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Jury Selection Slated for Monday for Trump Hush-Money Trial; Speaker Johnson to Appear at Mar-a-Lago with Trump Today; 30M+ Under Wind Advisories Across Parts of U.S. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired April 12, 2024 - 06:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Friday, April 12, right now on CNN NEWSROOM.

[06:00:32]

Donald Trump out of legal tricks and out of time. Jury selection in his hush-money trial set to begin in just over 72 hours.

House Speaker Mike Johnson hoping a visit to Mar-a-Lago -- should we call it a pilgrimage -- will provide him with enough cover to keep his job.

And Vice President Kamala Harris taking the fight for reproductive rights to Democrats in Arizona.

Six a.m. here in Washington. A live. Look at our nation's capital on this Friday morning. It's Friday. We made it. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.

Donald Trump is going on trial, his delay tactics and legal maneuvers seemingly exhausted. Jury selection set to begin Monday in New York in the former president's hush-money trial, that process expected to take a week or possibly longer.

Judge Juan Merchan says he expects the trial to last six to eight weeks.

Sources tell CNN law enforcement is deploying a multi-layered security plan on social media and in the streets of New York City, as Trump is required to attend every day.

And while that could limit his ability to hold rallies, he has shown plenty of willingness to turn courtroom appearances into campaign events.

In the run-up to the trial, Trump keeps making the same claims that all the cases against him are politically motivated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT/2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: All of these crooked cases are brought about by the Justice Department, in one form or another, and Crooked Joe Biden.

But the only thing they can do is go after his political opponent, a guy named Donald J. Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So let's just be clear that that claim is not correct. The hush- money case was brought by New York state. The DOJ, the White House have no involvement here.

But Trump is likely to keep making that claim, as we know he does, when he holds a rally tomorrow in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania.

Our panel's here: Republican strategist Sarah Longwell; former Obama White House senior policy adviser, Ashley Allison; and Isaac Arnsdorf, who's national political reporter for "The Washington Post."

Sarah Longwell, let me start with you. You talk to voters all of the time. What do you hear from them about what we're about to see unfold here?

SARAH LONGWELL, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, first of all, there are so many cases against Donald Trump that for voters, a lot of this is white noise. They can't really tell all of the cases apart.

That being said, as they come into singular focus as he goes into trial, I've never liked this one going first. Because just the word "porn star," which you're going to hear over and over again, is just the kind of thing that makes people laugh it off as not serious, even though this is about, you know, corporate checks being passed and trying to hide things before an election so it didn't get out.

Even though that's what it's about, like, it's -- the voters are going to interpret this one more, I think -- a little bit more through Trump's frame, as this is them trying to get me on something silly, than they would something like the January 6 case or the documents case, where, when they are taken singularly, seem more serious to voters than this one does.

HUNT: Ashley, do you agree with that assessment here? And also, I mean, if you're the White House and you're -- the guy that you're running against is about to go on trial in New York, I mean, surely your apparatus is doing something to prepare for that.

ASHLEY ALLISON, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE ADVISOR: Yes.

HUNT: At least your campaign certainly should be, even if it's not in the White House. What do you know about what they are going to do next week?

ALLISON: Well, it's clear that the Biden-Harris campaign is going to use Trump's criminal issues as a reason why voters should not trust him.

So the campaign is going to be blasting it out, using it to fund raise. I'm sure, you know, the RNC and the Trump campaign does not have as much money as Joe Biden. So the Trump campaign will be using his court appearances as free political rallies, basically.

And when he does that, he says these off-the-cuff things that sometimes do not land as well as you would like them to for your everyday voter. And there'll be using those, repackaging those, and send those out to say, See, this is just the case, yet again, of why Donald Trump is unfit to be president.

Now, will that work? I'm not sure, to Sarah's point, because you know, there are so many voters are confused.

The one thing I will say that people should be on alert for is that when you have criminal cases, you often have missteps. Something can happen.

And so Donald Trump will use those things as evidence as to why this is like a cricket case.

It's normal in our judicial system to not always have a perfect streamline from point A to point Z. But it'll work in his favor to try and twist it and say, See, they're out to get me. And so they need to be prepared for that also.

[06:05:05]

HUNT: Yes. So this -- this all kind ties together: unpredictability, what -- whether it's going to break through or not. And Jimmy Kimmel talked about it on his show last night. Watch what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, ABC's "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE": All his trials are behind schedule and most now won't likely happen until after the election if at all, which I don't know. Seems like quite a lot of due process for a witch hunt to me.

It's like, we can't burn this witch yet. Her attorneys are saying the water we use to see if she floats wasn't distilled. But --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So you were there, Isaac. But this is, of course -- it's a historic moment, right? A former president, current nominee for a major party, going on criminal trial. You've spent all this time inside the MAGA movement.

How do you think they are going to see it differently from the general election to Trump trying to win now, that electorate?

ISAAC ARNSDORF, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, it's an intentional collision from Trump's perspective. I mean, I was there for the hearing a few weeks ago that -- that set this date. And every time Trump went, in and every time he went out of the courtroom, cameras. You know, he -- the campaign is, for all intents and purposes, for the next six weeks or however long this takes, going to be in that hallway between the office where he meets with his lawyers and the courtroom where he's going to go into 40 Wall Street and holding press conferences.

And, you know, Trump is comfortable in that space of dominating the new cycle. He and his campaign like that. They think that works for him. But when this is the subject matter, we'll have to see.

HUNT: What do you think?

LONGWELL: I think that this is not a great look for Trump. I mean, I -- this is where, I think, analysis still hasn't quite shifted from primary to general election, right?

Because in the primary, undoubtedly, Trump's legal troubles help him, right? People rally around him. They'd say this is a witch hunt, an attack.

But in a general election, a lot of these sort of college-educated, suburban swing voters don't love the look of a presidential candidate living in a courtroom. And so I think that his campaign seems to have not made the shift yet out of, you know, primary mode.

HUNT: Do you think it's going to be enough, Allison, the -- Ashley Allison, the existence of this trial, the fact that it is happening, to grab people's attention at a time when it is very hard to grab people's attention for anything? Is it a big enough deal?

ALLISON: I don't know. I mean, I think --

HUNT: I'm not trying to say it should or it shouldn't. I mean, it seems like a huge deal to me, but like, can we have so much flooding our timeline and life happening? I'm not sure. I mean, it does have some some juicy details, to say the least.

So I think if it -- if it spins out until again, like the Kimmels of the world and becomes comedy, perhaps. But I think it will have to break through on a pop cultural level and not just because it's Donald Trump and because he's in court.

Because I think people, sadly, expect that at this point.

HUNT: It's really something. That sort of a frog in boiling water thing where everything he says, people become inured to it.

LONGWELL: We're the frogs.

HUNT: We're the frog, yes.

LONGWELL: We have become --

ALLISON: I'm jumping out. I'm jumping out of the water, OK?

HUNT: All right. Speaking of a trial that got a lot of attention and grabbed America's attention completely, how the O.J. murder trial in the '90s changed America.

And House Speaker Mike Johnson heads to Mar-a-Lago for a joint appearance with Donald Trump.

Plus baseball star Shohei Ohtani's former translator set to surrender to federal authorities today.

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[06:12:58]

HUNT: Welcome back. House Speaker Mike Johnson makes a joint appearance with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago today. They're going to be talking, they say, about proposals and laws that they claim would allow noncitizens to vote. We'll see about that.

Johnson still won't concede that President Biden won the 2020 election legitimately.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you recognize that President Biden won the 2020 election. Can you just put that aside?

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): President Biden was certified as the winner of the election. He took the oath of office. He's been the president for three years.

The Constitution was violated in the run-up to the 2020 election. Not -- not always in bad faith, but in the aftermath of COVID, many states changed their election laws in ways that violated that plain language. That's just a fact.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. Panel rejoins.

Sarah Longwell, what does -- what does Mike Johnson need from Donald Trump today? And what does the two of them together standing on a stage say to you about kind of the evolution of the Republican Party?

I mean, I -- when I think about it, when I compare what it was like for Trump to come to Washington in 2017, when there was a Republican Party that still stood independently of him. It seems to me that this is really going to send a message that that's over. I'm curious your view.

LONGWELL: I mean, it's kind of been over, but here's the thing about -- what's happening right now, is that Mike Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are kind of -- they're in a fight with each other. And they're running to the ref, Donald Trump. They're running to the big guy to see who he'll back in this dispute over, you know, passing a bill to fund Ukraine.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, she wants to be, like, Trump's right-hand person, just like Kevin McCarthy. She's part of the new MAGA establishment.

But Mike Johnson also wants to be chief of the MAGA establishment. He's the Speaker of the House. He wants to be able to, you know, have Trump back him against Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wants to file a motion to vacate if he goes ahead and funds Ukraine.

And so this is actually, to me, sort of interesting from a Trump perspective. Like, is he going to back them both? Is he going to pick a favorite? What's he going to do?

[06:15:05]

But as far as what it means about the Republican Party, the extent to which it is -- you have to make these pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, like Kevin McCarthy did after January 6.

HUNT: It really seems to me to be the word, right?

LONGWELL: Go get Trump behind you. That's all you need to know about where the Republican Party is.

HUNT: Isaac, I mean, what's your sense of Sarah's question here about Trump and what he's going to do it? And he does often try to have it both ways, right? Keep everybody in the tent. But is he more Johnson or more Marjorie Taylor Greene in something like this?

ARNSDORF: Well, keep everybody in the tent. I mean, another way of saying that: he's very comfortable with cats in a bag.

And -- and loyalty goes one way with Trump. I mean, we all remember Kevin McCarthy looking through the Starbursts to pick out Trump's favorite flavors. And that did not rescue Kevin McCarthy when it was time.

So this helps Mike Johnson today. It gives Trump something that he wants today. I don't think that it goes any farther than that.

HUNT: Big picture, Ashley Allison, one of the things that -- that Johnson is fighting about with the right wing of his conference is FISA. I don't want to get into the technical details of section 702, but I do think Johnson's explanation for why he has essentially changed his mind on FISA and gone from someone who was willing to stand with those right wingers who say it's the government spying on you and instead attempt to move an extension of it that angered his right wing, he explained it. I'll just let him tell you why it is he says he changed his mind. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNSON: This area, saw the abuses of the FBI. The terrible abuses over and over and over, the hundreds of thousands of abuses. And then when I became speaker, I went to the skiff and got the the confidential briefing from sort of the other perspective on that, to understand the necessity of Section 702 of FISA and how important it is for financial security, and it gave me a different perspective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So gee, he suddenly learned why it was that it's important for the country for this to go forward. And this just really stuck out to me, because it seems like the story of the way these narratives get built on the right and become reality when, in fact, you are actually exposed to real information and details about what it actually takes to secure and govern a country. And this is the result.

ALLISON: Yes, I mean, and I think it, though, plays across the board, whether its FISA, whether it's the election denial that you all were just talking about.

It is this warped sense of we're going to run. I'm going to keep your sports analogy going. I might change sports up a little bit, but you're going to run down the field with the ball and, like, stop at the one-yard line when it's no longer makes sense to you.

And to talk about cats in the bag, it's like maybe Mike Johnson is trying to get out of that bag for a little bit and get into that bag. But Mike Johnson does not want to lose his speakership.

And so part, I think, of going down to Mar-a-Lago today is, like, Donald Trump will tell him the direction to go, and he will fall in line.

HUNT: Yes.

LONGWELL: But it's just a little funny to watch these people who go from activists to get elected, to go into actual governing and saying, oh, there's a reason for these things and oh, when you're an adult in the room, you have to make more difficult choices to defend the country.

And suddenly like, oh, actually, I see the purpose of this.

And, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene will never turn off the activist part of her. That's what sort of unique about her, where Mike Johnson, for all of his flaws, is actually trying to figure out how to govern in this position.

HUNT: Right. We're just watching him figure it out in real time, because he's so new to the job. I should get a placard that I can hold up that just says, "Governing is hard." Because it is.

All right. Coming up next, Vice President Harris is fronting the fight for reproductive rights for Democrats.

Plus, new bodycam video of an officer jumping into frigid water to save a drowning teenager.

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[06:23:14]

HUNT: All right, 22 minutes past the hour. Five things you've got to see this morning.

A Washington State Police officer saving a drowning 15-year-old girl. Officer Steve O'Neal jumped into a lake and dragged her to the shore, where two other of his fellow officers helped pull her out.

Love -- love that.

Parts of Southern Russia under water this morning as the region deals with massive flooding. Artificial dams in Kazakhstan have been blown up to lower water levels in flooded areas.

Archaeologists uncovering new Roman frescoes in Pompei, the town buried by volcanic lava and ash from Mount Vesuvius more than 2,000 years ago. Wow, look at that.

The ancient art depicts characters from Greek mythology. It's wild.

And Tiger Woods working overtime this morning. He is one under par after 13 holes. He's going to have to play 23 holes today after a rain shortened round one. He is six shots off the lead.

It's going to be a long day for him, especially in the wake of that long recovery he's had.

Pittsburgh recording its wettest April day so far, the city slogging through its third wettest April ever, now facing life- threatening flash flooding. Look at that yes. Yikes. Thinking of them.

And of course, this as more than 30 million people are under wind advisories this morning with gusts that could reach up to 55 miles an hour, causing travel delays and power outages.

Our Weatherman van Dam tracking all of it. Derek, good morning. What are you looking at?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, good morning, Kasie.

This is the storm system that just will not quit. So last night, we'll take you into the Western suburbs of Pittsburgh. And this is what it looked like. People traversing through flooded roadways, not recommended, obviously. We've got that slogan from the National Weather Service: "Turn around, don't drown." Because especially at night, you cannot see how deep that water is.

[06:25:02]

Nonetheless, it was a very difficult night, because there were -- there were, actually, some water rescues that took place. And this is going back to a very heavy rainfall event that occurred yesterday that -- you said it -- wettest record April day on record.

But we did some digging into the data. And we actually saw that April second of this year was also the previous wettest April day. So you combine those and the other showers in between that, and we are quickly approaching the wettest April ever recorded for Pittsburgh. So that's really saying something.

Flash flood warnings have been allowed to expire, but we still have flood warnings. So the rivers within this area, Western Pennsylvania, in particular, still very swollen. We could have some ponding on the roadways with the showers moving through now.

This is a storm system that was responsible for the tornadoes in Florida, as well as Mississippi and Louisiana. I was there yesterday, tracking this system. And you can see the flood threat throughout the Northeast today as the system wraps (ph) up.

And now we want to pay attention to the severe weather threat that is ongoing this week across the Plains. Heads-up, Oklahoma City. Monday is going to be a tough day -- Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Good heads-up. Weatherman van Dam, Derek, thank you very much. Have a wonderful weekend. See you Monday.

VAN DAM: Thank you. You, too.

HUNT: All right. Coming up next, remembering O.J. Simpson and the trial of the century.

Plus, the message that Vice President Harris will take to the key battleground state of Arizona.

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