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Trump Says, I Don't Care About Nobel After Tying It to Greenland; E.U. Chief Vows Unflinching Response to Trump's Greenland Threats; Trump Slams Anti-ICE Protesters Who Rushed Inside St. Paul Church. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired January 20, 2026 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, President Trump's aggressive push for Greenland and clashes with Europe now rocking the markets. Dow futures sliding as Trump threatens new tariffs and shares private messages from world leaders.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking this morning, a judge and his wife shot in their home in broad daylight. We've got new updates as the manhunt is expanded.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: It's good to be an Indiana Hoosier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the rugs to riches story for Indiana football comes to conclusion, and they are the national champions of 2026. What a football team.

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BOLDUAN: Have I reminded you recently I'm from Indiana? Just saying. Indiana began its season as the losingest major program in the history of college football, ended it with the school's first national championship last night.

I'm Kate Bolduan with Sara Sidner and John Berman. This is CNN News Central.

SIDNER: Breaking overnight, President Trump upping the ante on his Greenland gamble as he prepares to travel to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. There he says he will hold a meeting with the key players on Greenland. Overnight, the president said, quote, we have to have it. And he's even sharing some of his private messages with other leaders on the matter, including a text message from French President Emmanuel Macro that reads, quote, I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.

France is one of eight European nations President Trump is threatening with new tariffs over his desire for Greenland, and here's how the markets are reacting to that. Yes, not good. The major indices significantly down across the board.

Now, as we reported, the president explicitly linked his quest for Greenland not -- to not winning the Nobel Peace Prize in a message to Norway's leader. But late last night, he said this.

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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: No, I don't care about the Nobel Prize. They have a board, but it's controlled by Norway. And I don't care what Norway says, but I really don't care about that. What I care about is saving lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Okay. All of this comes as the president celebrates his first full year in office.

CNN's Kevin Liptak is live at the White House for us.

The president also spoke about Greenland overnight. What did he say?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, there was no evidence that the president is backing down from this at all, and it is letting clearly a new degree of urgency to his visit to Davos this week. He's headed off later this evening as European leaders all work to scramble to try and talk the president down from these ambitions, or at least try and get a better picture from him about what his true intentions here are. And you saw that in the text message that the president posted from the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and even inviting the president to Paris for this emergency G7 Summit.

You also saw the president post a message from the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, who has spent an enormous amount of time trying to cultivate the president over the last year, saying that he is committed to finding a way forward on Greenland.

But so far, it doesn't appear as any of this is having an effect on the president. He sounded ultimately hardened in his stance when he was speaking last night. Listen to what he said.

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TRUMP: I don't think they're going to push back too much. Look, we have to have it. They have to have this done. They can't protect it. Denmark, they're wonderful people and I know the leaders, they're very good people, but they don't even go there.

And, you know, because the boat went there 500 years ago and then left, that doesn't give you title to property. So, we'll be talking about it with the various people.

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LIPTAK: So, you hear the president there reference title to property. I think that is something of a clue into his mindset in all of this. You know, officials say he feels emboldened after that raid to capture Nicolas Maduro. He's heading into Davos eager to tout his view of dominance over the Western Hemisphere, as he wrote on Truth Social last night, there can be no going back on that, everyone agrees.

[07:05:04]

SIDNER: Yes. It should be clear, this is not a simple real estate transaction, but that seems to be the way he has been talking about it.

Kevin Liptak, thank you so much, live from the White House for us. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Europe is simply reeling right now over how rough and far President Trump is taking this, and the corner that America's allies are being backed into by the American president. European Union Chief Ursula von der Leyen says that Europe is preparing now its own security strategy to protect Greenland. Speaking in Davos, she said that Greenland's sovereignty and integrity are, quote, non-negotiable.

CNN's Melissa Bell tracking this from Paris for us. Melissa, the E.U. chief is now also calling for a new independent Europe. What does that entail, but also just this sense of how far and very real this has all become?

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, and how divided the two sides are ahead of what promises to be a pretty frosty meeting by the time President Trump meets with a bunch of these European leaders tomorrow in Davos. What we heard from Ursula von der Leyen was that a crisis as an opportunity, that Europe was taking this very seriously, that it was an added incentive to its push for independence from the United States, also announcing fresh investments in Greenland, and its continued solidarity, the rest of Europe that is with Denmark, as it continues to protect the idea of Greenland's sovereignty.

So, there is no sense of any possible bridge in the growing divide between the two sides over the question of Greenland. We have also been hearing this morning in London from House Speaker Mike Johnson echoing the words of Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, has been calling for measure, suggesting that it is time to talk, to engage, and that, Kate, is the official position of the European Union as well.

What we do know though is that they're preparing some pretty steep countermeasures in response to those threatened American tariffs should they come into effect on February 1st. What Europeans are preparing to do is to see the suspended tariffs from the last round of the trade war last summer. You'll remember ahead of the deal that was struck between the E.U. and the U.S., they're preparing to unfreeze their countermeasures. That is 93 billion euros worth of potential countermeasures that they are preparing to deploy should those threatened extra 10 percent tariffs go into effect on the 1st of February, the so-called Greenland tariffs at this stage.

So, European Union pre preparing to counteract in a very forceful way, and European leaders will be discussing just that, Kate, when they meet in this emergency session on Thursday in Brussels to discuss this ever souring transatlantic relationship.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And it does seem that they all need to be preparing for what is about to come at them when President Trump heads to Davos in his remarks that could -- that he will be giving.

It's good to see you. Thank you so much. John?

BERMAN: All right. The demonstrators who protested inside a Minnesota church, what charges they could face and how far the federal government will take this.

Have you seen the temperatures promised to hit much of the country, already causing huge problems like this 100-car pileup?

And major questions this morning, how did millions of French fries wash up on a beach and why on earth do they call them chips?

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BERMAN: All right. New overnight, President Trump lashed out of participants in an anti-ICE protest inside a St. Paul church. He called demonstrators agitators and insurrectionists, and accused them of being highly trained to sow disorder. He said, quote, they are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail or thrown out of the country.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke further about the investigation, making it clear where the administration stands on their investigation.

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TODD BLANCHE, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: We are absolutely investigating. Our civil rights unit has already sent experts out to Minneapolis today, the civil rights unit, the U.S. attorney's office, the FBI. DHS is investigating this.

It's a crime, and so they will face a jury. If they're convicted, they will go to prison.

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BERMAN: All right. with us now is CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig. And to be fair, we had a discussion yesterday, we were way out ahead on the legality of this, but just remind people what the law says in the FACE Act, which is what apparently the federal government is looking at here.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: So, there are actually two laws, one of them being the FACE Act, the other being a civil rights law, which says, it is a crime to intentionally interfere with another person's free exercise of religion. We rarely use these laws, but they certainly exist and the conduct that we see here on, its face, seems to meet the requirements of those laws. Is it intentional? Sure. Are they interfering with people's exercise of free religion? You see it on these videos. They intentionally went into a private church. So it is met on the face.

Now, I do have to say DOJ ought to think about the other factors. How long was this interruption? Was it brief? Was it long-term? Was it -- I mean, it was just a matter of minutes or hours. And second of all, there was no violence used, no injuries. That said the elements of the laws do seem to be met here.

BERMAN: What does it tell us that the deputy attorney general is making clear that the full force of the civil rights division is rushing out to Minnesota to investigate what happened in this church here while at the same time he says there's no investigation into the killing of Renee Good?

HONIG: A not notable contrast in approaches here.

[07:15:00]

With the church interference, it is all hands on deck. We are going after them. These are crimes. They will be charged. With the shooting of Renee Good, regardless of one might think the ultimate conclusion should be, the approach of DOJ and Todd Blanche has been, we're not even going to look, we're not even going to do an investigation. And as we discussed yesterday, FBI actually opened an investigation, which apparently now has been shuttered. So, yes, definitely some distinction there in the approaches.

BERMAN: Given how clear the law does seem with what happened at that Minnesota Church, if you were defending these protesters, what would you tell them? I mean, how would you handle this?

HONIG: Yes. Well, first of all, I would have advised them not to do this. But if I did get one of these cases, now I would prevail upon DOJ to look at the discretionary factors. I would say this was a momentary interruption. It's not as if they stopped these people from worshiping over days or weeks. And I would use the argument that it was not violent. But what I would be doing there is appealing to DOJ on the soft factors, not on the actual elements of the crime.

BERMAN: And then very quickly, there are two now federal cases dealing with the situation on the ground in Minnesota. What are they and how are they different?

HONIG: So, two cases, one brought by six protesters who have gotten a ruling from a judge saying basically, ICE, you can't break the law, you can't use physical force against peaceable protesters. DOJ is actually appealing that today because they don't like judges telling them what to do one way or the other.

There's a separate case brought by the state, brought by the governor, the attorney general, in which so far all the judge has done is deny the request to kick ICE out, deny the request to end the surge. But that's going into court today, so we'll have a hearing on. That wouldn't surprise me if the judge in that case. I don't think the judge in that case is going to remove ICE. It wouldn't surprise me though. It's the same judge actually in both cases. If this judge issues a similar decree, in the other case saying, ICE, I'm not going to kick you out, but you can't use force against nonviolent protesters.

BERMAN: It's a middle ground and it seems like an obvious thing for a judge to say. You have to follow the law here. This is what the law says.

HONIG: Yes, it's fairly academic. It's a prescriptive decree by the judge. It doesn't actually change the status quo, which is ICE is supposed to follow the law.

BERMAN: Elie Honig, Counselor, great to see you this morning. Thank you very much. Sara?

SIDNER: The U broken. Ahead, they are climbing flagpoles in Indiana, the huge Hoosier celebration. I think I hear some screaming in the back, that may be Kate, after their first ever national football Championship. We will take you there.

And we are one year into President Trump's second term. We asked his voters how they're feeling about his agenda one year in.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're open to voting for a Democrat?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of course.

I wish that Washington could get along like cows.

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SIDNER: For the first time in program history, the Indiana Hoosiers are the college football national champions. They beat the Miami Hurricanes 27-21 to complete a perfect 16-0 season. Fans and students of course freaked out and took to the streets of Bloomington overnight to celebrate in the biggest way possible.

Coy Wire is in Miami for us. Coy, that was wild. The Hoosiers, though, had to really work.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: I saw a wild champion -- they did. Last time I was at a championship like this was with you and I had that song in my head, it's great to be of Floridian. And now I'm going to have who, who, Hoosiers stuck in my head. It was pandemonium.

This was the championship that no one saw coming. Two teams overcoming all sorts of odds, Sara. Miami playing for their first title in 24 years on their home field, Indiana and their Heisman-winning quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, seeking a first. And Fernando had his moment, fourth down, Heismendoza, sheer will and determination in the city where he grew up, putting his team up ten in the fourth, and Mama Mendoza was on Cloud Nine.

Now, the hurricanes weren't going to go down without a fight, superstar Malachi Toney willing his way into the zone, bringing Miami within three. And after an Indiana field goal, Miami would have a chance to go for the win, but it was intercepted by Jamari Sharpe and the Hoosiers pulled off the unthinkable. The team that had more losses than any team in college football history before Coach Cignetti arrived climbing to the mountaintop. Perfect, undefeated season, complete. I caught up with Coach Cignetti and some of his stars after the game. Listen to this.

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CURT CIGNETTI, INDIANA HOOSIERS HEAD COACH: Champions made when nobody's looking Our kids have great work ethic, great leadership. It's commitment to a worthwhile goal and just try to improve daily and anything's possible when you prepare the right way and have the right people on your step and in the locker room.

JAMARI SHARPE, INDIANA HOOSIERS DEFENSIVE BACK: Oh, yes, we've been battling, having games like this, this fight we just fought to the end all year.

FERNANDO MENDOZA, INDIANA HOOSIER QUARTERBACK: I'm stuttering right now because you can't even use words today. They're my brothers for life and it's been the most special brotherhood. It's -- I'm so emotional about it, I can't even process it. You see that emotion and tears but it's -- I mean, they're my brothers for life and it's just a special group of guys, no one rather would with (ph).

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WIRE: 27-21 is the final, Sara. For the first time ever, the Indiana Hoosiers are your college football national champions, and the scenes back in Bloomington, showing you exactly how much it means to Hoosier Nation. What a moment.

SIDNER: Can we just quickly go over the fact that Fernando Mendoza is from Miami. He's got so many ties. And there was this beautiful shot of his parents, his mom, who is suffering with M.S., like celebrating. I mean, the whole thing is so crazy because he's from there. This is hometown, but he was playing for the other team.

WIRE: Yes. We caught up with Fernando earlier in the week and he said it was a full circle moment. Grew up about a mile from the University of Miami's campus, always wanted to play there, they didn't really give him an offer. So, he had to go elsewhere, and here he was playing against his team in front of mom, who played tennis at University of Miami, incredible stuff.

And Jamari Sharpe, who had that game-sealing interception, same thing, from Miami, always wanted to be a Hurricane. They never offered him. And he took all that pain from the past and let it all out on the field with that game-sealing interception. Incredible storylines all year, all around, Sara. Just congratulations to all those players who fought so hard, that coaching staff, incredible, unforgettable, one of the best seasons we've ever seen.

SIDNER: Regrets, Miami has had a few, two players that kick the butts. They could have had them, but you guys got them.

[07:25:00]

BOLDUAN: You got to love a fairytale story. If you love a fairytale story, you have to love Indiana, the best state in all of them, I say.

SIDNER: Not biased at all.

BOLDUAN: Never.

SIDNER: You're sort of from there, so --

BOLDUAN: Objective, through and through. Love you, Coy.

SIDNER: Bye, Coy.

BOLDUAN: Let's turn to this. President Trump sharing publicly what one would assume are private messages with world leaders. The topic, Greenland. What leaders are now preparing for as President Trump is getting ready to head to Davos tonight.

And right place, right time, a Navy rescue swimmer goes from eating lunch to pulling up a dramatic rescue.

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