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2026 FIFA World Cup; New Bill Moves Germany Closer to Military Conscription; Netflix Bids on Warner Bros. Discovery's Studios, Streaming Unit. Aired 3-3:30a ET
Aired December 06, 2025 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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BEN HUNTE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello. Wherever you are in the world, you are now in the CNN NEWSROOM with me, Ben Hunte in Atlanta. And it is so good to have you with me.
Coming up on the show, U.S. president Donald Trump receives a peace prize from the world football governing body. The controversy around the decision.
While the world reacts to that, the 48 football teams find out who they're going to play in the World Cup.
And a Batman movie prop and a creature that last roamed the Earth more than 60 million years ago are on the auction block and they could be yours.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from Atlanta this is CNN NEWSROOM with Ben Hunte.
HUNTE: Welcome. We're starting with the draw for the World Cup, the tournament that's considered the most widely viewed sports event on the planet. It was a big event in Washington, D.C. But the draw wasn't the only notable thing that happened on stage there.
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GIANNI INFANTINO, FIFA PRESIDENT: Mr. President, this is your prize. This is your peace prize. There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I'll wear it right now.
INFANTINO: OK, let me hold -- fantastic, excellent.
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HUNTE: So that is FIFA president Gianni Infantino, giving U.S. president Donald Trump the newly created FIFA peace prize. FIFA credited president Trump for brokering peace in multiple parts of the world.
But the activist group Human Rights Watch criticized the award for a lack of transparency and for being presented amid a U.S. immigration crackdown. Before receiving it, Mr. Trump was asked about the message that it sends.
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KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: What would you say to people who say that prize might conflict with your pledge to strike Venezuela?
TRUMP: Well, I think the Peace Prize, I mean, I settled eight wars. I don't know that I'm getting it. I haven't been officially noticed. I've been hearing about a Peace Prize.
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HUNTE: CNN's Kristen Holmes has more on the FIFA peace prize and the only person whose name came up as a likely winner.
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KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: President Trump relishing the limelight today at the Kennedy Center during the FIFA World Cup draw, even winning what they called a FIFA peace prize.
Now this was given to him by the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, who has become somewhat of a friend of president Trump's, almost always by his side these days as head of that World Cup.
And this prize seemed to be almost a conciliatory prize for the fact that president Trump did not win the Nobel Peace Prize. It is not a prize that has previously been given. They called this the first annual FIFA peace prize.
But he seemed happy nonetheless to get it. He also danced to "YMCA." And one of the things to keep in mind here, as we move forward in president Trump's tenure, there are three big events that president Trump behind closed doors talks about on a regular basis and that is the FIFA World Cup.
It is also the Olympics. And, of course, America 250. He revels in the fact that he gets to be president during those three events. Now, of course, the fact that those events are coming to the United States under his presidency, those are decided by global committees and one is an actual anniversary.
But it does nonetheless fit into a timeframe that president Trump will be in office and is very, very happy that he gets to oversee these events.
Now, of course, again, this happened at the Kennedy Center, a place that president Trump has effectively taken over. In fact, this week he called it the Trump Kennedy Center during an event he has pledged. And Republicans have pledged about $250 million in renovations to the Kennedy Center. He walked the red carpet there today and spoke to the acting head
about all of those new renovations -- Kristen Holmes, CNN, the White House.
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HUNTE: Well, as for the World Cup itself, the opener between Mexico and Brazil is set for June 11th in Mexico City. The first matches in the U.S. and Canada take place a day later. CNN "WORLD SPORT" anchor Don Riddell was at the World Cup draw and he has more on the matchups from Washington.
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DON RIDDELL, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: What a day it has been at the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C., where the draw was made for the 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament.
It was bigger than ever before, 48 teams instead of 32, 12 groups instead of eight. And it was a real collision of the worlds of football, sports in general, entertainment and politics.
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U.S. president, Donald Trump was lauded by FIFA's President, Gianni Infantino with its inaugural Peace Prize.
We were serenaded by the operatic legend Andrea Bocelli and we listened to the Village People who played "YMCA." And the sports legends, Tom Brady, Shaquille O'Neal, Wayne Gretzky and Aaron Judge, all helped draw the teams out at random.
And, of course, that's really what this was all about. The host nations, USA, Canada and Mexico all received arguably favorable draws with pundits debating who had been drawn into a so-called group of death.
Perhaps it's Group I with France, Senegal and Norway with an unnamed playoff team yet to come. It's a draw that pits two of the game's biggest young stars Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland against each other.
Or the group of death might be L with England and Croatia a repeat of the 2018 semifinal, Panama and Ghana, who are arguably the toughest of the so-called weakest teams.
But arguably there is no group of death this time, because most of the third place teams eight of the 12 will also progress to the knockouts phase. So really the group stage will determine the more favorable roots through the knockout rounds.
On Saturday, FIFA will reveal the venues and the dates for all of the games and in March, the last six playoff teams will be determined to fill out the groups but the starting gun was fired in Washington, D.C., today, the next World Cup is starting to feel very real. Back to you. (END VIDEOTAPE)
HUNTE: The U.S. is hoping to take a good run at winning the trophy. CNN's Andy Scholes spoke to fans here in Atlanta, Georgia, one of the World Cup host cities.
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ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORT CORRESPONDENT: It was an exciting day here in Atlanta as fans gathered to watch the draw for the largest World Cup ever. Now the city of Atlanta is hosting eight World Cup games, including a semifinals.
And all the fans are certainly dreaming of making it that far in the tournament. And I caught up with many of them to ask him how they were feeling after the U.S. learned their group.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Love the U.S. group. I think it's going to take four points to come out of that group. So they got a really good chance, you
know, finishing that top two spot.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's not the best. It's not the worst. We're going to have some good challenges. I think we're going to make it out and I think we're going to have a good path to get to the final.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm feeling really good about the group. It's different group for -- I mean, different teams play differently. And so, it's going to be a good challenge.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's have a nice, clean, tidy group play. Get at least the four points. Let's get in the knockout round. And once you get in there, anything can happen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe semifinals right here in Atlanta.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're still going to the final, baby. We're going up there. At least quarters for sure. And we're going to surprise everybody, make it to the top.
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SCHOLES: So in the U.S.' group is Australia, Paraguay and a European playoff winner. The best the U.S. has ever finished in a modern World Cup was when they made the quarterfinals back in 2002.
But as you heard, a lot of fans very optimistic about their chances this time around. You can just feel the energy and we're still about six months away. The U.S. will kick off action in the World Cup at SoFi Stadium against Paraguay on June 12th.
(END VIDEOTAPE) HUNTE: And Mexico, one of the 2026 World Cup co-hosts, is preparing for a tournament set to make history. CNN's Valeria Leon is in the Mexican capital.
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VALERIA LEON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is really shaping up to be a World Cup of firsts, especially for Mexico, the only country in history to host three World Cups.
And this time only 13 of the 104 matches will be played in Mexico, five of them in the iconic Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, including the opening match, where Mexico will take the field.
And for this draw, we've seen screens in some of the streets in Mexico City to follow the minute-to-minute of this draw, including one of them is Gerardo. He's joining me.
Gerardo, how do you feel to be here in Mexico for this third World Cup?
It's your first one, isn't it?
GERARDO, WORLD CUP FAN: Yes, it's my first one. I'm very excited. I've been following this historic event every step of the way. Real close. So I'm super excited.
LEON: What do you expect for the Mexican team?
GERARDO: I expect -- well, it's a recurring theme from Mexico, to pass a certain point of the tournament. But I'm hoping that -- so they can go all the way to the final and win it all the way.
LEON: Thank you, Gerardo.
We all hope that -- we call that "la maldicion del quinto partido," that Mexico never passes far away from that five -- the five match. But the Estadio Azteca stadium in Mexico City is seeing this full makeover. Renovations are underway and need to wrap up before the end of March to see the friendly between Mexico and Portugal.
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Once it's ready, the Estadio Azteca will make history officially as the first stadium in the world to host three World Cup games in three separate occasions, in 1970, 1986 and finally next summer.
So clock is ticking and Mexico is racing to get the 80,000-seat Estadio Azteca ready for this World Cup -- Valeria Leon, CNN, Mexico City
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HUNTE: The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether president Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship is constitutional. The 14th Amendment guarantees U.S. citizenship to people born in the U.S., even if their parents were not. That's been considered law since the 19th century.
But now the justices are revisiting the issue after sidestepping it earlier this year. Lower courts have all blocked Trump's executive order and it has never gone into effect. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on it next year and likely hand down a decision by the end of June.
Still to come, we are learning new details of what the admiral in charge of the double tap boat strike told lawmakers as questions continue to arise over the strike's legality. That story and so much more. Next.
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HUNTE: Welcome back.
We're learning more about the double tap attack by U.S. forces that happened on September 2nd. According to U.S. forces, the alleged drug boat was heading to link up with a larger vessel on its way to the South American country of Suriname.
The vessel was eventually struck four times. The first one split the boat and left two survivors. The three other strikes sunk the vessel and killed the two people. Although it's considered a war crime by the U.S. to kill shipwreck survivors, Defense officials argued the sailors remained legitimate targets.
Earlier, CNN's Erin Burnett asked Seth Jones about the strike. He's the president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
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SETH JONES, PRESIDENT, DEFENSE & SECURITY DEPARTMENT, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Well, Erin, I think the most significant question is what is the strategy that the U.S. is pursuing in the region?
You know, the national security strategy that was just released today talks about strategy as being about ends and means. So what are the ends here?
What are we doing?
What is our objective in conducting these strikes?
How do we know that we're winning or losing?
What is winning even mean? And I say that in part because, you know, my involvement in operations against al Qaeda and the Islamic State, we were involved in imminent threats against people that were plotting attacks like 9/11 that were in American subway systems. And so, what is the -- what's the end goal of all of this stuff?
And the second question, really is, is what -- is the imminent nature of the threat?
And I think that is that that is not clear. And I think the discussion that Admiral Bradley had with House and congressional members raised additional questions about that issue as well.
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HUNTE: That national security strategy that Seth Jones mentioned was released by the White House on Friday. It lays out the top priorities concerning the U.S., both domestically and abroad.
The 33-page document discusses shifting military resources toward priorities like stopping drug trafficking, while other parts of it take a more confrontational approach with European allies. CNN's Melissa Bell has the latest on Europe's reaction to Trump's agenda.
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MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, curiously, given the document's contents, which really are surprising in how directly they attack European allies, talking about the danger that European civilization, if the current trajectory continues, could disappear entirely.
And calling for resistance on the European continent, really quite stark words that have met with a relatively muted response here in Europe. I think there's a reluctance, really, to provoke the anger of Washington.
But what is interesting here is, first of all, that the contents of this document very much reflect what JD Vance had come and told Europeans face-to-face.
You'll remember at the Munich Security Conference back at the start of the second president Trump term, telling them, warning them rather that the far right parties were being silenced, that the real danger facing Europe was the -- was -- were things like migration.
And the fact that there was not listening closely enough to the popular support of those far right governments. So this policy paper that very much follows that in a much more official way.
And by the way, the other interesting thing here is that the last time Washington published such a policy paper was back under the Biden administration.
And you couldn't have a different approach to Europe at the time, the explicit goal of the document had been to deepen our alliance with Europe. So that's how far things have come.
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HUNTE: All of Ukraine was under alert on Saturday for missile threats as Russia launched another massive attack. Ukraine says missiles and drones targeted generating distribution and transmission facilities in Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhya and Kyiv.
Some people were still without power as of this morning. People took shelter in the metro in Kyiv, where the air alert lasted for eight hours.
Ukraine's foreign affairs minister says Russia is disregarding peace efforts and NATO needs to raise the pressure on Moscow. That latest Russian attack came as a week of high stakes diplomacy to end the war continues.
The U.S. says it had constructive discussions with Ukrainian officials in Miami over the past two days. The delegations are set to meet again in the coming hours. Talks earlier this week in Moscow with Russian president Vladimir Putin yielded no breakthrough.
E.U. officials want to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine in its war effort. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen met with German chancellor Friedrich Merz in Brussels on Friday.
The meeting comes ahead of expected talks with Belgium. That country holds most of the Russian assets and has raised legal and security concerns on the plan.
Earlier this year, Merz pushed for more than $160 billion worth of those assets to be used to supply Ukraine with weapons. A formal commitment is expected to be made in two weeks.
German lawmakers have approved a bill to increase the size of its military while moving the armed forces closer to conscription. This comes as tensions with Russia are on the rise across Europe, with many countries looking to beef up their military readiness and capabilities.
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The vote sparked youth protests across dozens of German cities. CNN's Fred Pleitgen has more from Berlin
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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We are right in the heart of Berlin today. And we're at one of the big protests against a new law in Germany, which could see some of the folks that you see here conscripted into the German military.
The people who are protesting here today are mostly students from schools around the Berlin area. But protests like this are happening in 90 cities around Germany. What's just happened is that the German government, the parliament,
have passed a law, allowing for conscription in certain cases in the future. Now a lot of the folks that we've been speaking to here say that they're categorically against that and they will not join the military service.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's very important that everyone can choose their own future. And if they don't want to spend it on war, I think it's their right to say that they don't want to go into the military, that they don't want to prepare for war, because preparing for war just brings us closer to it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why is our system that's -- that cost so many lives here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we as young people shouldn't fight for old people who are in the government.
PLEITGEN: What the German government wants to do is they want to put together a fighting force of about 460,000, 260,000 active duty and 200,000 reservists.
And if they can't get enough people to sign up for that voluntarily, then they can draft people, many of which you might be seeing right here, right now.
And so a lot of these people are saying, look, for them, it's real. The security situation right now in Europe is difficult. And so a lot of them say they simply don't want to be forced into a military service.
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HUNTE: India continues to roll out the red carpet for Russian president Vladimir Putin. He was the guest of honor at a state dinner on Friday in New Delhi as part of his two-day visit.
Mr. Putin offered India uninterrupted fuel supplies as part of an agreement to expand trade and defense ties between the two countries. At the same time, Indian officials are in talks with the U.S. on a trade deal to cut tariffs imposed by president Trump.
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VLADIMIR PUTIN, PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA (through translator): Our talks with our Indian friends yesterday and today were genuinely open and constructive. The final policy statement adopted outlines large-scale plans for future cooperation in politics and security, economics and finance, transport, energy, education and culture.
Equally important is that Russia and India are working hand in hand to establish a just, multipolar world order
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HUNTE: Prime minister Narendra Modi called India's enduring partnership with Russia a guiding star that has stood the test of time.
This is the Russian president's first trip to India since the invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Modi weighed in on the conflict, saying India is not neutral but is on the side of peace. CNN's Will Ripley is in New Delhi with more on the meetings between the two leaders
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WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Here in India, prime minister Narendra Modi is trying to have it both ways really. He's trying to keep Russian energy but also keep strong trade with the United States.
But with president Trump's new tariffs kicking in, that balancing act is getting shaky. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is here in India for the first time since the Ukraine invasion. He faces an ICC arrest warrant in Europe.
But here in New Delhi, he gets a 21-gun salute, a state dinner and open support for Modi. That puts Washington in an awkward spot. India is a key U.S. partner here in the Indo-Pacific but it's also become the world's largest buyer of Russian seaborne crude.
Before the war, Russian oil barely showed up in India's books. Now it supplies more than a third of the country's needs. Trump responded with tariffs, a 50 percent duty on Indian exports to the U.S., half of it targeting Indias growing appetite for Russian oil.
U.S. trade delegation is expected to land here in Delhi next week. Putin wants to lock in India's dependence on Russian energy and he also wants to widen the relationship into areas like nuclear power, shipping, critical minerals, labor deals.
Russia sees India's huge market as a way to cushion the blow of Western sanctions. Putin is also launching "RT's" Indian newsroom, potentially pushing Russian state media into a massive new market and offering more weapons to a military that is still built around Russian systems.
For the U.S., the stakes are clear, as Trump tries to end the war in Ukraine and choke off Russia's finances. Putin is here in India to prove he's not isolated, standing beside a U.S. ally that wants cheaper oil, Russian hardware and the freedom to navigate between Moscow and Washington.
But will he be able to pull it off?
We'll see how it all unfolds -- Will Ripley, CNN, New Delhi.
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HUNTE: Streaming powerhouse Netflix is making a $72 billion bid to buy Warner Bros. The deal would give Netflix control of the studio's huge film and TV library, including HBO.
[03:25:02] It comes as Warner Bros. Discovery moves ahead with plans to split into two companies next year. Netflix would make the acquisition after the split takes effect.
The deal would give Netflix control of Warner Bros.' vast film and TV library, including HBO but the deal still needs approval from regulators in the U.S., Europe and beyond, a process that could take years. Warner Bros. Discovery is the parent company of CNN but CNN will not be a part of the deal with Netflix.
Christie's auction house in London is preparing to make fossil history. Bidding will open in just days for Spike, a dinosaur skeleton, that's roughly 68 million years old. It could fetch more than $6 million. The skeleton is one of the most complete specimens ever discovered, with 100 preserved bones.
Another highlight, the iconic Batpod from the 2008 Batman film, "The Dark Knight," starring Christian Bale. The vehicle could go for more than $600,000.
Few in history have mingled art and architecture like Frank Gehry. The legendary architect has died at the age of 96 in Santa Monica, California, after a brief respiratory illness.
Known for his whimsical creations, Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, became a global symbol and tourist draw for its sculptural beauty.
Gehry designed Dancing House in Prague, nicknamed Ginger and Fred, for its feminine, dance-like lines. He also designed L.A.'s stunning Walt Disney Concert Hall. A contemporary called him the greatest architect that we have today.
Love that.
Well, that's all I've got for you. Thanks for joining me and the team. I'm Ben Hunte in Atlanta and I will see you tomorrow. "CONNECTING AFRICA" is next. Then there's so much more CNN NEWSROOM with Kim Brunhuber at the top of the hour. See you tomorrow.
