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Hegseth Won't Release Video of Strike; FBI Releases New Video in Brown University Shooting; Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) is Interviewed about the ACA. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired December 17, 2025 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:30:23]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me on CNN THIS MORNING. It's half past the hour, and here's what's happening right now.

The first funerals held this morning for the Bondi Beach shooting victims. Two rabbis were laid to rest in Sydney. One of the victims, a ten-year-old girl. Her parents recounted the moments the shooting started.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VALENTYNA WITHHELD, 10-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER KILLED IN BONDI BEACH ATTACK: She's running around happy. And then second what I see before my eyes is she is lying on the ground.

MICHAEL WITHHELD, 10-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER KILLED IN BONDI BEACH ATTACK: She was in shock. She was telling me that she is hard -- it's hard to breathe. And I was -- I was - I was hold -- I was holding her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Charges have been brought against the suspect in the shooting. He's facing 59 charges, including 15 counts of murder and committing a terrorist act. The second suspect was killed by police.

President Trump expands the travel ban to the U.S. Thirty-nine of -- to the U.S. Thirty-nine countries now facing full and partial bans. The White House says the countries don't have proper screening, vetting or information sharing. The only exception is for lawful permanent residents, existing visa holders and individuals whose entry serves the national interest.

An uproar from soccer fans. FIFA is now slashing prices for World Cup tickets after there was a global backlash over how expensive they are. Some tickets going for more than $4,000. Now those prices are around $60.

President Trump turning up the pressure on Venezuela, ordering a total and complete blockade of sanctioned oil tankers coming into and leaving Venezuela. That announcement follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's refusal to let the American people see unedited video of a deadly double-tap boat strike in the Caribbean. The September 2nd attack on an alleged Venezuelan narco boat included a follow-up strike that killed two crew members who had survived the initial strike.

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PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: In keeping with longstanding Department of War policy, Department of Defense policy, of course we're not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: That second strike is at the heart of a fierce debate over the legality of the Trump administration's ongoing military campaign against Venezuela.

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REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): In my entire time in Congress, I've been in many classified briefings, from Ukraine, China, many different areas. This is the -- one of the least professional, classified briefings I have ever sat in on, with the least amount of legal and intelligence justification for what is happening. There was not a single piece of intelligence that was shared in this briefing that -- or legal opinion that provided justification for what they are doing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: The Trump administration not backing down, striking three more suspected drug boats in the eastern Pacific early -- earlier this week that killed eight more people. The total number of fatalities now at least 95.

In a Truth Social post yesterday, President Trump writes, "Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen, until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the oil, land and other assets that they previously stole from us."

Joining me now in the group chat, Sara Fischer, CNN senior media analyst and senior media reporter at "Axios." Charlie Dent, former congressman from Pennsylvania, and Antjuan Seawright, Democratic strategist.

You guys, thank you so much for being here.

So, Charlie, you know what these briefings are like, right? When they're like, OK, we're bringing all the top people. And I tend to think of the world of intelligence is where lawmakers kind of buckle down and listen and where the White House might take it seriously to share information with them. And I don't know if that happened here. CHARLIE DENT (R), FORMER PENNSYLVANIA CONGRESSMAN: Yes, it doesn't --

it doesn't sound like that. In fact, there was apparently a competitive exchange between Secretary Hegseth and Senator Kelly. But these are areas where usually the members do sit and listen. And quite often you walk out of those briefings, you feel like you didn't learn anything new that you hadn't already read in the press.

But what is so striking about this situation is, you know, the administration really has not provided a legal justification for their actions in Venezuela.

[06:35:05]

They may have a legal justification, but it hasn't really been shared publicly. I mean we have a secretary of defense, who some are accusing of a war crime, but there is no war. We just had the White House chief of staff reveal yesterday that the -- that the White House's intention is to force some kind of a regime change. Not about drugs, but about regime change. So, we're getting conflicting messages.

CORNISH: Yes.

DENT: If I were a member of Congress, I'd be pretty upset right now.

CORNISH: That's interesting. That just -- Antjuan, I'll come back to you for a second, but interesting that in that "Vanity Fair" article you were learning little bits about how different members of the cabinet felt about certain issues in Venezuela came up.

SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: Yes. Well, I think what you're describing, Charlie, with this differentiation in terms of messaging is key. One of the things that the senators called out yesterday, specifically Senator Chris Coons, was that when it's convenient for the Department of Defense, Department of War, they will put out full videos of strikes. When it is inconvenient, they hold them back. And so, this is an incongruence in the strategy in terms of what they choose to reveal and what they don't choose to reveal.

I think all members of Congress wanted yesterday was that simple explanation, and they just did not get it.

CORNISH: You know, it's interesting, when I talked -- or when we hear from some Venezuelan Americans, people who are here, you know, they -- they want regime change. They don't like Maduro. Like, they talk about this as something that they are embracing.

So, where does that leave Democrats in terms of dealing with the issue itself? Not just the boat strikes, but, like, what is the U.S. doing in this part of the world?

ANTJUAN SEAWRIGHT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I don't think this should be viewed as a Democrat versus Republican conversation. I think this should be a bipartisan conversation. I think Congress has an obligation to provide -- the legislative branch should provide oversight to the executive branch. That should be bipartisan. And certainly we've seen the lack of transparency and accountability from various cabinet officials and cabinet leaders throughout this administration. So, it's not anything new.

But what I will tell you is that we've heard Democrats speak out. We have not heard Republicans speak out. And --

CORNISH: Right. The silence was deafening coming out of that briefing.

SEAWRIGHT: And as Charlie -- as we say in the neighborhood, if you do not have anything to hide, then let the video ride. And I think that we -- the Trump administration's been very arrogant, saying that they will release the video, they would, and now they're backing up on that. So that tells me that they believe something that should not -- should -- that has been done should not have been done.

CORNISH: Can I ask one more thing? In the Truth Social post, the president saying that the U.S. is going to take back oil and land. I don't know if I missed the period of history class where Venezuela was part of the U.S. I do want someone to help parse that for me. How is that being talked about?

DENT: Well --

FISCHER: I mean, I just think that this is part of what the West Wing's overall Monroe Doctrine-like thinking is, which is, we are the dominant democratic force in the western hemisphere. And as a result, it is our responsibility to promote democracy in the western hemisphere. The question becomes whether or not that bumps up against the law. You know, you can't just do a double-tap strike if you're killing people who otherwise would not have been targets and expect that to go over well with Congress, who you say should have and should have legislative authority over something like that.

CORNISH: Yes. And it's one of those things, if anyone wants to, you can go look up the new national security strategy that they revealed last month, where they called it the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. We're going to talk about that one day soon.

You guys, stay with me. More to discuss.

And I want to come back briefly to the search for the person responsible for a mass shooting at Brown University that left two people dead. Authorities releasing new, enhanced images of the suspect. They're asking the community to study it to see if they can help identify him.

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CHIEF OSCAR PEREZ, JR., PROVIDENCE POLICE: We're asking the public to ensure that they can see the -- they can see here that you want to focus on the body movements, the way the person moved their arms.

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CORNISH: These videos are all from public streets, not from the school. And it's raising questions about Brown's security on campus. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: How does a multi-million-dollar school not have a bunch of cameras in the hallway?

PETER NERONH, RHODE ISLAND ATTORNEY GENERAL: There's the back part of the building, old part, and front part, new part. The shooting occurs in the old part, towards the back, out towards Hope Street. And that older part of the building, there are fewer, if any, cameras in that location. I imagine because it's an older building. So, as students are fleeing the area of the shooting into the new part of the building, there are cameras in that -- in that brand new building that show that chaos.

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CORNISH: CNN's Michael Yoshida is live from the scene.

Michael, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

First, can you talk about the investigation. We're learning of this enhanced video. What do they hope to achieve?

MICHAEL YOSHIDA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Audie.

And you talk about the investigation and those new enhanced images. The focus of all of this still remains surrounded by crime scene tape. You can see that building, that area where this deadly mass shooting happened.

[06:40:02]

Still filled and surrounded by these law enforcement vehicles.

And this investigation now really shifting towards those enhanced images you talked about that were released yesterday, these images, these videos, and the hope being that someone may recognize this individual based on the appearance, on the way they walk, the way they're moving through the streets in this area.

And one of the challenges that was talked about is really evident where we are right now, right on the edge of campus. It really starts to move into a more residential area. That's why those images, those videos, they are from more home surveillance cameras as opposed to something that may have captured this person of interest on the campus. This is an area where throughout the last few days we have seen members of the FBI evidence response team, others going through bushes, going through the snow, looking for any clues that they might find. And we know moving forward into today, as it's now the fifth day of this -- of this manhunt, that the Rhode Island attorney general talked about how they're going to be moving into even newer areas as they're moving further away from this campus space, looking, again, for any clues that might help them track down the shooter.

CORNISH: (INAUDIBLE) and we've been hearing about the relatives of the victims. There are, of course, two victims. Their names and faces are released. I want to play for you just what we heard from one of the -- the sister of one of the victims.

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SAMIRA UMURZOKOVA, BROTHER KILLED IN BROWN MASS SHOOTING: When he was seven, he got diagnosed with an illness or, I guess, condition called carimalformation (ph). The doctor, you know, put him through, like, an eight-hour surgery. Very risky brain surgery.

Dr. Jeffrey Wisoff (ph), that is a professor now at NYU, asked him and he said, Mr. Muhammad (ph), what do you want to be when you grow up? And he said, I want to be a neurosurgeon just like you so I can help kids like me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Michael, can you talk about what more you're hearing from the community?

YOSHIDA: Yes, it's really a sense of somberness and anxiety here on the campus. We've been here for the last few days. And you heard from the family members of one of the victims, Mukhammadaziz Umurzokov, a freshman. We've heard from others talking about the second victim, that sophomore, Ella Cook. And a sense of, obviously, sadness processing this roller coaster of emotions that they've all gone through with the terror of that initial shooting, then a sense of relief, if you will, when that initial person of interest was in custody. But, of course, cleared and released. And now they're back to worrying, wondering.

We were walking around the campus yesterday talking with individuals who live here about this sense of a bubble being shattered at this point. They used to walk, run at any time of the day and night here with no real worries. But that is now gone. Obviously, they're all waiting, worrying and wondering why this happened, where the person is who caused all of this deadly violence and when they'll be caught.

CORNISH: All right, that's CNN's Michael Yoshida, who's going to be reporting from Rhode Island.

And if you missed any of that reporting or any other part of the show, know that we're a podcast. Please scan the QR code to find it and share it, because CNN THIS MORNING is available anywhere you get your podcasts.

And next on CNN THIS MORNING, nothing to see here. The White House tries to clean up the mess made by the chief of staff.

Plus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE LAWLER (R-NY): I am pissed for the American people. This is absolute bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

(END VIDEO CLIP) CORNISH: Republicans clash on what to do about expiring ACA subsidies, and Americans are caught in the middle. I'm going to be asking Ohio Democratic Congressman Greg Landsman about that and more after the break.

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[06:48:15]

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REP. MIKE LAWLER (R-NY): I am pissed for the American people. This is absolute (EXPLETIVE DELETED). And it's absurd that we are in a body with 435 members, everybody has a responsibility to serve their district, to serve their constituents.

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CORNISH: Health care costs set to skyrocket for millions of Americans in the new year, and Congress is paralyzed to do anything about it. Last night the Rules Committee denied a move by moderate Republicans to force a floor vote on extending ACA subsidies with some reforms. The subsidies now expire in two weeks and could end up doubling monthly health care costs for millions of Americans when they run out.

So, those moderate Republicans are now lashing out after not getting a vote.

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REP. KEVIN KILEY (R-CA): That's a failure of leadership. I mean, we have, you know, members on both sides who believe this is an urgent issue. And it is for all of our members in terms of what their constituents are going to have to deal with in the start of the new year. So, what's wrong with having a vote?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining us now in the group chat to talk about this, Congressman Greg Landsman of Ohio.

Thank you for being here, because Ohio is a state people watch the politics, right?

REP. GREG LANDSMAN (D-OH): Yes.

CORNISH: This is the voter that this kind of angry, righteous Republican is trying to appeal to.

I noticed that people were going for these discharge petitions, meaning they were trying to force the hand of the House speaker to get him to vote on this thing. But they're not successful. So, help us understand the logjam.

LANDSMAN: Well, sometimes they are. We forced a discharge petition on the Social Security Fairness Act last year. We got it passed. It's the only way we got it done was to go around --

CORNISH: And the Epstein files. Yes.

LANDSMAN: The Epstein files. You got to go around leadership. And it's becoming more commonplace. And there are multiple discharge petitions sitting in the well.

[06:50:02]

And, you know, one is a three-year clean extension. There are 214 members of Congress that signed on. You only need four more. And so, Lawler and others can sign that today if they want to and get a vote that would force the speaker to vote on the ACA.

CORNISH: So, I want to underscore that. You're saying of the many options, there is an option. And the same people who are upset publicly could be signing on to that.

LANDSMAN: And they may. They may decide today to sign on to that discharge petition. There are a few others. They've already signed on to those. I have -- my feeling is, whatever gets this done, you got to be for it because --

CORNISH: So, why shouldn't Democrats sign on to some of these other petitions?

LANDSMAN: I -- I have, yes.

CORNISH: I want to play for you the House speaker, Mike Johnson. Here's how he describes the situation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): It is the Democrat's unaffordable care act that broke America's health care system, as has been recounted this morning. And it's the Democrats who have refused every good faith Republican effort to fix it along the way.

Yes, there is a health care affordability problem in America. It's a very serious problem for almost every family. But it is an indisputable fact that the Democrats caused that problem, and Republicans are the ones having to clean it up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: You said it yourself, you voted for some things that other Democrats are not. So, the option is there to fix this for Democrats as well.

LANDSMAN: Yes, I mean, look, there's a -- there's multiple discharge petitions. I believe I've signed all of them. If I haven't, I will. But I certainly have signed the Gottheimer discharge petition, the Hakeem Jeffries discharge petition. Again, whatever it takes to get this extended.

CORNISH: Something passed. LANDSMAN: Yes.

CORNISH: But that's not the approach everyone else is taking, or else we would have solved this.

LANDSMAN: Well, yes. The challenge is that the speaker, who controls the agenda, doesn't want to do this. The majority leader does not want to extend these subsidies. The president -- I actually don't know what he wants. I think he could want -- there's a possibility that he wants -- he's just not plugged in. He's not locked in. This is not something that is on his radar screen. He doesn't care. And if you have folks who don't want it or don't care who are in charge, it's very difficult.

And the idea that this is the fault of anyone, other than the folks in charge, is something that's not going to go over well with the American people. The American people know that Democrats pursued the Affordable Care Act to extend coverage to 20, 25 million Americans. It's been a game changer for them. And the subsidies have helped them pay their health care costs. Without the subsidy, premiums are skyrocketing. And they know who's to blame. And, honestly, it doesn't really matter. We just have to get it done.

CORNISH: OK, I want to ask you something because I understand you're on a bipartisan fentanyl caucus. Is that true? You care a lot about drug abuse.

LANDSMAN: Yes.

CORNISH: But we also noticed that the president is declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction in an executive order, saying that "illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic."

I want to ask you about this for a couple of reasons. One, do you agree? And two, this is relevant when it comes to Venezuela.

LANDSMAN: Fentanyl is a huge, huge problem. It has killed so many Americans. You know, constituents of mine. It is a -- it is a big problem all over the country, certainly in southern -- southwest Ohio, southern Ohio. It requires a very serious approach. It requires an approach where you're going after all of the points of entry. And it means mobilizing all of your resources to deal with this.

The boat strikes are moving resources away from the larger effort because you're talking about a small number of boats, a large number of military assets. They're spending an enormous amount of money.

CORNISH: But they're arguing that they are serious about this in a way that the war on drugs has not been, that past administrations have not been. They think they are disrupting the narco drug trade.

LANDSMAN: They aren't. They are blowing up a few boats. And they're using an enormous amount of military weaponry. And they're spending an enormous amount of money. And they're pulling resources away from efforts that are focused on drug trafficking, human trafficking. They're pulling resources away from our national security efforts around the globe, all to blow up a few boats and to take some tankers and to deal with what seems to be a very personal issue between Trump and Maduro.

CORNISH: OK.

I want to talk to you about something else, which you might have missed, because I learned during the break you don't have social media and you have unsubscribed from everything. The White House standing by the president's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, after her explosive comments in a "Vanity Fair" interview.

[06:55:06]

She told the magazine that President Trump has, quote, "an alcoholic's personality" and "operates with a view that there's nothing he can't do." The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, says Wiles words were just blown out of context.

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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is, unfortunately, another example of disingenuous reporting where you have a reporter who took the chief of staff's words wildly out of context.

I think the most egregious part of this article was the bias of omission that was clearly present. And we see a lot of this when dealing with the media every day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Wiles also went on to criticize other top administration officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, calling him a "conspiracy theorist."

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J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true.

And by the way, Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Group chat is back.

First, I want to start with you, Sara, because this is a big deal. They gave him a lot of access, the writer. Eleven interviews over the course of a year, I think. And he's got tapes, Chris Whipple. So, does anybody think Susie Wiles is in trouble, though?

FISCHER: No. Everybody is standing by Susie Wiles within the White House. The president has said he's standing by her. They think it's more convenient to just bash the media when something like this comes out. To me, the most egregious part is not just that she sat down for these

interviews, but also that she and her colleagues also sat for these photo shoots. When you do that, you are implying a cozy relationship with this reporter and this magazine. You want that full page spread. So, if you want that, you best be prepared for what's going to come out on the other end.

CORNISH: Yes. Yes.

FISCHER: And since --

CORNISH: And they haven't denied any of the phrases.

FISCHER: Correct.

CORNISH: Calling Elon Musk an "avowed ketamine user" and Russell Vought "an absolute zealot." Just some of the quotes that have come up here.

Congressman, how did this image of this White House, compared to your mind to previous Trump administration, which I think of, it was like a subway turnstile, right? Like people were coming in and out. This was loyalists.

LANDSMAN: Yes, I mean, look, I, you know, I only read her quotes and they seemed all accurate. I mean I -- you know, I don't know what it means to be like an alcoholic. I don't know what she's referring to about Trump. But it is accurate. It does not give us any new information about this White House.

I think the challenge for most Americans who really do want good government is that this is a very, unstructured White House. There is a great deal of corruption. It's chaotic. There's a cruelty --

CORNISH: But what if people see the opposite? Like you don't -- compared to Bannon, is Susie Wiles chaotic?

LANDSMAN: No. In fact, you know, one thing interesting about this whole thing, sometimes in Washington, when you state the truth or state the obvious, it's a revelation, or a gaffe, depending on the circumstances. And that's where we are in this moment. I mean some of the things she said, she called Russell Vought a right-wing zealot.

CORNISH: An absolute zealot. Yes.

LANDSMAN: Yes. He'd probably agree with that. I mean -- I mean there -- and there are other things that were said there too that I think are just simply truthful.

CORNISH: Yes, we should note, Trump said to "The New York Post," of course, about the idea of his alcoholic personality. She says, "no, she meant that I'm -- you see, I don't -- I don't drink alcohol," he says, "so everybody knows that. And I've often said if I did, I'd have a very good chance of being an alcoholic." We should note that she has talked about alcoholism in her family and the idea of a very big, intense, bulldozing personality that comes with it. SEAWRIGHT: I'm willing to bet you the increased price in your health

care premiums that this was strategic. The timing and the release of the article and that Trump --

CORNISH: You think they enjoyed this?

SEAWRIGHT: I think they want to have us talking about something other than what we need to be talking about. There's no way this interview would have been done or released without the president or his top other senior advisers knowing about it.

The other thing is, saying J.D. Vance is a conspiracy theorist, it's true. He believed that Haitians were eating pets. He peddled election denying conspiracy theories. So, most of this is true. We're just talking about it now instead of talking about the affordability crisis they've created.

CORNISH: Congressman, last word to you.

LANDSMAN: That is spot on.

CORNISH: Really?

LANDSMAN: I mean -- yes. I mean, like right now the last thing they want to do is have people focus on the thing that they care most about, which is their health care costs, and the fact that Congress doesn't seem to be in the process of fixing that because the speaker just doesn't want to do it.

So, yes, I don't -- I don't know if it was timed well, but they certainly benefiting from the fact that we're talking about something else. And we shouldn't be. I mean, yes, it's a -- it's a story, but the most important story is the fact that Congress has a few days left to extend these Affordable Care Act subsidies, and they have to do it.

[07:00:03]

CORNISH: OK. Congressman, thank you so much for being here.

LANDSMAN: Yes.

CORNISH: You guys, group chat, as always, thank you for bringing your style and insight.

I want to thank you for waking up with us. I know there's a lot of places you could spend your time, and I'm glad you chose to spend it here. I'm Audie Cornish, and the headlines are next.