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South Korean Parliament Votes To Impeach Acting President Han Duck-soo; Israeli AG Orders Witness Harassment Investigation Of Netanyahu's Wife; Azerbaijan Airlines Says Plane Crashed After "External Interference" As Questions Mount Over Possible Russian Involvement. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired December 27, 2024 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

HANAKO MONTGOMERY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Then shortly, two weeks after that, the country's Parliament voted to impeach the president, and he was stripped of his duties. But in order for the formal impeachment process to actually end, a constitutional court ruling upholding this decision is required.

But critically -- and this is the problem facing South Korea right now -- they don't have enough judges within the constitutional court to issue such a ruling. And actually, it's the job of the acting president Han to fill those vacant spots but he's refused to do so, which has led to this political deadlock we're currently seeing in the country.

Now, for South Korea's future what happens next? Next in line to fill the spot of the acting president is the country's finance minister.

But this political saga is still far from over. In fact, this crisis -- this political game of musical chairs if you will is coming at a really critical time for the country as it's preparing for the next Trump administration. There are a lot of questions and concerns about how well South Korea can actually engage in diplomacy and maintain stable U.S.-South Korean relations when its own political leadership isn't stable.

And Sara, the question that still remains to be answered is when will all this political uncertainty in South Korea actually end? And frankly, that's anybody's guess -- Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: We think we have wild politics here. Well, guess what? South Korea is trumping, pun intended, us.

Hanako Montgomery, thank you so much. Appreciate it -- Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk more about this right now. Joining us is Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin. It's good to see you, Josh.

I mean, Yoon pulls off this baffling move on December 3 that lasts all of a matter of hours. But the political crisis it has very clearly triggered only seems to be getting worse, not better.

What do you think of this?

JOSH ROGIN, COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST (via Webex by Cisco): Yeah, it's really crazy, Kate. The president of South Korea attempted a military coup, failed, and is now clinging to power, and he might actually succeed. He might actually be able to stop his own removal. And -- sound familiar?

You know, this is the beginning of South Korea's political crisis because what's going to happen now is it's going to take months for them to sort this out. And while that happens, South Korea is going to be politically rudderless, and the country is just in complete turmoil.

I think in the end my prediction is that President Yoon will have to go. The people want him gone. He faces criminal charges. But how we get there could be a long and winding road, and we just don't know exactly how that's going to happen yet.

BOLDUAN: And I think what happens in -- during that long and winding road is an important one when you're looking from the United States' perspective. I mean, as Hanako Montgomery was saying, this is the first time South Korea has impeached an interim leader. It means that yet again one of America's most important allies continues on without really -- I'll say really anybody in charge who can really take charge of government and military there.

How is Washington looking at this?

ROGIN: Yeah, it's real disaster for U.S.-South Korea relations on a couple of levels.

First of all, as we just heard, it's really hard to make friends with the Trump administration if you don't have a government -- if you don't know who is leading your country. So every leader in the world is trying to get in good with the Trump administration. The South Koreans are on the sidelines because they are -- they're to internally messed up right now to play that game.

And then for the U.S. we need South Korea on a lot of important things, like standing up to China, dealing with North Korea. There was a whole process to make these moves between South Korea and Japan. All of that is up in the air. All of that is going to be more difficult.

South Korea is also helping Ukraine against Russia. Is that going to continue?

So, South Korea's dysfunction is not just a problem for South Korea; it's a problem for the region and the world.

BOLDUAN: Is there any silver lining to this? Like, the people in the Parliament pushed back and didn't allow the martial law to take hold. Do you see any silver lining here, Josh?

ROGIN: I do. And talking to South Koreans it's they are proud of the fact that the military coup failed. They're proud of the fact that the South Korean military didn't shoot the protesters, and they didn't shoot the lawmakers who tried to go and do their jobs. And South Korean democracy survived. I guess that's a silver lining if you want to find one.

And you can look around the world and see a lot of democracies that are sort of slipping towards autocracy, but in South Korea, at least, for now, that seems not to have succeeded. And although it will be a tough road ahead eventually the South Korean democracy will be restored one way or the other.

BOLDUAN: Look, and Yoon still is waiting to see what happens to him. He has defended his move -- just so everyone is clear, he's defended his move to declare martial law as an act of governance. He's denied charges of insurrection.

But in the meantime as this winding road continues is it clear to you what it means for U.S. efforts to counter the threats -- the ongoing threat -- nuclear threat and beyond from North Korea? Because you know North Korea is watching this and I'm sure quite happy with what they're seeing.

[07:35:05]

ROGIN: Right. I mean, North Korea is fighting against the Ukrainians in Russia. They're ramping up their missile and nuclear technology. They're threatening the region. They've turned their back on South Korea and any process to reunify. So that's a really dangerous situation. It's not really a situation where you want a South Korea that's in total chaos.

And the wildcard here is not actually South Korea. The wildcard is Trump because President Trump tried to make friends with Kim Jong Un. It didn't work but you could imagine him trying to -- trying again. And if he does that, that's really kind of the most important thing that can happen to South Korea. So you would think that they would want to be involved, and they can't be involved right now.

So there's a lot going on in the world. We've got Ukraine, we've got China, we've got North Korea, we've got the Middle East. Not a good time to have a major ally in total chaos, especially as we transition in our political leadership. That's a lot of moving parts that are not working together right now.

So I think the South Koreans hopefully will get their act together sooner rather than later and then hopefully, the Trump administration will be able to reset U.S.-South Korea relations on that basis.

BOLDUAN: You raise something really important going forward -- is what is Donald Trump -- the president-elect's view of what's happening in South Korea right now? I don't think that is something we do not know. That is an important question going forward to answer what relations will be like.

ROGIN: Yeah.

BOLDUAN: Josh, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for coming in -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Donald Trump may have won North Carolina but a Democrat will lead the state next year. Governor-elect Josh Stein handily beat Trump's initial pick Mark Robinson in November, but for Stein, the results were not just about Robinson's scandals. And now the only battleground Democrat who did better than Donald Trump has a message for his party.

CNN's Isaac Dovere has more on this. What is the lesson that he is trying to impart to Democrats so that they, too, can win?

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER (via Webex by Cisco): Yeah, that's right, Sara. Josh Stein, the governor-elect of North Carolina, is a prosecutor. He had been in politics for 20 years. He had ties to the incumbent Democratic administration.

It sounds familiar to Kamala Harris except in North Carolina, a state that Kamala Harris was desperately trying to win and had been working to win even before she became the nominee over the summer, she lost.

Josh Stein won, but Josh Stein won with 171,000 more votes than Donald Trump got winning the state. It's a huge win in North Carolina -- almost a 15-point margin for Stein.

And with it he swept in a lieutenant governor who is a Democrat, a state superintendent of schools. He broke the supermajority in the state legislature. It's a really big win for Democrats in a state that Donald Trump won.

And when I was getting into the reporting of this and talking with Stein and his team about it they said look, this is actually the kind of thing that Democrats need to really think about -- how they make the appeal to people on what they care about.

So when Stein -- he was attacked on immigration. He was attacked on being soft on crime. What he did was talk about his record doing things like reducing the rape kit backlog in North Carolina. Fighting the fentanyl crisis. When he talked about abortion, he talked about it not as an ideological thing but about respect for women.

I sat with him recently in Asheville, North Carolina -- obviously, a place that is recovering from that hurricane --

SIDNER: Yeah.

DOVERE: -- earlier in the fall. And I said to him, what is this? People have been calling all the time, I asked him. And he said yes, it's -- "Evidently, it's not a satisfying answer because people continue to come at me -- 'But how? But how? But how?'

And look, I worked very hard. The team around me is extremely strong. We ran a savvy campaign," he said to me. "But I don't think any of those things matter if voters don't believe you are fighting for them."

And that is the task in front of the Democratic Party overall as they try and pick up the pieces from the November elections. And think about how to win in all sorts of places around the country but especially in places like North Carolina where there is clearly a way for Democrats to win and there is clearly a need for them to start doing better as the population shifts around the country and the Electoral College going into the 2030s will require Democrats to actually win in North Carolina.

In the last nine presidential elections it's gone for the Republican eight times. But in the last nine gubernatorial elections now -- this is number nine -- it's gone for the Democrat eight times.

So that is the kind of coalition building and thinking about issues that the Democrats all over the country are trying to study and think about how they can do better at is going forward.

SIDNER: Yeah. It's not just what you're doing to let people know you're working for them. It sounds like his message is there's also the messaging on the other side of that to let people know what is being done for them as well.

[07:40:00]

Isaac Dovere, thank you so much.

DOVERE: That's right.

SIDNER: Appreciate it. That was great reporting -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: If one thing has become clear this week it is that the president-elect is -- elect is fixated on wanting to retake control of the Panama Canal and also obsessing once again on wanting to buy Greenland -- all leading to kind of a constant refrain of is he serious or he is trolling?

CNN's Alayna Treene has new reporting now and insight from inside the Trump world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Well, Donald Trump's fixation this week over wanting to take control over the Panama Canal as well as the revival of his desire to purchase Greenland, a Danish territory, is really part of a large negotiating tactic, I'm told. One Trump adviser told me his interpretation of what Donald Trump has been saying this week is really that he wants to force foreign leaders to the negotiating table to bolster United States trade, but also to try and curb both Russia and China's larger influence over the global region.

Now, as it relates to Panama specifically, Donald Trump believes that Panama and as it relates to the Panama Canal specifically is taking advantage of the United States and its companies. He really is pushing for a new agreement that would lower the price that different American vessels pay for passage throughout the Panama Canal.

He also believes that many Chinese companies are controlling the ports around the Panama Canal, essentially giving them more control over which ships can pass through and again, what the prices are for other countries.

Now, as it relates to Greenland, I'm told that Donald Trump's kind of fixation on that has been about trying to curb Russia's influence in the Arctic region. And that's part of why he has continued to say that he wants to buy Greenland even though we know that its prime minister who control the Danish territory has said that Greenland is not for sale, just like it wasn't for sale back in 2019 when he first floating this idea of trying to purchase the country.

Now, all to say this is what one of the Trump advisers told me. They said, "Everything has to be looked at in terms of curbing Russia and China influence, while also protecting the economy."

Now, to be clear as well, to go back to the Panama Canal here and what Donald Trump has been saying. Donald Trump has actually been fixated on this for several months now I am told.

And I would actually point to an August interview he did with Tucker Carlson on X where he brought this up. He said that he believed that the former President Jimmy Carter who negotiated this treaty to give Panama control over the canal despite it being U.S.-made was a stupid idea.

He believes that Panama is taking advantage of the United States and that he would potentially want to negotiate some sort of different deal with Panama if he were to be elected president.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: All right. Historically, stocks rise after a presidential election so the Trump bump, nothing new. But something unprecedented is actually happening. When you take a closer look just seven out of more than 500 stocks now known as the Magnificent Seven make up nearly all of the gains since November.

CNN's Matt Egan is joining us now. OK, so what is so magnificent about these seven stocks? And clearly, it is not my ability to speak.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Sara, these seven stocks are clearly living up to the hype. They've basically put the entire stock market on their shoulders and carrying it higher.

So we are talking about what's been dubbed the Magnificent Seven. This is Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. Now, all seven of them --

SIDNER: No surprises there.

EGAN: No surprises. And really, they all have two things in common, right? They're all massive. They're also all AI plays, right? They're investing heavily in artificial intelligence, and they are believed to be the likely winners in this AI arms race.

Now, the combined market value of these seven companies has now spiked above $18 trillion -- trillion with a t. Some context. That is more than the entire GDP of China. And since Election Day, these seven stocks have accounted for the vast majority -- 86 percent of the returns of the S&P 500. It's really stunning.

Now, we have seen this trend play out really all year because these seven stocks account for more than half of the gains of what has been a very, very strong year for the stock market. If you were to exclude these seven stocks the S&P 500 would only by up 13 percent this year, when in reality it's up almost --

SIDNER: It's unreal.

EGAN: -- 30 percent. So still up, just wouldn't be up by quite as much.

Now, we know AI has been the hottest part of this bull market. Of course, the question is how long will that continue? And the answer to that question I think is massive in terms of the stakes for really the whole stock market.

SIDNER: Yeah. It seems like if those seven catch a cold the rest of -- or if the seven cough the rest of the stock markets catches a cold.

How does this level of market concentration sort of look like or stack up globally --

EGAN: Yeah. Well --

SIDNER: -- and historically?

EGAN: Sure. Well, we have seen this play out in the past though just not to this extent. We saw something similar in the late 1990s before the bursting of the dot.com bubble.

[07:45:00]

SIDNER: Yeah.

EGAN: Also before COVID. That chart on your screen shows the level of market concentration for the top 10 stocks. And Goldman Sachs has found that the top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 right now account for 36 percent of the value of the entire market. That is an all-time high.

Now, as far as what this means there's positives and negatives. As long as the AI boom continues this could mean more and more gains for the market.

But to your point about if one of them catches a cold it's not really ideal to have the whole market rely on just a few players. It's kind of like a football team. If it totally lives and dies --

SIDNER: Right.

EGAN: -- on just one --

SIDNER: Right.

EGAN: -- player that's probably not going to end up well in the long run. So we need to pay very close attention because for the market to

continue to shatter records next year either this rally has to broaden out or these seven stocks have to stay magnificent.

SIDNER: Wow.

Matt Egan, thank you so much.

EGAN: Thanks, Sara.

SIDNER: That was really interesting.

All right. New this morning a judge denies Jay-Z's efforts to dismiss the case accusing him of raping a 13-year-old girl. The scathing language the judge used in the decision.

And stabbed over a bad tip. A pizza delivery worker is in custody this morning accused of stabbing a pregnant customer 14 times.

(COMMERCIAL)

[07:51:00]

BOLDUAN: New developments out of Israel this morning. Israel's attorney general has now ordered an investigation into the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is in response to a report in local media that alleges Sara Netanyahu harassed opponents and intimidated a witness in her husband's criminal corruption trial.

Elliott Gotkin is following this one for us from Jerusalem and he joins us now. Elliott, what more are you learning?

ELLIOTT GOTKIN, JOURNALIST: Kate, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu probably only gets riled by one thing more than being on the docket himself and that is when accusations are made against his wife. So he's come out quite as expected really with all guns blazing, decrying these allegations against his wife as a new blood libel, saying that this report on Israel's equivalent of "60 MINUTES" known as "UVDA" goes out on channel 12. It went out on Thursday. And saying that this report was biased and false propaganda.

His justice minister has said that this is once again extreme -- in his words, extreme, selective enforcement.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the extreme right wing national security minister in Netanyahu's government calling for the attorney general to go -- not for the first time, I should add.

Now, specifically, the attorney general has said, and I'm quoting here, "That an investigation should be opened into suspicions of witness harassment and obstruction of justice."

And as you say, this relates to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's own corruption trial in which he's standing trial for alleged breach of trust, fraud, and bribery -- charges that he vehemently denies.

Now, there's no investigation just yet and certainly we are a very long way off seeing this come to court.

I should note that Sara Netanyahu does have legal issues in the past that she's had to deal with. She was convicted in 2019 of misusing public funds.

And the reason why this matters more than just being a bit of tittle- tattle if you like about the prime minister's wife is because many people would dry a direct line from the prime minister's legal problems to the plan to overhaul the judiciary that went on for the best part of a year. It led to hundreds of thousands of Israelis coming out onto the streets in protest of what they saw as an attempt to weaken the powers of the Supreme Court.

And some would even draw a line from that into how this effectively led Hamas partly to believe that it was a good time to carry out the October 7 attacks because Israel was so divided -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yeah. It's great reporting, Elliott. And that through line is definitely part of this story, for sure. I really appreciate it -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. We are getting new details this morning -- telling details on the preliminary investigation into that deadly Christmas plane crash in Kazakhstan. Investigators determined "physical and technical interference" caused the plane to plunge from the sky. Those details are coming from the airline itself, according to state media in Azerbaijan where the flight originated.

Overnight, we also learned that authorities recovered the second black box at the site of the crash.

Now, a U.S. official is telling CNN that early indications suggest a Russian anti-aircraft system may have downed that plane in a case of mistaken identity. Russian officials -- well, they are urging people against speculation while the investigation continues.

Joining me now is CNN military analyst and retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling. Thank you so much for being here. Happy holidays to you.

This is an awful, awful scene that we have looked at on Christmas day, seeing this plane fall out of the sky. Russia initially said it was likely a bird strike that cause this crash. Now the airline is using words "physical and technical interference" in their initial assessment.

What can you glean from those words? What do they tell you?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST, FORMER COMMANDING GENERAL, U.S. ARMY EUROPE AND SEVENTH ARMY: Well, good morning, Sara.

[07:55:00]

And it just reinforces the words that are being used what actually happened. And that the physical interference was probably a weapons system that caused dysfunction in the aircraft in a variety of ways. The technical interference is something that has been speculated about

electronic warfare jamming. The fact that some kind of external technical operations causes -- caused the aircraft to not only avert the landing a couple of times in Grozny but also shift to another -- several has been reported -- several potential landing locations that they were denied.

So we're talking about the potential of both a weapons system and some kind of dysfunction on the ground, which caused the lack of the ability for this aircraft to land correctly with all its passengers on board.

SIDNER: When you look at the plane and the -- and the video that has been coming in what do see without being at the scene that makes this clear that this was not likely a bird strike?

HERTLING: Yeah. Well, first of all, the external factors that show the holes in the side of the aircraft have to do with the type of air defense systems -- the weapons the Russians use.

They have a couple of short-range air defense pieces of equipment. One is the Buk -- the kind of system that shot down MH17 back in 2014.

This one was more likely, in my view, something called the Pantsir weapons system. It also is a short-range system, and it has a missile that can either hit the aircraft directly and cause an explosion or it can explode off to the side of the aircraft or in front of it and cause shrapnel damage.

The amount of holes in the side of the airplane in the aft part of airplane tells me that this was an air defense system and certainly not a bird strike, which was the Russian's first conclusion -- or excuse for it would be a better term to use.

So when you see a lot of shrapnel on the side of the plane what that does is disrupt either the avionics or the control systems. And in this case it looked like it actually affected the rudder, some of the ailerons, and some of the other pieces of the aircraft that cause the disruption in the movement of the plane but also the eventual crash on the film showing the airplane going up and down and trying to gain some type of aerodynamic form.

SIDNER: Yeah, those terrifying pictures watching it sort of fall out of the sky.

Russia still has not admitted its role in the downing of the commercial MH17 flight over Ukraine. Do you think there will be any consequences if it is determined that, indeed, Russia shot this passenger flight down?

HERTLING: Well, there in MH17 the consequences against Russia were a lot of sanctions. A lot of world condemnation. They've already received much of that --

SIDNER: Right.

HERTLING: -- Sara, from their invasion and their illegal invasion into Ukraine. So I'm not sure how much more can be resolved.

But the fact of the matter is this is going to affect the airline industry going in and around the territories of Russia and also some of the caucus states like we saw this airplane going to Azerbaijan and perhaps even places like Georgia. It's too close to a war zone and there is too much of a dysfunction within the Russian military that they can't control their air defense and their electronic warfare against civilian aircraft.

So I think it may have effects in that regard to close down some of the airports and some of the air travel into this specific area.

SIDNER: Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, thank you so much for coming in on this holiday week. We really appreciate your time -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: So a federal judge in New York has denied rapper Jay-Z's efforts to dismiss a case accusing him of raping a 13-year-old girl.

In the new ruling, the judge also condemned the tactics that Jay-Z's attorney has been using. The judge writing, "His lawyer's relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominin attacks is inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources, and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client. The court will not fast-track the judicial process merely because counsel demands it."

The judge also ruled the accuser could remain anonymous despite efforts to have her identity revealed.

Jay-Z has repeatedly denied all allegations.

A Florida woman could be spending the rest of her life in prison after police say she stabbed a woman 14 times in front of that woman's 5- year-old daughter, and here is why. The violent incident allegedly started over an argument about a tip on a pizza delivery.

Twenty-two-year-old Brianna Alvelo -- it's who you're looking at -- delivered the pizza, then left and allegedly later broke into the victim's motel room and then stabbed her in the chest, arms, legs, and stomach. The woman was taken to the hospital, is recovering and in stable condition according to police.

Alvelo though now facing a bunch of charges, including for home invasion with a firearm, attempted murder, kidnapping, and aggravated assault.