Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Palestinians Push Back Against Gaza Takeover Idea; Syria Sees Long Road Ahead as It Starts to Rebuild; Football Fans Gearing Up for Chiefs-Eagles Matchup. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired February 06, 2025 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: Many governing principles still in force in New Zealand today. This year's anniversary comes amid controversial efforts in recent months to reinterpret the treaty.
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: More now on our top story. U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial plan for a potential takeover of Gaza and the relocation of Palestinians there to neighboring countries drawing swift condemnation across the globe. Russia, China, Germany and Saudi Arabia say it would cause new suffering and hatred.
White House officials and top Republicans are attempting to clarify Mr. Trump's remarks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he, quote, very generously offered the U.S. to become responsible for the reconstruction of Gaza. And U.S. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is an uninhabitable place for human beings. Do you really think that that families can live their dream in a region that looks like this with no running water, no electricity?
It's a demolition site right now. It's not a livable place for any human being. I think it's actually quite evil to suggest that people should live in such dire conditions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Meanwhile, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed President Trump's plan during an interview on Fox News, Israel's Defense Minister is ordering the IDF to prepare a plan for the, quote, voluntary departure of Palestinians from Gaza.
MACFARLANE: Now, these are live pictures coming out of Rafah, where some residents are already trying to rebuild their lives. Defense Minister Israel Katz says any Gaza resident who wishes to leave will be allowed to do so. He also claimed that countries like Spain, Ireland and Norway are obligated to accept them as they were outspoken against Israel's actions before the ceasefire.
FOSTER: CNN's Jeremy Diamond has more on what Palestinians in Gaza are saying about Mr. Trump's proposal.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the ruins of Gaza, Sami Ramadan (ph) is determined to clear the rubble where his home once stood. And he is determined to stay.
We will not leave. Occupation and colonization will vanish, and we will stay, he says. As long as we live on this land, we will stay. We will die here. Even if in a tent, I will live in the ruins of my home.
Like so many here, he swiftly rejected President Trump's proposal to permanently displace Gaza's two million Palestinians in favor of a U.S. takeover, and the president's rationale for doing so.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What's the alternative? Go where? There's no other alternative. If they had an alternative, they'd much rather not go back to Gaza and live in a beautiful alternative that's safe.
DIAMOND (voice-over): But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have decided to return to their homes. Alongside tents pitched amid the rubble, they have already begun to rebuild. They say they are undeterred by the scale of the destruction.
I don't care what Trump says or anyone else. Look, my house is completely destroyed. There's not even a roof. But here I am. I'm staying.
Jordan and Egypt, the two countries Trump is pushing to accept Palestinian refugees, reiterating that Palestinians must be able to remain in Gaza amid what will be a years-long reconstruction.
While Trump says his proposal is a humanitarian one, human rights experts call it a crime against humanity.
NOURA ERAKAT, HUMAN RIGHTS ATTORNEY & PROFESSOR, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY: Their removal is equivalent to their forced exile. Permanent and forced exile, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the denial of their return, which is already a Palestinian condition.
DIAMOND: So, there's no question in your mind that what President Trump is suggesting here is ethnic cleansing?
ERAKAT: There should be no question in anybody's mind. Trump is saying it himself: that this is about the removal of Palestinians. He's calling Gaza -- a home to 2.3 million people, a home to an indigenous people -- a demolition site, because the U.S. funded that demolition by air, by sea, by ground. And now, in order to complete the project, they want to remove Palestinians altogether and then to claim ownership of it.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Trump's proposal is being heralded on the right wing of Israeli politics, where lawmakers have long pushed for the forcible displacement of Palestinians. BEZALEL SMOTRICH, ISRAELI FINANCE MINISTER (through translator): Those who carried out the most horrific massacre on our land will find themselves losing their land forever. Now, with God's help, we will work to permanently bury the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling Trump's proposal worth pursuing. But even as he stopped short of a full-throated endorsement, Netanyahu's broad smile said it all. He and the new U.S. president now speaking the same language.
Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MACFARLANE: Now dead bodies have been littering the streets of a major city in the Democratic Republic of Congo as fighting still grips the nation.
[04:35:00]
FOSTER: The U.N. says almost 3,000 people have been killed in Goma, which M23 rebels say they recently captured. So far, U.N. workers say about 2,000 bodies have been collected, but more remains are yet to be retrieved. The rebels declared a unilateral truce on Tuesday, but the U.N. said it's not holding. Meanwhile, the rebels say they captured another town southwest of Goma on Wednesday.
MACFARLANE: Well, neighboring Rwanda is being accused of supporting the rebels. But Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, told CNN he didn't know if his troops are in the DRC.
Now, Syria is looking at a long road ahead as it starts to recover from more than a decade of civil war and the brutal dictatorship of former leader Bashar al-Assad.
FOSTER: The fighting has left more than 300,000 people dead and forced millions from their homes. And as CNN's Clarissa Ward reports, rebuilding will be a Herculean task.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're just about a 15-minute drive here from central Damascus, and these suburbs of Damascus really were essentially the heart of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad.
And you can see how they've just been smashed to bits. They've been bombed. They were besieged. People were starved. They were forcibly displaced.
And now, being here on the ground, you get a sense of the full scale of the devastation, the kind of rebuild and reconstruction that we're talking about. Estimates had been around 250 billion, which once seemed like a figure no one could get their head around. But when you're here on the ground and looking at it, it's clear that it is going to cost hundreds of billions to rebuild. WARD (voice-over): What's not clear is where those dollars will come from. Syria's economy has been hollowed out by years of war, corruption and crippling sanctions.
In the suburb of Darayya, life has returned to the streets, but making a living is hard. Imad Abu Kalam (ph) runs a shawarma shop. Like most here, he is optimistic about the future but realistic about the challenges.
WARD: So, he's saying that it's going to take a lot of money and a lot of time to start to really rebuild Darayya.
WARD (voice-over): Much harder to rebuild are the broken lives. Darayya is a town of widows and orphans. Schools are starting to reopen, but few are paying salaries.
WARD: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
WARD: Thank you. Thank you.
According to UNICEF, 2 million children are now not going to school inside Syria. These kids told us that they actually just got out of school and were heading now to a place that's been set up by a charity. Essentially, it's a safe space where kids can come and play.
WARD (voice-over): It opened just weeks after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad and is run by INARA, a charity whose work I support, that focuses on children affected by war.
Child psychologist Rahaf Al-Abdallah (ph) says that many of the kids here show signs of aggression and are lacking love and attention at home, a result, she says, of the grinding hardship of 12 years of war.
Most women of Darayya are widows, so the mother took the role of the mother and the father, she tells us. So, she has to work, support, and raise the children. This all affects her wellbeing.
As the euphoria of liberation begins to subside, the hard work ahead is becoming clear, and communities like Darayya will need all the support they can get.
Clarissa Ward, CNN, Darayya, Syria.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: President Trump has fired another shot in a long-running culture war and delivered on a key campaign promise by declaring the war on women's sports is over.
MACFARLANE: He signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in women's sports while surrounded by dozens of women and young girls in athletic apparel. The order allows the federal government to deny funds to schools that allow trans athletes to play on women's teams. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes and we will not allow men to beat up, injure, and cheat our women and our girls. From now on, women's sports will be only for women.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Critics of transgender athletes claim they have an unfair advantage in sports, which hasn't been proven.
[04:40:00]
Research from 2023, whilst limited, found sex differences do develop after puberty, but many are reduced or erased over time by gender- affirming hormone therapy.
Still ahead, the drinking trend, known as zebra striping, will explain what it means and why it's growing in popularity.
MACFARLANE: And get ready to let the fur fly as dozens of dogs prepare to compete for the most valuable puppy in this year's Puppy Bowl.
FOSTER: We're going for the whip it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:45:00]
FOSTER: One of Chrissy's favorites, ACDC's classic Back in Black. She blares it out in the makeup room every single morning.
MACFARLANE: Hey, it wakes me up.
FOSTER: Yes, now Britain's Royal Mail has unveiled a series of stamps featuring the Australian rock band to mark the 50th anniversary of their debut album, High Voltage.
MACFARLANE: The collection includes album covers and other photos of the band. The stamps go on sale February 18th. ACDC is the eighth band to get their own set of stamps. Others include the Beatles, Queen, and the Spice Girls.
FOSTER: More people are starting to moderate how much alcohol they drink by doing what's known as "Zebra Striping."
MACFARLANE: It's a trend which is apparently catching on, even though most people don't seem to know what it is -- myself included. Our Anna Stewart, though, hit the pubs here in London to explain how it works.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A drink in the pub is at the heart of British culture, but the way people drink is changing. To survive, the industry needs to understand how, apparently, people zebra stripe.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is zebra striping? I don't know. Is it the thing you put on a black and white horse? Some form of dance? No, no idea.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What I would imagine is painting something in black and white. But apart from that, I don't really know.
STEWART: So say you're going to start the night drinking beer. This would be your black stripe. Then your next drink would be nonalcoholic. We have a nonalcoholic gin and tonic here. This is your white stripe.
And then perhaps for your next drink, go back to alcohol. Nice glass of red wine, another black stripe. Simple.
STEWART (voice-over): It's a tactic to moderate drinking that's becoming more popular. More than half of U.S. and U.K. consumers are likely to zebra stripe in January, and 61 percent are either definitely or likely to moderate alcohol this way in 2025.
But are people actually using the term?
BEN BRANSON, SEEDLIP FOUNDER: I've not come across anyone saying, actually, tonight I'm zebra striping. It's not catchy. I'm here going, oh, I don't like the phrase, but I'll have a better one.
But I think the ritual and behavior of alternating is brilliant. That's what you call moderation.
STEWART (voice-over): Ben Branson was at the forefront of the non- drinking drinks industry when Seedlip was launched in 2015, billed as the world's first nonalcoholic spirit. At the time, he had a lot of pushback.
BRANSON: This is never going to sell. This is a ridiculous idea. What is the point? We don't need nonalcoholic options. And so you fast forward to there being a thousand brands, a $23 billion category, global, growing, exciting.
STEWART (voice-over): Diageo is now the majority shareholder of Seedlip, and all the major players are invested in the alcohol-free space, promoting options for when people mix it up.
BRANSON: We saw this play out with Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, where sugar was concerned, probably back in the 90s. The big companies see what's going on, I'm sure.
I don't think they're worried, I think they are just working out how and where and when to -- yes, to get involved.
STEWART (voice-over): "Zebra Striping," as a term, may still be earning its stripes. Not everyone is convinced.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have an alcoholic drink, then you have a non- alcoholic drink, then you have a non-alcoholic, and so on and so forth. What is the point?
STEWART (voice-over): But the wider shift away from traditional drinking isn't going away.
Anna Stewart, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Nothing new, though, is it, really?
MACFARLANE: It's basically drinking in moderation, which is something all of us sensible people have been doing for some time. But look, it's good to have a phrase for it if it means the kids are going to latch on to it.
FOSTER: Yes. My great friend, growing up, she used to always have a glass of water between all of her drinks, and she never got a hangover.
MACFARLANE: Yes.
FOSTER: And she always says that was the --
MACFARLANE: It's because she had to keep up with you, Max, so, you know.
FOSTER: Not easy.
MACFARLANE: She's a smart girl.
Now, predicting the winner of this weekend's Super Bowl, we'll hear from a former champion and some wild animals.
FOSTER: Of course, a bit of everything today.
[04:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MACFARLANE: Welcome back. Football fans are focused on the Superdome in New Orleans ahead of Sunday's big game. Can Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs pull off the Super Bowl three-peat?
FOSTER: What do you think?
MACFARLANE: Yes, I do think.
FOSTER: I think so, too. Or will the Philadelphia Eagles return to their championship glory of 2018? CNN's Coy Wire spoke with Super Bowl XXXIV champion Marshall Faulk.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COY WIRE, CNN WORLD SPORT: You've played in this big game. You know all about the pressures that come with it. From all these superstars, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, all of them, they're human.
What are the distractions, the added pressures that come with this big stage?
MARSHALL FAULK, SUPER BOWL XXXIV CHAMPION: First of all, when you get here and you then find yourself out of your element, which is you're staying in a hotel for a week, and then you've got to play a game. What I like is that the teams who traveled, and we know that the Eagles went to Brazil, so they have some experience on what this is. But the Chiefs they've been here a bunch of times, so I think both teams can handle that.
But then it's taking care of your family, making sure that everybody's settled, making sure all of that stuff is taken care of, and then getting back into your routine, let's say Thursday. You understand there's a road trip, but then Thursday you start doing, you're trying to create some normalcy, and then making sure that this game, and everybody wants to say, oh, play it like it's a regular game. No, no, you don't.
You play it like it's your last game and that it's the most important game, and you go out there and hope that you can perform and rise to the occasion.
WIRE: Yes, because this might be the last time any of these guys make it back to this stage.
FAULK: You never know.
WIRE: How about your thoughts for the big game, the outcome?
FAULK: Looking forward to it, man. Like obviously the sprint's one and a half. I think by Saturday -- by Friday it'll be down to one. This game is so close.
WIRE: It is.
FAULK: It is so close. You know, when you think about what a Jalen Carter could do, what a Chris Jones could do, these quarterbacks and what they mean to the running and the passing game, and Mahomes, I call it the Mahomes magic. The dude has something, man.
He has something, and I'm just excited to see the game. And I'm like -- like I want to see -- I want to see a team win three in a row, but then I want to see Saquon -- I want to see Saquon like just have one of those epic games like he's been having in the playoffs, but I don't know if I could have both.
WIRE: Yes.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MACFARLANE: Well, there's one group in Pennsylvania that's hoping for a little divine intervention this Sunday.
FOSTER: Inside the Our Lady of Angels convent, the Sisters of St. Francis are praying for an Eagles victory.
MACFARLANE: They've adorned the statue of St. Francis with an Eagles hat and scarf, as you can see there. They've even updated the prayer that brought the team the championship in 2018.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SISTER DEBBIE KRIST, OUR LADY OF ANGELS CONVENT: It is in rallying behind Jalen Hurts that we overcome Patrick Mahomes. Where there are Chiefs passes, bless us with swift and brilliant interceptions.
CROWD: E-A-G-L-E!
FOSTER: The nun is hoping to follow her Super Bowl watch party on Sunday with a parade down Philadelphia's famous Broad Street.
MACFARLANE: Oh, I love that. And if you don't want to watch the Chiefs and the Eagles, the second biggest game this weekend will also take place on Sunday. It is, of course, the Puppy Bowl 21.
FOSTER: It is actually a thing, isn't it?
[04:55:00]
MACFARLANE: It's my kind of Super Bow.
FOSTER: Getting bigger every time.
More than 140 rescue puppies from 80 animal shelters will participate. That includes 11 special needs dogs like Jolene, who uses a wheelchair.
MACFARLANE: Oh, where is Jolene?
FOSTER: Sprinkle as well, blind and hearing impaired.
MACFARLANE: Team Fluff will face off against Team Rough in the hopes of finding their furry friends their forever homes and inspire viewers to adopt from shelters. Thank you, Max. The event will be shown across multiple networks that are part of CNN's parent company.
FOSTER: So, I feel really done now because I always struggle to figure out American football and even dogs understand it.
MACFARLANE: They do. So, all of these dogs hope to have a home at the end of the -- it's kind of on the line for them, right?
FOSTER: Yes.
MACFARLANE: It's not just a game.
FOSTER: Get watching.
MACFARLANE: Now, as we gear up for the big game, there is a time on a tradition in the U.S. of letting some big game animals predict the winner, sticking with the animal theme. And at this Wildcat Sanctuary in Sandstone, Minnesota, a pride of lions rescued from war-torn Ukraine when they were just cubs took down the goalposts of the Chiefs.
FOSTER: Very telling.
MACFARLANE: Interesting.
FOSTER: The big cats then ripped the posts in two. I'm sure they knew exactly what they were doing, with one lion running off with a chunk. And that apparently means they choose Kansas City as the champions.
Who's the arbiter of this? Had the Detroit Lions made it to the Super Bowl, there may have been a different outcome.
MACFARLANE: I like that. Very clever. And they're not the only large felines who think the Chiefs will three-peat.
This 13-year-old tiger named Misha snubbed the box with the colors, the logo of the Philadelphia Eagles, and walked off with the Chiefs box.
FOSTER: Nowhere to put your money now, don't you? According to the Des Moines Register, the animals of the Blank Park Zoo in Iowa have correctly predicted the winner of 11 of the 13 Super Bowls we've had.
MACFARLANE: Well, you go with the zoo, right?
FOSTER: Yes. The newspaper reports that three years ago, Misha went against her species and correctly chose the L.A. Rams over the Cincinnati Bengals.
MACFARLANE: Misha certainly knows a thing or two I think. That's where my money is going this time around. And, honestly, with a line-up like that, you wouldn't bet against them, would you? I certainly wouldn't.
FOSTER: It's always at that horrible hour, though, isn't it, the Super Bowl, for us?
MACFARLANE: Sadly, yes. We'll catch up.
FOSTER: Yes, we'll do that.
MACFARLANE: On the show. Join us for that. And thank you for watching us here on CNN NEWSROOM.
FOSTER: She's Christina Macfarlane.
MACFARLANE: Max Foster, CNN "THIS MORNING," up next.
[05:00:00]
