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Winter Storm To Impact Holiday Travel; Cashing In On Gift Cards; President-Elect Plans To Dissolve Trump Foundation; Trump Quotes Putin In Tweet About Hillary Clinton; Russia Rules Out Terrorism In Deadly Plane Crash. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired December 26, 2016 - 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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POPPY HARLOW, CNN GUEST ANCHOR: Welcome to winter, folks. A winter storm could make your holiday travel pretty treacherous for millions of you out there. Snow, ice, freezing rain causing dozens of cancellations and delays already, much more on the way.

CNN national correspondent, Ryan Young, is live at Chicago O'Hare's International Airport. It is hard enough to get out of that airport on time, especially on a holiday. Now what are folks in store for?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, a lot of people would fight back on that one only because they had such a great Thanksgiving year. They've managed so many new TSA workers and the lines are actually moving fast over the last few periods of the holidays.

I want to show you something, Poppy. Look at the cancellation boards here that we have been looking at all day. There's only two cancellations on this board even though we know across the nation there have been about 120 cancellations so far.

But as you talk about this busy airport and the security lines that people sometimes dread, look at the lines here. This is one of the longest lines we've seen so far. Yes, it's early in the morning and people are getting over their Christmas hangover, so to speak.

But so far the lines are pretty open and they've been moving pretty fast. In fact, we talked to one family on the way in and they were worried about the idea of the lines being packed here. But when they arrived they all started smiling because the lines weren't as long.

One of the things that we do talk about, though, is the fact that the roadways will be packed. Over 93 million Americans will be hitting the roadways. Here in Chicago where it is normally cold during this time of year, it's actually 50 degrees outside.

There is more rain on the road than snow and ice and that's because it's so warm here. A lot of people, though, are surprised about the security lines that we see right here. They're hoping this sticks throughout the entire day and those cancellations start going away -- Don.

DON LEMON, CNN GUEST ANCHOR: All right, Ryan, thank you very much. Stay warm. You're inside. You'll be fine for now. Thank you very much.

YOUNG: Absolutely.

LEMON: This post-Christmas storm already wreaking havoc on the upper Midwest. We turn to our meteorologist, Mr. Chad Myers, for the forecast. Good morning and merry after Christmas, Chad.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Happy Boxing Day to some of you out there. Hey, Don, how are you? The big snow is going to be the Dakotas and Northern Minnesota. That is the area of major impact. Not a huge airport travel hub in that area. That's good news.

In the New York City area, it's warm, we are in the 40s. But there could be some freezing rain upstate in the valleys. Watch this morning. Temperatures around 31 or 32 and there could be a little bit of mist.

Now that is nothing like what they're seeing out here in the blizzard conditions of the upper Midwest. That is no way to run a railroad. Let me tell you that wind is blowing 40, 60 miles per hour at times and the snow is coming down two to three inches an hour. Drifts are everywhere.

There are advisories to just stay off the roads in parts of the Dakotas. But everywhere else it's green or blue depending on your color. It is not snow. It is warm enough to be rain. That's the good news.

Rain temperatures all the way across the northeast, 47, 57, 41 for New York City. No major snows for the rest of this travel up and down the east coast -- Poppy.

HARLOW: The hardy folks of the good state of Minnesota.

MYERS: You are one.

HARLOW: Which I am one. Can handle this as can my friends in the Dakotas. Thank you, Chad. Merry, merry.

Let's turn to business. Businesses have billions of reasons to be happy as 2016 comes to a close. Americans shelling out big bucks for holiday gifts. Now, the big after Christmas sale and, of course, all the returns are getting under way. CNN business correspondent, Alison Kosik with the details. Good morning.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy. You said it, it's time to tally up how the holiday shopping season went. Would you believe that Americans unloaded hundreds of billions of dollars on gifts?

The National Retail Federation forecasts a 3.6 percent jump in sales from last year. That total amount spent an incredible $655 billion. Now, it was estimated that Americans had planned to spend an average of $935 on gifts. That's second to last year.

Now, I'm thinking that some of what was spent on you for things that you really don't want. Let me give you a cheat sheet in return. Let's begin with gift cards. If you got a gift card you don't want, meaning you got a gift card to a store you don't shop at, you have some options.

Personal finance site "Nerve Wallet" has outlined these options to trade in some of these gift cards. Giftcardgranny and Cardpool are two websites that let you sell your gift cards for around 90 percent of their value. You can also buy cards from other stores on the site.

Many Coinstar machines at grocery stores you can actually trade in gift cards there, as well. At Target locations, they'll make you an offer on your gift cards from other retailers and load the amount on to a Target gift card. Your options are endless. Get out and return your gifts today, but watch out for the lines.

[06:35:06]HARLOW: Alison, thank you very much. I don't think I got anything in return. My hubby did great.

LEMON: Really? I thought you were going to say, I don't think I got anything.

HARLOW: The baby did get more than me.

LEMON: I saw the baby sitting on top of presents. Did she let you open them?

HARLOW: She sat on presents and ate wrapping paper and I fished it out of her mouth.

All right, turning to much more serious news, President-elect Donald Trump making it clear that he wants to dissolve his foundation before he is sworn into office next month.

Will that be enough, though, to avoid all of these other conflicts of interest? Also a big road block for him just dissolving the foundation. We'll talk about all of it with our political panel, next.

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HARLOW: Welcome back to NEW DAY. President-elect Donald Trump promising to dissolve his foundation before he's sworn into office next month. He released a statement reading, "To avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as president, I've decided to continue to pursue my strong interest in philanthropy in other ways."

There is a hang up and that has to do with the New York attorney general. Let's talk about all of this. Back with us, our panel, David Drucker, Matt Lewis, and Selena Zito.

Selena, to you, I mean, the issue here is New York's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is investigating the foundation said, not so fast.

SALENA ZITO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Right. I mean, he -- you know, I believe it was in October that he put the foundation under investigation. The foundation has been in existence since 1998. It's been run by Donald Junior, Eric, and Ivanka since 2006.

Trump has not donated himself to the foundation since 2008, but it has raised tens of millions of dollars. It's in this holding pattern right now.

[06:40:01]But I think to the larger issue, Trump is going to -- I think we'll see a series of him divesting himself of different business dealings as he leads up to the big announcement that he's going to give about the future of his company and his children's involvement.

I mean, Trump ran on this breaking all the rules kind of presidency and I think he's continuing to do that with how he handles, how he's dealing with his business dealings. So, I think that this is -- well, unusual for anybody else. This is pretty routine for Mr. Trump.

LEMON: Matt, you know me, always a skeptic. Do you think Donald Trump with all his advisors and tons of lawyers around him, don't you think he knew that he couldn't dissolve this foundation and that he said, hey, I tried, but the New York attorney general won't let me. So I think there's a strategy behind this. Do you think I'm right or wrong?

MATT LEWIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think you're being a little cynical on this one.

LEMON: No just skeptical, not cynical.

HARLOW: Christmas.

LEWIS: Because I don't know that -- I think that, in a way that this is actually a hang up. He would probably like, he's got a lot going on. He doesn't need this foundation for him to be Donald Trump and for him to be significant.

So, I think that he would probably like to be able to shutter this thing. He just, frankly, can't. They're going to begin trying to unwind it and it may -- the problem, it may actually end up hurting him if this thing lingers.

He wants to put this behind him. I think the fact that it can't actually be officially closed is probably more of a problem for Donald Trump than anything.

HARLOW: David, something that struck me on Friday night as everyone started going into the holiday weekend is the president-elect tweeted. That did not surprise me. He likes Twitter. What surprised me is what he tweeted.

Let me read it. "Vladimir Putin said today about Hillary and the Dems in my opinion it's humiliating. One must be able to lose with dignity so true."

For two reasons, one that he is sort of agreeing with Vladimir Putin on anything. It's just surprising given the context all of the Russians relations and hacking. But that he is talking still about winning the election, the election he won at a time -- I mean, how many geopolitical issues were there in the last week that he could be tweeting about. What do you think the strategy is?

DAVID DRUCKER, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": Donald Trump never tires of making sure that we all remember that he won the election. There were two things about that that I thought were interesting. Not that he was agreeing with Vladimir Putin. His bromance continues. They're both -- at least for Putin's point of view, Donald Trump is a nationalist and he is trying to affect policy from a new president --

HARLOW: But it's within the same 24 hours that he said, basically, bring it on. Let there be an arms race.

DRUCKER: Yes, right. On the other hand, it appears as though Trump is going to be the third president in a row to try to charm Vladimir Putin. George W. Bush failed and Barack Obama failed. I guess, Trump is going to try a reset of his own.

But here to me was what was really rich about this entire thing, Vladimir Putin basically a quasi dictator, runs his own election, can't lose, and he's busy lecturing an American candidate in a democracy about how to lose with dignity when the man doesn't actually win or doesn't actually lose.

He just runs the show. He's the last person. I think you can make an argument here in the U.S. We can all talk about whether or not Clinton and her team post-election have handled their loss properly.

Some believe they have and some believe they haven't. Vladimir Putin is the last person on earth that should be lecturing any of our candidates about how to lose with dignity.

LEMON: And the current president -- President Barack Obama weighing in on the election and what he thought of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats performance. Take a listen to this.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I think that Hillary Clinton performed wonderfully under really tough circumstances. The problem is that we're not there on the ground communicating, not only the dry policy aspects of this, but that we care about these communities. That we're bleeding for these communities.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: That we understand why they're frustrated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So, he's talking to David Axelrod's podcast and talking about how the Democrats and especially Hillary Clinton did not reach out to people in the Midwest and rust belt and they essentially lost. Matt Lewis, weigh in on that. What do you think? Is the president right?

LEWIS: You know, first of all, everybody should be listening to pod casts because you'll get that long form conversation that I like. So, check that out. But, no, I think he is right. I mean, clearly, I think the big secret of this election and the turning point is that the Democratic Party used to be the party of working class Americans.

And, you know, and at least the perception was the Republican Party was the party of the rich and the Democratic Party was the party of the working man. And that, you know, if you're working class white guy, certainly, in the rust belt or in Apalatcha, the Democratic Party is not your party. So, if the Democratic Party wants to regain their status, they're going to have to make some changes.

LEMON: The problem now, it's a little late.

HARLOW: It's late. Look, a lot of what is our party, who leads our party, those comments Clinton made. People in the Midwest told me to never forget when she said I'll put a lot of coal miners out of work. They never forgot that. Guys, thank you very much.

[06:45:13]Up next, a trick play with a big twist. How a Kansas City chiefs lineman made a little history with a little toss. We'll tell you, next in the "Bleacher Report."

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LEMON: Let's talk some sports. Well, I'm going to let Coy Wire do it because I really don't know that much about sports. But I do know that the Chiefs punched their ticket to the playoffs and knocked out the defending Super Bowl champion, Broncos, at the same time. I know a little bit, Coy.

Coy Wire has more in this morning's "Bleacher Report." Hello, my friend and happy belated Christmas.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Great to see you. Don Lemon, everyone. It's a good Monday. The Chiefs have played second fiddle and watched the Broncos own the AFC West the last five seasons but this season the Broncos don't have some guy named Peyton Manning any more. The Chief fans knew this was the year.

They were even willing to weather the rain and the wind and it was blustery and cold, but that wasn't going to keep the die-hand fans away. On Christmas day, Santa wasn't the only big jolly fellow delivering gifts.

That's 346-pound (inaudible) with a touchdown throw. I've seen it all. The Chiefs defensive tackle because the heaviest player to ever throw a touchdown pass. That big belly is a whole big -- my goodness, a bowl full of jelly.

[06:50:09]The Chiefs win 33-10 and the defending Super Bowl champs, Broncos, will watch the playoffs from the couch.

And one of the NFL's most heated rivalries, Steelers/Ravens. The Steelers have the ball down by three with under 10 seconds to go. Ben Roethlisberger finds Antonio Brown from four yards out. Watch this.

Stretches out like spandex on Santa Claus delivering that Christmas day gift in front of the hometown crowd. Steelers scored 21 points in the fourth quarter to complete that comeback. They win 31-27 and earn their first division title since 2014. The sweetest part of all, they beat their heated foes, the Ravens and knock them clear out of playoff contention.

Let's look at the NBA where basketball fans were expecting a great game. A rematch of last year's NBA finals and they were not disappointed. The Cavs would not quit against the Warriors. Lebron flushing that one down the chimney and Kirie Irving was balling too.

An amazing day, 15 of his 25 points came in the fourth quarter including those two. The turnaround fade away jumper with 3.4 seconds left to win the game. That one looks like that shot from the finals back in June. Cleveland pulls off that 14-point comeback in the last 10 minutes of the game. Final score 109-108.

Poppy, for the sports fan, there are some college football today. You have Mississippi State playing in the St. Petersburg Bowl. That is at 11:00 Eastern. Should be good stuff coming your way.

HARLOW: I'm going to pretend I didn't watch my Vikings this weekend. That didn't happen. That didn't happen. No.

WIRE: I'm with you.

HARLOW: Thank you, my friend.

Investigators scrambling to figure out what caused a Russian military plane to crash. This as the entire country is observing a national day of mourning. A live report, next, from Moscow.

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[06:55:35]

HARLOW: Russian officials now say pilot error or technical issue could be to blame for a military plane crash that killed all 92 people onboard. Ruling out terrorism is a possible cause. Russia today observing a national day of mourning, remembering those lost.

Our senior international correspondent, Matthew Chance is live for us now in Moscow. Matt, what else are we learning about what caused this and the victims onboard?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're not learning a lot at this point about what caused this sudden catastrophe in the air as this 154 aircraft, which is an old aircraft built in about 1983 plunge under to the Black Sea shortly after taking off from the Black Sea town of Sochi in Southern Russia.

You're right, Russian officials really from within a few hours after the crash took place are saying that they didn't believe that terrorism was a version that they're considering, an option they're considering in this.

That's because this was a military aircraft. It was operated by the Russian Defense Ministry. Onboard it had Russian troops and it had 64 members of the Russian Army choir. And they were en route to Syria where Russian troops are stationed to perform a New Year's concert.

But the investigation is still only just in its early stages. They're saying they're focusing on technical pilot error in the moment, but that could change in the hours ahead.

HARLOW: Matthew live in Moscow. Thank you.

LEMON: Thank you very much. Officials in Southern Germany defused a bomb buried at a construction site. The explosive from World War II weighing nearly two tons. Officials chose Christmas day as a day to safely detonate it, forcing 50,000 people to leave their homes for most of the day. The explosive was traced back to Britain, which dropped it during the war.

U.S. security forces helping to keep hundreds of Iraqis safe as they return home and celebrate Christmas mass for the first time in years. Their town of east of Mosul was under ISIS control since 2014 before being liberated in October. CNN's Muhammad Lila live for us now in Istanbul with more -- Muhammad.

MUHAMMAD LILA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, you know there are no shortage of horrific stories in this part of the world, but this story is something different. It has to do with a town called Bartello, which is just on the outskirts of Mosul. It was overtaken by ISIS in 2014.

When that happened most of the people in that town were Christian fled. They never dreamed they'd be able to go back so quickly and also go back to the same church where they could hold a Christmas mass. Take a look. You can see the images there. They are celebrating and observing it.

Of course, this wouldn't have been possible without U.S. troops helping to secure that compound. One little interesting side note, Don, is that some American troops, we understand, went into the church and participated in the mass.

In order to do that, they had to disarm and leave their weapons at the door and some conflict zones that is violation of army protocol. But in this case, it was an important step to building trust with ordinary Iraqis and showing them that America and American troops are part of this offensive to get ISIS out of every corner of the country -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Muhammad Lila, thank you so much. Pretty powerful images there.

Meantime, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake rattles the southern coast of Chile. You can see it really ripped up the road there. A tsunami issue alert was issued shortly after. That has since been pulled back. As a precaution at least 5,000 people living by the coast were evacuated. Fortunately, though, no deaths reported.

LEMON: We are following a lot of news this morning including the sudden death of George Michael. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When it comes to the U.N., the gloves are off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We agree that the Security Council was not a place to resolve this issue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The fact of the matter is bipartisan policy of the U.S. government for decades has been to oppose settlements.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have iron clad information, frankly, that the Obama administration helped push this resolution.

HARLOW: President-elect Donald Trump announcing that he will dissolve his charitable foundation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Scrutiny over his charitable work led to an investigation, which is currently ongoing.

HARLOW: George Michael being remembered for his chart-topping music.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many, many people had profound feelings about.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I remember as a loving human being with so much talent.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: And good morning. Welcome to NEW DAY. Alyson and Chris are off this week. Poppy Harlow joins me. I cannot believe --