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CNN This Morning
Sources: Trump Likely To Pick Marco Rubio For Secretary Of State; Trump Energy Policies Trigger Anxiety At COP29 Climate Talks; New Jersey/New York Jennings Creek Fire Burns 3,500 Acres. Aired 5- 5:30a ET
Aired November 12, 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, CNN ANCHOR: It's Tuesday, November 12th.
Right now on CNN THIS MORNING:
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SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): China today is the single most formidable adversary of the United States has ever faced.
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HUNT: Filling out team Trump. A China hawk expected to be picked as Donald Trump's top diplomat. What that reveals about his foreign policy plans.
And this --
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JOHN PODESTA, BIDEN'S CLIMATE DIPLOMAT: Donald Trump may put climate action on the back burner.
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HUNT: Climate crisis. The world stage watching with bated breath as Donald Trump taps his head for the EPA, a man who vows to roll back environmental regulation.
And later --
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nobody's done what I've done for Israel.
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HUNT: Seizing a quote opportunity. How an Israeli minister hoping to use Trump's victory as a way to extend their sovereignty into the occupied West Bank. (MUSIC)
HUNT: All right, 5:00 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at Capitol Hill on this Tuesday morning.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
Just a week after winning reelection, Donald Trump working to fill out his cabinet overnight. Trump tapping South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem for Homeland Security Secretary, two people familiar with the selection tell CNN.
Noem is just the latest Trump loyalist he's chosen for his next administration to help carry out ambitious policy goals she will work alongside two immigration hardliners that Trump has slated to serve in senior roles, Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, both served in Trump's first White House. Two people familiar with Trump's thinking also tell CNN he's likely to pick Florida Senator Marco Rubio for secretary of state.
As of last night, it wasn't clear if Trump had offered Rubio the role, but Rubio was a staunch supporter of Trump throughout his 2024 campaign.
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RUBIO: He wanted by fundamentally remaking the Republican Party. This is not a partisan realignment. It is an American realignment. And Donald Trump just happens to be the candidate over the last ten years, that's truly not just revealed it but captured it and communicated it in a very unique way. But I mean, it's incumbent upon those of us who are in office now to turn that into policy and ultimately to continue it as a movement.
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HUNT: This, of course, a major shift from when Rubio and Trump faced off on the campaign trail in 2016.
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RUBIO: There is no way we are going to allow a con artist to take over the conservative movement. And Donald Trump is a con artist. He is wholly unprepared to be president of the United States.
Donald Trump is a con artist.
He would be a disaster for America. He would split our party in half.
The party of Lincoln and Reagan cannot have as its nominee, someone who refuses to condemn the Ku Klux Klan.
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HUNT: All right. Joining us now, political reporter for "NOTUS", Reese Gorman.
Reese, good morning to you. Thank you so much for being here.
REESE GORMAN, POLITICAL REPORTER, NOTUS: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.
HUNT: I know you've been doing quite a bit of reporting on who wants in, who doesn't want in, et cetera. Kind of taken together, it's clear that Donald Trump is looking for loyalists here, but let's kind of dig into -- we'll start with Rubio. Since that's the highest profile name. I mean, our understanding is that, you know, Trump could still change his mind, right? That can happen sometimes.
But this is quite the evolution of that relationship.
GORMAN: And you've seen that a lot with some of these more now Trumpy figures.
I mean, Senator Mike Lee was literally on the floor of the Senate yelling no to Trump. And now he's one of Trump's biggest supporters. I mean, Marco has had kind of the same kind of transition to where being a Trump critic realized that he couldn't get anywhere in the party without kind of supporting Trump.
So then he became kind of like an informal adviser to Trump during the first term, while he was senator. And then also then became the shortlist for a running mate. He was one of the last three names to kind of help Donald Trump on the on the top of the ticket there. And so, now, you're seeing that he's being rewarded with the secretary of state job and he is kind of a more -- he is very hawkish.
But he also has kind of a more mainstream Republican when it comes to some -- it comes to national security ideas. He's not as kind of isolationist as Trump is. He is a supporter of NATO. And so I think that kind of looking at looking there, it is kind of a balanced in that -- in that office.
HUNT: Yeah. It's been interesting to watch Rubio's moves. I mean, he voted against the most recent round of Ukraine funding, but he said it didn't have to do with Ukraine. It had to do with other issues.
And for Rubio in particular, I mean, I guess my question for you is when you talk to some of these people who have gotten back on Trump's good side, what do -- what do they understand as why that would happen?
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Because Mike Pompeo, for example, got thrown out of the administration in the next administration right off the bat, right? But he was someone who served with Trump who -- clearly, he committed some sort of sin. How do these people understand what actually works with Trump?
I think a lot of it is stuff that -- I mean, I reported this recently to with Tom Emmer, someone that was thrown out by the Trump kind of attacked him for the speakers race, tanked a speaker bid, and people told me that Emmer did it in a way that wasn't -- he didn't go and suck up to Trump. He wasn't just at Mar-a-Lago kind of begging at Trump's feet. He found ways to be helpful in the background and try and made sure that like Trump staff did see that this was happening, that he was being helpful.
And then what Trump started seeing that that he was helpful, that he was doing these things, whether it be hosting a fundraiser at Mar-a- Lago, whether it be hosting Trump at a fundraiser in Minnesota, whether it be campaigning for Trump or doing playing Tim Walz, I think the Trump team really likes seeing people be helpful. Not necessarily. I mean, Trump obviously likes being kind of swooned off his feet as we everyone knows.
But I think there's also something to be said about just being helpful as well, that we've kind of reported and seen there.
HUNT: Right. So one other thing, obviously, that that Trump is kind of working with here is what our White House team reported. I mean, they're called -- we typically shorthand them as czars, right? These are people. And the reason they exist is because they don't need to be confirmed by the Senate, which is a process that can really trip up people who are perhaps more controversial.
This was my colleague Kayla Tausche writes, quote, the president-elect has elevated a new class of candidates, the czars, a role that operates in the sphere between the agencies and the president. A bid to skirt bureaucratic processes, exert more power over the portfolio. It also means these candidates not burdened by the lengthy Senate confirmation process, can launch their work on day one.
There are people who aren't kidding around. They'll just go straight in and execute the president's agenda because -- I mean, some of these nominees could be tied up for months in a process. What does this mean for how the government functions?
GORMAN: Yeah, and I mean, to your point, I mean nominations take a long time. Czars, obviously I mean, they don't have the kind of overwhelming power as a cabinet secretary, but they do have the power of being like they're appointed, but they're still appointed by Trump.
And they still have the authority to kind of go and kind of -- they can't force cabinet secretaries. They can't force government employees to kind of do what they say in these agencies, but they do have the power to kind of advise and talk to and kind of give ideas. And they're going to be very powerful, especially with Trump, because you're looking at the people he's appointing are people that he trusts, people that he wants in this office.
And cabinet secretaries -- I mean, well see how long they take. If the Senate actually follows Trump's recess appointments, they could not take that very long. But that seems pretty difficult to do. So I think that they will probably be tied up for quite a while.
HUNT: Yeah. We'll see. All right. Reese Gorman, for us this morning, Reese, thank you.
GORMAN: Thank you.
HUNT: Really appreciate it.
All right. Coming up here on CNN this morning, the economy and the environment. Donald Trump taps Lee Zeldin to head the EPA. What he says are the top climate priorities.
Plus, Ron Brownstein is here to take a closer look at how exactly Trump won over the electorate and the massive gains he made.
And in our morning round up, winds intensifying as crews battle the growing Jennings Creek fire in New Jersey.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In my over 50 years of living here, this has been the most significant and probably most potentially dangerous situation I've seen or been involved in.
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HUNT: All right. Welcome back.
Diplomats from around the world gathering in Azerbaijan for the United Nations climate conference. Some are nervous about what Donald Trump's return to the White House will mean for global climate initiatives after months of rhetoric like this on the campaign trail.
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TRUMP: I will end Kamala's war on Pennsylvania energy and we will frack, frack, frack, and drill, baby, drill. We're going to drill, baby, drill.
I will cut your energy prices. All of your energy. Gasoline, for the house, air conditioning, heating, everything.
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HUNT: Trump's decision to tap former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin to head up the EPA, adding to the anxiety on display at the event. Zeldin telling Fox News the president-elects top priority when it comes to energy is economic prosperity.
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LEE ZELDIN, FORMER REPUBLICAN U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: There are regulations that the left wing of this country have been advocating through regulatory power that ends up causing businesses to go in the wrong direction. And President Trump, when -- when he called me up, gosh, he was rattling off 15 or 20 different priorities.
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HUNT: CNN's Max Foster joins us live from London with more.
Max, good morning. It's wonderful to see you.
Look, the political realities here in the U.S. are not always going to align or haven't aligned historically with where a lot of the conversations are going to be on the sidelines of an event like the climate conference. That's ongoing right now. That's obviously a challenge.
What are you hearing from world leaders about this?
MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well, certainly, you know I've been speaking to a few people in Baku, Azerbaijan, where this event is taking place, and certainly the election of Donald Trump as president is looming large. You had the U.S. climate envoy saying this is going to be a problem for the conference, but you know, America is still committed. We don't even know if Donald Trump is going to appoint another climate envoy. And we know that on the campaign trail, he was talking about pulling out of the Paris agreement which is the core agreement which aims to organize countries to reduce global warming effectively.
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America, the biggest polluter in the world, alongside China, if it isn't involved in that, then it doesn't hold much weight anymore and you end up asking the question, you know, these are some of the leaders who did turn up to the to Azerbaijan can they really afford to compensate for what America would be putting into the system? Probably not. So there's a lot of disillusionment over there at the COP conference, and we wait to see exactly what Zeldin does, what Donald Trump does, and whether or not they appoint a climate envoy to deal with these issues for the U.S.
HUNT: So, Max, obviously, one of the other big picture things here, the Paris Climate Accords and "Politico" recently wrote about this. They say this, quote, the world is bracing for president elect Donald Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate -- climate agreement for the second time, only this time he could move faster and with less restraint. The United States absence from the deal would put other countries on the hook to make bigger reductions to their climate pollution. It would also raise inevitable questions from some countries about how much more effort they should put in, when the worlds second largest greenhouse gas polluter is walking away.
And, obviously, the effects of the change in climate are starting to show up in people's everyday lives, in bigger and bigger ways. Whether it's right now, there's a wildfire burning here in the U.S. in New Jersey, a place that you know, rarely sees things like that. Hurricanes have gotten more intense and difficult to deal with. Insurance in Florida is getting to be impossible to get, and yet these sort of big picture things that are required to actually do something about it remain politically as outlined here, politically, very difficult. FOSTER: Well, it certainly needs the big industrialized countries to
work together to reduce global emissions. It doesn't work if everyone doesn't work together. And actually, the COP conference is set up in that way there has to be a unanimous decision about what they actually decide at these meetings but that's also undermine the meetings in the past, because countries like Saudi Arabia would veto any big decisions.
So, you know, Donald Trump could legitimately look at the cop conference and say well, it hasn't been working anyway but certainly the U.S. pulling out of the Paris climate agreement does leave everyone questioning, you know, they certainly couldn't make up for all of the pollution that America puts into the world but they cant afford it either. At the moment with economies slumping, its just not seen at the same priority.
And I think you really see that actually with the world leaders that have turned up to this conference, a lot of the smaller countries who are desperate to get some aid from the developing countries, but Germany is not there. France isn't there. Russia and crucially, China and the U.S., the leaders of those countries, aren't there. So it's losing a lot of its emphasis.
HUNT: Yeah.
All right. Max Foster for us this morning -- Max, always grateful to see you. Thank you so much.
All right. Coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING, the balance of the power of power in the Senate nearly sealed.
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REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D-AZ): When its time to fight, we will fight the administration. When there's places that we can find common ground, we'll find common ground.
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HUNT: Democrats officially claiming the Senate seat in Arizona.
Plus, how Donald Trump flipped the script to become the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades.
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HUNT: All right, 20 minutes past the hour, here's your morning roundup.
Democrat Ruben Gallego winning one of the last Senate races still up for grabs, defeating Republican Kari Lake to become Arizona's first Latino senator.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GALLEGO: Well, certainly first for the Republicans, thank you so much. Honestly, like, you know, they took a chance on me and we're not going to agree all the time. And I'm going to always seek the input. And we're going to, you know, find middle ground where we can.
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HUNT: With Gallego's win, the balance of power in the Senate nearly cemented. There's going to be a Republican majority. CNN still has not called the race in Pennsylvania.
Three U.S. based airlines now suspending flights to Haiti after planes were hit by gunfire while flying over the country. Spirit and JetBlue airlines reporting bullet damage to two passenger jets. One crew member was injured. United Airlines also temporarily suspending flights to Haiti.
Crews on the East Coast making some progress getting the Jennings Creek fire under control. The wildfire spreading across parts of New Jersey and New York. It's now 20 percent contained. It burned 3,500 acres.
And that gets us to weather this morning. More than 25 million people in the Northeast waking up this morning under red flag warnings. On the West Coast, wildfires continue in southern California.
Let's get straight to our meteorologist, the weatherman, Derek Van Dam.
Derek, good morning.
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah. The Jennings Creek fire not quite extinguished just yet. And in fact, it's going -- the conditions there are going to get worse before they get better. And I'll explain in just one moment.
But you can see the embers still burning through this thick vegetation across Northeast New Jersey. This is Passaic County. Firefighters doing everything they possibly can to extinguish the flames. I mean, look at this monumental effort to try and douse the flames there.
But unfortunately, today, we have red flag warnings reissued across much of the New England area including Long Island, northeast New Jersey, stretching into Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, and parts of New York.
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So this is the Jennings Creek fire, 20 percent containment. There was some relief yesterday with some light rain that fell overnight Sunday into early Monday morning, but that has since moved on. There is a secondary cold front that's going to not only whip up the winds today but also change the wind direction.
It will also create some more difficult conditions for the firefighters on the ground. Yes, you see some rainfall on this radar, but unfortunately, a lot of that evaporating before it reaches the ground. So very minimal help from the skies today, although tomorrow the winds will relax and then well start to gain some ground, perhaps on this fire.
Look at the winds for today, gusting out of the northwest at 30 -- 30 miles per hour. So a breezy day and you can see it starts to relax into the afternoon tomorrow. Very dry conditions there on the East Coast, but also still dry in southern California as well. So we have we have wind alerts and an elevated fire risk there too -- Kasie.
HUNT: All right. Derek Van Dam for us this morning, Derek, very grateful for that. See you next hour.
VAN DAM: Okay.
HUNT: All right. Still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, as Republicans sweep back into power in the Senate. Who will lead their majority? We're going to dig in to the secret ballot race that's going to decide one of the most powerful men and its going to be a man, it seems like, in D.C.
Plus, how Donald Trump pulled off this big political comeback with gains in areas historically dominated by Democrats.
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REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): There's a not insignificant amount of down ballot Democrats like myself, for which there were Trump-AOC precincts.
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