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Israeli Cabinet Meeting To Vote On Ceasefire-Hostage Deal; FireAid Benefit Concert Announced To Help SoCal Fire Victims; CNN Investigates Trump's Focus On Panama Canal; SpaceX Starship Spacecraft Disintegrates Minutes After Launch. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired January 17, 2025 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:30:00]
MOSHE LAVI, BROTHER-IN-LAW TAKEN HOSTAGE: -- enter those rallies, stages and give speeches for our loved ones. And also, when I speak with the media. It's been difficult, but we are -- we're strong and we'll keep being strong.
We're going to rejoice with the families who are going to see an end for their suffering over the next couple of weeks. But so many other families are going to keep fighting as well.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And, Moshe, what is your message for Omri? What is your message for your brother-in-law?
LAVI: My message to Omri is to stay strong, we are coming for you. We're coming to rescue you. So many people around the world know your name, know your daughter's name, Rona Najma (ph), and are praying for you, wishing you to return.
And I'm -- and believe me, we are returning every stone all across the world and putting our trust in elected officials like Donald Trump, President-elect Trump to do what they want -- and want to achieve, which is the release of the hostages.
And we do all that work in our country as well, holding our elected officials accountable.
KEILAR: Moshe, I am going to say a prayer for you. You have endured so much. Your family continues to endure so much. Thank you for talking to us about Omri, and we wish you so much luck.
LAVI: Thank you so much.
KEILAR: Moshe Lavi, we appreciate you being with us.
And we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:35:56]
KEILAR: The city of Los Angeles, living up to its nickname, the City of Angels. Donations are pouring in for fire disaster relief, in addition to the many food and clothing drives.
Companies and celebrities, such as Beyonce and Taylor Swift, are promising millions of dollars to rebuild -- to those rebuilding efforts and just announced a FireAid benefit concert with performances including native Angelenos, Billie Eilish and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani just donated half a million, following in the steps of his teammate, Freddie Freeman, who donated $300,000.
CNN's Julia Vargas Jones is at Dodger Stadium with more on how the city is really coming together on this -- Julia?
JULIA VARGAS JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brianna. It's -- the city is really coming together around this issue, and people are just happy to be here today.
I spoke with families who brought their kids, who have, you know, Little League aspirations who are just so happy to get a day where they can come out.
This is an event that's being put on by not just the Dodgers, but also other L.A. sports teams. And they're bringing people who were in either shelters or in evacuation areas. They brought about 800 people from these places into here today.
And also, they opened to the public. There's folks from both Altadena all the way to the Palisades, who are here today to get behind this one thing that L.A. has, which is this being united behind the sports.
This is going to be an event where there will be activities for children who have been out of school, whose schools have perhaps burned out in these fires, and they will get a little bit of a reprieve.
This, of course, as residents are just starting to -- to want some kind of normalcy and to see their homes and understand just the magnitude of what happened.
Look, we're so many days after this fire has started and we're hearing people getting impatient, Brianna, with where the -- the solutions are heading.
And you know, we heard from people saying, "I just want to go and see if my house made it or not."
At this point, the authorities are saying that they're not yet -- it's not yet safe for them to come home and to see what has been left of their -- of their properties.
They're saying there's hazardous materials, that there is still smoke in the air, that it's not safe for people to go in.
It might be several weeks. And this is what folks here are coming to grasp, that it might be a long time. We spoke with a mother with her two kids here who are both in the
Altadena school system. They play in the Little League. Not only was their arts center burned down, their Little League field was burned down.
They have to work now from a hotel room. She's a therapist and her husband works for the LAUSD. These are the kinds of families that are here today trying to come together with their community as well, hoping to reconnect with other families and share these experiences in a small moment of reprieve -- Brianna?
KEILAR: Yes, that is tough. They're just getting through their days.
Julia Vargas Jones, thank you for that report.
[14:39:14]
The Panama Canal is definitely on the radar of President-elect Trump, and it has been for a while. Ahead, new CNN reporting on what is behind Trump's threats to reclaim that critical waterway.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEILAR: Now to a CNN investigation into President-elect Trump's threats to regain control of the Panama Canal. Our Phil Mattingly traveled to Panama to dig into Trump's threats, including his refusal to rule out military force.
Phil speaks with the man who ran the canal for years, who says Trump's claims about the canal don't add up.
Here's Phil's report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the Panama Canal, a 51-mile corridor linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Its creation helped the United States become a global superpower.
(on camera): Most people don't get access to this. But what you're standing on top of right now, it's a modern marvel. It is an engineering miracle.
Only twice in the history of the Panama Canal has transit actually stopped. It's that invaluable to world trade, to the world economy, to geopolitics in general.
It also underscores why any president, President-elect Trump being one of them, cares so deeply about its operations.
(HORN)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE)
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Now, Trump's interest in the Panama Canal, it makes a lot of sense. It's 4 percent of global shipping. That's what comes through here on an annual basis. And 40 percent of U.S. containers come through this waterway.
(BELL RINGING)
[14:45:01]
MATTINGLY: But what people here unequivocally do not understand is why, after 25 years of smooth operations under Panama's control, all of a sudden, Trump is threatening to take it back and refusing to rule out using military force to do so.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Panama Canal is a disgrace.
MATTINGLY: He's railed against how the canal is being run and Chinas growing influence around the waterway.
TRUMP: They charge more for our ships than they charge for ships of other countries. They charge more for our navy than they charge for navies of other countries. They laugh at us because they think we're stupid, but we're not stupid anymore.
China's at both ends of the Panama Canal. China is running the Panama Canal.
MATTINGLY: I asked the man who was in charge of the canal for seven years, Jorge Luis Quijano, about those claims.
(on camera): Does the canal charge U.S. ships more than others?
JORGE LUIS QUIJANO, FORMER PANAMA CANAL ADMINISTRATOR: No.
MATTINGLY: Does the canal charge the U.S. Navy more than others?
QUIJANO: No.
MATTINGLY: Are there Chinese troops operating in the canal?
QUIJANO: No.
MATTINGLY: Does Beijing or the Chinese Communist Party operate the canal?
QUIJANO: Definitely no.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Trump's current Panama fixation has left officials here perplexed and frustrated, but also cognizant of the former real estate magnates roots in the country, long before his turn to politics.
TRUMP: Well, my interest in Panama really began when we had the Miss Universe contest in Panama, which I own. I own the Miss Universe, and it was one of the most successful contests we've ever had.
MATTINGLY: Not all of his business dealings in Panama have been a success.
(on camera): There's a complicating factor for Panamanian officials trying to figure out what the president-elect actually wants here.
And that starts right here, because this building, this building is the tallest building in Central America, and it is a building that used to be known as the Trump International Tower and Hotel, also home of the Trump Ocean Club. Now, it is neither.
(voice-over): The gleaming 70-floor resort marked Trump's first international hotel venture, a massive project, mired by mountains of litigation and confrontation that led to the removal of Trump's name from the property halfway through his first term in the White House.
As for Trump's attack on the terrible deal that set in motion the U.S. handover of the canal and its surrounding zone to Panama, that's rooted in an even longer standing preoccupation.
TRUMP: Jimmy Carter gave the Panama Canal away for nothing. Zero. In other words, they said, "We want the canal." He said, "Oh, OK," even though we spent the equivalent of many billions of dollars to build it.
MATTINGLY: Now, Trump is calling for Panama to reduce the tolls and rates U.S. ships pay to transit the canal, or else.
ILYA ESPINO DE MAROTTA, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR OF THE CANAL: That was one of our dredges working on it.
MATTINGLY: I put that to Ilya Espino de Marotta, deputy administrator of the canal.
(on camera): You know, one of the things that you hear from people in the United States is just all Trump wants is you just cut the rates a little bit for U.S. ships or make some adjustments there just for U.S. ships.
Is that a plausible option?
DE MAROTTA: It's not a possible option.
MATTINGLY: Why not?
DE MAROTTA: Because of the treaties.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): The same treaties Trump rails against mandate equal treatment of all vessels. No U.S. carve-outs.
(HORN)
MATTINGLY: Trump has also ignored that the canal today is far bigger than the one handed over by the United States.
(on camera): There was an expansion.
DE MAROTTA: Yes. MATTINGLY: The U.S. government played what role in the expanded version?
DE MAROTTA: OK. As far as -- financially, none.
MATTINGLY: More than half of the revenue that comes in from the Panama Canal doesn't come in through the one that the United States was integral in building. It comes in through the expansion.
DE MAROTTA: That's right.
This is the Atlantic side.
MATTINGLY (on camera): Marotta led the massive $5.2 billion project, which dramatically expanded the size of cargo ships that can traverse the canal.
(on camera): So when President-elect Trump says he's taking -- he wants to take the canal back, do you guys get to keep the one you did?
QUIJANO): No, no.
(CROSSTALK)
QUIJANO: No, no, no. We get -- we get to keep everything.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Phil Mattingly, at the Panama Canal, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[14:49:03]
KEILAR: And when we come back, a huge explosion of a SpaceX rocket, sending debris streaking across the sky, impacting airports in Florida and the Caribbean. We'll have more.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEILAR: "Eerie yet awesome." That is how an eyewitness described this, the burning fragments that fell from the sky after SpaceX's Starship exploded over the Atlantic Ocean.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is -- this is not right. Something happened. This exploded. This thing has exploded.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Video shows the breakup of the spacecraft just minutes after launch. Now the Associated Press is reporting a fire may have caused that explosion.
CNN's Pete Muntean has more on what went wrong during the test flight.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: This is significant because it could be the first time that falling space debris has ever had a major impact on air travel like this. Though not the first time that falling space junk has been seen by pilots.
Remember, it is the Federal Aviation Administration that controls the airspace in the United States. The same federal agency that grants the launch license to SpaceX. So there could be an interesting rub developing here.
Pilots reported seeing the view of Starship breaking up about 10 minutes into its test flight, 90 miles above the earth. That's when the link to Starship was lost.
And there was apparently real concern that some of this could fall on a commercial flight below, because the airspace in the Caribbean can be very busy, especially in the wintertime.
So the FAA put into place a rare sweeping delay for flights leaving Miami International Airport, also Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
And this was the peculiar line. "Flights were delayed an average of 45 to 60 minutes because of a rocket launch anomaly." A separate alert said this was due to debris.
[14:55:04]
I want you to listen now to this recording from liveatc.net of pilots telling air traffic controllers of the colorful display that was unfolding in front of them.
Listen.
(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)
PILOT: We just got a major streak going from at least 60 miles with all these different colors.
And just curious but it looked like it was coming towards us. But obviously because of the distance, just -- just letting you know.
(END AUDIO FEED)
MUNTEAN: The good news is this did not last for all that long.
And here's the statement from the FAA. "The FAA briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling. Normal operations have resumed."
The FAA says it was able to divert some flights away but also keep incoming flights out of the area of concern. This is exactly why the FAA restricts airspace and will slow flights for a launch.
Private space flight really makes the skies even more crowded than they already are. So this is the first time that this has happened, but maybe not the last.
The FAA says it establishes what it calls a Debris Response Area when something like this happens.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KEILAR: All right, Pete Muntean, thank you for that.
The ball is now in President-elect Trump's court as he's preparing to take office one day after a U.S. ban on TikTok is set to go into effect. His options for saving the app that he also once suggested banning.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
