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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Trump, Haley Attack Each Other With 4 Days Until New Hampshire Primary; Biden Running A Write-In Campaign in New Hampshire; Netanyahu Rejects 2-State Solution, Raising Tensions With Biden; Biden Admits Strikes Haven't Stopped Houthis But Says They'll Go On; Another Arctic Blast Today With More Snow And Ice. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired January 19, 2024 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:44]
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have a ton of independents in the state.
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KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Four days until the vote in New Hampshire. Why the outcome there could be quite different from Iowa.
Plus --
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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: She would not be able to handle that position. She would not be able to handle the onslaught.
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HUNT: Donald Trump worried about Nikki Haley? Could she turn third place into something bigger on Tuesday?
And --
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He doesn't want to be the next Herbert Hoover. As I told him, he's already Hoover.
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HUNT: Joe Biden on the attack, taking the former president to task for saying he wants the stock market to crash.
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HUNT: Good morning to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's Friday, January 19th. Happy Friday. It's 5:00 a.m. here in Washington. Ad also 5:00 a.m. in New Hampshire, where Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSantis are all on the ground today trying to make the most of the four days that are left until the state's first in the nation primary.
Haley and Trump going after each other yesterday. Haley at a CNN town hall trying to undermine Trump by tying him to President Biden.
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NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is the similarities you're seeing with Trump and Biden, neither one of them will debate their opponents. Right now, do we really want to have two 80-year-olds running for president when we've got a country in disarray and a world on fire? And then, you look, finally, at the fact that they are so distracted by their own investigations and by their own grievances.
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HUNT: Trump taking on Haley in a Fox interview.
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TRUMP: She's not going to make it. She has no chance. She's got no way. MAGA's not going to be with her. She would not be able to handle that position. She would not be able to handle the onslaught.
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HUNT: So, neither Trump nor Haley bothered to focus their fire on Ron DeSantis who is trailing far behind in New Hampshire polls. He vowed to remain in the race through Super Tuesday and beyond.
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HUGH HEWITT, RADIO HOST: Are you in through the end of March, do you have the money and the staff and the ability to compete through the end of March?
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Oh, yes on that, 100 percent. We can do that.
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HUNT: Let's bring in politics reporter for "Politico" Massachusetts, Lisa Kashinsky.
Lisa, good morning. Thank you so much for being here.
Clearly, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley are treating this as a two- person race in New Hampshire, basically ignoring Ron DeSantis. And you can see why from the poll that's on the screen here.
You are in Manchester. You've been on the ground up there. I think the big question everyone has is, can Nikki Haley actually pull out a win here? That seems like what needs to happen if she has any hope of going forward in a meaningful way. What is your latest reporting tell you?
LISA KASHINSKY, POLITICO MASSACHUSETTS REPORTER: That is the tall task ahead of her. She really needs to focus these next few days on turning out more moderate Republicans and really crucially independents. In New Hampshire who can pull ballots in the GOP primary and do so in actually a very big way. You'll see her have about 12 hours of campaigning ahead of her today. Retail stops, building to a rally. It's all focused on getting out the vote. And that is really crucial to her if she has any chance of getting close to Trump in this state.
HUNT: Yeah. She's been walking this slightly different line since she -- since the end of Iowa, really, where she has started talking about Trump and Biden kind of in the same breath.
When you talk to voters up there, do you get the sense that they think that that's enough? Because it does seem like a big part of what Haley has to do is get out, as you point out, voters who are -- who don't want to see Donald Trump become the nominee. Is she strong enough in that messaging for them?
KASHINSKY: That is something that some voters who are vehemently anti-Trump are struggling with right now and have been for several weeks as she has tried to ramp up these attacks on the former president, but in a still somewhat mild way. For some voters, it is enough to see that, and they understand that she can't go too far, thus she risks alienating the more traditional Republican voters, and the MAGA voters that she does have in her corner, which are not as many as the former president obviously.
[05:05:02]
But there are still some, and she will need them to win this state. There are also voters who certainly would like to see her go further.
HUNT: So in that interview that Trump did on Hannity last night, he also echoed some of the themes that we heard him say in Iowa when he gave his victory speech there. Listen to what he had to say about unity. Watch.
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TRUMP: Within the Republican Party, I want to bring unity, and within the nation I want to bring unity, and you know, unity is going to come from success.
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HUNT: So we've already started to see a little bit of that, right? I mean, the pace of endorsements from Republicans here in Washington picked up in the wake of -- when he says unity is going to come from success. I mean, it picked up in the wake of his sort of dominating Iowa victory, and there certainly is a sense, I think, here, among Republicans in Washington that if they don't get on board now, they might have to pay a price later.
I mean, what did you make of Trump's remarks there?
KASHINSKY: Well, it is interesting because exactly, as you said, folks are starting to come on board, Vivek Ramaswamy as well. People who ran against Trump are starting to come to his corner. You're not seeing that from everyone, but it is something that, you know, voters are thinking about the candidates.
You know, they wonder, it's become this line of attack on the trail between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, about whether they would rule out being Trump's VP. It's something that voters have had in mind this whole time, really, as this has been a race for second place among the candidates not named Donald Trump about whether they will at the end of this get behind him.
And it's something that voters and the candidates are actively thinking about and dealing with.
HUNT: Yeah. Lisa, since you're up in New Hampshire, can I just ask you briefly about the Democratic primary? Obviously, it's not competitive. Dean Phillips is running against President Biden.
It is -- you know, he's trying to reflect the discontent that we see in polls that voters are feeling about the match up that they're headed in for. Biden's approval ratings obviously very low. They have had to mount this write-in campaign because he's not on the ballot in New Hampshire.
Have you heard anything on the ground about nervousness around that effort, are Democrats confident that they're not going to have any problems? I know I've sort of picked up from some of my sources that Nikki Haley drawing so many independents has the Biden team a little bit worried about -- you know, what they need from independent voters in terms of the write-in campaign.
KASHINSKY: That is absolutely a concern, and you saw that when as soon as Trump's victory was declared in Iowa, the write-in Biden campaign put out a statement basically telling independents if they want to stop Trump, which a lot of them in New Hampshire do, they should pull a Democrat ballot, not a GOP ballot, and write in Joe Biden's name.
And in general with -- on the Democratic side here, we've seen a lowering of expectations. First, it was, you know, kind of this major majority victory for Biden, even on the write-in campaign. Dean Phillips, you know, his main rival, someone in his campaign told my colleagues at "Politico", a 42 percent benchmark. You're seeing those numbers go down now on both sides as it gets closer to voting, and there is a lot of concern about what independents will do on Tuesday.
HUNT: All right. Lisa Kashinsky of "Politico" -- Lisa, thank you very much.
All right. Still ahead here, two comments from President Biden, one for continued U.S. strikes against Houthi rebels, the other sounds against it. We'll watch that. Plus, a federal judge in Michigan refusing to shut down a case against
fake electors, and how icy was it in northern New York? Enough for a plane to slide right off the runway.
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HUNT: Welcome back.
Tensions are growing between the Biden administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President Biden has long advocated a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But in a news conference Thursday, Netanyahu appeared to completely reject that idea.
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BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): With or without agreement, the Israel -- the state of Israel must control security between the Jordan river to the sea, and the clashes with the sovereignty idea, and I'm telling our American friends, I stopped a reality which would have hurt the security of Israel. The prime minister of Israel should have the ability to say no even to our greatest friends when it has to.
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HUNT: Remarkable.
Let's bring in CNN's Scott McLean on this.
Scott, good morning to you. Thanks for being with us.
This is a pretty remarkable statement by Netanyahu, and it does stand at odds with the way President Biden views this situation. It's something that we knew Benjamin Netanyahu had been focused on behind the scenes, but I'm honestly a little bit surprised to hear him say it in such a straightforward way in public.
What's your latest reporting on this?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, so none of this, Kasie, should necessarily come as a surprise to anyone. It was even last month that President Biden said that Israel is not interested in the two-state solution, and he said that Prime Minister Netanyahu is kind of stuck. He is kind of -- there's only so much he can do given that he is at the whims of his far right government, which involves many people who never wanted a two-state solution in the first place and certainly don't want one today.
For instance, his national security minister is a guy who has advocated for annexing the Palestinian territories in the first place.
[05:15:07] And Netanyahu himself has said last month that he would not make the same mistake of Oslo, the Oslo accords, the closest, perhaps, that Israel has ever come to getting a two-state solution in the region.
And, you know, the Palestinians have identified the source of the problem, and they say that it's the United States and their blind support for Israel. And Americans -- well, officials and President Biden, they're increasingly frustrated, it seems that Israel is very happy to accept American aid but they are not so happy to accept American advice.
And, of course, they have options, things that they could do. They could make a huge fuss about it. They can publicly call out Netanyahu. They put conditions on aid. Biden could go to Israel and speak directly to the Knesset, or bypass Netanyahu and the government, something similar that Netanyahu did to President Obama when he was in office.
But at the moment, it seems that American officials are more contentious to brush this to the side and to say that, look, Netanyahu has made these kind of statements in the past and then sort of wound them back later.
And even Ben Cardin from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday said that, look, he recognizes there's an issue with Netanyahu right now, but he thinks when the dust settles and when this is over, there may be a more clear pathway to peace. It's just tough to see it at this stage.
HUNT: Yeah, it's really interesting, and it's also interesting the different between how Netanyahu sounds and the things he focuses when he does events in English versus when he does and Hebrew, there's a distinction in the audience, right.
Scott, while I have you, I want to ask about the other major foreign policy situation that's facing Americans right now. President Biden conceded that strikes on the Houthis in Yemen aren't stopping the attacks. He says that American strikes will continue, though.
Why do you think these strikes haven't been as effective as the Americans and the British and the coalition were hoping that they would be?
MCLEAN: Yeah, I suppose what else is the other American option at this stage. If they do nothing and let the Houthis do as they will, the strikes on shipping will continue. If they do something, those strikes will also still continue, it seems, but perhaps less so.
You know, as last week the U.S. or U.S. officials said that they believe that about a third of the Houthi capability, offensive capability had been taken out by these American airstrikes in Yemen. But they're still going. There have now been five rounds of American strikes, but for each of the last three days, you have had a U.S.- owned ship in the Red Sea that has been targeted. In fact, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the ships were actually hit, though they didn't cause enough damage to actually prevent them from continuing sailing. Yesterday's missile missed its target.
But there's no indication that any of this is going to stop anytime soon because even the Pentagon said yesterday, that look, we never said that the airstrikes would stop the Houthis right away. It's a decision they need to make and obviously, there's no indication they will make it soon as long as they have the capability to continue striking.
HUNT: All right. Scott McLean for us on this Friday -- Scott, thank you very much.
All right. Ahead here, a blistering new report from the Justice Department claiming lives were needlessly lost because of the failed police response to the Uvalde school massacre.
And another dangerous winter storm just in time for the weekend, where the most snow will fall. That's next.
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HUNT: All right. Quick hits across America now. A scathing report from the Justice Department on the police response to the 2022 Uvalde school massacre. If police had gone right after the gunman to stop him, the report concludes that some of those lives would have been saved.
A federal judge refusing to block Michigan's prosecution of fake pro- Trump electors who tried to overturn the 2020 election. The judge ruling there's no evidence of wrong doing by the prosecutor.
Donald Trump is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that removed him from the state's ballot. Trump's attorneys argue there will be quote, chaos and bedlam, end quote, if the ruling is allowed to stand. Ominous.
Also ominous, another blast of arctic air set to hit with a wintry mix of snow and ice bringing travel chaos, especially in the Northeast, where we expect more snow. It was snowing when I came in this morning.
Up in New York, it was so icy, this is Rochester that an American Airlines jet slid off the runway as it tried to taxi to the terminal. At least 55 people have died during dangerous storms in multiple states.
Our meteorologist Allison Chinchar is tracking all of it for us.
Allison, this just isn't letting up.
ALLISON CHINCHAR, AMS METEOROLOGIST: That's mother nature reminding us winter is not over yet. And it's likely going to get colder as head into the weekend. You've got this arctic air right now focused on the northern plains, but that is going to spread south and also east in the coming days. And that's really going to provide the cold air necessary for some snow. Here's a look at the current radar. You can see we've got snow across
Indianapolis, Cincinnati, that's spreading over into areas of the mid- Atlantic, including Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. That closer look shows that eastward movement.
So this is going to continue to spread into states like New York, New Jersey, and then farther east as we go through the rest of the day.
Now, one thing to note here, you can see all of those areas where we've got winter weather alerts. So, all of these locations have the potential for either some slick roads or even accumulating snow over the next few hours.
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Here's a look at the forecast radar, though. Again, notice by tonight, really even by the dinner rush this evening, most of that moisture has finally pushed out. The rest of it during the overnight hours tonight, and all we're left with tomorrow is that pickup and some lake effect snow through the weekend.
Those temperatures, here's the current feels like, this is the combination of the temperature and the wind, 19 below in Omaha, 5 below in Chicago, down to 40 in Atlanta, and those temperatures are going to continue to drop. These are the focus for the wind-chill alerts today, and then farther south, this is where the concern is going to be tomorrow because in about 24 hours, we're going to see that big drop in temperatures.
Yesterday, not bad in Atlanta, temperatures around the 50 degree mark, today down to 42, tomorrow, a high barely above the freezing mark. Chicago going to stay cold for the next few days. D.C. is going to see that dip once we get to Saturday as well.
The one bit of good news I have for you, if we can make it to next week, we will finally see temperatures warming up to above normal for a change, taking a look ahead to the New Hampshire primary. Things should be actually above average temperature-wise on Tuesday.
HUNT: Well, that is a relief for me -- I am heading there on Monday, and I was not looking forward to another Iowa-like experience. Thirty degrees, 35 degrees sounds down right balmy.
Allison Chinchar, thank you very much for that. Happy Friday. Have a wonderful weekend.
CHINCHAR: You, too.
HUNT: All right. The countdown is on, four days until the New Hampshire primary. Nikki Haley clashing with Donald Trump on the question of presidential immunity. And will Hunter Biden agree to a private deposition before House Republicans instead of a public hearing. Ahead, the plan to do both.
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