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CNN This Morning
Haley, DeSantis Face Voters Days Before Iowa Caucuses; Shooter Posted TikTok Video from School Bathroom; Epstein Documents Reveal More of How Girls Were Fooled; Winter Storm Targets Northeast. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired January 05, 2024 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like you haven't seen anything like that. I haven't. Maybe you guys have seen it. You guys have seen everything. So -- so the sky's the limit.
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ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Yes, Kasie that was just an epic first meeting between those two. And you know, Wemby, 20 years old. Giannis is still in the prime of his career. Looking forward to a lot more great match-ups between them over the years.
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Amazing. And so much fun to watch. Andy Scholes, thank you very much. Happy Friday. Have a wonderful weekend.
SCHOLES: You, too.
HUNT: Thanks to all of you for joining us this morning. Have a wonderful weekend. But don't go anywhere. I'm Kasie Hunt. CNN THIS MORNING start right now.
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis hit Donald Trump harder at CNN town halls, but are their closing arguments to Iowa voters enough to close a massive polling gap ten days before the first contest?
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Today, President Biden opens his 2024 campaign with a speech from historic Valley Forge. His message to voters about protecting democracy ahead of the third anniversary of the Capitol attack.
MATTINGLY: And a second tranche of Jeffrey Epstein documents have been unsealed. Hear how one victim claims Bill Clinton tried to pressure a popular magazine to, quote, "not to run sex trafficking articles about his good friend."
CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.
Well, good Friday morning to everybody. Audie Cornish is with me here in New York. Poppy is off today. And we are focused on politics with a very good reason.
Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley sharpening their attacks on Donald Trump in Iowa. Just 10 days left to close that giant gap in polling before the caucuses.
In back-to-back town halls, DeSantis and Haley both made the case to voters that Trump becoming the presidential nominee would spell defeat for Republicans in November.
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GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The Democrats want Trump to be the candidate. They are going to talk about all the legal stuff, January 6th. That will be what the election will be about.
NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Chaos follows him. And we can't have a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. We won't survive it. And you don't defeat Democrat chaos with Republican chaos.
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CORNISH: Now today, Trump is set to return to the campaign trail with two rallies in Iowa after a holiday break.
CNN's Jeff Zeleny is in Des Moines with the highlights from last night's dueling town halls. And Jeff, of course, time is of the essence here for both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.
Can they change the dynamics of this race?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Audie.
You can just feel that time is running short here now before the voting begins in this 2024 presidential campaign for Republicans.
But one thing was very different last night. For all the millions of dollars spent in negative ads on television, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis both were actually being pretty nice to one another. They appeared separately at CNN town halls, making their own case and, of course, that case about electability.
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HALEY: It is time to move past President Trump, and it is time to start focusing on how to strengthen America.
DESANTIS: You don't want it to be a referendum on Trump and the past. You want it to be a referendum on Biden's failures.
ZELENY (voice-over): Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis sharpening their arguments against Donald Trump and one another. Ten days until Iowa voters render the first judgments of the Republican presidential race. In back-to-back CNN town halls last night, DeSantis raising questions about Trump's electability and the uncertainty surrounding the mounting legal challenges against the former president. DESANTIS: Whatever may be beneficial in the primary doesn't mean it's
beneficial in the general election. And I think a 2024 election where the Democrats get to run against a candidate that is going through all this stuff, that is going to give the Democrats an advantage.
ZELENY (voice-over): Haley arguing she's the most electable Republican candidate of all.
HALEY: Americans don't want another nail biter of an election. And that's what we'll get. Look at any of the polls.
ZELENY (voice-over): Even as she sought to put to rest a controversy that's been following her over failing to say that slavery sparked the Civil War.
HALEY: I had black friends growing up. It is a very talked-about thing. We have a big history in South Carolina when it comes to, you know, slavery, when it comes to all the things that happen with the Civil War. All that. I was over -- I was thinking past slavery and talking about the lesson that we would learn going forward. I shouldn't have done that. I should have said slavery.
ZELENY (voice-over): In the aftermath of a deadly shooting Thursday at an Iowa high school just 30 miles away from the site of the town hall, DeSantis and Haley both said new gun laws weren't the answer.
HALEY: Instead of living in fear, let's do something about it. We have got to deal with the cancer that is mental health. We have to.
ZELENY (voice-over): DeSantis said he supports a Florida proposal to eliminate a three-day waiting period to buy a firearm, a law passed following the 2018 shooting at Parkland High School that killed 17 people.
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DESANTIS: You shouldn't have to be on a mandatory waiting period. Instant checks will do the job.
ZELENY (voice-over): From immigration to the economy to foreign policy, the Republican rivals presented their own views, rarely criticizing one another to the degree they have on the campaign trail.
DESANTIS: Biden's weakness invited a lot of the problems that we're seeing around the world. When I'm president, it's going to be totally different. You know, we're going to lay down very clear markers. And people are going to know, don't mess with the USA.
ZELENY (voice-over): Haley drew gentle boos from the audience at Grand View University in Des Moines.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Boo!
HALEY: Oh, my gosh.
ZELENY (voice-over): Over a statement she made earlier this week in New Hampshire.
HALEY: You know Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it. You know that you continue to go --
ZELENY (voice-over): With a smile, she downplayed that comment.
HALEY: New Hampshire makes fun of Iowa. Iowa makes fun of South Carolina. It's what we do. So I mean, I think the problem in politics now is it's just like too serious and too dramatic.
ZELENY (voice-over): Haley and DeSantis are locked in an increasingly bitter fight to emerge as the leading alternative to Trump. Their collision course has left Trump in a frontrunner's lane of his own as he heads back to Iowa today.
He's eyeing more than a victory in the caucuses. He's looking for a decisive one. Trump's advisers tell CNN complacency among his supporters poses a bigger challenge than any of his rivals.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We've got to be sure that we put this thing away. The poll numbers are scary, because we're leading by so much. The key is, you have to get out and vote.
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ZELENY (on camera): And that is one of, really, the central questions hanging over this race in the final days here. Yes, there have been a lot of polls, but there have been no votes yet. Of course, that will come on January 15 at 7 p.m. when Iowans gather in their precinct locations across the state.
That's why the campaigns right now are focusing on organization, trying to get their supporters organized and remind them that they do, indeed, have to vote on that evening.
But today the candidates are back on the campaign trail. This morning, Nikki Haley has an event here in just a couple hours. Ron DeSantis, as well. And Donald Trump coming back to the state.
He's not been here until just before Christmas, but his campaign certainly has been. But guys, that is one thing that's very interesting. His campaign is warning against complacency, trying to tell his supporters that you actually have to show up here to prove those polls correct -- Audie and Phil.
MATTINGLY: No question. Ground operations always matter, particularly in a caucus state. Jeff Zeleny, thank you.
ZELENY: All right.
CORNISH: Now joining us to discuss more, CNN senior political analyst John Avlon; former Republican strategist Lee Carter; and CNN political commentator Errol Louis. Welcome to all of you.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST/ANCHOR: Good morning. CORNISH: So just in terms of tone last night with both of them, did you see feisty candidates? Did you see people just making the obligatory messages? Lee, can I ask you first?
LEE CARTER, FORMER REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I thought it was a different side of both candidates. I think we saw a more folksy version of Ron DeSantis. He used some different language. He brought a jersey. He was just sort of a very different candidate.
And we were talking earlier. He put some pretty bold plans out there that maybe he hadn't before. I think it's something worth discussing. But he's a very different candidate.
Nikki Haley, I think she could not have done better. I haven't seen her perform better at any other time during this campaign. She is ready to fight, but I'm not sure it's going to be enough to have a big, big impact on the polls.
CORNISH: Errol.
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I thought Ron DeSantis did a great job. And I thought if he had shown up this way a few months ago, he wouldn't be having some of the problems that he's having right now.
It was a very -- it was a very conservative message, but he was selling it in a very sort of measured, almost moderate tone. So he wasn't saying things like "slitting throats" or, you know, "where woke goes to die" or any of that kind of bloody imagery.
Instead, he was just kind of quietly saying, I plan to abolish the IRS. You know? Very, very conservative for sure.
I agree. Nikki Haley did extremely well. And she made an argument that, you know, I think is really one of her stronger ones, which is to say that, even in the polling, I can win a general election. And in the end, that's what this is really about.
MATTINGLY: So to the point that Zeleny was making in there, this is kind of a universal opinion, what you guys are saying, from people I've spoken to. Not that my anecdotal focus group is some broad swathe --
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MATTINGLY: -- of who's going to be voting on caucus night in Iowa. We're talking about time is of the essence. The clock is ticking. There's only ten days left. How you do things.
But it's a caucus state. And organizations matter. So is there time to make up what, in public polling, looks like a massive gap?
AVLON: Yes, absolutely. Because it's a caucus state. Because it's Iowa. Because there are a lot of voters who are undecided.
No, Trump's got a hard-core base, but listen to that message. He hasn't been there since before Christmas. But it's important that his supporters show up. They're concerned about that conversion.
It's hard to ask people to show up when you haven't showed up. And I think one of the things we saw last night was DeSantis and Haley showing the benefits of that campaigning. Not just in Iowa, but they've been debating. They're doing the town halls. They are at their prime.
Do you line up (ph) Donald Trump side-by-side to give that comparison, which he's been too cowardly, frankly, to do, I think they would have blown him out of the water, because he hasn't been showing up to these kind of things.
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CORNISH: They tried to kind of underscore -- we did see more pointed critique. I want to point out one from Ron DeSantis when he was asked to talk about the Republican election losses of the last couple years. This is something Nikki Haley talked about for a while, but we heard it with DeSantis.
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KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: It sounds like you're saying Republican voters can't trust Donald Trump.
DESANTIS: Well, what I'm saying is, if you've run before, promised things, didn't deliver, and then you're running on the same things, wouldn't it be reasonable to say, Well, gee, I don't know that I can take that to the bank going forward.
So yes, I think the fact that he's campaigning on something, that does not mean that he would actually follow through on it.
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AVLON: -- that argument the last several months. Campaigns are about contrasts. And last night, they drew the contrast real hard.
Not just that line, which was strong. But Nikki Haley, taking it to Donald Trump on two issues in particular. And not just electability, which is her strongest card. Polls show in Iowa, that's actually people's No. 1 concern, theoretically.
But also whether Trump is too cozy with dictators. That he's added $8 trillion to the debt. Those are strong, substantive arguments that draw clear contrasts, and it's not that tiptoeing around Trump, which we've seen far too much this campaign.
MATTINGLY: Go ahead.
CORNISH: I was just going to say DeSantis' problem earlier was, besides Trump going after him, that people were like, Well, you're Trump light. So then why do I need to vote for you?
So last night, did we see that guy, or did we see something different? CARTER: I think we saw that guy, but I think we saw him too late. It's
very, very difficult to change your strategy this close to an election.
We saw Ted Cruz try to do it. He changed three different times during the primaries in 2016. It's not effective. We want people who are authentic, who are who they are. And I think there's a lot of questions about who is this Ron DeSantis guy? Is he going to be the one that's fighting Mickey Mouse, or is he going to be the one fighting for the American people and doing what he says he's going to do?
Nikki Haley made a much better argument, because she's consistent with what she's always been, even if she had to, you know, address some issues she's had in the past.
MATTINGLY: She's also been consistent on being significantly ahead of Joe Biden in a general election matchup over and over and over again. And I think part of the reason for that is her ability to at least, on a messaging perspective, sound a little bit more --
CORNISH: Appealing to swing voters maybe.
MATTINGLY: Right. That is a --
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CORNISH: I shouldn't be doing the analysis. You jump in here, because she's always been polished.
LOUIS: Exactly right. There are areas where Trump and Republicans in general have been struggling, right, with suburban women, with college-educated voters. She's both of those things.
And she comes across that way. And she is ready. You know, she certainly has the credentials. And she does it with a light touch. She talks about her foreign policy experience and her executive experience as a governor. She's -- she's checked all the boxes. She's done all the right things. She's -- you know, she is painting a a picture of a new Republican party, which is something that doesn't get talked about enough. And that's one thing that Ron DeSantis doesn't come anywhere near.
AVLON: Total contrast. Total contrast. And just, you know, quickly -- I think we also lose sight of how extraordinary and historic it is to have a woman at this tier of a Republican primary.
I mean, you know, and that clear contrast. You know, she grew up, you know, as an Indian immigrant family in a small Southern town. And making a case where, you know, her mother was saying, you know, I want to look at -- focus on what unite us, not what divides us. That's a kind of general election message. It's pretty revolutionary for this Republican Party in this era. Total contrast.
MATTINGLY: It's something she got into last night.
AVLON: Yes.
MATTINGLY: She got asked about it. We'll play that sound later in the show, because we have a lot more to get to. Guys, stick with us.
CORNISH: Wonderful. So next Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash moderate CNN's Republican presidential debate. And that's going to be live from Iowa.
MATTINGLY: Also this morning, new details on a deadly school shooting in Iowa where a sixth grader was killed. What the gunman reportedly posted on TikTok right before the shooting.
CORNISH: And a new trove of Epstein documents just released. What they say about a process Epstein allegedly used to find and recruit girls.
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MATTINGLY: We are just now learning new information about yesterday's deadly shooting at a high school in Perry, Iowa, where a sixth grader was killed and several others were wounded, including the principal.
Several news outlets, including the A.P., report the shooter posted a TikTok video from inside the school bathroom, posing with a blue duffel bag captioned, "Now we wait."
The 17-year-old shooter was found dead at the school with a self- inflicted gunshot wound. One survivor telling CNN about the terrifying experience.
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RACHAEL KARES, PERRY HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTING SURVIVOR: We heard four gunshots down the hall from us. Our band teacher looked at us, and he just goes, "Run." And like, none of us hesitated. We just all got up and ran.
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MATTINGLY: CNN's Veronica Miracle is live for us in Perry, Iowa. Veronica, what more are we learning about this post?
VERONICA MIRACLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this TikTok video and other social media posts posted around the time of the shooting all part of the investigation, according to the A.P.
And according to authorities, who spoke at a press conference yesterday, this is all part of their investigation as they try to figure out what this -- what the motive was, why exactly this horrible atrocity happened.
The community this morning truly mourning the loss of a sixth grader. Five other people were also injured in this attack. Four individuals who were students were injured and one staff member, the principal of the high school. One of those injured are critically wounded, but all of them are expected to survive. Now, this is the first day back from winter break, and school had not
even started yet. It happened just after 7:30 in the morning. And students from all grades were gathered for a breakfast club when the first shots rang out.
Within 7 minutes, the first arriving officer arrived here on scene and found people running from the school. Obviously, people terrified. Also, people were sheltering in place that they had to assist and protect.
This community, it's very small. The entire school district only has about 1,800 students. Everyone knows everyone. When CNN was at a vigil last night, we ran into people who know the victim, who knew the victim and had some heartbreaking things to say. Take a listen.
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JESSICA CONRAD, PERRY HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE: A friend -- a friend of ours, he's like my second kids. His friends. And he had heard that he was missing, and he lives in our neighborhood, so I went to ask. And I heard from the family themselves. And he really is just the sweetest boy. The one you want your kids to be friends with.
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MIRACLE: Now, police say the gunman died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was a 17-year-old student here at Perry High School.
Back to you, Phil.
MATTINGLY: Veronica Miracle, please keep us updated this morning with the investigation. Thank you.
CORNISH: New details this morning. Hundreds of new pages have been unsealed in a lawsuit connected to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The victim alleges that the former -- that former President Clinton pressured "Vanity Fair" not to run a story on Epstein.
The pages also shed new light on how Epstein's victims were recruited and what happened to them.
CNN's Jean Casarez joins us now. And Jean, we're talking about 900 pages here, so there's a lot to go through. What new details have come up?
JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they came out last night combing through them. And, you know, this all stems from a 2015 civil suit brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell.
And Virginia Giuffre had wanted her story to come out. She wanted a book. And so she became very close with a reporter out of Britain. And this reporter was encouraging her to go to the "Vanity Fair" magazine to have them do an article on it.
And here is what, in a newly undisclosed e-mail from 2011, here's what Virginia Giuffre says. She says, "Considering that B. Clinton walked into V.F." -- "Vanity Fair" -- "and threatened them not to write sex trafficking articles about his good friend J.E." -- Jeffrey Epstein, so she didn't want to do it.
Now, we last night contacted Graydon Carter. He is "Vanity Fair's" editor from 1992 through 2017. He said categorically, this did not happen.
We also went to Bill Clinton's representative. He refused to comment on this but once again reiterated it's been nearly 20 years since Bill Clinton has ever spoken to or acknowledged Jeffrey Epstein.
Now further, in all of these pages that were released, there was a lead investigator from a case in the mid-2000s. His name was Joseph Recarey. And a deposition of his was released.
He was specifically asked about the method of the recruiting and the massages and the girls, and then he was finally asked a question, so how many would you say girls were recruited for Jeffrey Epstein?
His response, "I would say, approximately 30. Thirty, 33."
And then he was asked, "And at the end of that massage, if that victim brought other friends, she would get paid for the recruitment of those friends?"
"Correct," he answered.
And then the attorney asked him, "So did you determine that massage was actually a code word for something else?"
And he said, "When they went to perform his massage, it was for sexual gratification."
And finally, there was one victim that was recruited between 15 and 17 for massages. And unsealed documents now, she says, you know, massages, OK. She said, I had no idea it was sexual gratification. And once I got there, I was looped in, and that's what it was all about.
CORNISH: All these very young people involved in this. Thank you so much, Jean, for this reporting.
MATTINGLY: Well a big winter storm is headed to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast this weekend. Our weather team is tracking it. We'll tell you more, next.
CORNISH: And a Trump attorney suggests some Supreme Court justices might, quote, "step up for him" in the Colorado ballot case.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court. I have faith in them.
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MATTINGLY: The historic snow drought across the Northeast, it could potentially end this weekend with a roar, or maybe a whimper, depending on where you live.
The storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico is heading North and could bring ice to the Appalachian Mountains and flooding rains into the South.
CORNISH: CNN's Derek van Dam is live at the weather center, tracking what to expect. So Derek, give us an idea of what's to come.
DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, summarizes it best, with a roar or a whimper, that's really it. But any way you slice it, this will be an impactful storm for the entire Eastern Seaboard.
But in terms of snowfall, what -- snowfall, in terms of what everybody wants to know, this will be a Southern interior New England snow thump, with potentially 6 to 12 inches. You'll notice that Boston is the only major East Coast city within this winter storm watch.
New York, Philadelphia, all the way to Baltimore and the D.C. area, not included.
So this is the storm responsible. It's just about to pick up some moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Let's time it out for you. If you're located in D.C., we'll start to see that rain/snow mix mid-morning on Saturday.
And then the precipitation moves into Philly and New York City, we think right along the coastline, East of I-95. This will be a mainly rain event. Maybe a wet snow for New York City, up to an inch possible, ending that snow drought.
But it will then transition to mainly rain overnight and maybe a few flurries behind it. An all-snow event for Boston, certainly from the interior towards Worcester. And then it's all said and done by Sunday evening into Monday morning.
This is very telling from the weather prediction center. They have a marginal risk of excessive rain. Notice this extends all the way to Providence, New York, and Philadelphia. They're picking up on that signal or that hint that this could be a major rainmaker, at least for the coastline.
So here's that I-95 corridor. That sharp cutoff point. It's a matter of miles. New York City, yes, we could end the snow drought, but not likely. You can see the rain anticipated across Long Island, New Jersey, all the way to the Delmarva Peninsula.
I don't want to be the bearer of bad news and crash anybody's hopes, but yes, this is looking more like a rain event along the immediate coastline, with snow the further West you travel inland.
CORNISH: Derek, thanks so much. VAN DAM: OK.
MATTINGLY: Well, this morning there are growing concerns that the war in Gaza could expand. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Turkey today. He left last night.
It is the first stop on his eight-nation visit to the Middle East trying to prevent a wider conflict.
Now, this trip comes just after ISIS claimed responsibility for a pair of explosions in Iran that killed 84 people and injured hundreds on Wednesday.
CORNISH: Tensions rising on the Korean Peninsula this morning.
