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Opening Statements to Begin in Trump Hush Money Trial; U.S. House Passes $95 Billion in Aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan; Jewish Students at Columbia University Urged to Stay Home for Their Own Safety. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired April 22, 2024 - 05:00   ET

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

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KASIE HUNT, ANCHOR, CNN THIS MORNING: It's Monday, April 22nd, right now on CNN THIS MORNING. Opening statements set to begin in Donald Trump's hush money trial. New CNN reporting on who prosecutors plan to call as their first witness. A foreign aid bill passed by the House, leaving hard right Republicans and Hamas infuriated.

And a crisis on campus. Jewish students at Columbia University urged to stay home for their own safety. All right, 5:00 a.m. here in Washington, but this is a live look at New York City on this Monday morning where opening statements are set to begin in the Donald Trump trial.

Good morning, everyone, I'm Kasie Hunt, it's wonderful to have you here with us. Opening statements in the historic criminal hush money case against Donald Trump set to begin just a few hours from now. CNN has learned that David Pecker; the former Chairman of the "National Enquirer's" parent company is expected to be the first witness called by the Manhattan DA's office, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Pecker was a central player in the alleged scheme to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels to cover up her alleged affair with Trump ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Pecker is the first in a string of witnesses expected to take the stand.

They include Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels herself, the former Trump aid Hope Hicks and Karen McDougal, who was also alleged that she was paid to conceal an affair with Trump. The former president briefly spoke to the media after jury selection wrapped up on Friday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We just had another theory, and the trial starts on Monday, which is long before a lot of people thought the judge wants this to go as fast as possible. That's for his reasons, not for my reasons. This is a giant witch-hunt to try and earn a campaign that's beating the worst president in history.

And this is the only way they think they can win, but it's not going to work. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, joining me now to discuss is Eugene Scott; he's senior politics reporter at "Axios", Eugene, good morning to you --

EUGENE SCOTT, SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: Good morning to see you.

HUNT: So, we spent last week in jury selection. This morning, we are headed to the start of this trial. It's a historic moment really for the first -- you know, first-time former president is going to be really involved in the meats of a criminal trial here. What are you expecting to unfold today?

SCOTT: Well, listening to obviously these opening statements and listening to the former President's attorneys try to make the case that the former president did nothing wrong, that decisions were made that were either beyond him, out of his control or that did not involve him.

And one of the things that I think we're going to see is them really try to pick apart the prosecution's witnesses, specifically Michael Cohen, and make the argument that these individuals who are trying to prove or make the case that Trump did do things wrong, just aren't reliable, credible people.

HUNT: Why do you think they make the decision to start with David Pecker here? He obviously was the person who basically said, OK, I'll keep an eye out, try to keep bad stories out of the tabloids for you when you're running for present.

SCOTT: I think the argument is that Pecker is running his own business and making many decisions by himself, that even if he had conversations with the former president, which they probably are going to try to make the case that he did not, that these were choices that he ultimately made, that not -- that did not involve the president.

Their whole argument said the president is innocent that he did not do this, and having another businessman come in, showing how he operated his corporation could help them make that case.

HUNT: So, of course, big picture, the politics of this. I mean, you and I have sat here on many morning and talked about the fact that these trials, the various indictments, the looming trials were something that helped Donald Trump or seems to help him politically in the primary election --

SCOTT: Yes, sure --

HUNT: But we have raised questions about what impact would happen in the general election. "NBC News" had to pull out over the weekend a new poll -- the official CNN parlance is that this race remains, you know, too close to --

SCOTT: Right -- HUNT: There's no clear leader shown, but we can put up there, that

you see that there is some movement in Joe Biden's favor when they did this poll back in January, it was at 42 percent for Biden.

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Now, he has ticked up to 47 percent. This is of course in the head-to- head, it doesn't account for the third party candidates as it looks a little different when you do that. But this does seem to suggest that perhaps there is something to this idea that as the general election were to be joined and Donald Trump, of course, were to actually have to confront these legal challenges that have been looming over him, things might start to move. What do you see?

SCOTT: Yes, we've seen this in a few recent elections, be the congressional midterm, more general election primary voters and general voters are very different, right? You have these loyalists and primary voters who are going to back the former president, almost no matter what.

But we have polling. We talked to focus groups where voters who are outside of the base say, if he's convicted, I'm not sure that I'm going to back him. And now we're getting closer to that possibly happening, and we also see more voters paying attention now and being reminded of what happened during the Trump presidency. And they're deciding, I don't know if I want to go back to this.

HUNT: Which -- did you ever sense that what unfolded last week actually started to break through with people? I mean, the other kind of piece of this, you know, you hear some members of -- Republican members of Congress, we should say defenders of Donald Trump allude to this, but they will say that like voters don't distinguish and Sarah Longwell, who was on with us regularly, she talks to Trump voters as well.

There's this sense that it's kind of all the same, all the legal problems he's facing are the same in voters' minds. And that it is kind of baked in, was that the sense you got as you covered this last week and as we head into the real -- the real heart of this trial?

SCOTT: I did. Last week, I spoke with a lot of people outside of Washington, some student groups, some focus groups, and they're paying attention now, and they want to know, is this actually going to happen? Are there other cases they're going to make it before the election?

What did I think the outcome was going to be? People are tuning in now because four months, if not more than a year, we've been saying that things are moving in this direction. And now that a jury has been selected, people are paying attention.

HUNT: All right, Eugene Scott, thank you very much --

SCOTT: Thank you --

HUNT: For being with us this morning -- SCOTT: Yes --

HUNT: I really appreciate it. All right, up next here, Hamas and far- right Republicans are furious with House leadership after aid for Israel passes, plus, a crisis at Columbia University, Jewish students urged to stay home for their own safety. And North Korea reportedly launching multiple ballistic missiles just hours ago. We'll give you details ahead.

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HUNT: Welcome back. The head of Israel's Military Intelligence Unit has just resigned for not detecting Hamas' preparations for the October 7th attacks. He's the first senior military official to resign over the Intelligence failures that led to the deaths of over a 1,000 Israelis, hundreds more taken hostage. CNN's Max Foster is with me now.

Max, good morning, great to see you. This is really kind of the first significant move toward Israelis, the Israeli government taking accountability for having been on watch when October 7th unfolded. What do you see in this move here?

MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Intelligence agencies, a while ago, didn't they? They -- you know, they admitted there were Intelligence failures and on a pretty epic scale. If you look at the fallout from what happened on October the 7th, but also the fallout since then as well, the reaction, this war that's come out of it, and the -- you know, the -- you know, the pain that Israel has been through.

So, this is someone finally taking account and responsibility for that. The question is whether or not, you know, it's enough. This is just one senior Intelligence officer where many people are pointing the finger at Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister who was ultimately -- who is ultimately responsible for, you know, the reaction, and someone who is, of course, plugged into Intelligence.

And you know, whether or not he saw that Intel and whether he was part of that failure. So, I don't think this is the end of it, but I think there will be some satisfaction at least that someone is taking responsibility.

HUNT: It's interesting, Max, Netanyahu, it seems in the wake of these attacks from Iran is almost been strengthened in this way, as that -- as those attacks from Iran had been launched on Israel, and has kind of reinforced his repeated messaging that we've talked a lot about here.

That while we can't have conversations about a political accountability until we're done with the war, until we're kind of out of this immediate situation, that kind of threw him a life-line in this kind of strange way. I mean, certainly, it changed the politics on the ground here in Washington in terms of the movement of aid to Israel getting out the door and the House Speaker Mike Johnson finally acquiescing to the pressure around that.

Is this all unfolded? What is your sense of how events have kind of turned things for Netanyahu, even of course, as we have the administration, the Biden White House basically saying they want to make moves against a West Bank unit, that military unit accused of human rights abuses.

That is a significant thing that they are, you know, basically going against the Israelis in that way. That's not something we've seen either.

FOSTER: I think public opinion, you know, is firmly against Netanyahu. Washington turning against Netanyahu as well. But you know, is it the right time to -- for a change in leadership when you're involved in a war with Hamas.

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And there's this huge amount of tension as well with Iran, which seems to have died down for now at least, but it's not going away any time soon. So, it's a question of whether or not you want all that political instability at this time, and this is something that cynics about Netanyahu say he's playing to as long as there's this tension.

They need a strong war leader in power, and he's the man to do it. But I think, you know, if you look at any of the evidence, as soon as all this is over, he's politically extremely weak.

HUNT: Max, on another topic. Although related in that big bill that the House passed over the weekend, foreign aid bill, they also sent a TikTok ban to the Senate, it's a little bit modified from the one that they had done before. It gives him a little bit more time. What did you make of that?

And I know -- you know, we've talked a lot about this here, and I know you are on the -- I'm actually not active on TikTok, but you are. I would highly recommend to everyone that they follow you if you're -- if they're on the platform, because I certainly have learned from you in terms of how you use it.

But I think it really does kind of underscore the fear that a lot of lawmakers here in Washington have around China's control over the platform and the influence it has -- I mean, even how they've conducted their campaign against it, has reinforced everything that lawmakers have been saying, because they've been flooded with these calls, saying, hey, look, China wants to influence our political process. They're doing it right now.

FOSTER: Yes, I mean, there're so many different angles on this, aren't there? And it certainly bears -- you know, you could argue there's a possibility that there could be a lot of Chinese influence on the app, whether or not they're using that isn't quite clear.

But it certainly does expose a lot of people to the potential of, you know, Chinese authorities having access to at least the data on the app. That's what all the question and concern is in Washington. Lot of legitimate concern as well, and big questions being asked.

It has however taken hold in America in an extraordinary way. Lot of young people quite dependent on it, but also a lot of brands dependent on it. So, what I'm interested in seeing is if this gets through the Senate, you know, we know that Biden is going to sign it if it does get through the Senate.

What happens after that? Because the idea that it would be closed down pretty quickly if China or if ByteDance doesn't sell it, you know, isn't necessarily the process that might play out, because there are so many vested interests in America in this app.

You wonder if it will get caught up in all sorts of legal cases and they'll survive a while because of that. And you can't really imagine a situation where the Chinese government would actually allow it to be sold by ByteDance. So, maybe it's not a ByteDance decision in the end.

HUNT: Lots of potential avenues there. You're absolutely right. I mean, there's no way, TikTok is shutting down in the U.S. before the election. So, from that perspective, Democrats --

FOSTER: Also --

HUNT: President's -- yes, go ahead.

FOSTER: I mean, well, the -- there's just a great debate on TikTok about this at the moment, about how President Biden seems to be so against it, was going to sign this into law. And yet, is appearing on TikTok and using it as part of his campaign on the Democrats account.

HUNT: Fair enough. Max Foster for us in London, Max, great to see you, thank you so much. See you tomorrow. Coming up next, opening statements set to begin in Donald Trump's hush money trial. We're going to have new details about the first witness expected to take the stand, plus an intruder arrested for breaking into the home of the mayor of Los Angeles while she was inside. Scary stuff.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:20:00]

HUNT: Twenty two minutes past the hour, here's your morning round up. North Korea believed to have fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles just hours ago. The Japanese Coast Guard announcing that at least one of the missiles fell into the waters of east of the Korean peninsula, no injuries or damage have been reported.

Three people injured after a car rammed into a group of pedestrians on a street in Jerusalem. Israeli police characterize the incident as a terror attack, saying the suspects attempted to fire weapons as they fled on foot. Two of the suspects have been arrested.

Delaware State University will be closed again today after an 18-year- old woman was shot and killed near a residence hall early Sunday. Police say she was not a registered student. And an intruder arrested for breaking into the home of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Bass and her family were home at the time. They were not injured. The unidentified suspect was arrested without incident and is being held on a $100,000 bond. Time now for weather. More than 70 million people in the eastern U.S. under frost alerts this morning. Temperatures also expected to be about 15 degrees below average and parts of southern plains. Our weatherman Van Dam tracking all of it for us. Derek, happy Monday to --

DEREK VAN DAM, METEOROLOGIST: Good morning --

HUNT: You, good to see you. What have you got?

VAN DAM: Happy Earth Day.

HUNT: Happy Earth --

VAN DAM: Yes --

HUNT: Day --

VAN DAM: It's Earth Day today, that's right. That's right. So, April 22nd, here it is. And this weatherman is checking his calendar, going why are we talking about frost and freeze warnings this morning? I think people need to just be aware that not everyone is below freezing with this setup.

But remember cold air sinks. So, if you happen to be in one of those valleys, let's say across central Pennsylvania, right along the spine of the Appalachian. This is where some of that colder air had settled in. And if you've already planted your vegetables for the season or perhaps flowers, that could be a jeopardy this morning.

So, just keep that in mind. Maybe yes, if you can get out there early, remember the coldest part of the morning is roughly between 5:00 and 7:00 in the morning. So, if you have the opportunity to cover those plants that are extremely sensitive, you can see temperatures are indeed above freezing for most of these locations.

Look at Cincinnati, 34, but we will be cold this week. In fact, about 56 percent of the lower 48 or roughly 180 million people will be below 40 degrees. So, we'll see that mercury in the thermometer drop well below average for this time of year.

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Here's an example, Atlanta, 44 this morning, St. Louis, 42 on Monday morning where your normal low temperature should be in the upper 40s to around 50. So, clear and cool, all thanks to this high pressure system, I want to show you this. You can see a cold front that is going to be kind of our next weather maker.

There's a departing system that's really bringing us our only rainfall on the map this morning across eastern U.S., but it's that secondary cold front that will develop across the plains with severe weather chances as we edge towards the second half of this work week. Kasie, happy Earth Day, happy Monday. HUNT: Happy Earth Day, happy Monday. Our weatherman Van Dam Derek, I'll see you next hour. Thank you very much --

VAN DAM: Have a good one, all right --

HUNT: Coming up next, the first witness expected to take the stand after opening statements in Donald Trump's hush money trial. Plus, protests rocking Columbia University's campus classes, all being held virtually today.

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