Score. Do i mean at time. Com . Cnn this morning with kasie hunt next its monday, april 22, right now . Now on cnn this morning, Opening Statements set to begin in Donald Trumps Hush Money Trial. New cnn reporting on who prosecutors plan to call as their first witness. A foreign aid bill passed by the house, leaving hard right republicans and hamas infuriated. And a crisis on campus jewish students at Columbia University urged to stay home for their own safety all right 5 00 a. M. Hearing washington, but this is a live look at New York City on this Monday Morning where openings statements are set to begin in the donald trump trial. Good morning, everyone. Im casey hunt. Its wonderful to have you with us Opening Statements in the historic Criminal Hush Money Case against donald trump set to begin just a few hours from now, cnn has learned that david, the former chairman of the national enquirer, is Parent Company company is expected to be the first witness called by the manhattan das of
Have to confront these legal challenges that have been looming over him. Things might start to move. What do you see that weve seen this in a few recent elections to be they congressional midterm more General Election primary voters and general voters are very different, right . You have these loyalists and primary voters who are going to back the former president , almost no matter what. But we have polling. We talked to Focus Groups where voters who are outside of the base say, if hes convicted, im not sure that im going to back him. And now were getting close so to that possibly happening. And we also see more voters paying attention now and being reminded of what happened during the trump presidency. And theyre deciding, i dont know if i want to go back to this. Did you have a sense that what unfolded last week actually started to break through with people. I mean, the other piece of this and thank heres some members of republican members of congress. We should say defenders have d
take a look. meanwhile the angry orange baby is throwing another election he can t admit he lost. he wrote, if we don t solve the presidential election fraud of 2020, which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented, republicans will not be voting in 2024. it is the single most important thing. i know, i am confused also. it s like did neps nancy pelosi write this for him? juanita? yeah. the lone democratic candidate across the country reading it. i ll take it, i guess, you know like that s the worst thing he can do is to have the base say, let s be real, the gop has tethered themselves to trump in order to access. that is his only selling point. every time he talks to republicans like this, he is reminding them, i have you in a vice grip. i will squeeze whenever i want to, to make sure you are lying
biden 12, in some cases 15 points ahead, and he is trying he understands that for him to win re-election, he needs to destroy his opponent, and he s tried to begin this process in this way. the thing that, you know, in the process he clearly has created a huge vulnerability for himself and may put the house in a position where impeachment is unavoidable. well, i mean, yes, i mean, it does sound like things are definitely moving on the impeachment front. in terms of a huge vulnerability for himself, he famously said he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and his base would stay with him. do you think this is making him politically vulnerable? i think it s a good question. my guess is that a lot of people among his base say, you know, embrace the trump equation, which is that everybody does this stuff. this is just the way the world works, and so and may buy into some of the stories that
impeachment. there will probably come a time when we may have to vote that, based on information we have, whether or not we want to go for impeachment. remember, if we have impeachment, the government is shutdown, we re through until some decision is made. look, at the end of the day you have 108 on board. it seems you need a lot more for a majority, to say the least. are you confident that more democrats are going to sign onto this? no. i think that many democrats, my colleagues i ve had conversations with, they realize that we ve got to be, you know, very deliberate. and they also realize only 23% of the public wants to do this. and they also realize that what adam schiff has been telling us is real, and that is, you know, we impeach and then the senate says no. people in the base say why did you guys overreach? why didn t you just wait around? the election is 16 months from now.