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Hazardous Holiday Storms to Hit Southern California; DOJ Says Alleged Letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is Fake; "Die Hard" Debate: Is It a Christmas Movie; Most Watched CNN Videos 2025. Aired 3:30-4p ET
Aired December 23, 2025 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:30:00]
JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: ... Coming to it.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Yes, it'll be interesting. All right, Joan Biskupic, thank you so much.
Still to come, the flooding in California has already proven deadly and now several months worth of more rain is on the way. We're tracking the dangerous holiday weather next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: California's certainly not getting a break for the holidays when it comes to weather. Yet another round of potentially deadly storms are just about to hit the state. A rare flash flooding risk is now prompting new evacuation orders as well.
KEILAR: CNN's Derek Van Dam is tracking the dangerous system for us.
DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: If you live in the state of California, now is the time to travel to see family and loved ones for the Christmas holiday. Tomorrow is going to be a completely different story.
[15:35:00]
The Weather Prediction Center has issued a rare level four of four. That's a high risk of excessive rain that could lead to flash flooding over a large population of Southern California.
Focusing in on this area, that shading of purple encompasses six million people or so. And also encompasses these burn scars from the recent Hughes, Eaton, and Palisades fires. So these areas are extremely susceptible to debris flow, mudslides, landslides, rapid rises in rivers, urban flash flooding, all possible with this atmospheric river that is streaming in.
And the fact that it is impacting Southern California and this densely populated area by tomorrow morning means that your window for travel is closing. It is going to get significantly more difficult to travel across the entire state, especially into the mountainous regions where several feet of snow will blanket the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. Six to ten inches of rain across Interstate 5, Interstate 405, that
will cause problems. And then the transverse mountain ranges here that run east to west across Southern California, that is going to wring out all of the available moisture. We could see ten inches or more of rain fall from the sky.
Look at the snowfall totals further north. This is great for the ski resorts, but bad for tourists who are trying to get to those destinations. Winter storm warnings in place and a lot of wind energy associated with this powerful atmospheric river coming in.
Back to you.
KEILAR: All right, Derek, thank you for that. We'll be right back.
[15:40:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HILL: There is more breaking news at this hour on the Epstein files. The Department of Justice just putting out yet another new statement about one of the 30,000 pages of documents which were released overnight.
KEILAR: First, here is the initial document we're talking about. This is a disturbing letter signed Jay Epstein, sent to convicted sex offender Larry Nassar in the same month that Epstein died. Just a few days after is when it was postmarked.
And it appears to make a lewd reference to President Trump without directly mentioning him by name. We do know President Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing here.
CNN's Marshall Cohen back with us now. OK, what's the Justice Department saying now about this document?
MARSHALL COHEN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: It's been quite a day. But the Justice Department coming out with another statement. I will read it to you line by line and we'll break it down together.
So this just came out a few moments ago from the Trump appointees at the DOJ.
Quote, "The FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is fake. The fake letter was received by the jail and flagged for the FBI at the time.
OK, so that would have been in 2019. And they say it was received by the jail as opposed to going out of the jail where Epstein lived.
Continuing with the statement -- "The FBI made this conclusion," past tense, made this conclusion. So they're saying it's not a new conclusion today, but the FBI made this conclusion based on the following facts. One, "The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein's." And we
were just talking, I don't know, 30 minutes ago about how the FBI had ordered its handwriting experts, its handwriting lab to run this down and see if it was a match.
We -- this is the first we have learned from authorities on possibly the results of that analysis. I'll continue here.
They say, "The letter was postmarked three days after Epstein's death out of northern Virginia when he was jailed in New York."
So they're pointing to the postmark on the envelope that says Virginia, even though obviously Epstein was locked up at a federal prison in New York. So he couldn't have been in Virginia.
Continuing, "The return address did not list the jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail."
We talked about that already.
And finally, the DOJ concluded by saying, "This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the DOJ does not make the -- does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual. Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law."
KEILAR: We don't know when they assess the handwriting.
COHEN: According to what they put out here, it would have been great if they had said the FBI assessed in 2020 or in 2021. They do not reveal that.
HILL: It's also so, yes, there's no I mean, there's no -- there's no real sourcing on that. Right. They say it's just appears that it is not. But to both of your points, if this was requested in 2020 and it would also seem odd that only now they're saying this right now when they would release the letter --
COHEN: Yes.
HILL: -- hours later.
COHEN: I mean, this is the first time we've seen the letter. It would have been incredibly helpful if they had released all of the context along that this this morning when it when it dropped. And I think, you know, the folks on Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans who passed this law to get this stuff in the public sphere, they're probably going to be demanding documents just like that.
HILL: All right. So watch this space. There we go. Quite a day for you, Marshall. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Up next here, the final word on the biggest debate of the holiday season.
[15:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HILL: It's time to talk about a fairly sensitive topic. It can often divide households, but it's an important one.
KEILAR: Yes.
HILL: Is "Die Hard" a Christmas movie?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought I told all of you I want radio silence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sorry, I didn't get that message.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mayday. Terrorists have seized the Nakatomi Plaza.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This channel is reserved for emergency calls only.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do I sound like I'm ordering a pizza?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Possible crank call. Check the area. Confirm.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No signs of disturbance. Dispatch.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome to the party, pal.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HILL: Oh, yes. Welcome to the party. How about that?
That's my ornament on my Christmas tree. My son, Weston, took that picture just to prove that in our house, the iconic Bruce Willis film is, in fact, a Christmas tree. Since we have the ornament.
Yippee-ki-yay. You can fill in the rest. Ready to go.
KEILAR: That's right. I mean, listen, I'm not going to disagree with you on this. That makes it official.
And joining us now is Adam Howard. He's the director of Theater Contra in Philadelphia, where actors actually bring this wonderful Christmas action film to the stage during, what else, the holidays. All right.
Talk to us about this. How did this live reading and performance come to be?
ADAM HOWARD, DIRECTOR, THEATRE CONTRA: Well, first of all, absolute privilege to be here. Thanks for having me. It's funny you say you have an ornament.
I have a koozie that says it's not Christmas until Han Hoover falls off Nakatomi Tower. OK, so absolutely.
HILL: I need one of those.
[15:50:00]
HOWARD: We at Theater Contra are low stakes, high fun. We're a small theater company in Philly. So we love these 80s and 90s action movies.
So what we did, we took the whole script. We added a little parody and our own commentary on it. And with six actors, we partnered with a local business. And we read the whole script. All six actors played all the parts.
And it was sold out for two nights in a row. We had a total blast.
HILL: This is amazing. We need you to do it next year because Brianna and I are going to do a little field trip. What are the challenges in pulling this iconic movie and bringing it to the stage?
Because, you know, there's a lot in there.
HOWARD: There is a lot. And it's funny, we were trying to get it down to 90 minutes. Die Hard is two hours and 12 minutes.
And we also want to have fun. You know, we try to take the seriousness and the uniform out of theater. So we wanted to add our own little parody and spin on it.
So the challenge is honoring the original picture because it's so iconic. There are way too many famous lines to quote right now. But we also want to bring the audience into a space that allows them to connect with us and have fun on a night out.
We brought a drinking game to the party. And so after a while, the audience is like sitting in their own living room watching it with their friends. They were talking to us.
They were yelling at us. They were oohing and aahing and gasping. Awesome.
KEILAR: Yes, I mean, I basically screen for friends by saying, "Schisten feisten, shoot the glass." So I'm with you on that.
HOWARD: It's my favorite line.
KEILAR: It's hilarious. And I need to know if you know what I'm talking about when I say that. How does the audience react to the -- I mean, it's just such a great film. How do they react to your performance of it?
HOWARD: They love it. And like I said, we like to add our own little spin to it. So for example, an iconic moment in the movie is Bruce Willis is barefoot the entire time, right?
KEILAR: Yes.
HOWARD: And so what we did, instead of having our actor walk around this local bar that we partnered with, nobody wants to walk around barefoot in an open bar for two hours. So we ordered from Amazon these rubber, giant bare feet slippers.
They were humongous. They looked like Hobbit's feet almost. We put them on his feet and he ran around like that. They loved it.
We also brought these little toy helicopters -- because we're just reading the script. You know, we didn't memorize our lines or anything.
So we brought these little toy helicopters for that famous scene at the end when the helicopter swooped around, he jumps off the building. Everybody seemed to buy it. We got applause at the end when he jumps off Nakatomi tower.
And all we did was jump off about a six foot cube, about six foot tall cube.
HILL: That's good. Do you also have like a little mini limousine that's sort of in a parking garage? Is Argyle in it?
KEILAR: Yes.
HOWARD: I couldn't find a limo, I'm afraid to say, but maybe I'll get in the budget next year for a limo. But I did have a little toy car. We drove that around.
HILL: All right. I'll be on the lookout.
HOWARD: (INAUDIBLE)
HILL: If I find one, I'll send it to you. Do you sell, just in terms of merch, you mentioned your koozie that you have. Do you sell those at the show?
I feel like those would sell really well.
HOWARD: I think so too. I think I got that just at a store. But we do have merch.
We have our own little Theater Contra merch. We have some hoodies and stuff that we have, if anybody was interested. Yes.
But maybe we should get some tie-in material too. I mean, that's a good idea.
KEILAR: Adam, final 20 seconds for you. Make the case to a doubter about why "Die Hard" is A, is the Christmas movie.
HOWARD: I'm ready. So it's funny. Macaulay Culkin just said in an interview recently that he did not think "Die Hard" was a Christmas movie.
I disagree. We at Theater Contra disagree. It takes place on Christmas Eve. It ends on Christmas morning.
But at the heart of the movie, John McClane is just trying to spend Christmas with his family. All he wants to do is get home with his wife and daughter.
That is exactly what is going on in Home Alone, which we can all agree is absolutely a Christmas movie.
KEILAR: Listen, Macaulay Culkin --
HOWARD: Macaulay Culkin and his family, they just want to reunite, the same thing goes on in "Die Hard."
KEILAR: And Macaulay Culkin, it's the market share. He has a conflict of interest. I just don't know that we can take his word for it on this, Adam.
HILL: I think that's a fair point.
KEILAR: Such a good point that you make.
HOWARD: We'll have to bring him on.
KEILAR: We will. He's invited.
Adam Howard, thank you so much. And if you want to finally settle this debate, CNN's making it easy. Go to cnn.com.
There is a bracket you can fill and even vote for the ultimate non- traditional holiday movie.
HILL: Although this is a traditional holiday. Obviously, I mean. Once more, let's be clear here.
KEILAR: Right. OK.
OK. So from a stunning Oval Office meeting to a man being swallowed by a whale, CNN's Boris Sanchez takes a look back at the top 10 most watched CNN videos of 2025.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Number 10. Trump targets Iran. Hours after the United States began its precision air strikes on three nuclear facilities in an unprecedented aerial bombardment of Iran, the president spoke to the nation.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success.
SANCHEZ (voice-over): In the aftermath, some members of Congress openly questioned the constitutionality of the strikes, while others, especially MAGA lawmakers, supported the administration.
[15:55:00]
Number nine. L.A. Devastated. Satellite images showing the breadth and depth of the runaway Eaton wildfire. The fast moving flames this past January, forcing thousands to flee their homes in search of higher and safer ground. Devastation like this will take years to rebuild. Number eight. A shocking midair collision caught on tape. On January 29th of this year, an American Airlines flight operated by American Eagle and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter collided over the freezing Potomac River at night. The tragedy caught on tape. The jet was on final approach to Reagan National, while the helicopter had been performing a required flying evaluation. All 67 people aboard both aircrafts died.
Number seven. An American is Pope. In May, shortly after the death of Pope Francis, the College of Cardinals elected their next leader.
And to the surprise of many, the choice was this man. Chicago's very own Cardinal, Robert Francis Prevost, the first Augustinian Pope.
POPE LEO: I invite you to recognize the marvels that the Lord has done.
SANCHEZ (voice-over): Even more surprising, he briefly spoke in English during his first mass.
Number six. Hot mic. Justin Trudeau, who at the time was Canada's Prime Minister, overheard making a jaw-dropping admission to business leaders back in February. Essentially telling them that President Trump's talk of making Canada a 51st U.S. state was no joke. So far, Canada remains Canada.
Number five. Kramer speaks out. Famed CNBC broadcaster Jim Kramer appearing on Erin Burnett's show earlier this year, admitting he was misled by the Trump administration's tariffs policy.
Listen.
JIM KRAMER, CNBC BROADCASTER: Over and over again, the president said, listen, it's going to be reciprocal. So you do it, we do it. And that was going to be so good.
And I really believed in it. And I feel like a sucker tonight.
SANCHEZ (voice-over): Number four. Swallowed whole. A father on a kayak captures the moment his son, Adrian, was briefly swallowed by a humpback whale off the coast of Chile.
Adrian told CNN he didn't realize at first it was a whale and thought he just got caught up in a big wave.
ADRIAN SIMANCAS, SWALLOWED BY WHALE: If the whale had hit me, it would be more dangerous.
SANCHEZ (voice-over): What a story to tell his grandkids.
Number three. Beauty influencer gunned down. Valeria Marquez was shot and killed by a man who entered her salon all while on a TikTok live stream in Zapopan, Mexico. Her death sending shockwaves through a country grappling with frequent suspected cases of femicide.
Number two. Jimmy Kimmel speaking out. After a brief suspension following controversial comments he made about conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel returned to ABC late night to say he never intended to make light of Kirk's murder. Also delivering powerful remarks about freedom of speech.
JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST OF JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE: This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.
SANCHEZ (voice-over): And the number one viral video on CNN's countdown, the feud seen around the world.
TRUMP: Wait a minute. No, no, you've done a lot of talking.
SANCHEZ (voice-over): On the left, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy hoping to win more lethal aid from the president. On the right, President Trump moments before he would launch into a verbal rampage against Zelenskyy.
Boris Sanchez, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KEILAR: All right, Boris, thank you for that.
HILL: So it turns out the naughty list is not just for children. Officials in Illinois now sharing their top contenders for the license plates that will never make it to the back of a car in that state because they're just too naughty.
Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALEXI GIANNOULIAS, ILLINOIS SECRETARY OF STATE: Some of the rejected plates included "BBL," which apparently stands for Brazilian butt lift, which had to be explained to me. IB POOPIN', OK, that one's pretty funny. I C U P, this one, I guess you just say the letters.
Apparently a 10 year old requested this one. S N D U D Z, this apparently stands for send nudes. No, thanks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: OK. All right. According to the state, there were 55,000 requests for vanity plates this year.
More than 550 were denied because they were deemed inflammatory, profane, offensive, or too difficult to read. I'm just curious if some kind of slipped through that approval process.
HILL: Oh, I'm sure some do.
KEILAR: Absolutely. Right.
HILL: Yes. You ever had a vanity plate?
KEILAR: No, no, haven't had one.
HILL: Don't know what I would put on it either.
KEILAR: So what is today? Is today this Festivus I've been told?
[16:00:00]
HILL: Yes. It's the time for the airing of grievances.
KEILAR: I have no grievances.
HILL: I don't either.
KEILAR: Just thrilled.
HILL: I'm so happy to be sitting next to you, my friend.
KEILAR: It's grateful to be here.
HILL: And Die Hard's a Christmas movie.
KEILAR: Yes, it is, the end. That's it.
And "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts now.
END
