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CNN This Morning
Trump's Dinner with Supremacist; Volcano Erupts After Nearly 40 Years; Woman Found after 51 Years. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired November 29, 2022 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KEVIN CRAMER (R-ND): Clearly it's not our view. It's not my view. I would - I don't think it's his view. But, as you know, President Trump doesn't condemn a lot of people who support him.
SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL): Well, I think he could make better choices, obviously.
SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): I think it's disgusting to invite people like that to meet with a former president of the United States. I think there's -- it's been clear that there's no bottom to the degree to which President Trump will degrade himself and the nation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Should he apologize? Do you think that more Republicans --
ROMNEY: Oh, he doesn't - he -- he never sees anything wrong in anything he does. So, this is characteristic of his approach, which is either say it was a joke or say he didn't know what was happening. But that doesn't fly, obviously. This is something which degrades him, frankly, to do what he's done and - and it is something which diminishes the country as well. It's very unfortunate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: The strong criticism of Trump's judgment isn't just coming from the halls of Capitol Hill, but also down in Georgia, where I spoke with the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): And that was a bad decision. There's no place for that in the Republican Party. I know he's got, you know, his answer to that question, and I'll let him speak to that. But my views on that are very clear.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: It's not just in Capitol Hill. It's not just in Georgia. The criticism is also coming from those who worked for Trump in the White House. Jason Greenblatt, who served as Trump's envoy to the Middle East, praised Trump's record in a CNN opinion piece this morning, but said the dinner, quote, should not have happened, period. Greenblatt said that he hopes Trump condemns Fuentes and West for, quote, what they are, haters of Jews and haters of the foundations of the United States of America. Greenblatt calling Fuentes dangerous to the United States.
But perhaps the strongest condemnation came from Trump's number two, his former number two, Vice President Mike Pence, who says his former boss should apologize.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE PENCE, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table. And I think he should apologize for it, and he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Let's bring in CNN's senior political analyst John Avlon and CNN anchor and correspondent and host of the fantastic new podcast "The Assignment with Audie Cornish," Audie Cornish.
Thank you both for being here.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.
HARLOW: So that was -- we were talking yesterday on the program about where are these Republican voices in Congress. It took a few days but they're there. And there's a lot of them. But missing, there's a big ones missing, too. Where is Kevin McCarthy, who, in February, called out Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar in Congress for speaking at Fuentes' white nationalist conference, called it unacceptable, no place for our party to have this then. What about now?
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'm glad you're bringing up that event because that is supposed to be -- Fuentes, in his mind, creating an alternative to CPAC and has had luminaries of the extreme right there. And Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke there, right, was brought to - after chants of, you know, yeah Putin, or whatever.
So, I think the real issue is, what exactly does this mean, if anything, based on what we've seen in the last couple of months, for the power of someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, right? We've seen Kevin McCarthy talking about the last couple of days, the people he wants to elevate, the voices he wants to support. And now here's a perfect example why people had very serious questions about supporting this particular person, and now the rubber meets the road about what it means to be leader.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's exactly right. I mean if you - if you look at Kevin McCarthy, you know, the two titles is -- words in his title are, you know, leader and speaker. He's not leading. And he's not speaking out. And that's because he's constrained by the dynamics of the caucus he's desperately trying to lead or corral is probably a better term.
But if you can't condemn this, you actually are incapable of leading. If you can't condemn this, which is one of the lowest bars you can possibly imagine, yes, the former president and current person running for president again shouldn't have had dinner and invited into his home a notorious white supremacist, Holocaust denier, and anti-Semite, what can you condemn? And so it's great that Republicans are stepping up, particularly in the Senate, particularly Mitt Romney. But we've come to expect that from Romney. Every else still tiptoeing, finding a way to rationalize.
CORNISH: Yes.
AVLON: And then there's the folks who are still silent. Grow a spine, people, this isn't hard.
LEMON: Well, and, listen, to -- to Poppy's point, it took a while.
AVLON: Uh-huh.
LEMON: I mean they stuck their finger up to sort of see which way the wind was blowing with this.
AVLON: That's exactly right.
LEMON: And it took a while.
Look, I think it's - I think that there should be so many people speaking out that if we ran it, you know, it would take all day to get all of the sound bites on CNN for people.
AVLON: Yes.
LEMON: But there -- there we have it.
I do have to say - people are going to go, oh, my gosh, I can't believe Don Lemon is saying something positive about Mike Pence.
[06:35:00]
I think Mike Pence was the most emphatic, had the correct response, he should not have done it, period, and should apologize.
AVLON: Yes.
LEMON: I think he went even further than Mitt Romney. And I don't know if that's because he's running for president. I don't know what - he has, you know, presidential hopes.
CORNISH: Can I come back to Pence for a second.
LEMON: Yes. CORNISH: Just - this will sound of angle, but it is related. Pence was someone who stood up to the president on January 6th, right? And one of the things we learned from the subsequent reporting of the last couple months is that there was sort of like a team crazy and a team normal around Trump. There were some people who encouraged his worst impulses around trying to hold on to power, and others who fought it.
And you do have to ask whether or not a dinner like this happens because there are fewer and fewer people who will say "no" to the things that do not make sense for the former leader of the free world to be doing. And is that how you end up at a dinner like that?
AVLON: Yes. I think the answer is self-evident. I mean the answer is, no.
CORNISH: Yes.
AVLON: It's all team crazy all the time. That's all who's left.
CORNISH: But that's implications for this campaign, right, going forward?
AVLON: Of course, it does. This is - this is what a second Trump term would look like. And it's Donald Trump's impulse, right? This desire to never offend anyone who might say anything positive about him and what are (ph) crazy, far-out and extremist they may be.
And that will be the undoing. We're already seeing it in real time.
COLLINS: But can I say one thing that stood out to me on that front yesterday. Listening to these Republicans, seeing these statements come in as they were -- returned to Capitol Hill, they knew they were going to get asked about this by reporters. So many of them blamed it on staffing issues and they always sidestep the issues.
CORNISH: Yes.
AVLON: Yes.
COLLINS: I covered Trump. This is always what happens. When it's his attorneys, they blame Rudy Giuliani for something that was said. When it's something like this, they say, I don't know who let him in the door. Well, it was Trump.
AVLON: Right.
COLLINS: I mean, it's his club. He hosted. It's a private club. It's not like a Ruby Tuesday's where anyone can just go in and have dinner. And I think that is something that stood out to me as, even when there are Republicans criticizing him, he still (INAUDIBLE).
CORNISH: Yes.
AVLON: Super fair.
CORNISH: And I don't think it was an unwitting - you know what I mean -
AVLON: No.
CORNISH: I've seen some sort of like - he - how could he have known who came to - like, I can't go to dinner with a former president without someone checking me out. So that makes no sense.
AVLON: Yes. Sir, this is (INAUDIBLE).
LEMON: He still has Secret Service. He still has the Secret Service around him.
CORNISH: Yes.
LEMON: And aren't these people supposed to be vetted? That was a point we were making yesterday. Should they -
HARLOW: I don't know. Kaitlan, do they vet? Would they vet -
COLLINS: They don't vet if you're like an anti-Semite or not. They vet if you have like weapons or a questionable criminal background.
LEMON: Yes. Yes. Exactly.
CORNISH: Yes, but like Google machine works and I think you would see something that doesn't make any sense to do.
COLLINS: That's a -
AVLON: Yes. Yes.
HARLOW: Google machine.
AVLON: Neither is - neither is -
CORNISH: It's like a very quick thing.
HARLOW: Line of the morning.
AVLON: Yes. Neither Conte (ph) nor - nor - nor Nick Fuentes were exactly unknown in these corridors.
CORNISH: Yes. That's the thing.
AVLON: But - but to your point, it's this - and you could hear it from some of the senators, the still impulse to find rationalizations, to deflect blame. He is a 70-plus-year-old man who was a former president of the United States and we continue to infantilize him. And it's totally absurd.
HARLOW: This - isn't this, to your earlier point, John, about McCarthy, I mean isn't this McCarthy essentially acknowledging his view that the ends justify the means?
AVLON: A hundred percent.
HARLOW: And it's now incumbent upon Republicans in the House to decide if that's worth it for them.
AVLON: Yes. But - but -
CORNISH: I think they've decided that.
AVLON: They've decided.
HARLOW: Yes.
CORNISH: Right. This is -
HARLOW: Well, making -
AVLON: I mean - well, I - no, I -
HARLOW: Despite the statements they'll make saying this should be our - be our new speaker.
CORNISH: Well, how to assess a statement. Do they ever mention his name? Do they ever say what needs to be done? Do they ever say if they would do it? If you don't hear any of those things in somebody's condemnation, it's not really a condemnation.
LEMON: And then they - the knee jerk is he's - but, it's not an anti- Semite. No one asked if he was an anti-Semite. They just thought, is it appropriate for him to be doing what he's doing?
AVLON: Right. And this is all about vote counting ahead of the January 3rd vote, right? You know, this is the -- McCarthy can't afford to lose anybody. So, he's terrified of alienating even the people who might defend Nick Fuentes and - and Kanye, let alone offending Donald Trump.
COLLINS: Well, he needs their votes.
AVLON: That's right. That's (INAUDIBLE).
COLLINS: John Avlon, Audie Cornish, it was a great conversation. Thank you both.
HARLOW: Thank you, guys, very much.
LEMON: Thanks, guys.
HARLOW: Up next, something very different but something you've got to see. The world's largest active volcano erupting in Hawaii for the first time in nearly four decades.
Also this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": There you go. There you are with your co-hosts. How did you -
LEMON: I feel like - I feel like - COLBERT: I like the turtleneck.
LEMON: Thank you.
COLBERT: The turtleneck is very Christmassy too.
LEMON: It's - I like -
COLBERT: It's very Andy Williams Christmas special.
LEMON: I'll be home --
COLBERT: How do you want people to feel in the morning, because a lot of these shows - and obviously you're a new show - but when the people first get up in the morning, you know, what's the vibe you want to give people?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: (INAUDIBLE) about my night, straight ahead.
AVLON: Andy Williams Christmas special.
LEMON: You guys, you were saying, go, Don, I was talking about what happened.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:43:13]
LEMON: The world's largest volcano is erupting for the first time in almost 40 years. Boy, as you can hear and see, lava is flowing down the side of the volcano. The images come out of the Mauna Loa on Hawaii's big island. Officials are telling surrounding communities that they are not in imminent danger, as of now.
Let's bring in, though, our chief climate correspondent, Mr. Bill Weir.
Good morning to you. Good to see you.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Don.
LEMON: Bill, 40 years and then this. What is this?
WEIR: This is so thrilling. I can't even tell you. The volcanologists have been waiting.
LEMON: Yes.
WEIR: This is one of the most measured volcanos in the world.
LEMON: Volcanologists.
WEIR: Volcanologists have been waiting for this event for a long time. They're studying it intensely. And native Hawaiians. And I'll explain that in a second.
LEMON: Yes.
WEIR: But this is not the kind of volcano that spews big ash clouds, like we saw in Iceland or other parts in the South Pacific. It's the kind that sort of oozes this mesmerizing lava. There's fountains, small and large, popping that magma up there. The park - Volcanoes National Park is open with some restrictions today. So, the people who are lucky enough to be there are going to see this.
And here is why native Hawaiians are so excited.
Take a look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in Foreign Language).
WEIR (voice over): Lucca (ph) is a native Hawaiian practitioner on Kilauea. The most active of the volcanoes on the big island.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in Foreign Language).
WEIR: And he carries on the belief that this molten power is evidence of the goddess Pele. Even when she is rearranging entire neighborhoods with the kind of eruption that came in 2018, Pele is described with an affection normally reserved for temperamental relatives.
[06:45:01]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Imagine if the whole world looked at their environment as their grandmother, or their father. They'll treat them very differently, you know? And so that's how we try and treat our environment in that same way. We look at them as family.
WEIR: To Hawaiians, Volcanoes National Park is as sacred as the Vatican to Catholics or Mecca to Muslims.
WEIR (on camera): We are headed to pay our homage to Pele. As we head towards the glow on the horizon of the Kilauea volcano and it's about 4:00 a.m. and the line of tourists is already here as people race to get their best viewing spots to see splatters of magma and hopefully a glimpse into the lava lake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WEIR: That's from "The Wonder List," now streaming on Discovery Plus, by the way. But it's so cool that the tourists will actually get to experience the double eruption right now.
LEMON: By the way, for clarification, you said a big ash with an a-s-h cloud, right?
WEIR: I said - well, it goes both ways. It goes both days. This is big ash clouds.
LEMON: You saw - you -- we saw in what you just showed, you said rearranging neighborhoods, right?
WEIR: Yes.
LEMON: So how do they know, volcanologists, how do officials know that this is not a threat to (INAUDIBLE)?
WEIR: They can measure sort of the seismic activity, the number of volcanoes - or earthquakes doubled in -- since September. So, they know something's coming but they still don't know precisely when it will pop.
Right now the lava's flowing northward. Most of the communities are to the south. That can shift. But the biggest concern really is - is what's in the air. The gases that come off. And Pele's hair. That's these thin strands of glass that if you breathe them can be really dangerous.
LEMON: Wow.
WEIR: But, right now, it looks like nobody's in any danger.
LEMON: Fascinating. Always a pleasure. Good to see you.
WEIR: Good to see you, Don.
LEMON: Thank you. Be safe. WEIR: Congrats on the new digs.
LEMON: Thanks for coming. I know, you like this?
WEIR: I like it.
LEMON: It's nice.
WEIR: I like it.
LEMON: Thank you, Bill Weir. Appreciate it.
WEIR: You bet.
COLLINS: All right, on top of those remarkable images, we are also seeing an incredible reunion this morning. Fifty-one years in the making. A woman who had been kidnapped as a toddler finally got to meet her real family.
Plus this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUSIC: This could be love because I've had the time of my life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: So much. I love this movie so much, I was just telling them. The star of the classic film "Dirty Dancing" revealing which of our favorite characters will be seen in the sequel. That's right. There's a sequel.
LEMON: Come on, Poppy. I can do it. You - we're going to do this!
COLLINS: Don't.
HARLOW: Are we going to do the lift?
LEMON: Oh.
COLLINS: You guys rehearse that?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:51:33]
HARLOW: Good story.
Well, this morning, a family in Texas has been reunited with their daughter more than 50 years after she was abducted when she was just 22 years (ph) old. A DNA match made this all possible.
Let's go straight to CNN's Ed Lavandera in Dallas.
Wow, what a story.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Overwhelmingly emotional, this story.
Melissa Highsmith was abducted when she was 22 months old. Her mother had hired a babysitter because she needed to go to work. The babysitter came to the house, took the child and they disappeared. Fifty-one years later, the parents get a DNA test. It comes back a few weeks ago that it is connected to their daughter's children. And that triggers a relationship that culminated this past weekend with the family reuniting.
You can imagine what this family has been through in the last few days. And they've been talking about it since all of this news has broken.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MELISSA HIGHSMITH, KIDNAPPED AS A BABY: It is overwhelming, but, at the same - same time, it's -- it's just the most wonderful feeling in the world.
ALTA APANTENCO, MOTHER: I just couldn't believe it. I thought I would never see her again.
JEFFRIE HIGHSMITH, FATHER: And they said, dad, she's alive. And I started crying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LAVANDERA: Melissa Highsmith's parents had lived in Illinois for a time. They have been back in Fort Worth essentially parents and this woman had been living in the same town, had no idea. And now Melissa Highsmith is discovering that she has four other siblings and the family is going through this process of getting to know each other once again.
COLLINS: Ed, what about what happened to the babysitter?
LAVANDERA: Well, investigators in Fort Worth say that they will try to figure out more of the details as to what happened surrounding the circumstances of - of this abduction and kidnapping. So, it's not exactly clear. Melissa Highsmith has said in interviews that she confronted the woman she believed to be her mother for so long, and then things started spiraling, the story started unraveling after that. But what exactly is going to happen to this woman is not exactly clear. It sounds like the statute of limitations might have been - might have passed. It was 20 years. So, we will have to see exactly what Fort Worth Police do next. But they say they will continue to investigate the details surrounding this abduction.
COLLINS: All right, Ed Lavandera, thank you.
LEMON: Senate lawmakers set to vote on landmark legislation today to protect same-sex marriages. What to expect, straight ahead.
Plus, this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: Why do you think there were 200,000 people that voted for you but not for Herschel Walker?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Wait until you see this interview Kaitlan just did with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. He really opens up on the high stakes Senate runoff election, ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:58:37]
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STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": You know, co-anchor of CNN's new morning show CNN THIS MORNING, please welcome back to "The Late Show" Don Lemon!
Oh, hi, Don.
LEMON: I was doing (INAUDIBLE).
Hey! Wow! Oh, my gosh!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Yes. I got to stay up way past my bedtime last night to hang out with Stephen Colbert of "The Late Show." We talked about this new gig here with these two folks and how it's been waking up early for us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: But, you know, it's - I can be a little bit grumpy. I can be a bitch in the morning.
COLBERT: Interesting.
LEMON: Anybody can relate to that? I'm sure. Just being honest.
COLBERT: On CNN - on CNN are you allowed to say (EXPLETIVE DELETED) because you can't say it here?
LEMON: It's basic cable. You can say (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
COLBERT: You can say (EXPLETIVE DELETED)? Oh, wow.
LEMON: Yes, you can say (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
COLBERT: That's (EXPLETIVE DELETED). That's worth it right there.
LEMON: Basic cable. You can say - and I've said - I've said much worse on - on CNN.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: I was going to ask if you were g-rated, and you weren't.
LEMON: No, he asked me if we - if I got any advice from any other morning show anchors. And I was telling him about what Gayle King said to me, and I was actually quoting Gayle, who said something very nice. She said, you never get used to the hours because they are, I won't say the word this early in the morning. Idi. And she said, but, it is one of the best jobs in television and because it's an honor to have people wake up with you.
[07:00:03]
And so I agree with that. To - and people in their home.
But there was also - we had a funny moment where we did - we actually did a shot on television.
