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House of Representative Fails to Pass Government Spending Bill to Prevent Shutdown; Vice President Elect J.D. Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson Attempt to Work with House Republicans to Pass Spending Bill to Avert Pending Government Shutdown; Pentagon Announces "Approximately 2000" US Troops in Syria; Suspect Luigi Mangione Now In a Federal Prison in New York. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 20, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

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NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Defend against these claims. The known risks and benefits are described in their FDA approved labeling.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Since my doctor prescribed Ozempic for Ramadan, I've never gotten more work done.

WATT: And so many commercials in between.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ozempic!

WATT: I can hum the tune from the commercial.

ANDREW VAN ARSDALE, PATRICIA'S ATTORNEY: There's a reason you can hum the tune. There's a reason everybody knows about this, because of the amount of money they're putting into the marketing of these products.

PATRICIA, FORMER OZEMPIC USER: I heard about Ozempic on the TV.

WATT: Patricia has now stopped taking it, but she says she is still suffering.

PATRICIA: Uncontrollable diarrhea. WATT: Which makes life quite hard to live.

PATRICIA: Right, so I stay pretty much close to the house. I still have the effects of uncontrollable going to the bathroom.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news right now. A high stakes meeting happening on Capitol Hill, including the incoming Vice President J.D. Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and the conservative Freedom Caucus, trying to essentially break the ice and find a way for Republicans to get on the same page with Republicans as the government is set to begin shutting down operations at midnight.

Also this morning, accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione is now behind bars in the same federal prison as Sean Diddy Combs in New York. Federal prosecutors now weighing whether to pursue the death penalty.

Plus, Apple facing pressure to ax its new A.I. tool after it falsely summarized a BBC report. As one press freedom group put it, "Facts cannot be decided by a roll of the dice."

John Berman is out today. I'm Kate Bolduan with Sara Sidner. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SIDNER: Breaking news on the chaos on Capitol Hill. A critical meeting inside the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson as the clock is ticking towards a government shutdown. Members of the House Freedom Caucus sitting down right now with the speaker and Vice President elect J.D. Vance, as well as Donald Trump's pick to run the Office of Management and Budget. Vance and Johnson scrambling to get all Republicans on the same page after 38 GOP lawmakers voted against a Trump-backed spending measure last night, joining Democrats, a plan that was drawn up at the 11th hour after pressure from Trump and Elon Musk killed a bipartisan funding bill.

Joining us now, CNN's Annie Grayer. Annie, what can you tell us about this meeting that is happening right now and what it may signal?

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN REPORTER: Well, this is about Republicans trying to get on the same page. They desperately want to pass something to keep the government open. But as we saw last night, 38 Republicans bucked their own leadership in voting against the plan to keep the government open because they didn't support the extension of the debt limit. So now, by bringing all the key stakeholders in one room, the hope is that there will be enough consensus to try and move forward. In fact, we caught up with House Speaker Mike Johnson this morning who said that he believes that there is a plan and that they are going to be voting later this morning. That has not been officially announced or anything like that. But we are standing outside the meeting just down the hall trying to get new details, because right now Republicans are back to square one and it's clear they don't have Democratic support to rely on.

SIDNER: Annie Grayer, thank you so much for that late breaking news. Appreciate it. We will be checking back in with you. Kate? BOLDUAN: And more of that. Just moments ago, Donald Trump took to

social media to put out his latest statement. These are significant because it is clearly having an impact on what Republicans are doing or not doing when it comes to keeping the government funded. Here is what he put on Truth Social. We will read it for you, we'll read it all together. "If there is to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now under the Biden administration, not after January 20th under Trump. This is a Biden problem to solve. But if Republicans can help solve it, they will." That's a double backflip for you.

Joining us right now is CNN political commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin and Democratic strategist and consultant Simon Rosenberg. Alyssa, you want to decipher that one? I mean, what do you think of that?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: OK, so just for some historic context, I mean, I worked on Capitol Hill for years. Pretty much every Christmas there is, we come up to the 11th hour of a government funding deadline. But this one is looking -- this one was avoidable. It was extremely avoidable.

The last government shutdown I was in the White House, 2018. It was 34 days, the longest in history. So if the government were to shut down tonight or at Saturday evening, this would, and if it went as long, would spill into after Donald Trump was in office.

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And so one thing I would say to pump the brakes of the idea of some really long term shutdown would be Donald Trump wants his transition to continue, and he wants his inauguration to continue. He doesn't want national parks shut down when he's being sworn in at the Capitol on January 20th.

So the House has to figure out what it's going to do, though. Mike Johnson has very limited flexibility here. Democrats are not inclined to bail Republicans out. But I do think it's interesting that he's basically saying, hey, Joe Biden is still president. Where are you?

BOLDUAN: Is that indicating also -- I mean, Simon, lets jump into the psyche of Donald Trump on social media, because I know you love to do that. Is this also indicating he doesn't think there is a deal to be had, and so he's this is the beginning of the spin?

SIMON ROSENBERG, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST AND CONSULTANT: listen, I think the real story this week is that Donald Trump's honeymoon has come to an end, his post-election honeymoon has come to an end. We saw yesterday the Fed signaled that the markets are worried about his inflationary economic proposals. We're going to have the Matt Gaetz report come out any day reminding us about his recklessness in choosing his nominees. And now we may have a government shutdown and just incredible Republican chaos on Capitol Hill. This has been an ugly few days for Donald Trump and the Republicans.

And so I think they are desperately trying to figure out a path forward. And yes, of course he's going to blame Democrats. Thats what he does for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. It's not a big surprise. I don't think it's going to work. I mean, we know from history that the people that crash, that caused the government shutdown get punished by voters. And Republicans are taking enormous risks right now.

BOLDUAN: One thing that this one is going to be hard, I will say just factually, if you look at the sequence of events, it will be hard for Donald Trump to claim this is a Biden problem, because this was going to be, as I said earlier, like a footnote in this Christmas tale, because there was a bipartisan deal until Elon Musk started putting out tweets, and then Donald Trump weighed in as well. This one is a little, there's more to it than this.

But this raises once again, the Mike Johnson problem. And "Playbook" put it well this morning about Plan C, saying this, "Mike Johnson's challenge is to find a path that can, one, keep Trump happy, two, placate House conservatives, three, win the support of a substantial number of House Democrats, four, pass muster with the Democratic controlled Senate and White House, and five, allow him to take to keep the gavel. Do you see him doing that?

GRIFFIN: Correct. And just to remember, in the new Congress, he is going to be voted in as speaker again and he's going to need the votes. But what complicates this further is that House conservatives, traditionally their issue is they don't want a clean lifting of the debt ceiling. They've committed to not ever voting for it. Donald Trump actually hates the debt ceiling. He wants to do away with it. He thinks it's arcane and unnecessary.

BOLDUAN: Sometimes a progressive Democratic position.

GRIFFIN: Correct. And even more so, he doesn't want to have to raise the debt ceiling six months into his first term.

Donald Trump still has a lot of sway with the Freedom Caucus. I think that because this is a mess of his own making, he's going to have to step in. Mike Johnson does not have the flexibility to, on his own, bring some of these folks along. And you've seen Anna Paulina Luna, a very Trumpy, MAGA member of Congress saying she probably needs to vote for this because her district expects her to. I think Donald Trump's going to have to twist some arms, and he may spend his Christmas break working on fixing the deal he blew up.

BOLDUAN: So, but that then poses something interesting, Simon, if Donald Trump jumps on a plane, gets to Washington and starts basically what he will, then -- we're going to do, let's just assume because we don't know what's going to happen in the next five minutes, he starts trying to break the logjam between Republicans. I just had Greg Meeks on making very clear that Democrats, they negotiated this once, and they have -- they have no motivation to start heading back to the negotiating table again. Could the Democrats be looking at a worse deal than they had if they had just gone along with, I'm going to call it Plan B last night?

ROSENBERG: Well, I mean, the reality here is that anything that passes the House, and whether they do it under the suspension rules they've been doing, which requires two thirds of a vote, meaning they need lots of Democrats to come on board, or they go back to a three day period where they just get Republicans, it then has to pass a Democratic Senate, and Joe Biden has to sign it.

And so Democrats have to have a seat at the table here, right, at some point. And we did have a seat at the table which got us to this bipartisan deal on Wednesday, that Elon Musk and Donald Trump blew up. But the notion, this kind of fantasy notion that they're going to be able to pass a bill that has no, that Democrats are not consulted on, they are not negotiating, that's being shoved down their throats, is a recipe for keeping the government shut down. It's just reckless. It's wasting all of our time. The Democrats have to have a seat at the table here because of our political system. And this fantasy that they have that they can do this purely with Republicans I think is part of what got us into this mess that we're in today.

BOLDUAN: And what is always so frustrating for people not in Washington watching this is the government eventually will get funded, but a lot of people are going to potentially feel pain in the meantime.

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And it's just, these always feel like -- to not be eloquent -- the dumbest of fights.

GRIFFIN: No one wins a government shutdown. The blame games goes around --

BOLDUAN: No one wins. More people get hurt. And then we move on, and it just leaves that ick in, like icky feeling for people watching it. And this is not going to get easier in the next Congress, right? The Republican majority in the House is going to be, what is it, the slimmest in the modern era.

GRIFFIN: Right. And Donald Trump wants to focus on things like broadening his tax cuts in the first term. He doesn't want to be dealing with government funding battles and deadlines. And I think there's already this expectation, it feels weird to talk about the midterms before Donald Trump is even sworn in. But this would be a really negative way to start a new Congress if he's hoping to keep control of the House going into his the second half of his term.

So there is no win. There'll be a lot of furloughed federal employees, people who won't be getting paid. They'll eventually get back pay. It should be avoidable. But honestly there's really limited paths out at this point.

BOLDUAN: It is a strange moment that -- there's always like a Plan C, like a Mitch McConnell comes in right at the last second.

GRIFFIN: I don't know that there's a hero in this one.

BOLDUAN: I know, but that's the thing. You always are waiting for, like, the Mitch McConnell to come in and be like, I've got this thing. I'm not going to tell anybody about it because this is what I do. And they fix it. This one feels different. But let's see, let's see. Let's buckle up and like buckle up again. It's good to see you guys. Thank you both very much.

Sara?

SIDNER: Right ahead, after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the U.S. is now revealing it has more troops in Syria than previously known. That news coming as an American delegation is in Syria today. We'll talk about that.

And also, the holiday travel rush underway, folks. Guess what? The weather might not let you rush at all. We have the forecast.

And later, a disturbing rise in the number of homeless families in America. Learn how one group is trying to make a dent in housing insecurity.

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SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The Pentagon Thursday revealed that the US currently has about 2,000 troops fighting ISIS in Syria, which is more than double the 900 that was previously disclosed.

The announcement comes as the first US delegation is expected to visit the country since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.

CNN chief national security correspondent, Alex Marquardt, following all of the developments now. What's the significance of today's visit? And this number is quite high compared to what they had initially said.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It is, Sarah, and this is really a transparency question. We had long heard that there were some 900 US troops in Syria. Now, we're being told that its 2,000. They are primarily there to fight ISIS.

One would imagine that troops were surged in there, given all the uncertainty the past few weeks. But this is a very important day in US-Syrian relations.

We have this delegation that is in Damascus as we speak. We are waiting to hear from them momentarily. The US has not had diplomatic ties with a Syrian government for the past 12 years. And so, this is the first high level delegation to go back into Damascus in years.

It is being led by senior members of the State Department, and we believe that they are meeting with HTS, this group that led the charge to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. One big question is whether they'll be meeting with its head, Ahmed al-Sharaa who is designated by the US to be a terrorist. There's a $10 million bounty on his head. HTS is a designated terrorist group.

So, in these meetings, the US is certainly going to be pushing for its vision of what it hopes Syria will be, an inclusive, representative government, one that does not allow terrorists to be harbored inside Syria, one that doesn't have chemical weapons. But you can be sure that this transitional government is also going to be pushing for US sanctions to be lifted on Syria and for that terrorist designation to be dropped.

And, Sara, one major focus of these meetings, we're told, is going to be the location of Austin Tice, the American journalist who disappeared some 12 years ago. The US has been frantically looking for any sign of Tice.

So, a lot to discuss. You have Barbara Leaf, who is the top Middle East official leading this delegation alongside Roger Carstens, who's in charge of hostage affairs, and a newly named senior advisor named, Daniel Rubinstein -- Sara.

SIDNER: I know there's a desperate search. His family just devastated, hoping that he is still with us and he can be found.

Alex Marquardt, thank you so much for your reporting on this.

Accused CEO Killer, Luigi Mangione in a federal prison this morning for the first time in New York.

Now, his lawyers are planning their strategy as they face the possibility the Feds may push for the death penalty against him.

And new information from the investigation into the man police believe may have been planning a coordinated attack with that teenage girl who ended up perpetrating a mass shooting at the Wisconsin school.

Those stories ahead.

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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: This morning, the list of charges against accused killer, Luigi Mangione is growing. Mangione, is now facing a murder charge on top of the 11 state charges that we've already discussed.

The federal murder charge brings with it the possibility of seeking the death penalty against Mangione. We also learned this after Mangione was extradited to New York and met with a spectacle, a long, dramatic perp walk that even included the mayor of New York city as part of it, rarely seen.

So as for what happens next, joining us right now is CNN legal analyst, Joey Jackson to help us walk through this. Lets' start with the charges, Joey, why federal charges?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So, I think a couple of reasons. First of all, if you look at the federal charges and distinguish that from the actual state complaint, wow, it sings of all the details.

And generally speaking, in any case, you just have to establish really a facially sufficient complaint. You don't have to go into all the details. This talks about everything. But I think number one, there's a role for the federal government to the extent that you cross state lines, to engage in any offense, they have authority.

And here, right, he certainly did that. And you see that with regard to him going from Georgia to New York to do what he did, use of the internet qualifies. They have him as stalking, et cetera. And I think there's could potentially be another basis. And you hit on him. And that's the death penalty.

New York State does not have the death penalty. The federal government does and I think they certainly want to assure accountability. And the federal government, Kate, wants to exert itself with respect to this prosecution.

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BOLDUAN: So, then we already saw yesterday maybe the laying on the groundwork from his defense team of saying that this proposes a double jeopardy problem and kind of putting that out there is a challenge. Do you see that?

JACKSON: So, I don't. Now, first of all, obviously, it's good advocacy by counsel. And what they're saying is, look, it's unfair you're piling on. And that also could be playing to the public. Remember at the end of the day, he'll have a jury of his peers and people are celebrating this, calling him Saint Luigi and everything else.

So is that a factor? This is the unfair government going against the little person et cetera. But from a legal perspective, I see no basis. Why? Number one, when you look at double jeopardy, it means accused of the same offense and tried twice for it. The federal government has a different theory. What is that? In a state crime, murder is you've committed the murder, right? If you intended to do it and of course, in the state case, they're saying that terrorism was a component. But the federal government's theory is that you crossed state lines to do so. That in and of itself, makes it a separate offense.

Federal government also charging stalking as it relates to the use of the internet, as it relates to travel and of course, carrying a firearm across state lines.

So to the extent that there are different theories and different charges, there is no double jeopardy bar. But again, I think this is a defense advocating and potentially garnering more if there could be, if you look at social media, support for their client.

BOLDUAN: So, this gets to another aspect of this. When you're talking about support and a potential jury pool, and also then that very public perp walk that we watched yesterday. Do you see a problem in that?

JACKSON: So, here's what I think. I mean, look, remember the mayor was a former police person, right, a high ranking one. And so I think, right, to be fair, that that's something that's very close to him.

We live in New York City and of course, he is one who is, you know, who wants to be tough on crime and is all about crime. But I think also this is a different scenario.

It is a different scenario because we haven't seen someone like this, Kate, who's been celebrated for engaging in this type of activity. And I think what they're showing is that there's cooperation between the federal government, right, the state city government, in coordinating to bring this to justice.

You heard the police commissioner speak too, hey, glorifying this is improper, inappropriate, it has no place. So, I think there's a larger message that whoever you are, whatever you do, if it's in this city, we're going to come get you, and I'm going to be the face of it and ensure that justice is done for all citizens.

BOLDUAN: One of the things that was -- that came out with the federal complaint is some details about the evidence that they say they have gathered, that we didn't really have before, and it speaks.

There is offer of some interesting insight, the notebook that they say they have, that they found on him when he was arrested, the way it's written in the complaint contains several handwritten pages that expressed hostility toward the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular.

And then there's this October 22nd entry, and the writer calling an upcoming investor conference a true windfall, describing the intent to "whack the CEO" of an insurance company at the conference. If you're seeing that, what are you thinking?

JACKSON: So, I'm thinking that he needs to be concerned. That is the defendant as it relates even to the state prosecution, right. People were talking about, hey, is terrorism appropriate charge, right. You're talking about the federal complaint, of course.

BOLDUAN: You have to get to intent.

JACKSON: Exactly, but in the state case, people are saying, how is this terrorism, et cetera. If you're talking about trying to engage in plotting and planning and having a specific message for an industry, corporate America, specifically the healthcare industry, how they're unfair, how they deny claims.

You go to preparation and planning that presents a significant problem to prove terrorism in the state case. In addition to proving murder in the state and the federal case. So there's even more, I should tell you, Kate, I'm expecting that is not written in this complaint that exists. And I think we'll see that as the prosecution moves forward.

BOLDUAN: Very interesting to see what they're already revealing, I have to say.

JACKSON: Yes.

BOLDUAN: It's good to see you, Joey.

JACKSON: Always.

BOLDUAN: Thank you so much.

Coming up for us, the clock ticking down to a midnight deadline and we are keeping a close eye on Capitol Hill, of course, as Congress is struggling right now, they are on the definition of the struggle bus to try to keep the government operations going.

They're already, we are hearing with meetings on Capitol Hill amongst Republicans to get on the same page. What are Democrats going to do about it? What new demands may they put on the table?

And a shutdown could also impact families heading to the airports this weekend. Another big question is, will the weather also slow you down?

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