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Race to Contain Deadly Fires as Crews Face New, Dangerous Wind Threat; Hegseth Appears on Glide Path to Confirmation After Fiery Hearing; Report Says, TikTok Preparing to Shut Down in U.S. on Sunday. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired January 15, 2025 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, developing this morning, the death toll rising in California as forecasters warn of one last extremely dangerous 24-hour stretch.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Another huge day on Capitol Hill, six of Donald Trump's nominees heading to the Senate for confirmation hearings. Donald Trump's picks to be the attorney general and secretary of state are in the hot seat.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And new this morning, TikTok plans to shut down the app to all U.S. users on Sunday unless the Supreme Court decides it doesn't have to sell or be banned, what this could mean for the app's future.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN Central.

BERMAN: All right. The breaking news this morning, now is the time to stay on guard. That is the urgent warning from weather officials in Los Angeles and neighboring counties. New evacuations and curfews are in effect, as one more day of extreme danger alerts cover much of the region.

At this moment, four major fires are raging. The largest one in the Palisades is still only 18 percent contained. That's after one full week of burning. Overnight, the death toll rose to 25. FEMA says more than 40,000 applications for disaster aid have been filed so far. We're just seeing the first images of some of the destroyed areas. It's really the first time we'll be able to get to some of these places, and there are new developments in the investigation into where and how the fire started.

We're going to get to the critical threat from the wind in just a moment. But, first, Stephanie Elam is in the Pacific Palisades. Good morning, Stephanie.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John. We are seeing some of those winds starting to kick up now that we know that the winds were not as strong yesterday as predicted, but now is the day that they're watching out for that, particularly over the Eaton fire. And this is why they're asking people in all areas to be prepared for an emergency and having to evacuate as we see these winds pick up.

But overall, in these areas, it is a slow methodical process of trying to make sure that they go from each lot to the next, making sure that if there's anyone who did not make it out, that they're able to find them, and then also just for Cal Fire to go through each and make sure each place is safe.

In fact, take a listen to an official from Cal Fire talking about this process.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT FOXWORTHY, CAL FIRE INFORMATION OFFICER: Crews are doing a methodical process of moving through the area. We're going to every individual structure and searching it, looking for hazards possibly searching for any victims that may not have made it out of the fire. And they will continue to do this until they cover the entire fire area.

It's a considerable amount of structures to search, thousands, and it's going to be a long process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ELAM: A long process and also going to delay when people are able to get back in and see their lots to see if their homes are standing, see if they can salvage anything, especially since we do have these wind advisories. They want to make sure that people are not in here while that's happening. So, we are looking for better wind weather towards the end of the week, so that might be a time that we could have that.

But what's also interesting to note, John is this new study from UCLA that saying that these fires burn hotter and were larger in part because of human induced climate change, and that these fires probably still would have happened but that they were worse because of it. So, just something to think about as people are looking to rebuild how they do that, how they handle their houses as people are starting to focus on where they go next, John.

BERMAN: Yes, the intensity of storms of all kinds that are the emerging problem. All right, Stephanie, stand by.

Let's get right to Allison Chinchar for the forecast in what the winds look like today. Relatively speaking, lucky yesterday. Will they be as lucky today?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: All right. And that really is the ultimate question. The key is we just have to get through the next 24 hours. After today, we finally start to see those winds calming back down, really, in some cases, to very low single digits.

Here's a look at the red flag warning that's in effect for today. Now, until 6:00 P.M. ;ocal time later this afternoon. Those wind gusts up around 50 to 70 miles per hour. Embedded within that red flag warning, you have two particular areas where we're talking about particularly dangerous situations, and that's valid until 3:00 P.M. this afternoon. [07:05:05]

You can see three of the four fires we've been talking about are embedded within one of those PDS locations.

Look at some of the wind gusts that we saw just in the last 24 hours, 74, 61, 60, 50. This is a concern. We got lucky yesterday, really in the last 24 hours, that we have not had any new fires begin because had they, these winds would have carried them very rapidly in and around those surrounding areas.

When we go through the rest of the day again, you're going to start to see those winds beginning to pick up. That's why you have this wind advisory in effect for those sustained winds, about 30 to 40 miles per hour in some areas could be gusting upwards of 50, 60 even as much as 70 miles per hour.

But you'll notice as we go into Wednesday evening and then gradually into Thursday, all of these numbers finally start to drop back to much more reasonable numbers that the firefighters can use to get a much better handle on what's going to happen. And then Thursday and Friday of this week, finally, a much better wind direction as well.

BERMAN: We just have to get through these next 24 hours, as you said. Allison Chinchar, thanks to you, Stephanie Elam, thank you to you as well. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Also knew this morning, history is in your hands. That is part of the farewell message and letter just released from President Biden to the American people. The letter is coming also as he prepares for what the White House calls a farewell address. His final primetime speech from the Oval Office scheduled for tonight.

Let's get much more on the president's final message as he prepares to leave the White House. CNN's Arlette Saenz is at the White House for us.

What else is the president saying in this letter, and what are you hearing about tonight?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, President Biden will sit behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office for the final time to address the nation as he is looking to say goodbye to the country and cap off a more than five decade-long career in public service. This is the latest effort by Biden to really try to cement his legacy as he's trying to present himself as this transformative leader who has provided the country with a steady hand, both at home and abroad.

Now, in this letter to Americans that was released this morning, the president tries to make the case for his accomplishments by also reminding Americans of what he inherited four years ago. He writes, quote, we were in the grip of the worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War, that being a reference to January 6th. He adds, but we came together as Americans. Ultimately, President Biden believes that he is leaving the country in a stronger position than when he came into office. He talks about how the economy is in a strong position, even though many Americans at home don't exactly feel that way.

In this letter, he also talks about other accomplishments, like boosting manufacturing, low violent crime rates, and also efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs for older Americans in this country.

But even as President Biden is pointing to these accomplishments, he is leaving office with low approval ratings, which stand around 38 percent. And he is also preparing to welcome back to the White House the very man that he has described as a direct threat to democracy and being unfit to serve in the job as president.

And that is really one of the challenging components of Biden's legacy. His decision to seek reelection is something that continues to frustrate many Democrats who believe that that created an opening, paved the way for Trump's return to the White House. President Biden himself has really remained defiant about that decision, saying that he still believes that he could have beaten Trump if he had stayed in the race.

Now, Biden's unlikely to rehash that part of his legacy. Instead trying to offer some final words, the American people, he writes in this letter, I have given my heart and my soul to our nation, and I have been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people. History is in your hands.

Much of Biden's post-presidency plans are still in the works, but he did tell reporters last week that he does not plan to be out of sight or out of mind. Kate?

BOLDUAN: More than five decades in public service, wrapping that up in one speech in one letter tonight. We will see. Good luck. Good luck to the speech writers on that one.

Arlette, thank you so much. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Thank you. Kate.

Today, six of Donald Trump's cabinet picks will face questions from senators. The most contentious hearing maybe for the attorney general, Pam Bondi, who has promised retribution against some on behalf of Trump.

Plus, new body camera video shows what happened when a teenager threatened an elementary school with an airsoft rifle.

And why lawyers for Sean Diddy Combs are requesting copies of the so called freak-off tapes.

Those stories ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SIDNER : Happening today, six of president elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks head to Capitol Hill for high stakes confirmation hearings. Defense Secretary Nominee Pete Hegseth was first in the hot seat. He locked in, though, the GOP support amid a contentious session as Democrats pressed him on his character and fitness for the job.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ): December of 2014 at the CVA Christmas party at the Grand High at Washington, D.C., you were noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to your room. Is that true or false?

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY NOMINEE: Anonymous smears.

SEN. TIM KAINE (R-VA): You cheated on the mother of that child less than two months after that daughter was born, didn't you?

[07:15:03]

HEGSETH: Those were false charges. It was fully investigated and I was completely cleared.

KAINE: And you have admitted that you had sex while you were married to wife two after you just had fathered a child by wife three?

SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D-IL): Can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in the ASEAN in ASEAN, and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations? And how many nations are in ASEAN, by the way?

HEGSETH: I couldn't tell you the exact amount of nations in that, but I know we have allies in South Korea, in Japan, and in AUKUS with Australia, and trying to work on submarines with them.

DUCKWORTH: Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN. None of those three countries that you've mentioned are in ASEAN. I suggest you do a little homework before you prepare for these types of negotiations.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: Despite all that, it looks like he could sail through among the six nominees to be questioned today. The president-elect's choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, is a loyal Trump supporter who defended Trump's 2020 election lies.

CNN's Lauren Fox is joining us now from Capitol Hill. What are you watching for today with these many nominees?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. In just a couple of hours, Pam Bondi is going to take the hot seat. And you can expect the Democrats are really going to grill her on a key question. Can she be independent from Donald Trump? She's obviously someone who's been very close to him over the years. She represented him in his first impeachment trial. She is someone who has spent a lot of time with the president. And one of the key questions from Democrats is going to be, will she be able to enforce the law as it is written, or is she going to be influenced by Donald Trump?

This is just an example of the kinds of things that Bondi has said in the past backing up Donald Trump. Here she is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAM BONDI, NOMINEE FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL: The investigators will be investigated because the deep state last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows, but now they have a spotlight on them.

The good residents who are all supporting us in Pennsylvania, their votes don't count by these fake ballots that are coming in late. And back to the observation, they're not letting us watch the process.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pam, did you just say fake ballots?

BONDI: There could be. That's the problem.

They've had this reckless obsession with impeaching President Trump from before he was even sworn into office, and it's continued on and on.

They are dead set on taking out our great president, and we're not going to let it happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And you can expect that this is going to be a key focus for the top Democrat on the committee, Dick Durbin. We have just obtained part of his opening statement in which he says, quote, Ms. Bondi, you have had many years of experience in law enforcement, including nearly a decade of service as the attorney general in one of the largest states in the nation. But I need to know, would you tell President Trump no if you are faced with the choice between your oath to the Constitution and your loyalty to Donald Trump? And I think that that really sums up what today is going to be like in this hearing room. Sara?

SIDNER: Yes. And we should say our Kate Bolduan is going to be speaking with Dick Durbin in our next hour. So, we'll hear more from him.

What are some of the other key nominees that that stand out that you're expecting potentially some fireworks?

FOX: Yes. I mean, I think one of the most interesting hearings that we're going to see today is Senator Marco Rubio, who's going to go before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has been nominated to be Donald Trump's secretary of state.

And I think one of the key things to keep in mind about this hearing today for Rubio is that he is going to be walking into a room with colleagues who he has worked with over the years, colleagues who have a lot of respect for him on both sides of the aisle. So, that might be an opportunity where we actually see really substantial policy discussions and get some insight into what Donald Trump's future administration is going to look like when it comes to the relationship with China, when it comes to U.S. investments in the war in Ukraine.

I think that Marco Rubio is going to be in a really interesting position because he has traditionally been more of a foreign policy hawk than Donald Trump, who's more of an isolationist. And I think how he sort of threads that needle is going to be really interesting to watch today.

SIDNER: It'll be a little bit like the times of old, potentially, where nominees have some bipartisan support.

Lauren Fox, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Also breaking news coming in this morning, TikTok making plans now to shut down the app for all 170 million of its U.S. users and in just four days.

And more than 6 million people under a new fire threat today as winds in Southern California threatened to kick back up. Officials asking everyone to hold on for another 24 hours.

[07:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right. Breaking news, an earthquake in the world of social media that could be even bigger than we thought, reports that TikTok is planning to shut down its app to users in the United States this Sunday, the day a federal ban is scheduled to take effect.

Now, that ban was supposed to just mean that people couldn't update their apps. This goes much, much further. This means that people won't even be able to get in to TikTok. This comes -- this new report comes from the tech site, The Information.

CNN's Clare Duffy is here. This is a huge deal. This is much bigger than we thought it would be and much quicker.

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Yes, I imagine there are some creators on TikTok who are really freaking out now, if they weren't already.

[07:25:02]

ByteDance really had three options here. The first was to shut down TikTok all together when this ban went into effect. The next was to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner. They've expressed very little interest so far in doing that, although you may be hearing some negotiating soon. And the third option was to essentially do nothing and allow the app stores to ban it, because it was always really the app stores were on the hook to remove the platform from their app stores. And that's really what we expected was that people just wouldn't be able to download the app. If they got a new phone, they wouldn't be able to update it. But if you had the app on your phone, you would still be able to use it. Now, according to this new report, it sounds like people won't be able to access the app at all. If they go on there, they'll be redirected to a site explaining the ban. Creators may be able to download their data, their old videos, but they won't actually be able to access TikTok.

And this may be sort of a negotiating tactic on the part of ByteDance. They obviously are going to have a lot of upset creators, and as they're trying to potentially work out a plan with the new Trump administration that having lots of angry folks in the United States, 170 million American users could be, you know, a leverage point for ByteDance here.

We're already seeing creators move to a number of different alternative apps as people try to figure out sort of what's next. And it's not necessarily the Instagrams and the YouTubes that you would expect. There are a lot of new apps that are cropping up, including Lemonade, which is a ByteDance app like TikTok is, RedNote, which is actually a Chinese-owned app as well, and then Flip, Clapper, Fanbase. A number of these other apps that are also short form video creators can make money. So, it'll be really interesting if we do see this band go into effect, whether any of these ends up being sort of the winner over the mainstream apps that we know of.

BERMAN: Yes. Again, this is just such a huge difference from what almost everyone thought this was going to be, which was, you know, you won't be able to put the new app on the phone. It would get a little bit of clunky over weeks or months. But I can't get in to watch my cat videos as of Sunday. I mean, I think 170 million people are in for a big surprise.

Now, the inauguration is Monday, and as you said, we just don't know how this is going to change or what will play out here.

DUFFY: Yes, it's a really good, good question, a big question. And, again, let's talk about that second option there, that ByteDance could sell TikTok. Yesterday, we are seeing reports from Bloomberg, from the Wall Street Journal, that Chinese officials are now considering Elon Musk as a possible new American owner for at least part of the U.S. operations of TikTok, which is really interesting, right, because Elon Musk already owns X. He could add to his massive social media portfolio that he already has.

TikTok called this report pure fiction, but for a lot of logical reasons, it would make sense why the Chinese would consider Elon Musk, you know, a friendlier American owner than a lot of other folks who have put their hands up to buy this platform.

Elon Musk has huge business interests in China. It's the second largest market for Tesla. He does a lot of manufacturing there. And so China may see Elon Musk as the best possible option here if they don't win their Supreme Court case. BERMAN: All right, a lot going on, a lot to watch, and maybe a lot of unhappy people in just a few days.

Clare Duffy, thank you very much. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. She has defended the president-elect and promised to investigate the investigators who investigated him. Pam Bondi, President Trump's choice for attorney general, heads to the Hill to face questions today.

And pulling hope from the ashes, CNN was there as a firefighter who lost his entire home in the fire, made an incredible discovery that actually made him laugh.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's that? What's that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me see.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's it? That's it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my God. Oh my God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:00]