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Third Day of Anti-Trump Protests; Getting Ready for the White House; Melania Trump as First Lady; ISIS Killing Civilians in Mosul; Three Dead after Explosion at Bagram Airfield. Aired 12-12:30a ET

Aired November 12, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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


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CYRIL VANIER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Protesters across the U.S. take to the streets once again, their anger directed at President- Elect Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, planning for the future. We're learning more about his potential cabinet members.

And what about that wall, by the way?

We hear from the experts on whether Trump can fulfill one of his key campaign promises.

Hello. Thanks for joining us. I'm Cyril Vanier. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.

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VANIER: For a third straight day, protesters have taken to the streets across the U.S. against the election of Donald Trump.

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VANIER (voice-over): And that was downtown Atlanta a short time ago. Similar scenes have been playing out in dozens of cities from coast to coast, those include Boston, Chicago, Miami, San Diego.

We are also getting live pictures from Portland, Oregon. Most of the protests have been peaceful. But protests in Portland on Thursday turned violent, with more than 2 dozen people arrested.

Meanwhile, Trump is moving ahead with his transition team. Vice President-Elect Mike Pence was put in charge of that on Friday.

As for Trump's vast business holdings, the Trump Organization says plans are underway to transfer control of more than 500 business interests to Trump's grown children, Eric, Ivanka and Donald Jr.

Trump's transition team is moving forward despite the protests and there have been several developments on Friday, among them hints of a compromise on ObamaCare. Jim Acosta explains.

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JIM ACOSTA, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just days after the election, a shakeup inside the Trump transition team. Vice president-elect Mike Pence has taken over Trump's transition efforts, bumping New Jersey Governor Chris Christie down to vice chairman, along with Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, Newt Gingrich and Dr. Ben Carson.

Sources say the move comes after infighting inside the transition over whether the team should hire previously anti-Trump Republicans, the so-called never-Trumpers, not to mention the still unfolding Bridgegate scandal in New Jersey.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: Mr. President, it was a great honor being with you.

ACOSTA: Another surprise for the new administration comes one day after Donald Trump met with President Obama. Following his conversation with the president, Trump is now open to keeping some portions of ObamaCare, something he vowed to repeal during the campaign.

Trump told "The Wall Street Journal": "Either ObamaCare will be amended or repealed and replaced."

But the incoming administration is facing a more pressing concern, continued protests against the president-elect flaring up across the country.

REINCE PRIEBUS, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Look, I everyone needs to just take a deep breath.

ACOSTA: RNC Chair Reince Priebus urged calm after the president-elect himself ratcheted up the tension, returning to Twitter to complain: "Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters incited by the media are protesting. Very unfair;" a gripe he walked back, later tweeting: "Love the fact that the small group of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud."

But Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says Trump must do more than just tweet. "If this going to be a time of healing," Reid says in a statement, "we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs, at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate."

Priebus, who helped persuade Trump to stop tweeting at the end of the campaign and now a front-runner for White House chief of staff, agreed demonstrators have a right to protest.

PRIEBUS: I understand the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights but this election's over now. And we have a president-elect who has done everything he can do over the last 48 hours to say, let's bring people together.

ACOSTA: CNN has learned Priebus and former campaign chairman Steven Bannon are the leading candidates for the powerful chief of staff position, with a source telling CNN that signs are pointing to Priebus.

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VANIER: I'm joined by Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Larry, tell me about transition dos and don'ts and how Donald Trump is doing so far.

LARRY SABATO, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Essentially, Trump is just getting into the meat of this. And so are many of his people. Yes, he's had a transition planning committee for some time. It's provided for by the federal government.

But let's just say that we weren't the only ones shocked by the Trump victory. The Trump high command, the Republican National Committee and Trump himself actually expected to lose. And they had spent far more time on their concession statement than in writing a victory statement.

VANIER: OK. But does that matter?

OK, he is taken by surprise and might have been taken by surprise, does it really matter in the way he conducts his transition?

Maybe he is one, two, three days late in the way he starts it but now he is in the thick of it.

SABATO: I think it matters --

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SABATO: -- a great deal. Donald Trump has never spent a day in public office, appointed or elected. So this is all new to him. And I think the visit to the White House with President Obama sobered him up in a way.

Now the transition committee has had a major change already. The person who was in charge, New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, is no longer in charge. He was clearly demoted from chairman to vice chairman.

And the new vice president-elect has been pointed to head up the transition committee, Mike Pence. In a way, that's a good thing because --

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VANIER: And that shows some political savvy, doesn't it?

SABATO: Well, it shows that he recognizes that there are so many things to do and that the transition chair has to work closely with the leaders of Congress. And it takes somebody like Mike Pence, who actually served 10 years in Congress, to accomplish it.

SABATO: And just briefly, Larry, are there any pitfalls, things that Donald Trump absolutely needs to avoid?

SABATO: Well, it would be helpful if somebody took his iPhone away from him again so he couldn't access Twitter in the middle of the night. He briefly got into trouble criticizing the protesters and the media who were reacting to his election. Clearly somebody got from his staff got to him or his family got to him and he cleaned it up with a second tweet in the morning.

But it would really be helpful if, as president, he decided not to use Twitter so often.

VANIER: Tell me, how far can his inner circle take him?

He has got three of his children and his son-in-law on his transition team. Like almost a quarter of his transition team are his family.

How wise is that politically?

And how far can that take him?

SABATO: This is not only unwise, it actually opens up a new can of worms, which is the mixture of his private business operations with government, which he is supposed to separate.

Why is that true?

Because he has already said that his business operations will be devolved upon the children and the children are in positions to know absolutely everything that's going to be happening in the new administration.

So, sooner or later, this will generate trouble.

VANIER: And tell me, Larry, about the wider transition. We're discussing who's going to be chief of staff, who might be secretary of state, the big cabinet names. But there are thousands of jobs that need to be filled across branches of federal government, names that we'll probably never know or care to remember.

How important is that and are they to the success of any administration?

SABATO: The real policymakers for 90 percent of what comes before the federal government in both domestic and foreign policy, they are the second tier, the third tier, the fourth tier.

And so it's critical to get the right people and the right people means those who will actually try to implement what you tell them to do. If you don't get people who understand what you think and are willing to do what you say, then you're going to have an unsuccessful administration. VANIER: Larry Sabato, thank you very much for joining us.

SABATO: Thank you, sir.

VANIER: Let's get back to the policies and specifically what we found out about a possible compromise on ObamaCare on Friday. Donald Trump now says that he may keep some parts of the Affordable Care Act intact, this despite repeatedly promising to throw it all out during the campaign.

The president-elect told "The Wall Street Journal" that after meeting with Mr. Obama on Thursday he is now reconsidering his stance. Here's what he added during an interview with the CBS News show, "60 Minutes."

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let me ask you about ObamaCare, which you say you're going to repeal and replace.

When you replace it, are you going to make sure that people with preconditions are still covered?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, because it happens to be one of the strongest assets.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're going to keep that?

TRUMP: Also with the children living with their parents for an extended period. We're going to --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're going to keep that?

TRUMP: Very much try and keep that (INAUDIBLE).

Adds cost but it's very much something we're going to try and keep.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And there's going to be a period, if you repeal it and before you replace it, when millions of people --

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TRUMP: We're going to do it simultaneously. It will be just fine. That's what I do. I do a good job. You know, I mean, I know how to do this stuff. We're going to repeal it and replace it.

And we're not going to have like a two-day period and we're not going to have a two-year period where there's nothing. It will be repealed and replaced. And we'll know. And it will be great health care for much less money.

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VANIER: And proof of how much this matters to Americans, the threat of a repeal of ObamaCare sent more than 100,000 Americans rushing to buy health insurance on Wednesday. That's the day just after the U.S. election and it's the single biggest turnout so far during this year's sign-up period.

At least 25 American cities have seen large groups of anti-Trump protests since Tuesday's election. Our Gary Tuchman went out --

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VANIER: -- on the streets of Atlanta to find out why people are so upset.

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GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A combination of anger and disbelief on the streets of Atlanta, Georgia, hundreds of people marching through the city, expressing their opposition to Donald Trump being president.

These people have been marching for about two miles right now. They're angry because he became president and also they can't believe he became president. Most people acknowledged to us they expected when they went to bed Tuesday night or stayed up early into Wednesday morning that Hillary Clinton would be president.

What's interesting is that a lot of people here didn't vote for Hillary Clinton. Some people didn't vote at all.

But there are a lot of angry Hillary Clinton supporters here, feeling the system betrayed them. When we asked them how do you feel the system betrayed you, the one thing they continuously cite is that it appears that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.

And if she does, it's the second time in 16 years -- Al Gore in 2000 -- a Democrat won the popular vote but the Republican won the election. So it's been peaceful but the anger continues to simmer here in Atlanta, Georgia. This is Gary Tuchman, CNN.

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VANIER: Coming up, how realistic is a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico?

Donald Trump says the border will be a priority during his first days in office. The reaction from Mexico -- next.

Plus: from a successful model to the next U.S. first lady. We'll examine Melania Trump's path to the White House.

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VANIER: A fundamental part of Donald Trump's campaign was his promise to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. And he's not backing down on that. He says that border security will be a priority during his first days in office. Ed Lavandera has more now on the reaction in Mexico.

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TRUMP: We're going to build a great wall.

The wall just got 10 feet higher.

Maybe someday they're going to call it the Trump Wall.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The border between the United States and Mexico stretches nearly 2,000 miles; nearly 700 miles of it is already covered with some form of border wall or steel fencing. But Donald Trump wants more.

TRUMP: On day one, we will begin working on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall.

MICHAEL DEAR, CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNER: Well, of course it can be done --

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Professor Michael Dear is an expert in city and regional planning and the author of the book, "Why Walls Don't Work."

DEAR: A large concrete structure which might be 25 feet high would be very intensive in terms of resources and money.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): In fact, CNN has surveyed a number of civil engineers, architects and academics about what may be most feasible. The wall would mostly likely need to be made of precast cement wall panels, 25 feet tall, 10 feet wide, eight inches thick, requiring 339 million cubic feet of concrete.

The panels would be held together by 5 billion pounds of reinforced steel with an estimated cost of at least $10.5 billion and possibly much more.

Trump supporters say they can't wait to see the beginning of the --

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LAVANDERA (voice-over): -- border wall construction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That wall will get built and Mexico's going to pay for that wall.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he will try to build a wall and I think he will try to secure our borders.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If people want to come into the country, they should do it legally.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): But in Mexico, the idea of a wall is often shrugged off as a bump in the road north.

Jose Torres Hernandez says he has illegally crossed into the U.S. many times to find work picking fruits and vegetables. He says a wall might make crossing over a little harder but immigrants like him would always find a way to find work to feed their families.

And Armando Flores Gutierrez says he has crossed the border 25 times, starting when he was just 16, to work farm fields all over the U.S. He says keeping people like him out of the country will only hurt the U.S.

He says if he tries to remove all of the Mexicans in the United States, Donald Trump will realize what a huge mistake that is and how much the U.S. economy depends on Mexican immigrants -- Ed Lavandera, CNN, Mexico City.

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VANIER: And Donald Trump's wife, Melania, is also preparing for her new life. On Thursday, she met with first lady Michelle Obama in the White House, this while Mr. Trump was meeting with President Obama. CNN's Randi Kaye takes a look at Ms. Trump's path to first lady.

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MELANIA TRUMP, WIFE OF PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: It will be my honor and privilege to serve this country. I will be an advocate for women and for children.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Melania Trump, just days before learning she would be the next first lady of the United States. At this speech in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, she spoke of her love for this country as a little girl growing up under communist rule in Slovenia.

M. TRUMP: We also knew about the incredible place called America. America was the word for freedom and opportunity. America meant if you could dream it, you could become it.

KAYE: Throughout the race Melania was somewhat of a reluctant campaigner, often staying home with the couple's young son, Barron. The Trumps, reportedly, have a cook, but no nanny. Early on in the campaign she was more often seen than heard. In fact, it wasn't until the Wisconsin primary in April that Melania officially stumped for her husband.

M. TRUMP: I'm very proud of him. He's hard worker, he's kind, he has a great heart. He's tough, he's smart.

KAYE: In March, during an interview with Anderson Cooper, Melania shared how she feels about being compared to Jackie Kennedy.

M. TRUMP: I see around that they compare me to Jackie Kennedy. It's an honor but, of course, we are in 21st century and I will be different. And she had the great style and she did a lot of good stuff, but this is different time now.

KAYE: As a Slovenian immigrant, Melania will be only the second foreign-born first lady and the first in modern times. President John Quincy Adams' wife, Louisa Adams, was also born outside the United States in London. She was the first lady nearly 200 years ago.

Melania Knavs, as she was formerly known, became a naturalized citizen in 2006. At 5' 11", she was once a successful model, meeting Donald Trump at New York Fashion Week party back in 1998. She told "People" magazine she thought he had "sparkle" and later became his third wife.

Melania once graced the covers of glamor magazines and sold her own line of jewelry on QVC. She also appeared in this AFLAC commercial.

As first lady, Melania, who is 46, plans to focus on women and children. She hopes to end cyber bullying and teach children to treat others with compassion.

M. TRUMP: We have to find a better way to talk to each other, to disagree with each other, to respect each other.

KAYE: From Fifth Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue, Melania Trump will soon be first lady -- Randi Kaye, CNN, Orlando, Florida.

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VANIER: We showed you earlier the protests taking place across the U.S. There is another type of protest going on as well. Some people have taken to wearing safety pins as you see there. It's meant to show support for women, Muslims, people of color, groups that felt singled out, potentially threatened during the campaign, some of which who have reported harassment since Election Day.

This is similar to what happened in the U.K. after the Brexit vote.

As the battle for Mosul continues in Iraq, the U.N. says ISIS is once again targeting civilians. The gruesome details ahead.

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VANIER: As the battle for Mosul rages on in Iraq, there are more reports that ISIS is executing civilians. The U.N. said Friday that the terror group killed at least 60 civilians in the city this week. Some of the victims' bodies were hung at intersections, bearing notes alleging that they had collaborated with Iraqi forces.

Witnesses tell CNN that some were killed for just having cellphones. News of the atrocities comes as anti-ISIS forces pushed into the Kadacea (ph) and Al-Bakraoui neighborhoods in Eastern Mosul.

These images from the Iraqi defense ministry appear to show civilians cheering Iraqi forces as they advance into Eastern Mosul.

ISIS is losing ground but Iraqi gains come at a cost. Fierce fighting with the terror group has put both civilians and Iraqi troops in harm's way. From near Mosul, our Michael Holmes has this look at a hospital rushing to save lives. And a warning: his report contains graphic images.

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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN HOST (voice-over): Casualties of war: the weapon, an ISIS favorite, the car bomb.

The triage room is full. And yet the ambulances keep coming. The doctors and medics have to decide who is closer to death and one operating theater at this hospital 40 kilometers from Mosul.

This man has shrapnel wounds, stitched up. He will live.

They have two other brand-new operating theaters here but not the equipment need to use them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need equipment. But as soon as possible. We have only this with two beds.

HOLMES: Outside are two other Iraqi soldiers from the same unit that has been hit. This man wounded by a car bomb days earlier. Their will to return to the fight undiminished.

He says he is ready to fight again and not just in Mosul but everywhere they are. They are dangerous to the world.

This hospital isn't used to this. Once a small-town clinic, now dealing with combat casualties. And it's the only non-ISIS held hospital in the entire province.

On this day, more than a dozen wounded soldiers brought in; 70 arrived in the last week.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is helping with advice, equipment and staff but they and the hospital workers fear a flood not of soldiers but of civilians caught in the crossfire. At the moment, unable to get out wounded or not.

It would be hard to find a better example of what this war is doing to civilians. This family was in a house hit by a shell. These two men were injured but it got worse. His sisters, age 16 and 27, were both killed.

UINIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe more patients won't get access to health care. That is my biggest concern. I think right now, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

HOLMES (voiced-over): Later we see the soldier again, outside, emotional. He knows some of the new wounded and learned two good friends could be dead -- . Michael Holmes, CNN, Al-Shekhan (ph), Northern Iraq.

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VANIER: At least three people are dead after an explosion at the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan; 13 more have been wounded. NATO says the blast hit Bagram airfield early in the morning a few hours ago. A local Afghan official says it's unclear the nationalities of the victims for the moment or even what caused the explosion. But previously the Taliban --

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VANIER: -- had claimed responsibility for previous attacks near the base. We'll bring you more information on this as soon as we get it.

And far-reaching global weather impacts are expected as the long- awaited La Nina has finally arrived.

How do I even know this?

Well, meteorologist Derek Van Dam from our International Weather Center here at CNN told me. That's why --

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DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We had discussions during the break there. It has arrived, La Nina, this is the counterpart or the antithesis to El Nino, which was kind of the buzzword in 2015, if you recall. It set record-setting temperatures across the globe.

And it all stems from the warming of the Central and Eastern Pacific waters. We're talking about El Nino. But now, scientists and meteorologists are starting to see the reverse take place, La Nina.

So we were warned that La Nina and its effects across the globe were about to be set into phase but now we have actually seen an advisory issued by the Climate Prediction Center in the United States, where they have actually observed this cooling of the Central and Eastern Pacific waters, which is the indication to scientists and meteorologists that we have a La Nina season.

So why do we care?

I'm going to try my best to explain it to you. But first we need to compare what El Nino is compared to La Nina. So we're going back to El Nino and the coming months, if we were to be in that El Nino phase, we would have cool and wet weather across the southern United States. Certainly not happening right now. We'll get to that in a second.

Dry and warm weather across much of Indonesia into Southeast Asia. Now let's go into the La Nina phase that we are currently entering into and we start to notice the Pacific Northwest of North America starts gets wet. And dry and cool conditions continue across Australia, El Nino here for the summer months across North America also impacting that region.

But you can see that La Nina will continue to bring a very warm stretch of weather across Eastern Australia, which is not good for brush fires, for instance. And look how it impacts the Atlantic hurricane season as well. During the El Nino, we see the jet stream shifting southward and that increases the wind shear. Hurricanes don't like that. We typically see a decrease in hurricanes across the Atlantic.

But with La Nina, we see the decreased wind shear, which means we could have an uptick in Atlantic hurricanes. Also the reason why we're coughing when we head outside (INAUDIBLE) is because La Nina could be playing a part in the wildfires that are spreading smoke across the Metro Atlanta region as we speak.

That's why we've got that thick haze overhead.

VANIER: Derek Van Dam, thank you very much. Crystal clear, can't complain. Thanks a lot.

All right, thanks for watching, I'm Cyril Vanier. And I'll be back with the headlines after the break. You're watching CNN.

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