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U.S. Strikes Iranian Group in Iraq on U.S. Troops; Trump Lashes Out at Jack Smith, Biden in Angry Truth Social Posts; More Retailers Charging Fees for Holiday Returns. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired December 26, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

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[07:00:00]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good morning, everyone. I'm Phil Mattingly with Poppy Harlow in New York.

Breaking overnight, the Biden administration has directed airstrikes against an Iranian-backed group in Iraq after three U.S. military service members were wounded in an attack. What we're learning this hour.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: A county sheriff in Texas says law enforcement does not have enough resources to deal with the latest migrant surge. That surge about to increase as another caravan of migrants head to the border.

And former President Trump spent the Christmas holiday railing against many legal cases and against President Biden. What he said and what he's now asking a federal appeals court to do.

This hour of CNN This Morning starts now.

MATTINGLY: And we begin this morning with the risk of escalation growing in the Middle East. Overnight, President Biden ordering a retaliatory airstrike against the Iranian-backed militant group, Kataib Hezbollah. The strike came less than 13 hours after the group took credit for a one-way drone attack that wounded three U.S. troops in Northern Iraq.

Now, officials say the group is a Shia militant-aligned organization that, quote, poses a high threat to U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria.

HARLOW: Meanwhile, Iranian officials are vowing revenge this morning after an Israeli airstrike in Syria killed a high-ranking Iranian military adviser, and this all comes with increasing concern of the war broadening throughout the Middle East.

These dangerous back-and-forth strikes all playing out as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns the war is far from over and that the Israeli military is now, quote, intensifying its operations inside Gaza.

MATTINGLY: We start things off this morning with CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, who's live for us at the White House with more.

What are you learning, Priscilla, about the president's decision to direct these strikes?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, the president was immediately briefed following that attack that wounded three American service members in Northern Iraq, one of whom was critically injured. And he personally authorized these strikes after being presented options by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin yesterday afternoon.

Now, according to the White House, they say during that call, the president directed strikes against three locations utilized by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups focused specifically on unmanned aerial drone activities. The president places no higher priority than the protection of American personnel serving in harm's way.

It goes on to say the United States will act at a time and in a matter of our choosing should these attacks continue.

Now, U.S. Central Command has since said that early assessments show that they're that they did -- they've likely hit militants and that there were no civilian casualties, and that Secretary Austin also saying that these were, quote, necessary and proportionate. But, again, Phil and Poppy, these were strikes that were directed by President Biden yesterday, just hours after that attack on American service members.

MATTINGLY: All right. Priscilla Alvarez, live from the White House, thank you.

HARLOW: So, this morning, tension is high after Iran, Hezbollah and other armed factions vowed to retaliate and avenge the death of a top Iranian military adviser. This happened on Monday following an airstrike that reportedly killed him. Iran's foreign minister warned Israel of future repercussions saying, quote, Tel Aviv should expect a tough countdown. It's still not clear who was behind the strike. Questions remain about whether it was Israel.

Will Ripley joins us live from Tel Aviv with much more reporting. This isn't just any adviser. This is really a crucial adviser.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And this is exactly the kind of development that the U.S. and Israel did not want to see, which is the widening of this conflict in Gaza to a much more dangerous and serious regional conflict. And yet the signs of that are already popping up right now around the region.

We know that Iran and Iran-linked armed factions are believed by the U.S. and Israel to be carrying out attacks already in Iraq and Syria, targeting U.S. sites, and in Lebanon and Yemen, targeting Israel also from Yemen, launching attacks into the Red Sea, targeting commercial shipping, which basically has a global impact.

So, we now are hearing from Iran about this latest accusation that Israel, by the way, is not commenting on, that one of their senior military advisers has been killed. Let me read you just a portion of a statement from the Foreign Ministry in Tehran.

[07:05:01]

It says, quote, the Islamic Republic reserves the right to take necessary measures to respond to his killing at the right time and in the right place.

Now, we know that Iran cannot afford to directly go to war with Israel, given the sanctions, the protests and their dire economic situation, but what they can do and what they're believed to be doing already is pumping, funding weapons, resources, even training into their proxies across the region. That's why you have Israel saying essentially right now, Poppy and Phil, that they're fighting out a war on several fronts.

MATTINGLY: Yes, it's an important point, something everybody is keeping a very close eye on. And it's all happening as we've learned to close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to be in Washington, meeting with Biden administration officials today. What is Israel saying at the same time? It's offensive in Gaza. It seems to be intensifying, Will.

RIPLEY: Well, Israel is going to make the case to the United States that they need as much support as they can get right now. They need support both militarily, but particularly diplomatically, because of the momentum around the world, this U.N. resolution, which the U.S. succeeded in having the language soften quite a bit before abstaining from the vote.

But a lot of countries, when it comes to geopolitics, are really pressuring Israel to have, you know, basically do whatever it takes to have a ceasefire right now in Gaza, which Israel says would be exactly the wrong approach, because it would give Hamas time to regroup and it would give them time to restock and to actually strengthen.

And Israel says that would be a very, very dangerous situation, because they point out again to this multi-front war that they say they're fighting most fiercely right now in Gaza, but also on the border with Lebanon, with Hezbollah, in Iraq, in Yemen and in Iran.

The Houthi rebels in Yemen, they're not only a problem for Israel, they're also a problem for the global economy. In fact, shipping companies have had to send their ships on different routes, which is delaying supply chains by up to a month, as you both know.

So, this conflict spreading out, and the U.S. and Israel are going to have very serious talks at the White House to try to figure out what to do to contain this.

HARLOW: Will Ripley live in Tel Aviv, thanks for the reporting.

MATTINGLY: Well, new warnings this morning along the U.S.-Mexico border. Local law enforcement is sounding the alarm that it does not have the manpower for the expected surge of migrants trekking as part of a caravan from Southern Mexico to the U.S.

HARLOW: And this all comes ahead of the Secretary of State Antony Blinken's meeting with Mexico's president.

Rosa Flores live for us again this morning in Eagle Pass, Texas, with much more. Good morning, Rosa. What are you hearing on the ground?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, what I'm hearing is from a senior CBP official who says that even though the scene behind me has improved, you're not seeing thousands of migrants waiting outside to be transported for immigration processing, that the agency is not out of the woods yet. This official saying that illicit activity continues, smugglers still trying to push migrants to cross illegally, not just here in the Eagle Pass area, but also in very remote areas of Arizona.

And so the Biden administration has been dealing with this increasing level of migrants who have been crossing into the U.S. illegally, and they've been surging resources to the border region. And also they've coasted several ports of entry in several states, trying to reassign those personnel to process migrants.

And they're also using something called decompression. All that means is areas that are at or over capacity, like Eagle Pass was last week, those migrants are being transported to other areas for processing. Here in Eagle Pass, those migrants have been going to the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo and also to Del Rio.

I want to take you to Del Rio because we were there yesterday when a group of migrants celebrated mass under an awning. This is at a respite center there. And the priest tells us that he has been feeding these migrants three times a day. But yesterday, he arrived with an altar and some food for the soul. Take a listen.

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FATHER MICHAEL CORONADO, ST. JOSEPH AND OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE CATHOLIC CHURCHES: We had a few people come to our church to celebrate with us there and we knew that there was a lot more here. So, with that, it would be best for them to have a moment to have mass here.

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FLORES: He says that on Friday about 200 migrants arrived there. There were about several dozen migrants yesterday. But, Phil and Poppy, look, the Biden administration has been trying to impose legal consequences to illegal entry in the United States. But it's really been testing their holding capacity along the U.S.-Mexico border. Those migrants that you saw, they had been processed and released as many migrants are in these border communities after being processed by immigration.

MATTINGLY: Yes, a critical week ahead. Rosa, thank you.

Well, Donald Trump is now urging a federal appeals court to grant him immunity from prosecution, what the latest court filing is revealing. HARLOW: And not Nikki, why Trump's strongest supporters and even his own son are asking him to avoid picking Nikki Haley as a running mate.

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HARLOW: Welcome back. Some disturbing news this morning, the FBI working with local law enforcement investigating these threats against justices on the Colorado Supreme Court. The sometimes violent rhetoric is following the court's 4-3 ruling last week that Trump was constitutionally ineligible to appear on the state's Republican primary ballot. And this is a result of the insurrectionist ban included in the 14th Amendment.

Analysts shared with CNN -- analysis shared with CNN shows an uptick in this heated online language about the four judges in the majority who voted to disqualify Trump. And while there are no direct known threats at this time, there are big concerns about what this could cause.

Trump's team is called the ruling undemocratic as lawyers have vowed to file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

MATTINGLY: Well, former President Trump taking to truth social over the holiday to wish America a merry Christmas and lash out at his rivals. On Christmas Eve, Trump called Special Counsel Jack Smith deranged on Christmas Day. He falsely accused President Biden of presiding over election interference. It comes after Trump asked the federal appeals court to drop the charges in his criminal election subversion case and just three weeks before he takes on his GOP rivals in the Iowa caucuses.

CNN's Kristen Holmes joins us now. I'm a little hesitant to ask, but was there a strategy behind what we saw on social media from the former president the last couple of days?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Phil, the strategy is just keep doing what he's doing. Trump and his team have grown increasingly confident, particularly when it comes to Iowa, that they're going to win that caucus, they're going to win that state, and by a big margin.

[07:15:05]

And you have to remember, what they have been seeing is an increase in poll numbers, even as he continues this authoritarian language, even as he continues this aggressive anti-immigration rhetoric, and even as he continues to paint his legal problems as purely political.

Now, I will note, as you said, he did have a prolific time over the last several days on social media, really railing against these legal issues he has particularly against Jack Smith, Joe Biden, one point saying the thugs inside of America should, quote, rot in hell.

And, of course, I do want to make sure to add that, right after that he said, again, Merry Christmas. Not your typical leader calling for peace on Christmas-type of messaging, but, again, this is Donald Trump.

Now, while they do feel increasingly confident about Iowa, I do want to point out, they still have a lot of questions about New Hampshire, just because he is leading in the polls there, they are not nearly as confident. They have seen Nikki Haley surging, and they know that a lot of New Hampshire voters are still undecided.

HARLOW: What about, big picture, the legal issues? I mean, we're starting the New Year in about a week and he's got a host of trials waiting for him in '24.

HOLMES: So, Poppy, when it comes to his legal issues, several of them weigh heavier than others. So, first of all, as we have talked about at length, Donald Trump's lawyer strategy is really just delay, delay, delay.

So, when you look at all of the cases he's facing, and I believe we have something here, so I can pull it up just for reference, you talk about the Manhattan Hush Money case, you talk about the classified documents case, the DOJ 2020 election interference case, as well as the Fulton County election interference case, and then, of course, the New York attorney general's civil fraud trial. He is very fixated on that civil fraud trial. And, of course, that has wrapped. We are waiting for a decision in that.

When it comes to both of the federal cases, yes, they are worried about the classified documents case as a whole. However, they do believe that it is likely that the dates on that are going to shift until after the election in 2024.

Now, when it comes to the election interference case, which has been set for March, as we have seen, the judge put a hold on that. Now, there is speculation that that date is going to shift, too. And if you look at the calendar, that was actually scheduled to start the day before Super Tuesday.

But when you look at this calendar and you see the dynamics between the political and the legal, you can see why this is weighing on Donald Trump. He wants to focus on the election, and he wants to run for president, not focus on all this legal stuff.

HARLOW: In some of those cases, he's going to have to be present for them. Kristen Holmes, thanks very much for the reporting.

MATTINGLY: Well, there have been a series of reports that Donald Trump has been asking advisors what they think about Nikki Haley as he begins to decide potential vice presidential picks. The pushback from Trump's allies, the MAGA crowd, even Donald Trump Jr., has been loud and it has been forceful. They're telling the former president, don't even think about choosing the former South Carolina governor.

Just last week, Presidential Candidate Chris Christie called Haley out for not explicitly ruling out the possibility of taking a role as Trump's number two. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CHRISTIE, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'll be honest with you, if I were to drop out and support Nikki Haley, I have no confidence, no confidence in the fact that she'll make the case against Trump.

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MATTINGLY: Well, joining us now is Ron Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Ron, you've said that Chris Christie has a point with what he's saying there. Why?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Well, look, I mean, Nikki Haley has gained ground on Donald Trump. But in many ways, as she has become more prominent in the polls or improved in the polls, she seems even more reluctant to cross the line in making a case against him.

And Chris Christie's view, I think there are other Republicans who think that, like perhaps Tim Scott before her, she may be running to a point with one eye on not going too far to alienate Trump and his allies, either because she's interested in vice president or secretary of state, or she thinks that's a way to be viable for 2028.

Ultimately, Phil, I mean, she, at this point, is doing well at consolidating the portions of the party that are the most alienated from Trump and have been really in many ways from the outset. If she is going to truly threaten him in any way, she's going to have to make a sharper case about why people who are now oriented toward voting for him should not. And as Chris Christie points out, she has only gone so far in doing that.

HARLOW: I hear that, but Chris Christie's goal in all of this, right? I mean, obviously he wants to become the nominee, but also for Trump not to become the nominee. And one of the most viable paths to get there, those who are calling for him to drop out, is for him to drop out.

So, I understand what he's saying about the rhetoric from Nikki Haley that it doesn't go far enough, but also by staying in, the counterargument would be, you're preventing anyone from actually beating him, no?

BROWNSTEIN: Right. That's the paradox here, right? I mean, you know, the anti-Trump wing of the party is probably 25 percent, 30 percent on a good day in the right state, and that is necessary but not sufficient to win.

[07:20:04]

I mean, Haley's strategy really has been to run from the center toward the right, consolidating that side of the party as much as she can, and then hoping perhaps momentum itself allows her to grow into the Trump coalition.

DeSantis, of course, ran from the other side, trying to run at Trump from the right, peel away enough of his supporters and then leave the moderates with no choice. That has proved to be a very problematic road, to say the least.

But what you're saying is largely correct and what Chris Christie is saying is largely correct. I mean, you know, Haley ultimately needs to make a case against Trump. It doesn't have to be the same case that Chris Christie is making. But even if she performs well in New Hampshire, Poppy, the polling shows she's trailing significantly among Republicans. A lot of her strength there is among independents who are allowed to participate in the New Hampshire primary. And, ultimately, you can't be a party's nominee without winning its partisans, as John McCain learned in the 2000 race, a lot of similarities.

So, maybe the most charitable explanation is that Christie is kind of focusing on the low-hanging fruit through New Hampshire. But even if that positions her to eclipse DeSantis, become the principal rival to Trump, at that point, she has a month before her home state in South Carolina. And either she is going to make a sharper case against Trump and potentially threaten him, or she's not, and she's not.

MATTINGLY: Ron, what do you make of not only the burst of stories about Nikki Haley being talked about by the former president, rarely are those things just out of the blue, and then the immediate kind of turning of fire from Don Jr., Tucker Carlson, everybody in the kind of the MAGA world against Haley?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, historically, Phil, as you know, it has been difficult for people to run against each other to end up on the same ticket. It has happened, but there are always, often a lot of bruised feelings. Donald Trump has called her a bird brain. Logical politics would say Haley has shown she is strongest where he is weakest, that she has a lot of appeal among center right suburban voters who have never been warm to Trump, especially women, when you look at the polling against Biden. So, there would be a lot of logic in doing it.

The fact that they are attacking her so much in the Trump camp, I think, is reflective of a broader truth that you see in the aggressiveness and extreme nature of much of his agenda. They are feeling very confident. Biden's weakness in the polls has them feeling that not only is the primary well within reach but the general election is well within reach. And by normal political metrics, you would say a president at 40 percent approval is in serious trouble. And there is trouble for Biden.

But Trump, I think, responding to all of this, is putting forward an agenda that is so polarizing and so extreme, from repealing the ACA to internment camps, to his threats about weaponizing the Justice Department, that he is providing Biden a potential path that even if there is a majority that is not necessarily affirmatively excited about giving Biden four more years, there very well may be a majority, as there were in many places, in most places in 1820 and '22, that do not want to live under the vision of America that Trump is putting forward.

So, I look at that quick denunciation at Haley as just one more piece of evidence that they feel that they can run this election out on the vanguard of polarization and even extremism, openly authoritarian and racist rhetoric, and still win. And time will tell if that strategy, if he does become the nominee, simply was a bridge too far.

MATTINGLY: Yes, it's going to be a busy year. Ron Brownstein, thank you, as always.

HARLOW: Thanks, Ron.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me, guys.

HARLOW: A big winter storm could make travel more dangerous this holiday week. We'll show you the areas most affected.

MATTINGLY: And if you're heading out to return some Christmas gifts today, prepare to be frustrated. We're going to explain why, next.

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[07:25:00]

MATTINGLY: Well, goodbye to free returns, maybe. If you're thinking of sending back a disappointing gift you just received over the holidays, it's a little bit rude, but it also may cost you. More and more retailers are now charging return fees.

Joining us now to lay out all of this, CNN Business Reporter Nathaniel Meyersohn. Okay, so look, let's just start from the top line. Is this the end of free returns?

NATHANIEL MEYERSOHN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: It's looking like it felt. I hope neither of you guys got any disappointing holiday gifts.

HARLOW: None.

MEYERSOHN: So, 81 percent of retailers are now charging for at least one return method, and it's typically charging for online returns.

So, you look at some of the shipping fees that retailers are charging. I'm a J.Crew shopper. I like to bring it back in the store. Avoid that $7.50 fee. Macy's, $9.99, no, thank you. And then Amazon has started to charge a $1 fee for customers who are returning items to the UPS store when there's a closer Whole Foods or cold store near them. And online returns, they're more expensive for retailers than bringing it back in the store. And they can get you to buy something if you go back.

HARLOW: Sure, that's a good point.

There's a cool machine at Whole Foods where you like put it in the box and you print the label and the whole thing. What else should we be looking out for in terms of trends? MEYERSOHN: Yes, so some interesting new trends with returns. It's a huge business. So, shorter return windows, the retailers are tightening the return windows. You can now just bring it back without a box and without the label. And then you have companies like Staples. They'll offer you a discount if you bring them back your Amazon returns and then you go shop in the store, about 10 percent off.

And then this one is really interesting. Stores just offering you to keep the returns because it's more expensive for them to ship it back. You look at -- and you look at some of the return rates. 8 percent of all items were returned in 2019. It's doubled in 2022 to 16 percent. It's because we're buying so much online, much likelier to return something you buy online than in stores.

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MATTINGLY: Or maybe just people aren't giving us good gifts anymore.

MEYERSOHN: That could be it.

MATTINGLY: That's on us, not necessarily the retail store. Nathaniel Meyersohn, we appreciate it, my friend. Thank you.