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it's tuesday december 3rd. >> right now on cnn this morning. >> he didn't need to tell the american public, i will not do this. >> and he did. and when you made a promise, you got to keep it. >> it's a gift to donald trump biden's blowback. >> the president's broken promise not to promise. >> pardon his son. >> stunning. some of his closest allies. and this trump family on the job how can i justify that response personal misconduct. trump's pick to head the department of defense, facing increased scrutiny over new allegations about his past and vip treatment. president-elect donald trump traveling to paris this week following a personal invitation from the french president all right 5 a.m. here on the east coast. a live look at the

washington monument here in our nation's capital that is the white house in front of it. you can see it's never lit up at this hour but it's there. good morning everyone. i'm kasie hunt. it's wonderful to have you with us. as donald trump prepares to return to the white house and joe biden prepares to exit. a stark contrast now playing out both domestically and around the world for donald trump. the once and future president is finding himself again at the center of world affairs with leaders like canada's prime minister making the trek to mar-a-lago just this past weekend and now he's also getting invitations to go abroad. trump will be in paris this weekend for the reopening of the notre-dame cathedral at the invitation of french president emmanuel macron. all of this happening while trump assembles a cabinet of loyalists preparing to carry out his agenda, backed by a party showing almost unanimous allegiance to their incoming leader the american people gave president trump a mandate and what they've delivered with the mandate in this election is a demand that we shake up the status quo. >> this is the president's

cabinet. >> he's got to choose people who he has confidence in. >> americans elected a republican president, a republican senate and a republican house with a mandate. the senate is going to give great deference to a president that just won a stunning what i think is an electoral college landslide. when all is said and done and a mandate and he's being being given a mandate to govern. >> meanwhile, for the current president, there is not a lot of talk of mandates or any deference from many in his own party. president biden grabbed a last lever of power. it is reserved solely for the executive branch when he granted his son, hunter, a wide ranging pardon on a felony conviction before leaving on an international trip to africa. the move is now being largely condemned by many in his own party. after the president went back on a promise he made earlier this year, he didn't need to tell the american public, i will not do this. >> and he did. and when he made a promise, you got to keep it. >> it just gives the american people a sense that there's one system for the rich and

powerful, and another system for everybody else. >> are you disappointed by the decision? >> yes, i'm disappointed by the decision. >> it is discouraging that he has now gone back on his word, on that. all right joining us now to discuss all of this, shelby talcott reporter for semafor. shelby, good morning to you. thank you so much for being here. good morning. so let's talk for a little for a moment about the reaction among democrats to this pardon, because it's there are some out there who are defending him. but it's relatively the level of condemnation is pretty high. >> yeah. and i don't think it's particularly surprising because he repeatedly said that he wouldn't. >> and i think that's one of the things that democrats are stuck on. and i also think that they've raised the point that or the argument that this sort of erodes trust in the justice system at a time, of course, when donald trump is about to take office and has they have a party in the republican party who has argued that the justice system has been weaponized and they want mass change and so

this joe biden doing that sort of adds to republicans argument, because his his argument, biden's argument is basically that, hey, the reason to do this is because the system itself isn't fair. exactly. yeah. so let's talk a little bit about what senator joe manchin had to say yesterday to my colleague manu raju, when he was asked about this. let's watch what i would have done differently and my recommendations to counsel would have been, why don't you go ahead and pardon donald trump for all his charges and make it, you know, it had been it had gone down a lot, a lot more balanced. >> if you will. >> so he's basically saying that joe biden should also pardon donald trump by any world in which joe biden pardons donald trump for what happened on january 6th. you know, listen, i guess never say never. i think it would be shocking. i would say that there's probably not a world in which joe biden pardons donald trump for january six. but i also think if he did that, it would he would have backlash from the democratic party anyway so anything he

does in this situation besides not pardoning hunter biden is going to earn backlash from members of his own party and the republican party. i mean, big picture shelby. i mean, this is a situation where you have an outgoing president who just presided over sweeping losses for his own party democrats, while they're out there criticizing the president. what are they doing about moving forward? yeah, i mean that's the big question, right? i think that there is a huge hole that is waiting to be filled when it comes to the democratic party, and we're going to see over the next four years who fills that hole. is it going to be kamala harris again is it going to be any of the number of top democrats who were sort of keeping their powder dry to let joe biden finish his run this time around? and there's been a lot of conversations about that. and i anticipate that in the next four years, the democratic party is going to have to drastically change if they're going to have a chance in 2028. yeah. all right, shelby talcott

starting us off this morning shelby. very grateful to have you. thank you for being here. all right. straight ahead here on cnn this morning welcoming with open arms. french president emmanuel macron extends a paris invite to donald trump for his first foreign trip as president elect. plus, coming to the defense, gop senators look to push aside fresh allegations against trump's choice to lead the pentagon over his record and falling short. how the harris campaign was unable to seize on the controversy surrounding donald trump this political environment sucked. >> okay, we were dealing with ferocious headwinds, and i think people's instinct was to give the republicans and even donald trump another chance cnn heroes, an all star tribute meet and celebrate the honorees then find out who will be hero of the year. plus, a special tribute to michael j. fox, cnn heroes, an all star tribute sunday at eight on cnn. >> sail through the heart of

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california coast and this is cnn all right welcome back. >> president-elect trump heading to paris later this week to attend the december seventh reopening of the notre dame cathedral. he's going to be there at the invitation of french president emmanuel macron. the two leaders worked together closely during trump's first term, a relationship that some described as a quote bromance. macron rolling out the red carpet in 2017 when trump visited france for bastille day. the french president, explaining why he believes the relationship works when he did this interview with fareed zakaria in 2018. >> we know where we disagree and we are very straightforward on that. on climate, on trade, on multilateralism. but we we work very well together because we have very regular and direct discussions of course, catering to trump's ego never seems to hurt. >> cnn's stephen collinson writes this. quote, there will

be a sense of deja vu when french president emmanuel macron lays the flattery on thick for donald trump in paris this weekend. macron treated him with such deference at a bastille day parade on the champs-elysees that trump came home wanting a military parade of his own on july 4th. let's go to london, where we find cnn's max foster. max, good morning to you. what is behind this invitation and help us understand a little bit what it is about emmanuel macron that he knows or has decided to treat trump this way. >> well, you know he's a politician. he needs america. um the invitation is, you know i was there on friday at notre dame cathedral when macron was viewing it for the first time. it is absolutely stunning. this is he described it as the soul of france. it's, you know on many people's bucket lists. it's a place of worship for many people around the world. and it burned down in 2019, or

the roof fell through and they've completely refurbished it to the most extraordinary level. more than $700 million worth. and it's come out like new. so it looks like a completely new building. but actually what the historians love about it is that they've actually just restored it to what it would have looked like in the 12th century. so i think that, you know, this is a big moment for france. so they've invited heads of state, and they were expecting the u.s. ambassador to france to go along. and they've just heard that it's actually going to be president trump. so it's all been ramped up a level. the background to this is that there's a growing fear in the european union, of which france is a key member, that trump is about to launch a trade war against the european union which could be hugely, hugely destructive. so knowing macron, he's going to use this as an opportunity to absolutely throw everything at donald trump. give him you know, the red carpet treatment in front of

all of these world leaders at an event the world will be tuning into and showing how much he can charm president trump to try presumably to just reduce the impact of any sort of trade war that might be coming. >> well, and max, it hasn't trump shown like a particular focus on some things that are french, such as i seem to remember getting emails from my local wine shop here in washington, d.c., where they happen to specialize in french wine and they were very concerned about the impacts of what had been going on under the last trump administration, because donald trump had focused in on french wine, specifically in a way that was was stressful. i mean, how much of that is at play here? >> well, i think it's you know, it's the idea that trump has referred to in the past about the european union. and this trade bloc and getting unfair advantages against the u.s. in the world economy. and it's also plays into china because he wants the european union to block chinese products

coming into the european union in the same way that america is doou know,f you want to be our ally, you need to work with us. but europe depends on chinese imports. and if they don't bring them in, the prices are going to go up here combined with any tariffs that the u.s. is going to put on eu imports. so there's a massive fear that the literally that the european economy could collapse because of what trump is about to bring in. and it will, you know if you want to make it symbolic, then you do target french wine, for example, in the same way that you might target scotch whiskey from scotland. i will say that, casey, there's a very interesting there was a really interesting speech by the british prime minister yesterday where he actually spoke to this issue. he said, there's this idea that if donald trump does launch a trade war with the european union, then britain is going to have to choose whose side it takes is it going to go with america, or is it going to go with europe? and it's not going to be able to survive without

choosing one or the other and the prime minister saying we can deepen relationships with both, but people actually think that that's not a realistic point of view. it's a big moment for the uk to decide whether to go with donald trump or with the eu fascinating. >> all right. max foster for us. max, always grateful to have you. thank you very much. thanks, casey. see you tomorrow, i hope. all right. still ahead here on cnn this morning bypassing background checks. why some republicans are saying they're open to no fbi background checks for the president elect's cabinet picks. plus, the lake effect snow machine cranking into overdrive. some places seeing more than five feet of snow in just a matter of days. or is there more on the way scott keyes luther. >> never too much new year's day at eight. >> i've been warned by celebrities, athletes and world leaders, but i've always felt most comfortable up here with the folks that made me who i

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daniel penny case, penny is a former marine who held a man in a fatal chokehold on the new york subway. he is facing second degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges but his defense argues that penny is being scapegoated for jordan neely death all right, time now for weather. lake effect snow totaling more than five feet in some parts of new york and ohio. and that heavy snow across the great lakes region. it's expected to slow down, but lake effect snow warnings are still in effect for parts of ohio pennsylvania and new york. until this evening. let's get to our meteorologist, the weatherman derek van dam. derek. good morning. >> good morning casey. five feet of snow. that is just incredible. but it can also be crippling for our interstates and our roadways. this is a prime example of that. this semi truck loaded with goods here in erie pennsylvania, actually was struck by this train. this is just incredible.

there was so much snow that the train or the truck could not get over the tracks the train collided with this vehicle with this truck. fortunately, there was no damage or very little damage. and the driver was able to walk away from the scene. but this just shows you what can happen when you get that amount of snow in such a short period of time. of course, this is typical this time of year, not this amount of snow, but the lake effect snow machine. certainly kicks into high gear. the water is still relatively warm and we get the cold arctic blast that we have that have settled in across the northeast, and this is how much snow has fallen. some of these totals again, over 5.5ft. that's nearly as tall as this weatherman. just incredible. lots of cold air in place. so we're waking up into the 20s for many locations slightly milder along the east coast lower 30s from new york all the way to d.c. but there is a lull in terms of the lake effect snowfall in terms of this moment in time. but things are going to change here going forward with another blast of air and a clipper system that will move through. so we still have alerts in place. the

immediate shoreline that is downwind from the great lakes, creating these lake enhanced snow bands. lake ontario, lake erie into lake michigan, those typical spots just south of grand rapids erie into buffalo and watertown. but here is the next approaching clipper system. and there's going to be a lot of wind associated with this. so a lull in the wind today. but look what happens on tomorrow. we could see gusts over 20 to 30mph. and because of the direction of that wind, we'll also see an increase in the snowfall downwind from these lakes. so could also encounter some additional troubles on the roadways like you saw at the beginning of this broadcast. >> all right we'll keep an eye out for that. derek van dam for us this morning derek. thank you. i'll see you next hour. okay and still coming up here on cnn this morning fresh allegations. trump's choice to lead the pentagon heads back to capitol hill to try to lock down support as he faces more questions about his past. plus democrats still reeling after kamala harris lost to donald trump. now, some of the major players from her campaign reflecting on what went wrong

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where it is about 4:30 a.m. central time. good morning, everyone. i'm kasie hunt, it's wonderful to have you with us democrats criticizing president biden for his controversial decision to pardon his son, hunter biden, in the final days of his presidency, biden had repeatedly said he wouldn't pardon or commute his son's sentence, and the news reportedly came as a shock to some of biden's closest allies. but multiple sources tell cnn that hunter biden and his lawyers long thought a pardon was on the table. one former senior west wing aide tells cnn. this, quote, anyone who was even close to the top knew that he was probably going to do this. why did we pretend otherwise? colorado senator michael bennet argued that biden's decision gives the sense that there's, quote, one system for the rich and powerful and another system for everybody else. >> and a lot of the reason why trump got elected is because a lot of the people in america think it all is just politics and they think this place is

corrupt, and they think donald trump is corrupt. but at least he's being honest about his corruption. we should do better than that standard in this country as democrats grapple with their loss to trump last month, senior editor at the atlantic ron brownstein notes this in his latest piece quote, it was not as if voters were unaware of trump's flaws in the exit polls. >> in the votecast survey, a majority of voters agreed that trump was too extreme and would steer the u.s. toward authoritarianism yet a decisive slice of voters who held these negative views about trump voted for him anyway. so strong was their desire for change. ron brownstein, of course, is also a senior political analyst here at cnn, and he joins us now. ron good morning to you. always wonderful to see you. so you spoke with the top four harris advisers. they had also done some postmortem interviews with pod save america. but your

piece is fascinating. can you help us understand kind of what you learned in these conversations about what they think went wrong and whose responsibility it is? >> yeah look, casey, i think as i've said to you before, you know, to me the most shocking thing about this election was how normal it was. i mean, donald trump is anything but a normal candidate. but if you look at the exit polls and vote cast and the election results, it's pretty clear the voters essentially treated him as a normal candidate in that when they were dissatisfied with the way things were going in the country, and they dissatisfied with the incumbent president, the natural hydraulics of american politics is that most voters turn to the the out party. and that's what we saw. i mean 70% of voters said the economy was in bad shape, and basically 70% of them voted for donald trump. i mean, the figure that i cited in my introduction to this was when barack obama won in 2008 to succeed in unpopular president from the other party, 62% of

voters who said the country was basically on the wrong track voted for him. and in 2024, when donald trump wanted to succeed an unpopular president from the other party, 62% of voters who said the country was on the wrong track voted for him. i think the biggest takeaway i had from my conversations is exclusive interviews with the top people in the harris campaign was that they could never escape that core dynamic of american politics. i mean, you know, when david plouffe arrived and i think he was a little more candid than everyone else because he had not also worked for joe biden. he described the situation as catastrophic in july, and the core of that catastrophe was the chasm between biden's low approval, somewhere around 40%, and the rising retrospective approval of trump's presidency, which ultimately, in votecast reached 52% on election day and basically, their argument is that no matter what tactics they tried, no matter what critics felt that they should have done that they didn't. they simply could not overcome

that gulf between the share of voters who look back positively on what they got out of trump, and those who were disappointed in what they got out of biden. there was simply no way to escape that shadow. >> well, and, ron, i mean, do you buy that? because i mean, one of the other things you write in this piece is that there does seem to be a consensus that really the the lowest moment for her, for kamala harris and the campaign was when she went on the view and she didn't seem to have a good answer when she was unhappy with president biden what would you do differently from president biden? is there any thinking about how they might have handled that differently, that could have influenced this outcome? and what do you i mean, do you buy their arguments or not? >> well, you know as i wrote, that was certainly the moment about which they were the most evasive and defensive. i mean, you know, there are a lot of different things that harris could have done differently on a tactical basis, which could have appeared on the joe rogan show. she could have certainly needed a better answer on what

she would have done differently than biden she was guarded and probably, you know, too scripted in her interactions with the media at the start but she certainly aced her biggest moments on the campaign. i mean, the debate, the convention speech the ellipse at the end generated a lot of enthusiasm and a party that was really down about its about its prospects. i, you know, i to me, the core the core reality here is that whatever she might have done differently or that trump might have done differently, he hardly ran a perfect campaign with, you know floating island of garbage. and i will protect them whether they want or not. the reality is, casey, that every time an outgoing president has been this unpopular, his party has lost the white house. whether he ran for reelection, like carter and bush and trump himself in 2020, or stepped aside. truman, 52, bush in zero eight, lbj in 68.

every time a president has faced this level of disapproval, his party has lost in the election to succeed him. so i guess i think obviously in any campaign, there are things you could do differently and things you can do better, and that certainly was a low moment that they should have been better prepared for. but it's hard to see how you could overcome these fundamentals, especially given the late date at which biden stepped down. i thought it was interesting that david plouffe said to me, the cardinal sin that was his phrase in all of this was biden waiting so long to leave the race. if if if the process to replace him had started earlier, plouffe argued, they could have either found a candidate with less tied to the administration, or harris would have been forced to define her independence more clearly but at that point the hole was simply too deep. >> you know i'm so glad you raised that, because that really was the piece that i was going to kind of center in on because it does sound like, in some ways, your analysis would show that, you know, if biden had declined to run at all and there had been an open primary

democrats still might have found themselves in this situation. but i suppose the flip side of that may be that there would have been more opportunity for people to decide that maybe biden wasn't so bad because he wasn't asking to be president again. i mean, do you think if biden had declined to run, democrats actually could have overcome some of this i don't you know, basically, i think the answer is no. >> i mean, i think given the given the history, it would have been a historic let's put it that way. i mean, there's just no precedent for a party holding the white house when the outgoing president is this, uh unpopular, whether, as i said, whether he runs for reelection or not. and i believe those structural forces made this very difficult. you know, there was also, you know, in my story, the you know, i quote a woman who runs a group, jackie payne, who runs a group that studies basically white women who made, i thought, a really telling point when she said that once voters decided that they thought trump was going to give them a better economy many of them simply did

not want to hear about the other potential aspects of his presidency that would cause them cognitive dissonance. and you know, as i point out in the story with the help of the cnn polling unit, by the way if you look at the exit polls, you really see this expressed like the shard of the results. it's almost like you're in an archeological dig and you're kind of you know, dusting off the different shards to me, the core of the matter, the heart of the matter is that 36% of voters, that's a lot of people, were both pro-choice and negative on the economy and they broke for trump most of them, more of them voted for trump than for harris. among non-college white women who, as usual, were critical in deciding michigan, pennsylvania and wisconsin, which decided the race 40% of them were pro-choice but negative on the economy. it was strength against strength. they they were attracted to the strongest argument of each side. they voted 2 to 1 for trump, and that i think, is really how we got this result. above all, for

too many voters living paycheck to paycheck inflation and in some cases, immigration and crime trumped democracy and abortion. and i think i'm not sure. you know, it might have been a little better with someone else, but i don't think there was any way around that core dynamic. >> yeah, really interesting. all right. ron brownstein, for us this morning, ron always grateful to have you. thank you so much for being here. thanks for having me all right. straight ahead here on cnn. this morning, new allegations against one of trump's top cabinet selections, how they're adding more wrinkles in the confirmation battles to come. plus the quarterback who threw for nearly 500 yards on monday night football and lost. bleacher report next there are amazing things that are happening all over the world things that can make our lives better. >> that's the goal of my podcast to try and find the secrets to a longer and happier and healthier life. and then we

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for $12 for one year and get instant access to member benefits and social programs join and get an insulated trunk organizer. >> free plus aarp, the magazine all right welcome back. >> pete hegseth. donald trump's choice to lead the pentagon facing new allegations of troubling behavior. the army veteran and fox news host is back on capitol hill this week trying to lock down support from republican senators. but hague says confirmation has been complicated by this new reporting from the new yorker. the report is based on a whistleblower complaint and other documents that the magazine obtained, and it alleges that hegseth was forced to step down from two nonprofits that he ran in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety and personal misconduct. one of the reports is from when he led a veterans group. this was from 2013 to 2016. it describes him as being, quote, repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his

official capacity with his team at an event in cleveland, hegseth was asked about the reports while he was on capitol hill on monday nick rowley hoda kotb how can i justify that response? >> can you respond to these allegations in the new yorker article that came out misconduct allegations your time at the veterans joining us now to discuss nick johnston, the publisher at axios. >> nick good morning to you. good morning. good to see you here so some of the details on this i mean we we gave you the top line. yeah but i mean let's just dig in a little bit more. and again this was jane mayer writing in the new yorker and that event in cleveland, it says that hegseth had been out with three young female staff members and was so inebriated by 1 a.m. that a staffer who had driven him to his hotel in a van full of other drunken staffers asked for assistance to get hegseth

to his room because, quote, pete was completely passed out in the middle seat slumped over a young female staff member. the report says it took two male staff members to get hegseth into the hotel. there was also a situation where when he was married, he goes to a louisiana strip club when there, i think this was related to a senate race runoff in 2014. um, and then a report says that hegseth and other members of the management team sexually pursued the organization's female staffers, whom they divided into two groups, the party girls and the not party girls. in late 2015, a different former employee described hegseth being at a bar in the early morning hours of may 29th, 2015, while on an official tour through ohio, drunkenly chanting kill all muslims, kill all muslims! cnn obviously is not independently verified. this reporting. is this going to make a difference? >> i mean, the drip drip, drip of it certainly is. like if you go back to the matt gaetz nomination came out guns blazing and then more and more

of these allegations dropped, more and more of these stories started to come out. senators got fed up and eventually called mar-a-lago and said he doesn't have the support. what this is is, i think is a great symbol of i mean, it's a recommendation for why you should maybe fbi vet some of your nominees. a lot of these nominations coming out so quickly earlier. remember, we're more than a month and a half away from inauguration. and like the real process of this, even beginning and the vetting process is essentially go to mar-a-lago, have dinner with the president elect. and if you seem like a fun and interesting guy, you know, you nail that interview, off you go. and then now we begin the vetting and we're doing the vetting not by a bunch of lawyers in a closed room somewhere on k street here. we're doing it in the press. we're doing it on television. we're doing it in the halls of congress. and i think, remember, there was a lot earlier in the show today, you had the republican talking point about how you have a mandate. they say that over and over again. well, they have a very narrow mandate in the senate lisa murkowski, susan collins, mitch mcconnell, senator curtis, the new one who's taking mitt romney's place out in utah. these are not guaranteed votes for these

nominees. and they've got a three vote margin. and so i think things like this are going to make it very challenging to get some of these folks confirmed. >> well, and i think in the case of these hegseth allegations, i mean, obviously there's also this allegation of sexual assault against him where there was an nda signed and a settlement paid to a woman. we saw parts of the police report for that. these reports outline, and it's not just personal behavior here or what you could consider to be personal behavior they allege financial mismanagement, right, that he's taking money from these organizations and spending it on things that are inappropriate, that does. do you think that's relevant to what the pentagon they're separate from? >> exactly. from the management type of stuff, where the the, the nonprofits he was running eventually shut down. some of them had financial were spending money inappropriately. they had run up huge debts, running a $5 million nonprofit for veterans benefits. this is a lot different than running essentially one of the largest organizations on earth with millions of employees, hundreds of billions of dollars. some of

the initial criticisms, just about competence that have come out for some of these trump nominations is that they haven't run anything big like this. they had a great interview, they were great on television, but they actually have hands on experience in running these large and large organizations in some way. in maga world, that's a plus. if you want someone to come in and tear down these walls and bust these places up, maybe you don't want them to have a lot of experience on that. but again, the senate is very protective of its role to advise and consent, and you just need for senators to say, no, enough is enough. and donald trump's got to go back to the drawing board on some of these. >> do you think maga supporters see a difference between someone who could go in and tear things apart in a way that they want to see, and someone who is not capable of doing much of anything because of their own personal proclivities. there's a little bit of what we've written about at axios earlier this week, just a sense of shock and awe, right? >> if you look at the way kash patel talks about the fbi on day one, closing fbi headquarters he's publishing lists of people he thinks are in the deep state. is that an actual mechanism for maybe trying to reform that

organization, or is it just to go in as a bull in a china shop? i think more of that emphatic bull in a china shop thing is what, a little bit of what the maga, maga folks want. and then what you find when you pick those folks at the top and you begin to dig in that's where these problems begin to occur. and again, you get to pick them, but they have to be confirmed by the senate. now, we've already talked before about all the machinations around recess appointments, but i think there's going to be some challenges in the senate next year. >> yeah for sure. all right. nick johnston for us this morning. nick, thank you. great to be wonderful to have you all right. time now for sports. the broncos take down the browns in a back and forth thriller on monday night football. coy wire has this morning's bleacher report. good morning. good morning kc. >> football is a metaphor for life. it's a roller coaster with ups and downs. often the best thing to do is just hang on tight and enjoy the ride. and that is exactly what browns quarterback jameis winston does best. the former backup has breathed new life into the team with his infectious positivity and touchdowns. but at the end of the first half, a low a 71 yard interception by nick benito returned for a

touchdown. the pick six put the broncos up 2110, and the broncos were racking up points. their quarterback, bo nix favorite for rookie of the year, hit marvin mims in the third for a 93 yard touchdown. the second longest by a rookie since 1970. jameis kept the faith the very next offensive play, jerry jeudy, a 70 yard touchdown. jeudy stuck it to his former team to the tune of 235 yards on nine catches, trading haymakers. but with under two to go, browns down 3234. jameis throws another interception. another pick six. jaquan mcmillan broncos win, 4132. and winston, who threw for a franchise record 497 yards and four touchdowns. he's just trying to keep it all in perspective winston. in times like this, you know that's it's it's an opportunity to continue to glorify the lord even through the toughest circumstances i know i'm better than this i

know i'm like i'm just praying for the lord to deliver me from pick sixes. >> like, that's just that's not me. like a phenomenal game offense. do some great things. but i messed it up, all right. >> a league source confirms to cnn that the nfl is leaning toward suspending houston's azeez al-shaair for this concussive hit on jacksonville's trevor lawrence on sunday, lawrence was carted off the field saying later he was at home feeling better. some fans and analysts say al-qaim illegal hit was intentional. others disagree. texans head coach demeco ryans said a lot of quarterbacks try to take advantage of the rules, sliding late to get an extra yard, making it tough on defenders here's part of what jags coach doug pederson said it's unfortunate because it escalates to a to a level that doesn't need to be on the field and you know, we hold ourselves to a high regard um, you know we're in the national football league we got to

figure out a way as a league. >> i think, to somehow minimize or at least get these plays out of the game if possible azeez al-shaair apologized, saying he didn't see lawrence sliding until it was too late and it happened in the blink of an eye. >> he said in part, quote, my goal is to hit you as hard as i can. then i pray you're still able to get up and play the next play, and when the game is over, go home to your family unharmed because it's not personal. it's just competition. he also said he's received online hate, saying in part i've been called every single name in the book from reporters with their hands ready for a story to find their villain to racist and islamophobic fans and people you don't know my heart nor my character which i don't need to prove to any of you, unquote. i'll share. kc was fined on two previous occasions this season. we may know later today what the discipline will be for this latest infraction. >> all right. we'll keep an eye out for that. coy wire for us this morning. coy. very grateful for you. thank you. all right. straight ahead here on cnn this morning. pardon blowback. how the president's decision to pardon his son is

splitting his own party. plus, bracing for confirmation republicans worked to rally support for some of donald trump's more controversial nominees. we speak live with trump's senior adviser, jason miller. >> i think you do owe the president a great deal of deference on his picks. these are very problematic institutions. cash understands that. i think a lot of republican senators understand that. but apparently not enough. do cnn heroes on all star tribute meet and celebrate the honorees. >> then find out who will be hero of the year. plus, a special tribute to michael j. fox, cnn heroes, an all star tribute sunday at eight on cnn. >> i've been worn by celebrities, athletes and world leaders, but i've always felt most comfortable up here with the folks that made me who i am. i'm right at home out here on the land and i'm in my lane on the shoulder of the interstate because this is

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>> political infighting. how president biden's decision to pardon his son is further splitting a party still reeling from election defeat and he had a good explanation. >> but i'm not going to try to explain to to y'all. >> more allegations. trump's choice to lead the pentagon facing more tough questions about his record and israel is the one. >> and you should let him go and let him finish the job. >> hell to pay. trump issuing a new threat over how his administration would handle the israel-hamas war and this ain't nothing you get used to this kind of weather. >> living here piling on some places have gotten more than five feet of lake effect snow, and it is not over just yet all