-Fried. I think there's two former politicians from the Mexican government.

Once he gets there, he will not only be in a safer environment, he'll be allowed out of his cell probably from six in the morning to nine at night, barring counts. He'll get three regular meals, which tend to be much better than state meals. And overall, he will be certainly much safer in an open environment than having to require or need the protective custody of what he might need at Rikers.

DEAN: I also want to ask you, this case in particular, and we've talked about this on this show as well, just about the public support that we have seen for this man who is accused of killing Brian Thompson, and what that looks like on the internet and just how - not only high profile, but just how he has gotten so much public support from people. Does - what does that mean, if anything, when you're inside this facility? Does he get letters or phone calls or anything like that or it doesn't matter at all?

MANGEL: Well, certainly people could put money on his account for commissary and for emails. He'll get letters, he might get fan letters. Other than that, he's a - it makes him, in my opinion, much more vulnerable, much more susceptible to extortion, especially once, not so much where he currently is - this might be the safest part of his whole journey.

If he is convicted of federal charges, which would certainly be better than the state charges in terms of prisons, he's going to have to figure out with his team where to go, where will be the safest facility. Is he going to need psychological services or is he going to - depending upon the sentence - have to remain somewhere for life? And he will face inmates that do not - are not fans of his, do not care about UnitedHealthcare, usually care about one thing, what can you give me. How much money can your family send me or else.

And it's a very scary predicament that he and his family have to be concerned with going forward. This will be, in my opinion, the safest part of his whole experience being in Brooklyn, MDC.

[18:35:06]

DEAN: And - yes, and I know - again, as I said at the top of this interview, you are advising his legal team you've not been retained by them. Is that something you've - you all have talked through, just his particular situation in the fact that the public does know that he comes from a well-to-do family, things like that?

MANGEL: So I've spoken with his legal team. I've spoken with them on a number of occasions. I've also spoken with the legal staff at Brooklyn, MDC as recently as yesterday to try to help arrange the legal visits for him, for his counsel. So I wanted to clarify that.

I'm sure that they were blindsided the other day when they learned it was federal. So they're going to have to pivot and do whatever is necessary to deal with that charge. I'm sure that they were probably preparing for the state charges and a potential state incarceration. Federal is completely different and it's something that I'm sure that they will be addressing as time goes forward.

DEAN: All right, Sam Mangel, thank you so much for your insight on this. We appreciate it.

MANGEL: Thank you, Jessica. Happy holidays.

DEAN: Happy holidays to you.

We have some sad news coming in this hour as Baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson has died. Henderson spent 25 years in the majors and quickly established himself as one of the league's most exciting players and personalities. He is baseball's all-time leader in both runs, scored and stolen bases. The MLB commissioner saying in a statement today that Henderson was the gold standard of base stealing and leadoff hitting. Henderson was 65 years old. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:41:22]

DEAN: We are now in the final months of Joe Biden's presidency and the final chapter of a half-century political career. And with all of that comes questions about his popularity, his legacy. CNN Senior Data Reporter Harry Enten is joining us now to run the numbers, as he often does on a Saturday night.

And as Joe Biden's presidency now enters its homestretch, Harry, how are Americans viewing him?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: I would argue it's a sad end to a very long career is the way that I would put it. You know, we can see it, you know, quite well here. Look, approve of Joe Biden's job performance. Fox News is the best of the group at 41 percent. You got Quinnipiac at 38 percent. Monmouth at 35 percent. That's a record low for Monmouth's polls of Joe Biden's approval rating. And you look at Marquette at the bottom of this list at 34 percent. This just ain't good. This is not the way I think anyone would want to go out. But the numbers are the numbers. And right now, Joe Biden is hovering near the lowest approval point of his presidency. In fact, the lowest, if you believe Monmouth or Marquette, Jessica.

DEAN: And how does that put his standing in a historic - or can you put it in historical context for us?

ENTEN: Yes. I mean, look, it - he's on his way to having the worst approval rating at the end of a first term among someone who lost or didn't run for reelection. I mean, look, he's at 37 percent on average right now, right, in December of 2024. Now we'll see what happens over the final month, but that's actually lower than Donald Trump was in January of 2021.

I remember back then, right, it was COVID and I remember writing about how we had a historically low approval rating going out after just one term. Obviously, he's coming back. But Joe Biden actually beats that, but in a bad way. He's even lower than Donald Trump was.

And, of course, Jimmy Carter, when you talk about presidents with low approval ratings, he is normally, you know, the historical person you look to. But he was at 44 percent by the end of his presidency in January of '81. And then George H. W. Bush completely, whoops, completely on the other end there, right at 56 percent in January of 1993.

But the bottom line is this, Joe Biden at this point, unless he improves dramatically, is going to have the lowest approval rating for any president after just a single term, Jessica.

DEAN: And how much do people care about the president these days and this sort of thing?

ENTEN: Yes. You know, one way you might look at that is web - you know, web searches. And I sort of look at it relative to other presidents at the end of their term since, you know, since we had Google going all the way back. And look, Donald Trump, not surprisingly, was number one about - with a month to go in his presidency. Everyone was always searching for Donald Trump.

Barack Obama was number two in 2016. George W. Bush was number three back in 2008. Biden is at number four. He's just simply put relevant to fewer folks than these other folks are. So it's not just that Biden's approval rating is low. It's that he's also become irrelevant in the minds of a lot of folks worldwide.

DEAN: And then we have, of course, Donald Trump coming back into office. Where does his popularity sit?

ENTEN: Yes. If Joe Biden is near the bottom of where he has been historically, Donald Trump is right near the top. And I, you know, I think that is just something that Joe Biden never wanted to happen. Look, record warm feelings for Donald Trump as the presidential transition, you know, heads into hyperdrive here. His favorable rating, 47 percent in average polls. That's the highest it's ever been. Approve of the transition, 57 percent. That's the highest it's ever been. Obviously, we can compare those numbers back to 2016 going into January 2017.

So the bottom line is this, if Joe Biden is at the bottom, Donald Trump is at his apex in terms of popularity when it comes to the American public, Jessica.

DEAN: Interesting snapshot right now.

[18:45:00]

And before we let you go, you were struck by an article by our colleague, Nathaniel Meyersohn, about a certain food chain that's making a comeback. What is that about?

ENTEN: Yes. So, you know, he wrote an article about Chili's making a great comeback as other, you know, sort of casual food establishment struggle. Chili's is growing, thanks to $6 margarita. So I wanted to sort of put a list together for you of Harry's list of greatest comebacks ever. The Boston Red Sox in 2004 coming back from three nil against the vaunted Yankees, who, of course, I despise tremendously. They're on the list. Rocky Balboa coming out of retirement in 2006. He, of course, is on the list. And Chili's in 2024 making my list of greatest comebacks ever.

So the bottom line is Chili's rising high as other food establishment struggle in large part thanks to $6 dollar margaritas. And they make Harry's list of greatest comebacks ever.

DEAN: Listen, I spent a lot of my adolescence at Chili's, so it's fun to see it coming back. Maybe you can get a reservation tonight, Harry, enjoy some food.

ENTEN: I'm going to try my best. Maybe I'll go there instead of where I was going. You're giving me good ideas, Jessica.

DEAN: I know, it's food for thought. All right, Harry Enten ...

ENTEN: I like that.

DEAN: ... thanks so much, good to see you.

ENTEN: Nice to see you.

DEAN: New tonight, luxury travel, private flights and property deals with an extensive new report reveals about ethical practices in the Supreme Court and who's accused of breaking the rules.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:50:53]

DEAN: The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Democrat Dick Durbin is accusing conservative Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito of violating federal disclosure laws. A report by the Senate Judiciary Committee capping a months-long investigation and we go now to CNN's Brian Abel.

Brian, tell us more about this.

BRIAN ABEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jessica, this blistering nearly 100 page Senate Judiciary Committee report accuses conservative justices Thomas and Alito of violating those federal disclosure laws by failing to disclose lavish trips and gifts paid for by wealthy people with business in front of the court, then allegedly improperly using the personal hospitality exemption to defend themselves.

Now this report highlights the months-long investigation by the staff of Sen. Durbin an Illinois Democrat and as you said the chairman of the committee. Many of the luxury trips, private flights and other gifts in question have been publicly known for months but this report provides more detail. Some of that detail coming from information gained by subpoenas of some of the wealthy donors of the gifts.

One of those trips according to the report was a 2008 Alaskan fishing expedition taken by Justice Alito where the report puts the private flight alone at a value of nearly $24,000 per passenger. The report also digs into the past accusing the late Justice Antonin Scalia of improperly accepting gifts during his time on the High Court.

The report's authors use those and other examples to conclude that the court quote has demonstrated its inability or unwillingness to police its own ethical conduct. It's not just the gifts that the report calls unethical behavior by justices on the court though, it also asserts that justices at times have violated their duty to recuse themselves from certain cases where there's a conflict of interest including Justice Thomas staying on cases involving the 2020 presidential election despite political advocacy by his wife Ginni Thomas in support of then-President Donald Trump.

Federal law gives justices wide latitude to make their own recusal decisions. It requires them to bow out when a spouse has an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of a case.

Now, Durbin has long called for ethical reform on the Supreme Court saying this back in September on the Senate floor.

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SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): ... get that, Supreme Court justice, highest court in the land, life and death decisions every day and he's receiving $4 million in gifts that he doesn't disclose. Justice Thomas has failed to disclose the vast majority of these gifts in clear violation of financial disclosure requirements under federal law.

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ABEL: In a statement about this report, Sen. Durbin says it's clear that the justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires. Justices Thomas and Alito have said previously they were not obligated to report the trips and that they've done nothing wrong. A Supreme Court spokesperson has yet to respond to a request for comments about the findings of this report and it does come at a peculiar time released the day after lawmakers pass a budget and left for the year. When Sen. Durbin returns he will be in the minority of his chamber and ethics proposals that he and other Senate Democrats have supported recently will likely be shelved, Jessica.

DEAN: Very, very, very, very likely. Brian Abel, thank you very much for that. A new CNN film examines the storied career of one of the most influential artists of all time, Luther Vandross from his formative years in Harlem to his rise as the king of love songs. Vandross tells his own story using a wealth of archives along with the voices of his closest musical collaborators and friends. Here's a preview.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: During that time, we had this whole thing where the way that we used to get gigs is we would attend each other's session. And if incidentally they happened to need somebody to fill in, oh my friend's a singer he could definitely do it, and we always brought Luther.

[18:55:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Luther started doing what he does which is start singing when David put music on, he starts, you know, whatever or how many. And David was like, wow, this guy's great.

David knew talent and he whispered to me he said, I love this guy. And I'm like, what's not to love?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: You can catch "Luther: Never Too Much" on New Year's Day at 8 PM Eastern and Pacific. It airs right here on CNN.

When we come back tonight though how the personal and political realities of Washington are already throwing a bit of cold water on Trump's claims of an electoral mandate. More on that, you're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

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