A Fragile Peace
49:04 Share

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their U.S.-based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.

Time to move? Skip the hassles of selling during the holiday season and sell your home directly to Opendoor. Request an all-cash offer in minutes, close, and get paid in days. You can even pick your close date so you can move after New Year's. Start your move at opendoor.com or download the Opendoor app. Opendoor is represented by Opendoor Brokerage, Inc., licensed 0206-1130 in California, and Opendoor Brokerage, LLC, in its other markets. Terms and conditions apply.

It's Wednesday, November 27th, right now on CNN This Morning. We are changing the face of the Middle East. A fragile peace. Israel's Prime Minister celebrates a temporary ceasefire with Hezbollah. And... Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing. He's willing to go to jail. I'm willing to put him in jail. Tough talk. The nation's next border czar threatening to jail anyone who tries to block Trump's mass deportations. And... The political atmosphere was pretty brutal, and that's not an excuse.

Looking for answers, the leaders of Kamala Harris' failed campaign open up about what they think went wrong and... It's going to be called the Arrows Tour. See you there. The end of an era, Taylor Swift winding down her monumental tour, raising questions about what comes next for the superstar.

All right, we are ticking close to 6 a.m. here on the East Coast, a live look at the Washington Monument. I think it's 6 o'clock the airplanes can start taking off on this Thanksgiving Eve from Ronald Reagan National Airport, which is behind the Lincoln Memorial in that shot. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. At this hour, the truce between Hezbollah and Israel seems to be holding. Celebrations on the streets of Beirut as the two-month U.S.-backed ceasefire pauses more than a year of conflict under

Under the terms of the deal, Hezbollah forces will withdraw from southern Lebanon as they're replaced by the Lebanese military. In return, Israeli forces will leave Lebanese territory. In a sign of just how fragile this piece is, the Israeli military reporting their forces opened fire on unidentified vehicles attempting to enter an area the IDF considers restricted. And new this hour, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group responsible for the October 7th terror attack against Israel,

They're now saying they're willing to cooperate with, quote, any efforts, end quote, to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailing the deal in Lebanon as a victory in Israel's larger war against terror. And now Hezbollah is no longer, and it will help us with the task of bringing our hostages back.

We were attacked in seven fronts and we retaliated. We are changing the face of the Middle East.

For President Biden, this deal is a breakthrough in a region that has seen little progress since the Hamas terror attacks almost 14 months ago. As Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, writes this morning, quote, with just 55 days left in office, Mr. Biden is racing against the clock of history. He would prefer to be remembered as the president who set the Middle East on a path toward a lasting settlement of longstanding animosities than one who turned over a mess to his successor.

That reality and President Biden's hope that he could still broker a wider historic legacy defining peace clear in his Rose Garden remarks yesterday. Today's announcement brings us closer to realizing the affirmative agenda that I've been pushing forward during my entire presidency. A vision for the future of the Middle East where it's at peace and prosperous and integrated across borders. It reminds us that peace is possible. Say that again, peace is possible.

As long as that is the case, I will not for a single moment stop working to achieve it. In less than two months though, the Oval Office will once again be Donald Trump's. The president-elect was reportedly briefed on the terms of the deal earlier this week. One U.S. official telling CNN, foreign policy analyst and Axios reporter Barak Ravid this, quote, the Trump team agreed this is good for Israel and Lebanon and for the national security of the U.S. and that doing it now and not later will save lives. Axios.

Axios also reporting that a Trump transition official claimed Hezbollah agreed to the deal after Trump won because it knew the terms of a deal would only get tougher under Trump.

All right, our panel is here to discuss Stephen Collinson, CNN Politics senior reporter, Mario Parker, managing editor for the economy and government at Bloomberg, Jaime Moore, former Southern Regional Communications Director for Joe Biden's 2020 campaign, and Mike Dubke, former Communications Director for the Trump White House. Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here this morning. Stephen Collinson, I want to talk about this big picture here to start because, of course, President Biden wants this to be part of his legacy as he is going

as he is leaving the world stage. But there are some signs that part of why Benjamin Netanyahu was willing to do this, part of why Hezbollah was willing to do this now, is not because of President Biden, but because of incoming President-elect Trump. How do you look at it?

Certainly, Prime Minister Netanyahu knows that Trump wants these wars ended soon, if not by the time he gets into office. I think, however, the reason that U.S. diplomacy is working now when it wasn't before is that the incentives for the parties have shifted. Both Israel and Hezbollah want this war to end. The IDF is exhausted. Israel has been at war for a year. Hezbollah has been completely decimated by the Israeli attacks. It can't stand much more.

The question is, are those incentives going to be repeated in Gaza, where Israel has spoken much more about totally eradicating Hamas in Gaza at a great civilian cost? So...

Yes, the Biden administration has succeeded here. Gaza will be more difficult. And this whole idea the president was talking about yesterday about going ahead and doing this normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel does seem rather a leap in the last seven weeks of an administration. It does seem like a leap. I mean, Mike Dabke, how do you kind of look at how this cuts? I mean, it's interesting that Hamas saw what happened and put out, we're hearing this just in in the last couple of hours. Look, I think rhetoric matters. Words matter. The actions...

of Donald Trump, of a Donald Trump presidency on the Middle East are slightly unpredictable at this point. And so for all of the parties involved, better to get a piece now and more, and more to your point, there is sheer exhaustion after a period of time. So, um, I,

I am not surprised that the incoming Trump administration is welcoming this news at all. And look, I wanna give praise to the Biden administration for continuing to work this, but I think that Trump administration or transition official is right.

A lot of the reason this deal came together was because of the incoming Trump administration. - Jaime, do you agree? - Look, I mean, I think some people have said this before. Benjamin Netanyahu wanted Donald Trump to be the president. He got his choice. And so he did feel like it was more advantageous to move to a deal. But I think the reality is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have worked on this deal for a very long time. And this is not something that's to materialize

out of nowhere. This is hard work, this is dedication. I do think that President Biden is working on his legacy and he really would like for his legacy to be of that of peace and of hope. But I think the reality is still there. He has worked on this very, very closely throughout the last 14 months. And so we have to give him some credit for that.

Mario, how do you think Trump coming in impacts all of this? And I know obviously you cover markets and the economy, but you've seen how Trump in that space works as a dealmaker or doesn't. How does that apply here? No, absolutely. And I mean, if you look at just the cabinet that he's put together so far, right, it's a very pro-Israel cabinet that he's put together, whether it's Mike Huckabee, for example, and then others. And if you go back to his first term, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, all of those steps

I mean, that's a signal to those folks in the Middle East and those players in the Middle East that he'll be very pro-pro-Israel. Stephen, how does the Gaza conflict, I mean, what do you think is the arc?

arc for that here as we head toward inauguration day. I mean, obviously, to your point, the IDF is absolutely exhausted. They have taken a number of top Hamas leaders off of the battlefield. Yeah, it's going to be harder for Netanyahu to end because it creates more tensions in his cabinet. Ending the Hezbollah war was a much easier political lift. So

And the question is, is that incentive to end the Gaza war going to play out over the next few weeks? I do think that the lesson of the last 20 years at least is that while we sit in Washington and we talk about how US policy affects these conflicts, the Middle East has its own bitter realities. And it tends to confound every single US president. And I don't think that's going to change.

despite the incoming Trump administration. - Yeah, just ask Bill Clinton what his kind of biggest regret is from his own presidency. All right, still ahead here on CNN This Morning, Trump's pick to be his border czar heads to Texas. What Tom Holman is saying to those who are looking to slow down plans for mass deportations. Plus, the leaders of the Harris campaign break their silence and talk about what they think went wrong during their failed bid for the White House. And how Taylor Swift's new book about her wildly popular heiress tour could shake up the publishing industry.

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their U.S.-based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. People love to say we have the safest food supply in the world. I am not one of those people. That's Dr. Don Schaffner. He's a food safety expert. He has been studying foodborne illnesses for decades. Are food recalls really becoming more common? And with the holidays approaching, what can you do to protect yourself and your family from getting sick? Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts. Let me be clear.

There is going to be a mass deportation because we just finished a mass illegal immigration crisis on the border. It's a felony to annoyingly harbor and conceal an illegal entry for immigration authorities. Don't test us.

President-elect Donald Trump's new border czar, Tom Homan, laying out his day one plans for the new administration. Homan traveled to Texas on Tuesday, meeting with Governor Greg Abbott and delivering a message to Texas National Guard members. Texas government leaders are moving to get more aggressive on immigration. In recent days, they have ordered more barrier buoys onto the Rio Grande River, like the ones seen last year. The Biden administration had sued to get those barriers removed.

Not every local leader is signing up for the promises of cracking down on migrants. Denver's mayor says his city would resist extreme measures, drawing the ire of Tom Holman this week.

If they want to focus on violent criminals, we would be happy to help support pursuing, arresting and deporting them. If they are going to send the U.S. Army or the Navy SEALs into Denver to pursue folks to pull them off the job at hotels or restaurants where they're working or pull kids off the soccer field, I think we will see Denverites and folks around the country who will non-violently resist that. Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing. He's willing to go to jail. I'm willing to put him in jail.

Mike Dubke, I mean, look, it's very clear the country is very unhappy with the way immigration has been playing out. They're concerned about the security at the border. Where do you think the Trump administration and how can they stay or can they stay with Americans on that without, I mean, some of the measures they're talking about, I mean, that language of like, if you harbor somebody, we will find you. You know, if the Denver mayor wants to go to jail, I mean,

That has some significant and more extreme echoes than some of what we heard from the Trump campaign on the trail. There are several stages to kind of arresting, and I should choose a different word, but arresting

immigration at the border, one of which that worked incredibly well in the early days of the first Trump administration was the rhetoric. And this is going to be my theme, I think, for today was the rhetoric around the border. So Tom Holman's very strong language is going to restrict immigration

and impede the number of people that are actually flooding the border. You're saying it's going to discourage people from trying to come? Totally discourage that. That is super important. And that is something we saw when the Biden administration came in. There was a flood for a reason. The rhetoric was toned down. Now, if they focus, to answer your question, if they focus on the criminal elements who have crossed the border, and they are tracking and have been tracking for years the criminal elements that have crossed the border, I think the American people will back

them. It's when we get to the point after that first layer or second layer of individuals that we're sending back in mass deportations, that's where I think it all comes to a head. But right now, the rhetoric is important. And I'm glad they're saying what they are saying. And we saw on November 5th, that's what the American people were looking for. Jaime, the Harris campaign often just

tried not to talk about immigration at all, basically. Which I think some, we're gonna dig into kind of their critiques of the campaign later on in the show. There were certainly some people that I talked to who felt like

they weren't willing to engage on this. The places where Democrats have felt that they can win ground with Americans are things like what happened under the Trump administration with child separation. And Tom Holman is someone who basically suggested in a 60 Minutes interview, well, okay, what are you going to do if there's families in the U.S. with undocumented parents and the kids are citizens? He says, well, we'll deport them or we'll split them up

the families, basically. How do you think Democrats should be talking about this as we barrel toward the beginning of the Trump administration? - Casey, I think you're right. I think it was a missed opportunity in some ways, not just for Vice President Harris, but for the Biden-Harris administration, talking about this a lot sooner.

This is a conversation we probably should have had four years ago. But here, Kamala Harris tried. She went to Arizona a couple weeks before the election and tried to change the narrative of that conversation to her benefit, but it just didn't work. But two things happened. Yesterday, just on CNN, I think someone said, we have one of the lowest border crossings right now than we've had before. And so some of these indicators that people were speaking of just a few weeks ago have seemed to dissipate.

And it seems as if the immigration plan is working a little bit better than Donald Trump and others were saying during the campaign. So that's one thing. The second thing, as Democrats decide where we're going to go and what the agenda is, particularly we look at Congress and Hakeem Jeffries as the leader, we've got to look at people like Ruben Gallego, the new senator from Arizona who's been able to have this conversation in such a salient way in Arizona. And so I think Democrats have got to not run from the conversation. We've got to be thoughtful and we've got to talk about the...

the humane aspect of this. This is not just about deportation and sending people back to where they came from. This is about creating pathways for citizenship. This is about making sure that America remains diverse and strong. It's not just about getting people out of the country. - It's gonna be a tough argument for Democrats to be making. All right, ahead here on CNN this morning, Israel and Hezbollah agreeing to a ceasefire in Lebanon. Why Israel's prime minister is warning the Lebanese people not to return to their homes just yet.

Plus, staffing shortages, severe weather, threatening to make this Thanksgiving travel week, they want me to say, a real turkey, wah-wah.

All right, welcome back to CNN this morning. We're going to take a spin across the country as many of you are getting on planes or, you know, taking the roads in your cars. Here's a live look at Los Angeles, LAX International Airport. Where else we got, guys? What else can we take a look at? Here's Buffalo, New York. It honestly looks pretty calm at this hour. I actually really love to fly at this time of day, although I'd never like to fly the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Let's go to Cleveland.

Also looks pretty relaxed. Look at that. Also, it's Delta Airlines. I mean, they're on, let's be real, they're not the most efficient, are they not? All right, let's keep going.

What else we got anywhere else? That's it. All right, let's go then to Atlanta where we find our meteorologist, our weatherman, Derek Van Dam, who should have a map of the whole country. There it is. Derek, good morning. You know, this is the sweet spot. If you are traveling this morning, the day before Thanksgiving, consider yourself lucky. You've planned it right. You hit the jackpot. The lottery winner. I mean, today is the day without the weather problems for the majority of the country.

but settle in because things are going to change very quickly and it's all because of this storm system you see here that's moving across the state of Colorado. More on that in just a second. You can see all green green means go right from the west coast to the east coast. And that's good news for some of those major hubs like Atlanta all the way to New York and JFK. Here's the storm system bringing snowfall to the mountainous regions of Colorado. It's beautiful, very scenic,

winter wonderland. It is a snow globe of note, but watch how this storm system explodes in size as we head into the day on Thursday. So get in, relax into your family, friends or relatives homes because we're in for quite a storm, at least a rainmaker along the coast. But it will bring snowfall to, let's say, the Hudson Valley into northern New England. This is an area that could see a few inches of heavy wet snowfall and then the lake effect snow machine will kick in behind it

Now with a trailing cold front associated with the same system, we have the potential for some stronger thunderstorms across the deep south today, Mississippi into Alabama and then heads up Atlanta to Charlotte tomorrow. The potential there exists for a few stronger thunderstorms as well. So a few things to keep in mind. Macy's Day Parade looks wet, kind of cool for our friend John Berman Casey.

Yes, we'll be thinking of Berman. Derek, thank you very much. Happy Thanksgiving. Same to you. Have a great one. Enjoy. All right. I'll see you next week. Okay, still to come here on CNN this morning, a U.S.-backed ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah still appears to be holding this morning. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations joins us live. Plus, three weeks after Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump, some of her senior staffers are speaking out.

My concern here, as we think about the future, is if there's a belief that if only we had responded to this trans ad with national and huge battleground state ads, we would have won.

All right, welcome back. A U.S.-backed ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon appears to be holding. It's been about 10 hours now. But the Lebanese army and Israeli forces are warning civilians not to return to their homes near the Israel-Lebanon border just yet. Israeli forces moved into southern Lebanon to push back Hezbollah fighters a few months ago, forcing entire towns and villages to flee.

This morning, some of those residents have returned. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailing the ceasefire as a victory, but warning he will strike the region again if Hezbollah violates the deal. And now Hezbollah is no longer, and it will help us with the task of bringing our hostages back.

We were attacked in seven fronts and we retaliated. We are changing the face of the Middle East.

All right, joining us now is Danny Danone, Israel's ambassador to the UN. Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much for being with us this morning. I want to ask you about how this ceasefire came to be and why now. We heard from President Biden yesterday, of course, taking a degree of credit, praising what has happened here, of

Of course, we also know that former President Donald Trump, now President-elect Trump, waiting in the wings to come in here. Why do you think Prime Minister Netanyahu was willing to make this deal now? And did it have more to do with President Biden or President-elect Trump?

Good morning, Casey. Well, I think, you know, with all due respect to both presidents, the main reason is what happened on the ground. We were able to degrade the capabilities of Hezbollah to eliminate their leadership and basically to push them north,

of the Litani River. That was the goal of this operation. We didn't start this war. They chose to join Hamas on October 8th without a provocation. And Hassan al-Salah, the former leader that we eliminated, he said that there will be a linkage between the war with Lebanon and the war in Gaza. And what we saw that today, we broke that linkage. We have a ceasefire with Lebanon.

and now it will allow us to focus on Gaza and hopefully to eliminate Hamas over there. So speaking of Gaza, we actually did hear from Hamas just in the last hour or two in the context of the Lebanon ceasefire agreement.

And they say this, quote, they have a commitment to cooperating with any efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, end quote. A commitment to cooperating. What do you read into those words? And do you feel that Hamas is ready to be at the table in a significant way to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage release deal?

well first of all i don't believe them you know for the last 14 months the light so many times they are still holding our hostages and without even you know allowing the red cross for anyone to visit them we don't know who is alive who's not and we're talking about babies women

So it's a disgrace. But one thing I can tell you, Hamas plan that they will have support from Tehran, from Hezbollah, and they believe that they will actually be able to get the entire radical axis to join them. And today they realize that Hezbollah is not in the game anymore. I hope it will actually allow the negotiations to resume. We are willing to negotiate. We want to see the hostages coming home. We will not stop the war until we will bring them back home.

Do you think that the terms of this deal for Hamas will be, if we get to one eventually, would be materially different under a Biden administration here in the U.S. than a Trump administration?

Well, we are not waiting. We're thinking about the hostages. We don't know how many of them are still alive. So we are not waiting. We are continuing to apply military pressure and at the same time to try to negotiate a deal to release them. When you speak about the transition here, we're talking about two months from today. It's a long time for the people who are in the dungeons for 14 months. So we will not wait for that. Hopefully, we will see some progress before the transition.

All right, Danny Danone, Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much for being with us this morning. I appreciate it. Thank you, Casey. All right, let's turn now back to domestic politics. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz urging their supporters to keep up the fight on a call with grassroots organizers yesterday. I know this is an uncertain time. I'm clear eyed about that. I know you're clear eyed about it and it feels heavy. And I just have to remind you, don't you ever let anybody take your power from you.

You have the same power that you did before November 5th.

Three weeks after losing the election, Harris' team is speaking out for the first time in a wide-ranging interview with Pod Save America's Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to Barack Obama. Four senior members of the Harris campaign discussed what they think went wrong. One major hurdle, they say, they only had 107 days, and they say that impacted decisions like the number of interviews she could do. Trump, on the other hand, of course, made it part of his campaign to appear across several popular podcasts.

One of the things I like about doing a show like this, can you imagine Kamala doing this show? I could imagine her doing this show. She'd be laying on the floor. She was supposed to do it, and she might still do it, and I hope she does. She's not going to do it. I will talk to her like a human being. I would try to have a conversation with her. If she did this kind of an interview with you, I hope she does because it would be a mess. She'd be laying on the floor, Kamala Tuss. You'd be saying, call in the medics.

Harris's team addressed whether she should have gone on Joe Rogan's podcast and tried to explain why it never happened.

Yeah, there's a lot of intrigue around this, a lot of theories. It's pretty simple. We wanted to do it. We had discussions with Joe Rogan's team. They were great. They wanted us to come on. We wanted to come on. We tried to get a date to make it work, and ultimately we just weren't able to find a date. But it didn't ultimately impact the outcome one way or the other.

They say they just couldn't find a date there and that, you know, they don't think it would have impacted the outcome one way or the other. James Carville weighed in on this question in recent days. Let's watch what he had to say. The vice president was thinking about going on Joe Rogan show. And a lot of the younger progressive staffers pitched a hissy fit. If I were running a 2028 campaign and I had some little snot nose 23 year old,

saying I'm going to resign if you don't do this, not only would I fire that on the spot, I would find out who hired them and fire that person on the spot. I'm really not interested in your uninformed, stupid opinion as to whether you go on Joe Rogan or not. Okay, so Jaime, you have the unfortunate position as being for the person who has to explain and answer for all of this for us today. No, it's not.

What did go wrong? Yeah. Look, I hate these postmortems. And Mike and I have been talking about this. And this is going to go on for weeks and weeks and weeks. There were a myriad of things that happened over the course of the last four years and even eight years that led to what happened on November 5th. Look, two things that stand out to me. I think my friends on the Kamala campaign are correct. 107 days is not enough time to run for president. That's just a fact.

And on the other side, Donald Trump has now run three times. This is the third Democratic nominee that he's run against. And so Donald Trump has run for president three times. And so he's been able to seed his messaging a lot more strongly than any of our candidates have been because we've switched over each of the three times. And so I do believe that Vice President Harris ran a tremendous campaign. And I think she was as good of a candidate as she could have been. Now, granted, let's pull back to the layers a little bit.

Should she have done it, Joe Rogan? Yes, she should have. Would it have changed the election? Probably not. And so I think, and look, I'm gonna still have something that Mike and I were talking about in Mario during the green room. I think here's the overarching thing. You've gotta meet voters where they are. You can't try to lead them to where you want them to go. And I think time and time again, Democrats, and particularly this past campaign, we were trying to lead a high-minded campaign

campaign and talk about issues that we thought were important to people. But come to find out, that's not what people want to talk about. People want to talk about immigration. They want to feel safe. They want to talk about inflation. And look, all these numbers that, you know, these indicators that we're talking about today seem to be doing better right now. And I think if we had a couple more days or weeks, I do believe Kamala Harris and Joe Biden could have got that message out a little bit more saliently. And then, of course, Vice President Governor Walz did a great job, too.

And just to Haima's point, I mean, there's a couple of things, right? We talked about immigration earlier in this segment. We saw Governor Abbott. He was arguably the unsung hero of this political campaign, right, by bringing immigration to the fore. When you look at Donald Trump's

what he's arguing is a mandate for a second term based off of the margin of victory that he had over Vice President Harris. I mean, you look at some of those blue states. That's what's emboldening him. And that's also the warning sign, I think, for the Democrats, right? Because it is immigration. It is inflation.

she was quite defensive, as was Biden. When Jaime mentioned some of the indicators, right? President Biden, before Harris assumed the mantle, would just come out and talk about all of these statistics from the Economic Council, excuse me, et cetera. And Americans aren't feeling that when they go to the grocery store and pay for eggs and bread and all of those other things.

And Vice President Harris think the campaign fell a little bit short of understanding and being able to articulate Americans' pain. Yeah, so let's dig in a little bit more on Stephen in particular there. Of course, we've spent a lot of time on, and it was an ad that was,

framed around trans issues, right? That the Trump campaign put a lot of money behind and it was, you know, Kamala Harris is for they, them. Trump is for you. Here was how Quentin Fulks, who was on the campaign, as well as David Plouffe, explained that in this post-mortem. Let's watch.

Obviously, it was a very effective ad at the end. I ultimately don't believe that it was about the issue of trans. I think that it made her seem out of touch. And it was sort of a pseudo economic ad underneath it. At the end of the day, we were spending a lot of time with voters in these battleground states, both quantitatively and quantitatively. And this trans ad was not driving vote.

So he says the ad's not driving votes. But when you listen to what Quentin said there, I'm sure that they were testing the trans issue in a straightforward way. But if the ad's about way more than that, it doesn't necessarily line up. Right. And it's amazing how after an election, it's like one or two things that, oh, we lost because of that. But go back to the Virginia governor's race in 2021. The issues in that race were inflation, trans kids in sports,

And immigration, even in Virginia, was an issue. That completely prefigured this election. I think because the Democrats did better than everyone thought they would in the midterm elections, people kind of forgot that.

And that's why we ended up with a 170-day campaign, by the way. Right, but I think the election was probably lost three years ago when the White House was saying inflation was transitory when everyone knew it wasn't, and they were saying there wasn't a border crisis when there was. Do you agree? Oh, yeah, I agree. I also think there were parental issues in that gubernatorial race in 2021. I mean, it was a...

Let me put it to you that there's so many places I could go with this, but let me just put it in this context. The they/them was the important line in that ad. It had less to do with the transgender issue and more with the they/them, the wokeness. When you juxtapose

Vice President Harris and Beyonce against Donald Trump at either McDonald's or wearing an orange vest in a garbage truck, that was the difference in the election. It had everything to do with the economy, but it also had to do with who is speaking directly to the voters. And you had Donald Trump doing what Democrats have done for decades, speaking directly to working class voters. And the Harris campaign,

either ignored them, didn't think they needed them. I don't know what their idea was there, but they made a vibe election bet. He made a base election, unvoted, low propensity voter bet, and he won. For sure. All right. Stephen Collinson, Mario Parker, Jaime Moore, Mike Dupke, thank you all very much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Thank you.

All right, coming up next here on CNN This Morning, a smooth transition promised just a few weeks ago. How cooperation from this sitting president is looking different from what we saw four years ago. Plus, a curtain call. Taylor Swift's Heiress Tour is coming to a close. What's next on the agenda for the global superstar?

This week on The Assignment with me, Adi Cornish. Adam Jentleson, former staffer for Harry Reid, is taking a bunch of heat right now for an op-ed saying Democrats need to ditch the, quote, magical thinking and say no to the groups on its left front.

Listen to The Assignment with me, Audie Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app. Politics is tough.

And it's, in many cases, not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today, and I appreciate it very much. A transition that's so smooth, it'll be as smooth as it can get, and I very much appreciate that, Jim. Well, Mr. President-elect and former President and Donald, congratulations. And looking forward to having, like we said, a smooth transition.

A smooth transition, the promise from Joe Biden to Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Despite that conversation being two weeks ago, Trump's transition team has only just signed the paperwork with the White House allowing for Trump team members to get access to certain information ahead of Inauguration Day.

Transition cooperation from the sitting president was something that Joe Biden famously did not receive from the man who is now returning to the White House when he was leaving back in 2020. In fact, on this day four years ago, Trump was furiously tweeting and retweeting 34 times to be exact things like how machines, quote, gave Biden thousands of votes or how, quote, the 2020 election was a total scam with, quote, massive voter fraud.

And it was this week, four years ago, when Donald Trump spoke with reporters publicly for the first time since his election defeat, which led to a heated 25-minute exchange filled with falsehoods and anger at the media. There's tremendous fraud here. It was a rigged election. We caught them cheating. We caught them stealing. We caught a fraudulent effort to get votes. At the highest level, it was a rigged election. Don't talk to, I'm the president of the United States. Don't ever talk to the president that way.

All right, joining us now to talk about the state of Trump world on this Thanksgiving week, Maggie Haberman, senior political correspondent for The New York Times and a CNN political analyst. Maggie, I'm thrilled to have you. There's no one I'd rather talk to. Can you just take us inside the state of the Trump transition right now, including, I mean, are they having

with how the White House has been handling this and you know that we've been talking this morning a lot about this ceasefire deal between Hezbollah and Israel and of course the Trump team has been briefed on that I'm curious if you know anything about how if they were involved with it etc

I have no information, Casey, as to whether they're involved with that particular ceasefire deal. Certainly what you have not seen is Donald Trump posting on social media or objecting to it or saying something that would have scuttled it. And so I do think there is a mindfulness on the Trump team about what's happening on the world stage

not exacerbating certain problems. You know, when Trump wants to object to something that the current White House is doing, he makes it pretty clear this is also not, you know, the more elaborate ceasefire deal with Gaza that the current White House would like to see. And so this is of slightly lesser concern.

- So Maggie, we obviously are preparing for Trump to move back to town here in Washington. And there are all these questions about how access to him is gonna be managed and what that means for governance. And you and your colleague, Jonathan Swan, had this fascinating story about this one particular aide whose name is Natalie Harp. And you, I remember her coming up when Donald Trump was on trial in New York.

and she was described as a human printer who walks around with a printer, prints out articles for him to see, is really somebody who is bringing information to him on a regular basis. And you had these fascinating letters that she had written to Donald Trump. She had said, quote, "You are all that matters to me." She had said, "I don't wanna ever let you down. I wanna bring you joy to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk work." And she called,

Mr. Trump her guardian and protector in this life. Who is this person? What implications does her closeness with Donald Trump have for the American people? Well, I think the closeness is significant because, number one, she is now going into the White House. She's been written about before, Casey, and in a normal circumstance, a more junior aide would not be a subject of interest. But she is going into the White House.

expected to sit likely in the outer oval which is right outside the Oval Office but she's significant because she supplies him with what has generally been the unfettered stream of unvetted information and

times, many times that has led to social media posts that other people in Trump's orbit have been alarmed by or would have rather not had get out, such as the 40-some-odd posts that he did on the eve of his second trial involving E. Jean Carroll, who had accused him of a rape decades earlier, a civil trial that was held in New York. That's just one example. There are many

She is said to have been working more within a chain of command within the last couple of weeks of the campaign, but the new White House is different. And so that's why it's significant. As we know, Trump often would get information that was not vetted from questionable sources while he was president and in the interregnum between these two presidencies. And so what he does with that information, who he's listening to, is always of importance.

For real. Maggie, before I let you go, I want to ask you about one other figure who you had covered, I think, well before, I would imagine, Donald Trump actually was, you know, in the Oval Office, but obviously who was a figure during the first Trump administration, and that is, of course, Rudy Giuliani. I want to show you what he had to say after court this week. Let's watch. The reality is, I have no cash. It's all tied up. So right now...

If I wanted to call a taxi cab, I can't do it. I don't have a credit card. I don't have a checking account. I have no place I can go take cash out except the little bit that I saved. And it's getting down to almost nothing.

This is the man who was the mayor of New York City in the wake of September 11th. And now there are reports his refrigerator in his Miami condo was repossessed in this court case that he's he's dealing with. And it's all because of his association with Donald Trump.

Well, to a point, Casey. I mean, you know, I covered Rudy Giuliani in his second term. I covered most of that term when I was working for The New York Post at City Hall. And he was, you know, in some ways very different than what you're seeing here. In some ways not. There are aspects of this version of Rudy Giuliani that have always existed. You know, he did what was a widely pro-Rudy Giuliani.

praise job leading the city right after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, which was a terrifying time in this city. He has always been conspiracy minded. He has always had an openness to power and to access to power. So yes, on the one hand, it's Donald Trump. On the other hand, I don't know that anybody

forced Rudy Giuliani to go do the things for which he was found to have defamed two women who no one had ever heard of before until he started throwing their names around. And so, yes, there are a lot of people who like Rudy Giuliani who hear him say things like that and they feel very bad. What's always missing, and it's understandable, he's an almost 80-year-old man or however old he is now,

But it's also, there's never any sense of, you know, how he got into this position, which are actions he took himself. And so, yes, it was in the service of Donald Trump, but he had agency here and he is a grown man. He is a grown man. I very much appreciate that assessment. Maggie Haberman, very grateful to have you. Thank you very much. Thanks. All right, let's turn now to this. Taylor Swift's massive worldwide heiress tour coming to an end.

She's set to take the stage just three more times during her final stop in Vancouver, Canada next weekend. During her second to last stop in Toronto last weekend, she got emotional and thanked everyone who has been a part of the show.

I was lucky enough to actually have attended that particular show. Now though that the Heiress Tour is wrapping up, all the Swifties are left wondering what's next for their favorite superstar. On Friday, a book dedicated to the tour is going to go on sale. It's going to be exclusively at Target. The Atlantic reports this, quote,

This perhaps isn't so shocking. She loves to cut out a middleman. USA Today's dedicated Taylor Swift reporter Brian West reports that there might be some other clues about what's coming down the pipeline for Swift. He writes this, quote, for the superstar who goes to great lengths to keep her next business move secret, one public record might help decipher what's next for Taylor Swift. Trademarks. Brian West joins us now on this Thanksgiving Eve. Brian, thanks.

Good morning, thank you so much for being here. Fascinating, all of it. What do we know about what might be next for Taylor?

Good morning, Casey. Great to be here as well. So what we know with Taylor is that she's always future minded. She plans ahead. She has her next few years planned out. And one of the keys to figuring out what she might be up to is filings in the trademark office. So I spoke with the United States Patent and Trademark Office about some of the filings that she had this year, including and some of the filings that will end up having to be of substance this year. So what I mean by that is let's start first with the filings this year.

She filed "Female Rage: The Musical," she filed "Taylor Conn," and then also filed "A Girl Named Girl," which is a book that she wrote about when she was a preteen. A lot of fans are wondering, though, about her re-records, and she filed those back in 2022. When it comes to the trademark process, you end up getting a notice of allowance from the USPTO, and that basically means that you passed all the examination process.

And so that happened on August 16, 2022. The challenge is when you file a trademark and you don't necessarily have the product, the good or service in commerce, you have to prove that with reputation. Taylor's version and Taylor Swift, Taylor's version is even with extension. She has to prove that she's using those trademarks by August 16th of this next year or else the trademark is abandoned.

OK, so I guess we're looking we're looking for those things coming up next. Brian, one of the most impressive things about her is that she does manage to because of the strength of her own brand and her own business acumen. I mean, she wasn't working for movie with movie distributors, classic movie distributors to get her movie out in theaters. Now she's doing this as well with a book.

That's right. So what we did see during, of course, the SAG-AFTRA strikes is that Taylor just cut out the middle person, went straight to AMC distribution. And that was how she was able to get her movie. We're seeing now with the book that she's going straight to the publisher. So and this is already expecting high demand. Target is saying that there is a limit already because of the high demand. So if you're standing in line on Friday morning, you can't get more than four copies of this book. And so it does seem that she's just, you know, doing it by herself.

Yeah, I mean, it's really, I will say, the thing that sort of blew my mind, many things blew my mind at this concert. I mean, she's just...

an unbelievably phenomenal powerhouse of a performer. I mean, it was astonishing to see. But the merch lines, my goodness, like good luck getting a sweatshirt that's not like an extra large because people are so devoted to all of this. Brian West, I'm very grateful to have you on this Thanksgiving Eve. And I hope you'll come back. I hope there's reasons for you to come back because I'm excited to see what's going to be next. Especially after this next concert.

I know for sure. Yes, let's do it. It's a date. Thank you again. All right. Thanks. We're going to say thanks to our panel. Obviously, it's already gone off to enjoy their holiday. Thanks to you as well for watching. I hope you have a very happy Thanksgiving with your loved ones. I am Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.

This holiday season, CNN Underscored's got you covered with the top Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals so you can shop smarter, not harder. See all our expert recommendations at Underscored.com.