Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

U.S. Lawmakers Visit Denmark; Unrest in Minneapolis; Trump Faces Dismal New Poll Numbers. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired January 16, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:00:59]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Tensions flare up in Minneapolis, this 911 transcripts and an incident report reveal more about Renee Good being shot by an ICE agent and how her community reacted to her killing in real time.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Plus, new CNN poll numbers paid to bleak picture for President Trump and Republicans, as a majority of Americans call his second term a failure.

And give in or get tariffed. President Trump issues a news threat as he attempts to gain control of Greenland.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BROWN: And we are following the breaking news in a tense situation in Minneapolis.

Just moments ago, clashes erupted again right outside that federal building where ICE operates. You can see federal agents pushing back the crowd, taking some into custody. And it happened just minutes after President Trump gave another warning, saying he may be -- quote -- "forced to act" if the protests continue.

Now, this comes after the Department of Homeland Security says 12 people were arrested overnight for assaulting law enforcement.

CNN's Julia Vargas Jones is in Minneapolis.

Tell us what's going on the ground there.

JULIA VARGAS JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, it's a tense situation.

As we reported before, it does escalate and then there's a little bit of a de-escalation. That's what you're seeing now. This is pretty good. What happened, we saw a handful of people now get arrested by DHS and ICE. The real issue at hand here is this one road. You can see cars driving up and down it. Protesters at times have

walked up into the road. And that is what seems to trigger a response from these federal agents. One of them was a man who had a costume on, a fox costume on, a person, I should say, who was dancing right in front of these gates.

Very quickly, we saw a surge of officers just come out, take that person down, arrest them, take them into the building. A few minutes later, we saw it happen again, this time on this side of the street. Again and again, these officers have just been saying, stay off the street.

Once protesters get a little bolder and start walking into the street,that's when we're seeing these flare-ups. That's when we saw again another flare-up, about five different agents, at least, on top of one person, who was then taken into custody. That happened just behind us here as we were live in the last hour.

Now, again, this comes as authorities here in Minnesota, Pamela, keep on asking for protesters to remain peaceful, to not escalate, that escalating tensions only plays into the hand of the federal government, in the words of Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey here in Minneapolis.

But we have spoken to some who have specifically been walking around this crowd and calling for things to remain peaceful. But we're also learning this morning new reporting on one of the reasons why many of these protesters are here, the death of Renee Good, transcripts now being released that show what exactly happened in the minutes after that shooting involving the ICE officers.

We are learning that around -- the first few calls for -- 911 calls that came in, one of them was from a person, a man who identified as calling on behalf of Homeland Security officers who were on the scene. He said -- quote -- "We had officers stuck in a vehicle and we had agitators on scene," he said, and then he requested emergency services for local law enforcement.

Now, he said he did not have a description of the shooter and he was getting his information from a local joint operation command center. Among those calls, there are also calls of residents that seemed to be shocked or surprised with what was going on.

[13:05:08]

I'm sorry, Pamela. I was just turning around here as things start to get a little bit louder, but this is the sentiment of discontent. Many of the people that we have spoken to here, Pamela, are saying that they are here because they believe that this is an assault on Minneapolis, on the city, and the citizens of the city and the state.

That is why many of them have been compelled to come here and voice their discontent, Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Julia Vargas Jones, thank you so much -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: We turn out a health care.

With tens of millions of Americans facing surging costs, President Trump is now pushing what he says is his new plan. Earlier, he laid out proposals at a White House event, but big hurdles in Congress now lie ahead. Still, the president expressed confidence as he compared the issue to other challenges he's faced.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We want to make this precision, just like a Venezuela, just like the attack on the Iran nuclear weapons, which wiped that out. Just like all of the other things we do, they're precision. We want to make it the opposite of Minnesota, California, and all these places that are so badly run.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: What do people say when it comes to health care? New CNN polling finds that only 36 percent of Americans, about a third, approve of the way the president is handling health care right now.

And as we approach the one-year mark of his second term, more Americans, 58 percent, feel that the year has been a failure.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is live at the White House.

First, though, we just got remarks in from President Trump at the White House. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: ... insurance premiums?

TRUMP: It's going to be a tremendous -- it is a tremendous plan. It's called the Great Healthcare Plan.

And we're going to get tremendous reductions, as you know, through -- if you look at medicines and prescription drugs, they're going to come down by numbers that have never been seen before. And we're doing that by most favored nations. And other nations, who ever pays the lowest in the world, that's what we're going to pay.

Right now, we're paying sometimes 10 times higher than other nations. So we have favored nations. That's been approved. Other nations have, for the most part, agreed to it. And they had no choice. Otherwise, we were going to put tariffs on them.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: The health care plan that we're coming -- the money is going to be paid directly to the people. So it goes directly not to the companies, not to the insurance companies. It's going to go directly to the people. And the people are going to buy their own health care.

They'll get much better health care at a much reduced rate.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: ... pull out of NATO if it doesn't help you acquire Greenland?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, we're going to see. NATO has been dealing with us on Greenland. We need Greenland for national security very badly.

If we don't have it, we have a big hole in national security, especially when it comes to what we're doing in terms of the Golden Dome and all of the other things. We have a lot of -- a lot of investments in military. We have got the strongest military in the world that is only getting stronger.

And you saw that with Venezuela. You saw that with the attack on Iran, with the knocking out their nuclear capabilities potentially. So, yes, we're going to -- we're talking to NATO. We're talking to NATO.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: I don't talk about that.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: You urged protesters in Iran earlier this week to keep fighting in the streets. You said that help was on the way.

Is help still on the way, or has your bar for intervention changed?

TRUMP: Well, we're going to see. As you know, Iran canceled the hanging of over 800 people.

They were going to hang over 800 people yesterday. And I greatly respect the fact that they canceled that.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Prime Minister Carney is in China. How do you see the deals Canada and China have just signed, trade deals between the two partners?

TRUMP: Well, that's OK. That's what he should be doing. I mean, it's a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Did Arab and Israeli officials convince you to not strike Iran?

TRUMP: Nobody convinced me. I convinced myself.

You had yesterday scheduled over 800 hangings. They didn't hang anyone. They canceled the hangings. That had a big impact.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Yesterday, you accepted Maria Machado's Nobel Prize medal. What do you intend to do with it? And why would you want someone else's Nobel Prize?

TRUMP: Well, she offered it to me. I thought it was very nice. She said, you've ended eight wars, and nobody deserves this prize more than -- in history than you do.

And I thought it was a very nice gesture. And, by the way, I think she's a very fine woman, and we'll be talking again.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Say it?

QUESTION: What's the trigger for the Insurrection Act in Minnesota? What are you waiting for?

[13:10:01]

TRUMP: Well, the Insurrection Act, which has been used by 48 percent of the presidents as of this moment, the Insurrection Act -- also, if you look at it, I believe it was Bush, the elder Bush.

He used it, I think, 28 times. It's been used a lot. And if I needed it, I'd use it. I don't think there's any reason right now to use it. But if I needed it, I'd use it. It's very powerful.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: You called Machado a very nice person. You said the meeting went well. Why align with Delcy Rodriguez and the remnants of the Maduro regime, and not with Machado, who has the support of the Venezuelan people?

TRUMP: Well, if you ever remember a place called Iraq, where everybody was fired, every single person, the police, the generals, everybody was fired, and they ended up being ISIS. Instead of just getting down to business, they ended up being ISIS.

So I remember that. But I will tell you, I had a great meeting yesterday by a person who I have a lot of respect for. And she has respect, obviously, for me and our country. And she gave me her Nobel Prize. But I will tell you what. I got to know her. I never met her before.

And I was very, very impressed. She's a really -- this is a fine woman.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: The March for Life is next week.

TRUMP: Yes.

QUESTION: And some pro-lifers are worried about your support for the Hyde Amendment. What do you tell them?

TRUMP: Well, you know what I tell them? You're going to hear about it, because I just taped a beautiful piece for them. And they're going to play it. And those are great people. I want to tell you, they're great people.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: The president speaking there a short time ago as he departed the White House.

Kristen Holmes still with us.

And, Kristen, he covered a lot of stuff there, as you noted. But I do want to focus on health care. And you heard the president there make some promises about his health care plan, bring down costs like the world has never seen, allow people to have their own money.

But what are the actual specifics? And is this a piece of proposed legislation or just an outline of some sort?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, the thing to keep in mind here is that, when you say get to the specifics, I spent the morning on the phone with health care experts trying to figure out exactly what this means, because there's a lot of language in this framework.

But what they said was overwhelmingly the same. There's a lot of good. They have some concerns, certainly, but that it's very thin on details. So, because of that, they can't really come to an assessment. But I will go over some of what's in this health care proposal.

President Trump is calling in his name, the Great Healthcare Plan, and it is really just a framework to help Congress try and form future legislation. It aims to lower drug prices, reduce premiums, and increase price transparency.

That is where the health care experts say that would be great if that can be done. Now, here's the other part of this that there's a lot of questions on. It does not extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies. It sends federal subsidies to consumers, instead of to insurers, which is what happens now.

It requires insurers to disclose how much they spend paying claims versus profit and how often they deny claims. Obviously, we know this is a huge issue on the denial of claims from insurance companies. And it calls for more drugs to be over the counter.

We know about President Trump's most favored nation plan. This, of course, is something that he has been touting. He has made deals with these various drug companies to lower the cost of prescription drugs as he tries to reshape his version of health care. Now, one of the big concerns here, and I just want to go back to this,

is this idea of sending these subsidies, these direct payments to individuals, instead of to insurers. And the reason why people are concerned about that is, there is some concern that this would essentially exclude people with preexisting conditions, that they would be the only ones left in a health care exchange, and that everyone else, these healthier individuals would be moving to different health care avenues that they could use with this financing.

Karoline Leavitt kind of addressed this in the press briefing, saying that that wasn't true. But, again, the reason that they don't know what this means is because it is so thin on details. We still don't really understand who would be eligible for this, how the payments would be given to the people.

And that's kind of where you get into the White House saying this is just a framework for this, but that framework means that we don't actually understand what this would look like.

SCIUTTO: Just a practical question. We're a few months away from midterm elections, uncertain outcome there, already a very thin Republican majority in the House. Is there an actual plan to work this through Congress this year? Or, again, is this a wish list?

HOLMES: Well, I can't tell you what's going on in terms of the actual people on the Hill, but I can tell you what the White House is pushing, and they want Congress to essentially start working on this right now. That's what this plan calls for.

[13:15:02]

They call for codifying this most favored nation's plan of President Trump's. And they basically put this on Congress now and say, get to work, push this through. This question of midterms and all of this, I mean, this is just one of the domestic policy issues that is going to really plague Republicans as we head into that election season.

SCIUTTO: And a funding decision coming up quite immediately as well.

Kristen Holmes at the White House, thanks so much.

Still to come this hour: President Trump issues a new threat to countries that oppose his plan to take control of Greenland, of course, Greenland, one of those places.

Plus, the Pentagon moves an aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East, as Trump continues to weigh potential military action against Iran.

And, later, the threat of snow as far south as Florida. What you need to know about this weekend's wild winter weather -- that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:20:02] SCIUTTO: A group of bipartisan U.S. lawmakers is in Copenhagen, Denmark, today as President Trump's threats to take over Greenland create unprecedented friction with Denmark and other NATO allies.

The Trump administration maintains that acquiring the world's largest island, keep in mind, over the objections of the people of both Denmark and Greenland, is in the interest of U.S. national security. And now the president is threatening new tariffs on countries that don't agree with him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I may do that for Greenland too. I may put a tariff on countries if they don't go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security. So I may do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Today, however, that congressional delegation, again, Republicans and Democrats, is voicing opposition to that and other measures.

CNN's Nic Robertson has more from Greenland.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Well, the congressional delegation in Copenhagen led by Senator Chris Coons bringing some comfort to the people here in Nuuk, talking about the shared values between the United States, Denmark and the Greenlandic people, shared values in sovereignty, territorial integrity, self- determination, and also talking about the need to have a conversation between the two countries.

But very clear in the context of what this delegation was saying that there is, in a sense, a strong breakdown of trust between them and the White House.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Are there real pressing threats to the security of Greenland from China and Russia? No, not today. Are there real opportunities for us to partner through NATO to contribute to Arctic security? Yes.

And so there's a lot of rhetoric, but there's not a lot of reality in the current discussion in Washington. And part of the point of this trip is to have a bipartisan group of members of Congress listen respectfully to our friends, our trusted allies and partners here in Denmark.

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): When you ask the American people whether or not they think it is a good idea for the United States to acquire Greenland, the vast majority, some 75 percent, will say, we do not think that that is a good idea.

This senator from Alaska does not think it is a good idea. And I want to build on the relationship that we have had. As Aaja and I penned in an op-ed about a year ago, Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset.

ROBERTSON: And, on Saturday, the people of Nuuk also planning to send a message to President Trump, a march through the town here ending up outside the U.S. Consulate.

Nic Robertson, CNN, Nuuk, Greenland.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Not clear how that standoff is going to be resolved. Our thanks to Nic Robertson.

Well, back here in the U.S., brand-new CNN polling reveals what Americans really think about President Trump's immigration actions and his campaign pledge to bring down costs, whether he's met that pledge.

Plus, we're following an intensifying situation in Minneapolis following new reporting on the deadly ICE shooting of Renee Good, including exactly how many times and where she was shot.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:27:38]

BROWN: Brand-new CNN polling shows Americans generally have a negative view of most aspects of President Trump's first year back in office.

A majority of Americans, 58 percent, call his second term a failure. Few Americans see the president making progress on some of his inaugural pledges, such as restoring safety to the U.S. and bringing law and order back to American cities. On both of those promises, more Americans than not say the president is making things worse.

SCIUTTO: Yes, many of those are issues, he's tended to be strong on.

BROWN: Yes.

SCIUTTO: At the same time, a majority of Americans think that Trump has not done enough on his pledge to bring down the cost of everyday goods. In fact, on voters' top issue, the economy, 61 percent disapprove of what he's doing. Again, he typically polls high on economic issues.

This is significant when you consider that, just weeks after the 2024 election, Trump pointed to immigration and the economy as the very reasons he won.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I won on the border and I won on groceries. It's a very simple word, groceries. When you buy eggs, they were double and triple the price over a short period of time. And I won an election based on that.

(END VIDEO CLIP) SCIUTTO: The one bright spot for the president in the poll shows that he has managed to retain support from his Republican base.

Joining us now to talk about these numbers, David Axelrod, someone who's read a few poll numbers in his day, CNN chief political analyst, former senior adviser to President Obama.

David, good to have you.

We were talking just in the break about the headline number as well, because his approval is below 40 percent again, 39 percent. It was 37 percent in CNN's poll in October. That 40 percent threshold is usually a pretty bad one for the president.

I know you dealt that -- with that during the Obama administration a couple of times. How serious a marker is that for him at this stage, particularly this close to the midterms?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, well, I think the midterms are the thing that he needs to worry about, and that most Republicans who read this poll are going to be worrying about.

He is not up for office in 2026, but the party will bear responsibility in the minds of voters for what the president does. It's why the party in power often has difficulty in the midterm elections. The last time a party in power actually made gains in the midterm elections was 2002 after 9/11. So, yes, this is a bad report card and should be a source of great concern.