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CNN This Morning
Biden Faces Bipartisan Rebuke Over Son's Pardon; Trump Announces Visit To France This Weekend; Lake-Effect Snow Totals Exceed 5 Feet In Great Lakes Region. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired December 03, 2024 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:34]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Tuesday, December 3rd.
Right now on CNN THIS MORNING:
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SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): He didn't need to tell the American public, I will not do this. And he did. And when you made a promise, you got to keep it.
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO): It's a gift to Donald Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Biden's blowback. The president's broken promise not to promise -- pardon his son, stunning some of his closest allies.
And this --
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REPORTER: Were you ever drunk while traveling on the job?
PETE HEGSETH, TRUMP'S DEFENSE SECRETARY NOMINEE: I won't dignify that with a response.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Personal misconduct. Trump's pick to head the Department of Defense facing increased scrutiny over new allegations about his past.
And VIP treatment. President-elect Donald Trump traveling to Paris this week following a personal invitation from the French president.
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HUNT: All right, 5:00 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at the Washington monument here in our nation's capital. That is the White House in front of it. You can see it's never lit up at this hour but it's there.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House and Joe Biden prepares to exit, a stark contrast now playing out both domestically and around the world for Donald Trump, the once and future president is finding himself again at the center of world affairs with leaders like Canada's prime minister making the trek to Mar-a-Lago just this past weekend and now he's also getting invitations to go abroad. Trump will be in Paris this weekend for the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron.
All of this happening while Trump assembles a cabinet of loyalists preparing to carry out his agenda, backed by a party showing almost unanimous allegiance to their incoming leader.
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SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK): The American people gave President Trump a mandate.
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: And what they've delivered with the mandate in this election is a demand that we shake up the status quo.
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): This is the president's cabinet. He's got to choose people who he has confidence in.
REP. TOM EMMER (R-MN): Americans elected a Republican president, a Republican Senate and a Republican House with a mandate.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): The Senate is going to give great deference to a president that just won a stunning what I think is an Electoral College landslide, when all is said and done and a mandate, and he's being -- being given a mandate to govern.
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HUNT: Meanwhile, for the current president, there is not a lot of talk of mandates or any deference from many in his own party. President Biden grabbed a last lever of power. It is reserved solely for the executive branch when he granted his son, Hunter, a wide ranging pardon on a felony conviction before leaving on an international trip to Africa.
The move is now being largely condemned by many in his own party. After the president went back on a promise he made earlier this year.
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KAINE: He didn't need to tell the American public, I will not do this, and he did. And when he made a promise, you got to keep it.
BENNET: It just gives the American people a sense that there's one system for the rich and powerful, and another system for everybody else.
REPORTER: Are you disappointed by the decision? SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): Yes, I'm disappointed by the decision.
REP. DAN GOLDMAN (D-NY): I is discouraging that he has now gone back on his word, on that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Joining us now to discuss all of this, Shelby Talcott, reporter for "Semafor".
Shelby, good morning to you. Thank you so much for being here.
SHELBY TALCOTT, REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Good morning.
HUNT : So let's talk for a little for a moment about the reaction among Democrats to this pardon, because it's -- there are some out there who are defending him. But its relatively the level of condemnation is pretty high.
TALCOTT: Yeah. And I don't think it's particularly surprising because he repeatedly said that he wouldn't. And I think that's one of the things that Democrats are stuck on. And I also think that they've raised the point that or the argument that this sort of erodes trust in the justice system at a time, of course, when Donald Trump is about to take office and has they have a party in the Republican Party who has argued that the justice system has been weaponized and they want mass change.
And so, this Joe Biden doing that sort of adds to Republicans' argument.
HUNT: Because his -- his argument, Biden's argument is basically that, hey, the reason to do this is because the system itself isn't fair.
TALCOTT: Exactly. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about what Senator Joe Manchin had to say yesterday to my colleague Manu Raju, when he was asked about this. Let's watch.
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SEN. JOE MANCHIN (I-WV): What I would have done differently and my recommendations to counsel would have been, why don't you go ahead and pardon Donald Trump for all his charges and make it, you know, it had been it had gone down a lot, a lot more balanced, if you will.
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[05:05:06]
HUNT: So he's basically saying that Joe Biden should also pardon Donald Trump by any world in which Joe Biden pardons Donald Trump for what happened on January 6th.
TALCOTT: You know, listen, I guess never say never. I think it would be shocking. I would say that there's probably not a world in which Joe Biden pardons Donald Trump for January 6.
But I also think if he did that, it would he would have backlash from the Democratic Party anyway. So anything he does in this situation besides not pardoning Hunter Biden is going to earn backlash from members of his own party and the Republican Party.
HUNT: I mean, big picture Shelby. I mean, this is a situation where you have an outgoing president who just presided over sweeping losses for his own party Democrats, while they're out there criticizing the president. What are they doing about moving forward?
TALCOTT: Yeah, I mean that's the big question, right? I think that there is a huge hole that is waiting to be filled when it comes to the Democratic Party, and we're going to see over the next four years who fills that hole.
Is it going to be Kamala Harris again? Is it going to be any of the number of top Democrats who were sort of keeping their powder dry to let Joe Biden finish his run this time around? And there's been a lot of conversations about that. And I anticipate that in the next four years, the Democratic Party is going to have to drastically change if they're going to have a chance in 2028.
HUNT: Yeah. All right, Shelby Talcott starting us off this morning, Shelby, very grateful to have you. Thank you for being here.
All right. Straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, welcoming with open arms. French President Emmanuel Macron extends a Paris invite to Donald Trump for his first foreign trip as president elect.
Plus, coming to the defense, GOP senators look to push aside fresh allegations against Trump's choice to lead the pentagon over his record.
And falling short. How the Harris campaign was unable to seize on the controversy surrounding Donald Trump?
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DAVID PLOUFFE, FORMER HARRIS CAMPAIGN ADVISER: This political environment sucked, okay? We were dealing with ferocious headwinds, and I think people's instinct was to give the Republicans and even Donald Trump another chance.
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[05:11:35]
HUNT: All right. Welcome back.
President-elect Trump heading to Paris later this week to attend the December 7th reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral. He's going to be there at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron. The two leaders worked together closely during Trump's first term, a relationship that some described as a, quote, bromance.
Macron rolling out the red carpet in 2017 when Trump visited France for Bastille Day. The French president, explaining why he believes the relationship works when he did this interview with Fareed Zakaria in 2018.
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EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT: We know where we disagree and we are very straightforward on that, on climate, on trade, on multilateralism. But we work very well together because we have very regular and direct discussions.
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HUNT: Of course, catering to Trump's ego never seems to hurt.
CNN's Stephen Collinson writes this. Quote, there will be a sense of deja vu when French President Emmanuel Macron lays the flattery on thick for Donald Trump in Paris this weekend. Macron treated him with such deference at a Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Elysees that Trump came home wanting a military parade of his own on July 4th.
Let's go to London, where we find CNN's Max Foster.
Max, good morning to you.
What is behind this invitation and help us understand a little bit what it is about Emmanuel Macron that he knows or has decided to treat Trump this way?
MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, he's a politician. He needs America.
The invitation is, you know, I was there on Friday at Notre Dame Cathedral when Macron was viewing it for the first time. It is absolutely stunning. This is he described it as the soul of France. It's, you know, on many peoples bucket lists, it's a place of worship for many people around the world.
And it burned down in 2019, or the roof fell through and they've completely refurbished it to the most extraordinary level, more than $700 million worth. And it's come out like new. So it looks like a completely new building. But actually what the historians love about it is that they've actually just restored it to what it would have looked like in the 12th century.
So I think that, you know, this is a big moment for France. So they've invited heads of state, and they were expecting the U.S. ambassador to France to go along. And they've just heard that it's actually going to be President Trump.
So it's all been ramped up a level. The background to this is that there's a growing fear in the European Union, of which France is a key member, that Trump is about to launch a trade war against the European Union which could be hugely, hugely destructive. So, knowing Macron, he's going to use this as an opportunity to
absolutely throw everything at Donald Trump, give him you know, the red carpet treatment in front of all of these world leaders at an event the world will be tuning into and showing how much he can charm President Trump to try presumably to just reduce the impact of any sort of trade war that might be coming.
HUNT: Well, and, Max, hasn't Trump shown like a particular focus on some things that are French, such as I seem to remember getting emails from my local wine shop here in Washington, D.C., where they happen to specialize in French wine and they were very concerned about the impacts of what had been going on under the last Trump administration, because Donald Trump had focused in on French wine, specifically in a way that was -- was stressful.
[05:15:10]
I mean, how much of that is at play here?
FOSTER: Well, I think it's, you know, it's the idea that Trump has referred to in the past about the European Union, and this trade bloc and getting unfair advantages against the U.S. in the world economy.
And its also plays into China because he wants the European Union to block Chinese products coming into the European Union in the same way that America is doing. You know, if you want to be our ally, you need to work with us. But Europe depends on Chinese imports. And if they don't bring them in, the prices are going to go up here combined with any tariffs that the U.S. is going to put on EU imports.
So there's a massive fear that the literally that the European economy could collapse because of what Trump is about to bring in. And it will, you know if you want to make it symbolic, then you do target French wine, for example, in the same way that you might target scotch whiskey from Scotland.
I will say that, Kasie, there's a very interesting there was a really interesting speech by the British prime minister yesterday where he actually spoke to this issue. He said, there's this idea that if Donald Trump does launch a trade war with the European Union, then Britain is going to have to choose whose side it takes. Is it going to go with America, or is it going to go with Europe? And it's not going to be able to survive without choosing one or the other.
And the prime minister saying we can deepen relationships with both, but people actually think that that's not a realistic point of view. It's a big moment for the U.K. to decide whether to go with Donald Trump or with the E.U.
HUNT: Fascinating. All right. Max Foster for us -- Max, always grateful to have you. Thank you very much.
FOSTER: Thanks, Kasie.
HUNT: See you tomorrow, I hope. All right. Still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, bypassing background
checks. Why some Republicans are saying they're open to no FBI background checks for the president-elect's cabinet picks.
Plus, the lake effect snow machine cranking into overdrive. Some places seeing more than five feet of snow in just a matter of days. Or is there more on the way?
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[05:21:40]
HUNT: All right, 21 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup.
Right wing activist Dinesh D'Souza now apologizing for false claims in his 2020 election conspiracy movie "2,000 Mules". The activist now admits an allegation made against a Georgia man seen dropping off a ballot at a drop box was false and misleading. The movie has played a critical role for Trump and his allies in boosting claims the 2020 election was stolen, false claims.
Hannah Kobayashi declared a voluntary missing person. The Hawaii woman has been missing for more than three weeks after arriving in Los Angeles on a flight from Maui, police say surveillance video shows her crossing the U.S. border into Mexico on November 12th, with no evidence of foul play.
Closing arguments are set to continue in the Daniel Penny case. Penny is a former marine who held a man in a fatal chokehold on the New York subway. He is facing second degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges but his defense argues that Penny is being scapegoated for Jordan Neely's death.
All right. Time now for weather. Lake effect snow totaling more than five feet in some parts of New York and Ohio. And that heavy snow across the Great Lakes region, it's expected to slow down. But lake effect snow warnings are still in effect for parts of Ohio Pennsylvania and New York until this evening.
Let's get to our meteorologist, the weatherman Derek Van Dam.
Derek, good morning.
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Kasie.
Five feet of snow, that is just incredible. But it can also be crippling for our interstates and our roadways. This is a prime example of that. This semi-truck loaded with goods here in Erie, Pennsylvania, actually was struck by this train. This is just incredible. There was so much snow that the train or the truck could not get over the tracks the train collided with this vehicle with this truck.
Fortunately, there was no damage or very little damage. And the driver was able to walk away from the scene. But this just shows you what can happen when you get that amount of snow in such a short period of time.
Of course, this is typical this time of year, not this amount of snow, but the lake effect snow machine. Certainly kicks into high gear. The water is still relatively warm and we get the cold arctic blast that we have that have settled in across the Northeast, and this is how much snow has fallen. Some of these totals again, over 5-1/2 feet.
That's nearly as tall as this weatherman. Just incredible. Lots of cold air in place. So we're waking up into the 20s for many locations slightly milder along the East Coast, lower 30s from New York all the way to D.C. But there is a lull in terms of the lake effect snowfall in terms of this moment in time.
But things are going to change here going forward with another blast of air and a clipper system that will move through. So we still have alerts in place. The immediate shoreline that is downwind from the Great Lakes, creating these lake enhanced snow bands. Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, into Lake Michigan, those typical spots just south of Grand Rapids, Erie, into Buffalo and Watertown.
But here is the next approaching clipper system. And there's going to be a lot of wind associated with this. So, a lull in the wind today. But look what happens on tomorrow. We could see gusts over 20 to 30 miles per hour.
And because of the direction of that wind, well also see an increase in the snowfall downwind from these lakes. So could also encounter some additional troubles on the roadways like you saw at the beginning of this broadcast -- Kasie.
[05:25:08]
HUNT: All right. We'll keep an eye out for that. Derek Van Dam for us this morning -- Derek, thank you. I'll see you next hour.
FOSTER: Okay.
HUNT: And still coming up here on CNN this morning fresh allegations. Trump's choice to lead the Pentagon heads back to Capitol Hill to try to lock down support as he faces more questions about his past.
Plus, Democrats still reeling after Kamala Harris's lost to Donald Trump. Now, some of the major players from her campaign reflecting on what went wrong.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She also felt that she was part of the administration. And unless we said something like, well, I would have handled the border completely differently, we were never going to satisfy anybody.
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