piece of stripe gum. the situation room with wolf blitzer starts right now. see you tomorrow. happening now, breaking news. closing arguments just wrapped up in donald trump s new york civil fraud trial. the former president taking his campaign to the courtroom, launching into a rambling speech before being cut off by the judge who urged trump s attorneys to control their client. plus, we re now in the final stretch before iowa decides with the first in the nation caucuses just four days away. nikki haley and ron desantis trying to capitalize on last night s heated cnn debate and close the gap with republican front-runner donald trump. a key haley supporter, new hampshire governor chris sununu joins me live this hour. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world, i m wolf blitzer and you re in the situation room. announcer: this is cnn breaking news. and let s get straight to the breaking news. donald trump s new york civil fraud trial comes to
right now. out front next, the breaking news u.s. air strikes in the middle east tonight. u.s. fighter jets right now striking parts of yemen with tomahawk missiles. we are waiting to hear directly from president biden as the entire middle east and the world right now are on edge. and more breaking news tonight. trump s tirade, a judge shutting the former president down after an outburst at his fraud trial in new york. could this be the beginning of the end for trump s business empire? and christie s hot mic moment everybody s been talking about. we have the man on the other end, who was speaking to christie on that mic. what else did he say and what was it really an accident? let s go out front. and good evening. i m erin burnett, and we do begin out front tonight with the breaking news, the united states striking the middle east this hour. a u.s. official telling cnn that right now the u.s. military is carrying out strikes with fighter jets and tomahawk missiles on ye
opportunity to prove it. now, we don t know yet his extent of involvement? is he able to monitor this in realtime? what are the communications like between him and the president at this time? was this strike preauthorized? in other words, did he have to give a final sign off while in the hospital? these are all, frankly, questions that we have right now. the bottom line is this entire process and the national security perspective was able to move forward. alex, what should we be looking for next? well, a reaction of some kind from the houthis. if you believe the warning they issued earlier today, there will be some kind of response. so the question is whether this escalates from here. again, the u.s. and whoever else is in involved in terms of allies trying to send a message to the houthis to stop this. whether they listen to that remains very much to be seen, wolf. we re going to stay on top of this new development in the region. very significant indeed. guys, thank you. and to