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CNN This Morning
Today: Israeli Security Cabinet To Vote On Ceasefire-Hostage Deal; Today: Kristi Noem Testifies At DHS Secretary Confirmation Hearing; SpaceX Fail: Starship Disintegrates, Delays Flights. Aired 5- 5:30a ET
Aired January 17, 2025 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:33]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Friday, January 17th.
Right now on CNN THIS MORNING:
Agreement reached. Israel and Hamas moving forward with a ceasefire and hostage release deal, though airstrikes killing dozens of civilians in Gaza.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA WHITE, UFC CEO: The president is now on TikTok.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's my honor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: TikTok flip flop. President-elect Trump trying to save the app after he backed a national ban.
And Capitol Hill intrigue. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee booted. Was Mike Turner, the victim of a Mar-a-Lago hit job.
(MUSIC)
HUNT: All right. It is 5:00 a.m. here on the East Coast.
This is a live look at Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where it is noon as. Of course, everyone there waits for this ceasefire and hostage release deal to go into effect.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us on this Friday. Happy Friday.
The deal is on. The Israeli prime ministers office confirming that an agreement has been reached with Hamas for a ceasefire and a plan to release some of the remaining hostages.
Benjamin Netanyahu ordering his security cabinet to convene this morning to approve the three-phase plan. The full cabinet expected to vote tomorrow. That leaves very little time to implement phase one that's set to take effect on Sunday.
That initial phase will last 42 days, with a pause in hostilities and the release of 33 hostages. In exchange, 1,000 Palestinian prisoners will be freed from Israeli jails. Humanitarian aid will begin pouring into Gaza.
President-elect Trump insisting this agreement could not have happened without his intervention. President Biden doesn't see it that way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I told him what I was doing, what I thought could happen, but what we did, we brought in the people or his going to be his national security people. We brought them in closer to tell them what was happening. As we hand this off.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: It was so ungracious of Biden to say, oh, he did it. He didn't do anything. If I didn't do this, if we didn't get involved, the hostages would never be out. They would have never come out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Since the announcement of a deal this week, Israeli strikes have killed at least 86 people in Gaza, marking the highest daily death toll in over a week.
Let's bring in Joel Rubin, former deputy assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs in the Obama White House.
Joel, good morning. Wonderful to see you.
JOEL RUBIN, FORMER OBAMA DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATRE FOR LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS: Good morning, Kasie.
HUNT: So let's talk about the very latest here, because even as people were going to sleep on the East Coast last night, it was unclear whether the Israelis were going to be moving forward with this cabinet vote. Now, we know 5:00 a.m. here on the East Coast, noon over there, that that is the plan that he is saying this is what he wants to do, what's changed? And are you confident this is going to move forward quickly?
RUBIN: Well, thankfully we have a deal. You're right. It's going to go to the security cabinet in Israel and then it will go to the full cabinet and move forward.
You know, frankly, the delay in many ways was the Netanyahu gambit. I think, frankly, he wanted to show his right flank that he was holding out for as long as he possibly could, because he does have a rebellion amongst the right. In fact, the far right party in Itamar Ben-Gvir, his party threatened to leave the coalition, but that won't collapse the government. So it's going to go forward. Unfortunately, it looks like the release
of the hostages may be delayed by a day as well to Monday for this to really go into effect, but it's solid now and it's going to go forward.
HUNT: Well, is there -- was there anything behind the scenes that suggests that perhaps Monday was always the hoped for day, considering President Trump will be inaugurated by mid-afternoon?
RUBIN: Yeah. You know, Kasie, this is clearly tied up in American politics. And I have to say, when President-elect Trump says that he did it, it's -- he has it in reverse. Quite frankly, this has been the Biden plan since May.
And what President-elect Trump did throughout the past half year was ignore it, push back on it. And his allies mocked it.
Now, finally, Donald Trump signed up to this agreement, this deal, this structure, and supported the Biden approach. And so, now, we see it coming together. And that's American politics driving this.
And so I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is quite aware of that. And by having it going forward on Monday, clearly he's giving Donald Trump a gift. He's also doing it in a way where it still coincides with President Biden's term.
HUNT: One, there was some analysis I was reading out of Israel around why this is able to happen the way it is right now, because obviously, Netanyahu has been concerned about the collapse of his governing coalition, right? Of losing power, and that there may be some suggestion that part of why the right is willing to go along with this now is because they hope to get more from Donald Trump in the long run, and they don't want to anger him right now.
[05:05:10]
Is there truth to that?
RUBIN: You know, I think there was a positioning and a sort of a questioning about what they could get from Donald Trump when he becomes president. And I do believe that the fact that the Trump team closed that gap with Biden and said, there's no daylight between our view on the ceasefire and President Biden's that made them realize they had no room to hide, frankly.
But yeah, you know, this is just phase one, and its going to be now implemented by Donald Trumps team. And well see how much pressure they actually put on Israel to try to continue the cease fire negotiations to a further, fuller cease fire. That really is going to be up to Trump and his team.
And frankly, they don't have a full team on board either. At state, it's going to be a completely new negotiators, and so I think you're always going to see the prime ministers team pushing that edge to see how much more delay they can have. HUNT: But, Joel, we understand that in this batch of release, there
will be, of course, this release of hostages. Some of them will be remains. There still are likely to be at least one American held in Gaza in the wake of this. What is the hope for them?
RUBIN: You know, Kasie, the expectation is 33 will be let out in the first six weeks. That still means that there will be 60, 63, 65 more individuals and remains of individuals in Gaza. And so that is -- it's the darkness of this whole horrible conflict that that is the leverage that continues to maintain a negotiation to get them all out.
So that will be on the Trump team, that will be on the prime minister, and that will be on Hamas and all of our allies in the region to keep these negotiations going to ultimately get all of the hostages out and end the war and give -- give relief to the Palestinian people.
HUNT: All right. Joel Rubin, for us this morning, Joel, very grateful. Thanks for your time. Thanks for being here. Have a good weekend.
All right. Straight ahead here on CNN this morning, a surprise shakeup. Speaker Mike Johnson taps a new leader for the House Intelligence Committee. Were the chess pieces moved to make the president-elect happy?
Plus, fire in the skies. What went wrong with one of Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets?
And in a matter of hours, another critical Trump nominee will be under the microscope. How Kristi Noem could defend his sweeping immigration agenda?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. KRISTI NOEM (R-SD): Leadership has consequences. It matters who's in the White House. President Donald J. Trump is the leader we need for such a time as this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[05:12:03]
HUNT: All right. Welcome back.
With just days until President-elect Trump's inauguration, another key pick for his cabinet. Facing a confirmation hearing in just a few hours, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem will testify before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Her hearing was postponed earlier this week because of a delay with her FBI background check. Senate Democrats will have a chance to grill her on issues like immigration, but many concede Donald Trump's cabinet choices all seem to be on a glide path to confirmation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): I don't hear a lot of hard questions coming from the other side of the aisle that would give me confidence that any of these nominees will be subject to the kind of vetting that I believe they should.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): The Trump transition team has mounted a relentless campaign of pressure, threatening and intimidating my colleagues. So as of today, I would predict that they may well be confirmed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Joining us now to discuss this and all things Trump transition, Stephanie Lai, White House correspondent for "Bloomberg News".
Stephanie, good morning.
STEPHANIE LAI, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, BLOOMBERG: Good morning.
HUNT: Thank you so much for being here.
So let's start with Kristi Noem here. What to expect from her on this position. Homeland security secretary is one that in the first Trump administration became very much a center of controversy, in no small part because of family separations. And, of course, we know that Donald Trump has talked about a plan for mass deportations.
What do you think are going to be the main, you know, places where Kristi Noem may come under pressure today?
LAI: I certainly think that mass deportation is going to be the hot topic. You know, I think when it comes to some issues like family separation, Donald Trump has already distinguished himself from his first term in terms of what he would do. And he's sort of said, like, you know, we don't want to separate families, but we have to do something about border security.
And so when it comes to her confirmation, I don't necessarily know if its going to be the fiery, you know, back and forth that we would expect from some of these other candidates, just given the fact that, you know, immigration and border security has become more of a bipartisan issue. And if you look at the Senate Democrats on the committee, it's not necessarily the more partisan leaning members.
HUNT: Yeah, no. Very interesting.
Stephanie, you have some new reporting as well. I mean, one of the big things that were looking at for the Trump transition is what are these executive orders going to look like starting on day one? That's Monday after he is sworn in as president of the United States.
You're looking at cryptocurrency and you write this -- this order, this executive order expected to name crypto as a national imperative or priority, strategic wording intended to guide government agencies to work with the industry, according to people familiar with the matter. It's also slated to create a crypto advisory council to advocate for the industry's policy priorities, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an order that's not yet public. Now, this is a switch from where Trump was in 2019 when he put this out on what was then Twitter.
I think I am not a fan of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activities.
[05:15:06]
So this is a big switch. What's driving it, and what's the impact?
LAI: Yeah, I mean, like you mentioned, this is the culmination of Donald Trump's shift on the topic of cryptocurrency. A lot of this has come from his advisers. He surrounded himself with people who really know the industry well. And the fact that the crypto industry is getting more involved in politics really does say a lot about how he and other politicians have changed their mind on cryptocurrency.
And it seems like the mainstream idea now is that we want to create some sort of framework to guide cryptocurrency into this next Congress. And so, you know, looking at this executive order, he's basically said, we're going to make it a priority. It's not a secret. You know, he's talked about this on the campaign trail, but it really does seem like he's making good on the promises that he had suggested to people within the industry. You know, back in, say, 2023.
HUNT: One of the other things, of course, that we expect to see executive orders on immediately is immigration, which, again, is going to be a topic on Capitol Hill today. One of the things about that is, as you mentioned, a potential for bipartisanship.
I want to show you something Kevin McCarthy said on Fox News. He was talking about John Fetterman, the senator from Pennsylvania who has emerged as a particularly interesting figure in all of this. Let's watch what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEVIN MCCARTHY (R), FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: I think the Democrats in the Senate are going to vote for it. Listen to Fetterman. I mean, Fetterman should be the leader of the Democratic Party if they ever want to win the majority again.
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: Don't give him any ideas. But that's a good point.
MCCARTHY: But they are so out of touch. I would expect the Democrats to talk like this a year ago before the election. Have they not heard what the voters have said?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So he's talking, of course, about immigration legislation facing the Senate. There's the Laken Riley Act, and there will also be some other things that move forward in a larger bill.
But what do you make of how Fetterman is positioning himself and pressure on Democrats to potentially vote in different ways on this issue?
LAI: Yeah, I mean, I think as a lot of Democrats are starting to realize, the 2024 election in as many ways, was a mandate on how people are handling border security. You know, there's been so much discussion about crime at the border and what its impacts are. Now, I think Democrats are still leaning into this rhetoric of, you know, Republicans are taking it too far.
But I think, you know, as Kevin McCarthy mentions, as John Fetterman is starting to position himself towards, you know, there is sort of an agreement that there has to be something done. And if we even look back to 2024, when Senate Democrats and Republicans had tried to come together to make a deal, you know, it does seem like something that is going to be continued to be discussed and negotiated into this next Congress.
HUNT: All right. Stephanie Lai for us this morning -- Stephanie, thanks very much for being here. I appreciate it.
All right. Still ahead here on CNN this morning, a spectacular failure. How a SpaceX test flight gone wrong created incredible scenes in the sky.
Plus, TikTok's final weekend before it faces a ban in the United States. But there does seem to be an 11th hour plan to save it. We'll discuss.
And how you can watch big name stars like Lady Gaga unite to raise money for wildlife --- wildfire relief efforts.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:22:36]
HUNT: All right, 22 minutes past the hour. Here's your "Morning Roundup".
With only three days left in office, President Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders convicted on crack cocaine related charges. He calls their sentences disproportionately long. In December, he commuted the sentences of 1,500 other people who are under house arrest.
Beautiful but incredibly problematic. A SpaceX Starship rocket exploding minutes after launch in Texas, forcing some commercial flights and other flights to be diverted.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just got a major streak, going from at least 60 miles, there's all these different colors, just curious. It looked like it was coming towards us. (END AUDIO CLIP)
HUNT: Well, that's not alarming or anything. People could see this in Turks and Caicos as well.
Last night, Elon Musk said there may have been an oxygen leak.
And this birds --
(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)
HUNT: Billie Eilish sticking together with her hometown of L.A.
She will help headline a new fire aid benefit concert to raise money for wildlife relief efforts. Also expected to take the stage, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Jelly Roll, Dave Matthews, Stevie Nicks and many more. The show, planned for January 30th, and it will be streamed so you can watch.
All right. Ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING: a ban on TikTok looming this Sunday. Why is President-elect Trump now in TikTok's corner after he wanted it banned?
Plus, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee removed from his post. Was it an order from Mar-a-Lago?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: It's new Congress? We just need fresh horses in some of these places. It's not a President Trump decision. This is a House decision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:29:07]
HUNT: All right. It is 5:28 a.m. on the East Coast. A live look at Indianapolis, Indiana, where it is 5:28 a.m. as well.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. Millions of TikTok users in the U.S. still hoping President Biden, President-elect Trump or the Supreme Court will step in at the last minute to stop the ban on the app that takes effect Sunday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow. I feel like I'm in like a kind of zombie apocalypse.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not ready!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Oh, man. About 170 million Americans use TikTok. They are now looking for
alternatives like something called RedNote. That is a social media platform that is actively monitored by China's government.
Democratic senators have been pushing for a 90-day extension as the clock on TikTok ticks downward.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ED MARKEY (D-MA): We're willing to work with President-elect Trump, and try to extend that deadline as well. This should be bipartisan. This should not be an issue which we are.
