Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Police Sources Say Fingerprints at Murder Scene Match Mangione, Police Recover Notebook From Suspect Containing to-do List; Biden Facing Pressure to Protect Immigrants Before Trump Takes Office; Trump Border Czar Plans to Build Deportation Facilities in Texas. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired December 11, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:30:10]

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': Now, to breaking news in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. Law enforcement sources tell CNN that fingerprints found at the crime scene match Luigi Mangione's. The 26- year-old suspect was defiant outside court yesterday as he fights extradition back to New York.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LUIGI MANGIONE, BRIAN THOMPSON MURDER SUSPECT: It's completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Joining me now is Candace DeLong. She's a former FBI Criminal Profiler who worked on the Unabomber case. She's also the former Head Nurse at the Institute of Psychiatry at Northwestern University Hospital and the host of podcast -- the podcast rather, Killer Psyche. Thank you so much for being here.

You just saw and heard Mangione outside the court, talking about -- I'm not really sure what he was talking about, maybe you can shed light on it. But his former classmates call him a totally normal guy, unassuming and easy to approach, great guy, thoughtful guy. So with your vast experience in sort of profiling suspects such as Mangione, what do you make of that?

CANDICE DELONG, FORMER FBI PROFILER WHO WORKED ON UNABOMBER CASE: Well, I think his friends are describing the young man that they knew before. A lot of mental illnesses, Dana, emerge in the late-teens, early to mid-20s, and this young man had a meteoric rise and he was a star academically, athletically, culturally with his friends. And now, he is the subject of the biggest story, certainly, in America and possibly the world.

What happened? And my experience as a psychiatric nurse makes me think something emerged, some kind of mental disorder emerged and threw this guy off tracks. His writings are disjointed and rambling, and that's a clue.

BASH: Yeah, I mean, what he said, it's completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people. It's lived experience. I mean, like what does that even mean? I guess that's the point, nothing (ph).

DELONG: Exactly.

BASH: Yeah.

DELONG: My point exactly.

BASH: I do want to ask you about his fascination with the Unabomber. On a Goodreads profile, he wrote, "While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy Luddite, however they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary." You've actually spent time with Ted Kaczynski. What do you make of those comments, first of all?

DELONG: Well, actually, Ted Kaczynski was a very disturbed man and he was disturbed long before he started killing people. His mother describes an episode when he was nine months old, of -- he had to be in the hospital for three weeks. It was back in the '40s. Parents were frowned upon visiting in pediatric wards. And she said when he came home after three weeks, he was never the same.

We know now that, that sounds like an episode of maternal deprivation that left permanent scars and altered the course of his life. Now, the young man, Mr. Mangione, that as far as we know is not the case. Yes, Kaczynski went to Harvard when he was 16. Yes, he went to University of Michigan and got a doctorate before he was 24. But people that knew him at those schools described someone who was a loner. Sometimes he would not come out of his room, his dorm room for days. That he was disheveled and unkempt. That sounds like someone suffering at least one mental disorder.

For Mangione and I am not diagnosing, but when you look at his stellar history and what we are saying about him now, what we are learning about him now, it's a head scratcher. You say, what happened?

BASH: Well, what does it tell you about his past --

DELONG: And for me, because of my background in psych -- pardon me?

BASH: Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Please continue.

DELONG: No, for me, because of my psych background, I'm looking at this and saying, well, something emerged that threw him off course and he -- his admiration of Ted Kaczynski --

[12:35:12]

BASH: Yeah.

DELONG: -- is, I think it kind of speaks to where he's at in his head. BASH: Yeah. OK. Well, that was the answer to my question -- forgive me, there's a bit of a delay. I do want to ask about what a law enforcement source says, which is that investigators are looking into what Mangione wrote in a notebook, including a passage, also about the Unabomber, that he said he didn't want to use a bomb because it might kill innocents and it could be better to kill the CEO at his own bean counting conference. Again, what does that tell you about his mindset, that he didn't want to hurt other people?

DELONG: Well, good for him, but he gunned down a 50-year-old man, father of two, a self-made man, unlike Mangione who had everything handed to him. What are we supposed to, applaud that? OK. I guess, we're lucky that he didn't put a bomb down in New York City, but that doesn't make him any less of a murderer.

BASH: Yeah.

DELONG: I'm sorry, accused murderer.

BASH: Yeah, no, it definitely doesn't. I just -- it's just sort of as particularly because that's what you do, what it tells you about what's going on in his mind and what was as he allegedly prepared for this murder. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Hope you can come back soon.

DELONG: My pleasure.

BASH: Coming up, Congressional Democrats are urging President Biden to make one last push to protect immigrants before Donald Trump takes over. What would it look like? Will it work? We'll talk about that after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:41:23]

BASH: Now to some new CNN reporting, my colleague Priscilla Alvarez is learning Joe Biden is facing pressure to protect immigrants while he still can. Many who fear Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations are frustrated by the current administration's inaction. One Democratic Congressional aide said, "They're afraid of their own shadow on this issue."

My panel is back here. And let me just go through, Phil, some of the specifics that these Democrats are asking for -- extended temporary protected status. Something that I spoke about with Senator Cortez Masto on this show last week. Make more immigrants eligible for TPS. Expedite deferred action for childhood arrivals, of course, DACA renewals, and resolve pending asylum claims.

My question is like, what's -- why are they having so much? Why are the Democratic lawmakers who are pushing Biden having so much trouble? Doesn't this seem like a no-brainer?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DEMOCRATIC CORRESPONDENT: I think there's a political element and reality of this. I think there's a White House that has long struggled and grappled with this issue that isn't necessarily keen on bringing it up on their way out the door necessarily.

But I also think the reality is, if you look at those three items that you mentioned, two of them can get wiped away on January 20th with the swipe of a pen. Resolving asylum claims is a bit of a different ballgame there. And I think there's a recognition inside the White House, just as they did on day one of January 20, 2021, when the then President Biden or still President Biden -- President Biden signed the executive orders doing away with a large swath of President Trump's executive orders.

President Trump is going to do the same thing just at a much grander and wider scale. I think the reality right now is, my understanding is White House officials are working on this. They're trying to see what they can do. But they don't want to put stuff out there that, A, gets them hit and B, they know isn't going to actually last much longer than a couple of weeks. It's a very difficult moment to be in given what they know is coming.

BASH: Yeah. Which I totally understand. I remember asking Senator Cortez Masto about the fact that, like, what makes you think that it won't just be wiped away on Inauguration Day, as you said, and the answer was, well, at least it will make it harder for them because it will have to go through the courts. I mean, who knows if that's true?

I want to turn to a different part of the immigration story and the whole question of what is going to happen with regard to undocumented immigrants. Tom Homan, who is Donald Trump's incoming Border Czar, was asked by Dr. Phil about Texas's official offer for 1,400 acres. Texas offered 1,400 acres of state land to build deportation buildings. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HOMAN, DONALD TRUMP'S PICK FOR BORDER CZAR: I'm writing the plan as we speak. I was working on it last night, as a matter of fact.

PHIL MCGRAW, HOST OF "DR. PHIL PRIMETIME" SHOW: This is used to build a place to house these people temporarily for deportation. How long are they likely to stay in this?

HOMAN: They'll be moving in and out. One day, we may have a flight to the El Salvador nations. Next day, we have a flight to Asia. So we'll been moving through, but I think this 1,400 acres of land, that saves us from acquiring that land. The government never buys things real fast. When we do, we overpay for it. So having this from the State of Texas is great.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID WEIGEL, POLITICAL REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Well, a lot in what he said, one of them very quickly, he said we're going to fly them including El Salvador nations. That's one question that's unresolved in this, is what nations are going to take asylum seekers, migrants who do not want to return to their home countries or it's not safe to return to home countries.

Haitians were a big part of the debate in the campaign, the nation of Haiti is not in a position to take back a lot of those people.

[12:45:00]

But, what's the larger context they're operating in? One, it's very thermostatic. I mean, first off, Phil was talking about, when Biden made those orders January 20, 2021, they were popular. People wanted to reverse these Trump policies. They're operating with a lot of Brio (ph) right now, in a climate they think is ready for deportations like nobody saw in the Trump administration. And those details are really important. And they're not saying everything they're going to do.

Russ Vought, we talked about in previous segment, one of the Project 2025 operatives, who's going to be director, has been working on executive orders, but not publishing them like they did with the rest of Project 2025 because of that backlash. We don't know exactly how they're going to legally formulate this stuff, but there are a lot of questions about how you do that.

It's easy to say get rid of asylum seekers right away, but to where? House them where? Is that ready yet? Is there going to be a problem with the state? They're gliding past a lot of these questions right now.

BASH: Well, there's asylum seekers and then --

WEIGEL: Yeah.

BASH: -- what they -- what Donald Trump has said on others, and his incoming administration about the most violent, those who are actually in jail. And all of the -- for all of them, the question is how? How and where?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL AND POLICY COLUMNIST: Yeah.

BASH: And the money.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: Yeah. How, where, the money, and listen, to hear him talk again, I think the ease with which they talk about it, it does make it sound quite simple. It also makes it sound like they've got everything figured out and there's not going to be any backlashes, idea (sp?) that you're going to have 14 acres. You're going to build these detention camps, and that Americans aren't at some level possibly going to react against that.

They talk about splitting up families. Well, no, they won't split up families. If somebody is a citizen, maybe they'll just all be deported back to wherever the person who doesn't have citizenship is deported back to. So we'll see.

I mean, they are talking with a lot of confidence and sort of the numbers on this from the election suggest they should have some confidence in terms of Americans do want something done to the extent that they want it done is unclear. And we'll find out.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, I think the term the devil is in the details --

HENDERSON: Yeah.

BASH: -- was kind of coined for this kind of project because it is not going to be an easy one or a clean one.

Thank you so much. Don't go anywhere because, you remember Imelda Marcos and her shoe collection? That was nothing compared to Bashar al-Assad's car collection. The Syrian dictator's opulent palace is now overrun by rebels, and we're going to take you inside. Clarissa Ward has a "CNN Exclusive."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:43]

BASH: Now to a "CNN Exclusive." Clarissa Ward got inside the presidential palace in Syria, which of course has now been taken over by rebel forces. This is just days after the dictator Bashar al-Assad fled the country. The Assad family lived there in this palace for more than 50 years as it ruled Syria. It's one of the lasting symbols of that brutal regime.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WARD (voice-over): Outside the palace of Bashar al-Assad, Syrians gather to pose for photographs and celebrate the removal of its despised former owner. The public is not allowed inside the sprawling compound yet, where the courtyards stretch longer than a city block.

WARD: This is the driveway into Bashar al-Assad's palace, and you can see how enormous it is. There are still casings all over the ground from rebel's celebratory gunfire as they swept in here and took control.

WARD (voice-over): At the entrance, an Iranian flag unceremoniously laid out for people to step on -- Iran, one of the regime's staunchest allies. Where once foreign dignitaries roamed the halls, now rebel fighters have the run of the place.

WARD: You can see blankets on the sofas in here. It looks like this is where the rebels are sleeping. And in fact, over here, you can see they've got some kind of a makeshift dining area going, some of their weapons here, a couple of rifles on this sofa. So this gentleman here, who is with the rebels, has just asked that I put on my scarf. It's the first time since we've been here that anyone has asked me to cover my hair.

[Foreign Language]

He says that he's from Idlib and that this is the first time he's seeing the palace.

[Foreign Language] WARD (voice-over): We feel that the injustice will break down one day and justice must win. This is the idea of justice in our religion, he says. In Islam, it is a must and a promise of Allah that Islam is victorious.

WARD: After nearly 14 years of a vicious civil war, to stand in this palace is a proud moment, capping off a seismic victory.

So the rebels here want to stress, they tell us that it was not their group that ransacked this office when they first swept in.

You could see actually some of the graffiti here that those first rebels wrote on the window. It says, "Allah curse Hafez's soul." Hafez al-Assad being the father of Bashar.

WARD (voice-over): When you look at these ceilings and these chandeliers, the marble, the detail, this is the kind of opulence, this lavish lifestyle that engendered so much resentment from so many Syrians who have been struggling to survive for decades while the Assad family lived like this.

[12:55:00]

In a warehouse, rows and rows of luxury cars, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and classic Cadillacs. This was a dynasty that will be remembered not only for its brutality, but its deep corruption.

Below the palace in the heart of Damascus, crowds gathered in Umayyad Square. Under Assad's rule, the Syrian people were forced to worship him. Now, they finally have the freedom to celebrate his demise.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: Thank you so much to Clarissa for that excellent reporting. Thank you for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)