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Biden Gathers Key Officials to Plan Fire Response; Crews Race to Contain Los Angeles Fires Ahead of More High Winds; Senate Confirmation Hearing Begin Tuesday for New Cabinet; U.S. and Israel Discuss Ceasefire-Hostage Deal. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired January 13, 2025 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: And the world's largest religious gathering began Monday as millions of Hindu devotees gathered on the banks of the Ganges in India to mark the beginning of Maha Kumbh Mela.

Over the next six weeks, 400 million people are expected to attend the festival on the riverbanks of the city of Prayagraj.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Firefighters still working tirelessly to tackle the Los Angeles fires, but the return of gusty winds could complicate those efforts.

Meanwhile, in Joe Biden's final days as U.S. President, he's overseeing the federal response to the fires. FEMA's role will be especially important in the aftermath, as CNN's Julia Benbrook reports from the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIA BENBROOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Joe Biden is entering his final full week in office, and it is going to be a busy one. He's receiving regular updates on the efforts to suppress the fires across Los Angeles. And on Sunday held a virtual briefing with key officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. During an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Criswell, who has been on the ground in Los Angeles, emphasized that these fires are still dangerous and urged people to continue to listen to state and local officials.

When pressed on what these next few days could look like, she said that any changes in weather could have a big impact on what happens next.

DEANNE CRISWELL, FEMA ADMINISTRATOR: Firefighters, you know, they're working day in and day out. There's resources that are out there. But if the weather changes, it creates different conditions. It's going to change the environment with which they're operating under. Again, the most important piece is keeping them safe as they try to protect all the homes that are in the path of the fire. And then people need to, you know, start the registration process with us. They can register for assistance. They need to contact their insurance company and find out what their insurance company is going to pay for. And really, we can start working with them on what this road to recovery is going to look like.

BENBROOK: More than 24,000 people have already registered for FEMA assistance made available by the president's major disaster declaration. Biden has directed the federal government to cover 100 percent of the state's cost for the initial disaster response. That's over the first 180 days.

Now, this is, of course, all happening as they're preparing for the transition. And Biden says his team is briefing the incoming administration on the steps that they're taking. In addition to monitoring these devastating wildfires, Biden has two major addresses this week.

One on Monday from the State Department, where he will focus on foreign policy and his major accomplishments in that area. And then one on Wednesday, a farewell address here at the White House from the Oval Office.

The last time he addressed the nation from the Oval Office was in July. And that's when he discussed his decision to step out of the 2024 presidential race.

President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president in just over a week now.

Reporting at the White House, Julia Benbrook, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MACFARLANE: Well, this comes as Senate confirmation hearings for Trump's Cabinet picks begins on Tuesday. And first up is his controversial choice for defense secretary. One Republican senator said that it could look like the Brett Kavanaugh hearings on steroids.

CNN's Steve Contorno has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: It's a big week on Capitol Hill for Donald Trump's Cabinet picks. Thirteen of them have Senate confirmation hearings. That includes the highly anticipated hearing for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's choice to lead the Pentagon as defense secretary.

Hegseth's nomination has been dogged so far by allegations of sexual assault stemming back several years ago. Hegseth denies the charges. On Sunday, several Republican senators fanned out across the Sunday political talk shows in defense of Hegseth and several other controversial choices by Donald Trump, including Tulsi Gabbard to serve as the director of national intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let me ask you about Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump's pick for director of national intelligence. You have said that she needs to clarify where she stands on 702. Are Mrs. Gabbard's assurances enough for you, Senator? Are you now a yes on her?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I am. And that was a very important piece for me.

SEN. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO (R-WV): The first thing I asked Robert Kennedy Jr. was about vaccination inoculations. He came back with he's not anti-vaccination. He just is anti -- he wants to have it science based. And that's what he kept going back to. Let's have basic science to make these decisions in terms of -- I think he wants a healthy country.

SEN. JOHN BARRASSO (R-WY): And I also support Pete Hegseth. If you take a look at the current nominee compared to who's been in the Pentagon in the last four years where they had a woke military, where recruitment went down, morale went down. I think Pete is going to be terrific.

CONTORNO: Sources close to Trump's transition team tell CNN that these nominees have undergone weeks of rigorous preparation for these high stakes hearings on Capitol Hill. Some of them have been holding mock hearings that can last upwards of two hours and they are being forced to confront every single question that can be considered.

Quietly, Senate Republicans are also encouraging some of Trump's more contentious picks to just go ahead and confront their controversies head on and don't shy away from any concerns that Senate Democrats or Republicans might have about their nomination.

Ultimately, they are not only performing for the public and for the Senate, but also for Donald Trump who will be closely watching his nominees on the Hill.

Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota tells CNN, quote: The bigger challenge for any of the nominees is just making sure the president still has confidence in them when they've completed their discussions.

Steve Contorno, CNN, West Palm Beach, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Let's bring in Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor of government at the University of Essex. She joins us now from Colchester in England. Thank you so much for joining us.

And Steve, really showing there the amount of pressure there is on these candidates to perform well. They've been in intense tutoring role plays. Just take us through what they'll be practicing over recent weeks.

NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, PROFESSOR GOVERNMENT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX: Well, they are going to face all kinds of questions, most notably from Democrats, but possibly also from some Republicans about whether they are fit for these positions. I mean, if we look at just the case of the nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, he, as the report mentioned, has faced accusations of sexual assault, sexual misconduct, drunken behavior. Which, of course, would be concerning given that he will be in charge of an enterprise that is worth over $800 billion, have been in charge of over several million different employees. And he doesn't really have any kind of management experience.

So some of the questions that they're going to take him through are about, well, how do you do this or that? How will you manage such a huge organization? And what is shaping your worldview about these different types of decisions that he's going to be needing to make?

I mean, I think we need to illustrate that when Trump took over in 2017, the world was a very different place. This is pre-COVID, but also there weren't different conflicts going on. And Trump, I think, was really trying to push the envelope to see what he could get away with some of these different nominations.

And Pete Hegseth is definitely one of them. He is just sort of -- no one was really expecting this type of nomination. So I think there's going to be questions about how well equipped he is to handle the huge challenges that the U.S. is facing.

MACFARLANE: I mean, some of the controversial picks aside, Natasha, do you think we're going to see a faster approval process than we did in 2017? Purely because Trump and his team will have learned from the holdups that time around, you know, the FBI checks, the ethics checks. Will it be a speedier process, do you expect?

LINDSTAEDT: Well, Trump is definitely trying to make it as speedy as possible, trying to strong arm things, get around things, get around going through ethics approval and so forth. And I think for the vast majority of his nominations, they are going to go through fast. There is a lot of enthusiasm on the Republican side for most of these nominations.

But there are a few that I think are going to be a bit tricky. In addition to Pete Hegseth, as I mentioned, also Robert Kennedy, you have some senators who are concerned. Even Mitch McConnell is concerned about his stance on the polio vaccine.

Fifteen thousand doctors have sent a letter to senators asking them to really consider, you know, this nomination and reject it. You also have Tulsi Gabbard, and I think that might be the one who might not make it through. She's nominated for national intelligence. She'd oversee 18 spy agencies. She was pretty recently a supporter of Bernie Sanders. And there are questions from the Democrats of whether or not she is a Russian asset.

That might be the one that just doesn't make it. I think there are already some concerns amongst the senators, and there's only 53 Republican senators. And so just even a few could make it difficult for that type of nomination to go through.

FOSTER: In the last set of hearings for the first Trump, you know, cabinet, you actually saw some of those nominees trying to distance themselves from some of Trump's views. Take Nikki Haley, for example. But this time round, they're not going to get away with that, are they? A real pressure on their performances in terms of not slipping up and saying something that Donald Trump doesn't like.

LINDSTAEDT: Exactly. You have a Republican Party that has really been transformed under Trump. He doesn't have complete control over the Republican Party because I think there are some that are thinking of him as a lame duck president, that he's only going to be there for four years.

[04:40:00]

And then there are others that really see him as the future of the Republican Party, even though he's in his 70s. And they know that he will punish those that don't get in line. We've seen this happen again and again.

He uses his power through social media, through, you know, connecting with the public, to punish people. And if they don't get in line, you know, they won't be able to get reelected. And we've seen that happen time and time again. Or they will be demoted to some sort of committee that they don't want to be on. There's different ways that he can punish them.

And so this is a more authoritarian-style party. It's become very, very hierarchical. And it will be interesting to see where they are able to push against Trump and where they're going to have to do exactly what he says.

MACFARLANE: And just briefly, Natasha, just to reflect a little bit on Joe Biden's last week in office, we know that he's been very busy implementing a series of executive orders before Donald Trump returns. How likely is the president, the new president, to just reverse all of that the minute he's in office?

LINDSTAEDT: Most of the things that Biden is doing are going to get reversed. Things on asylum seekers or immigration, on the environment. I mean, Trump had rolled back over 100 regulations on the environment after he took over in 2017.

And on abortion rights, reproductive rights, and on transgender rights, and on LGBTQ rights. Those are the things he's probably going to go after and overturn. But there are a handful of environmental policies that Biden was able to safeguard.

And, of course, any kind of bipartisan legislation that went through, that would be difficult to overturn as well.

MACFARLANE: All right. Well, you can but try. Just a few days left.

Natasha, we really appreciate your thoughts. Thank you.

LINDSTAEDT: Thanks for having me.

MACFARLANE: Still to come, the latest on the Gaza ceasefire hostage deal negotiations as the White House hopes to strike an agreement in the final days of the Biden administration.

FOSTER: Plus, Vladimir Zelenskyy makes an offer to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Details just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:45:07]

MACFARLANE: Hamas is reportedly, quote, very close to an agreement with Israel for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage exchange deal, but several sticking points remain. That's according to an official from the militant group.

FOSTER: U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the latest progress on the negotiations on Sunday, and the White House says Mr. Biden once again called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the return of hostages and increased humanitarian aid to the enclave.

We're joined by Nada here. You have been in this situation many times, trying to read the runes of these negotiations. I mean, are you more positive?

NADA BASHIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, there certainly seems to be a bit more optimism towards these negotiations that are ongoing in Qatar. But again, it's important to underscore that the sticking points that we're hearing about from mediators are very much the same sticking points that we've been hearing about for months now. So while there is that cautious optimism, that's certainly how the Biden administration has been framing this, they've also been clear that the deal is not done until it's done.

And so they are still working on hammering out those key sticking points, which remain the presence of Israeli forces along the Philadelphi corridor, that buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza, the terms around whether or not this is a permanent ceasefire, a lasting ceasefire, or a temporary halt.

There was also questions around another buffer zone between Gaza's eastern and northern borders. We know that Hamas has expressed its wish not to see that deepened, as Israel wants to see, that they want civilians to be able to return to their homes in those areas.

And of course, one of the crucial points is also, of course, the exchange of hostages, the release of hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Now, we have seen some movement. We know, of course, that the delegations are all in Qatar discussing these points. We've been hearing from the head of the commission for Palestinian detainees who said he is now planning to travel to Doha today to advise on which Palestinian prisoners should be on that list to be released if, indeed, this deal materializes.

So, certainly, there has been some movement. And, of course, Netanyahu, on his side, has been meeting with ministers. He has sent his own delegation.

We know that he's met with the far-right ministers who have previously opposed this ceasefire, Bezalel Yoel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. They remain against any sort of ceasefire being approved at this stage. They want to see a full eradication of Hamas.

But, clearly, there is pressure building both on Netanyahu and the Israeli government, both from the Biden administration and from the incoming Trump administration, but also, of course, Hamas is in a different position as well. It is weakened. The regional situation has changed.

We've seen a ceasefire in Lebanon with Hezbollah, the collapse of the Assad regime. Iran is heavily weakened. So, this is a different situation.

MACFARLANE: Yes, it does feel like there's not really much room or nowhere for Hamas to go in this point. But I was going to say how much of this is to do with the incoming president, with the incoming administration, because Trump has said before he wants to see a deal on the table before he's in office.

BASHIR: That's right, and he hasn't really given any sort of clear outline of how this deal would be reached. It's still, of course, very much on the table for the Biden administration. Biden has reiterated that he wants to see this deal agreed as soon as possible to ensure the release of hostages and, of course, an end to the hostilities in Gaza.

But, as you mentioned, Trump has been clear. He has said all hell will break loose in the Middle East if there isn't that ceasefire agreement. He's even said that he wants to see an agreement reached before he is sworn into office.

So, there's certainly that pressure mounting on Netanyahu's government to secure some sort of agreement before January 20th. We know, of course, that there has been some discussions as well with Trump's incoming Middle East envoy, who remains somewhat positive and optimistic that we could see that deal. But, again, the Biden administration is still focused on this deal until Trump is sworn into office.

And, again, while there is that sense of optimism, as we heard from the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, over the weekend, there isn't a deal until the deal is done.

MACFARLANE: Nada, thank you.

FOSTER: We'll see you back here.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is offering to release two North Korean soldiers if North Korean leader Kim Jong-un can arrange the release of Ukrainian troops held in Russia.

MACFARLANE: On Saturday, Ukraine announced that it captured the North Koreans in Russia's Kursk region. Ukrainian security service released video that says it shows the wounded prisoners being interrogated.

FOSTER: Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang have acknowledged that North Korean troops are fighting alongside Russian forces. Kyiv says the captured troops are definitive proof that Russia's army is dependent on aid coming from Pyongyang.

MACFARLANE: Still ahead, we're following breaking news of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires as residents anxiously wait to return to their communities. The latest on the evacuation orders next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:50:00]

FOSTER: The deadly wildfires burning in Southern California could get worse in the days ahead, would you believe. Officials say the fire threat is very high, with wind speeds predicted to keep rising through Wednesday. The Eaton Fire is 27 percent contained, but the largest blaze, the Palisades Fire, is only 13 percent contained.

California Governor Gavin Newsom explains how they're preparing for these dangerous winds.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GAVIN NEWSOM, (D) CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR: So I'm up here in Mandeville Canyon, which was the site in the last two nights of tremendous investment of resources. Firefighters working the line. A lot of those assets still here, not only in anticipation of potential flare-up here in the Palisades Fire, but also prepositioned, as we're prepositioning in many counties throughout the state of California, because of the upcoming winds we're expecting.

Monday, peaking Monday night into Tuesday, extending into Wednesday.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACFARLANE: Well thousands of people still can't return home. Videos show California's National Guard and police enforcing a mandatory evacuation zone in Santa Monica on Sunday.

Health officials are raising concerns about the air quality in Los Angeles County. The fires have released hazardous smoke that poses several short- and long-term health risks that led to the county to declare a local health emergency on Friday after several days of intense fire and wind.

FOSTER: Experts say toxins from the smoke can cause more serious problems. That's especially true for children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with respiratory, heart or immune system issues. Some of the symptoms from the wildfire smoke include burning eyes, headaches and breathing difficulties. Experts caution residents to stay indoors, if possible, and to wear filtration masks outside.

MACFARLANE: Now, what one family's calling a glimmer of hope found amid the fire's destruction, while searching the rubble of a burnt home by the Palisades fire, these firefighters found a family heirloom.

FOSTER: A ring that's been handed down through three generations. The family says it was a miraculous moment. They thank the firefighters who, they say, helped them believe that not all was lost.

MACFARLANE: A ring of hope. I like it. And you can help those impacted by these devastating wildfires in California. Visit cnn.com/impact for information on vetted organizations.

FOSTER: Thank you for joining us here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster.

MACFARLANE: And I'm Christina Macfarlane. Stay tuned for CNN "THIS MORNING" up after this quick break.