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Concerns Rise Over Trump's New Right-Hand Man; Dow Poised to Hit Another Record High; Trump Appears Open To Obamacare Compromise; Texts Warn People in Aleppo to Flee; Election Sparks Electoral College Debate. Aired 9:30-10a ET
Aired November 14, 2016 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:30:00] NIHAD AWAD, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS: Mr. Bannon has bigoted views and will bring bigoted policies and that will not help the agenda of advancing unity among Americans and making this country move forward.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, I have to leave it there. Nihad Awad, thank you so much for joining me this morning.
AWAD: Thank you.
COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, so much for repealing and replacing Obamacare. Now Donald Trump says he doesn't want to nix all of Obamacare. So does he mean kind of a version of Trumpcare? We'll talk about that, next.
But first, the opening bell moments away. Is the market ready to hit another record? Alison Kosik is with me.
Good morning.
ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
So the Trump rally ready to roll into a second week. We are seeing the Dow open at a fresh record high. That's after a string of big gains boosted by Donald Trump's win. I want you to look at the Dow over the past five days, up more than 5 percent over that span of time. That's about 1,000 points.
Also all the predictions of a big drop if Trump won the election, all of that never materialized. So you're seeing investors focus now on his pro-business, pro-growth policies, like tax cuts and deregulations. So as we get into the trading day, we see the S&P 500 about 1 percent away from a record of its own. Investors are dumping gold, they're dumping bonds, they're buying into the market. And because of this market reaction, along with a stronger economic growth we've seen lately, Carol, we can expect to see the Fed -- everybody's expecting to see the Fed raise rates next month.
COSTELLO: All right, we'll keep a -- I know you'll keep an eye on it for us.
KOSIK: I will.
COSTELLO: Alison Kosik, thanks so much.
KOSIK: You bet.
COSTELLO: I'll be right back.
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[09:35:55] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.
Repeal and replace Obamacare on day one. That was a top pledge from Donald Trump during the presidential campaign. But now that he's headed to the White House, Trump may be preparing for either Obamacare-light or Trumpcare.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LESLEY STAHL, "60 MINUTES": When you replace it, are you going to make sure that people with pre-conditions are still covered.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: Yes, because it happens to be one of the strongest assets.
STAHL: You're going to keep that?
TRUMP: Also with the children living with their parents for an extended period, we're going to --
STAHL: You're going to keep that?
TRUMP: Very much try and keep that. It adds cost, but it's very much something we're going to try and keep.
STAHL: And there's going to be a period, if you repeal it, and before you replace it, when millions of people could lose --
TRUMP: Look --
STAHL: No?
TRUMP: We're going to do it simultaneously. It will be just fine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: With me now, the man known as the architect of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber.
Welcome, sir.
JONATHAN GRUBER, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, MASSACHUSETTS INST. OF TECHNOLOGY: Good to be here.
COSTELLO: Nice to have you here. So, so what does it sound like Trump is trying to do? Is he trying to -- is he -- is he going for like an Obamacare-light program? GRUBER: It sounds to me like Trump is trying to say he's going to
protect some of the parts of Obamacare that are most popular without actually laying out a plan for doing so. So, for example, one of the fundamental gains of Obamacare is ending discrimination in insurance markets. No longer allowing insurers to deny insurance coverage to people just because they're sick or charge them higher prices. He hasn't mentioned that. Pre-existing condition exclusions, that's nice, but that doesn't solve the problem.
So my wife, for example, is a breast cancer survivor. In -- what Trump laid out, if she went to the insurer, the insurer could say, yes, if we offered you health insurance, we'd make sure to cover your breast cancer. But, guess what, we're not going to offer you health insurance because you're sick. Trump has to address that problem.
COSTELLO: So if he keeps -- like I guess -- this still would have to go through Congress, right? So let's say he keeps the parts of the law that -- that people really like. What would that do to all of our premiums? If -- if -- if he can keep all of the elements that you say that Congress might reject?
GRUBER: The point is about Obamacare, it's complicated for a reason. The part people like is ending insurance discrimination. Not allowing insurers to deny my wife coverage because she's a breast cancer survivor. However, you can't have that unless you also make sure that people can afford insurance so that the healthy buy it and you get healthy people into the risk pool.
To just say we're going to keep the parts people like and get rid of the parts people don't, we've tried that. Seven states tried that in the 1990s. They tried to tell insurers, you can't discriminate against the sick. In every single case, it destroyed the insurance market. Premiums went through the roof and the insurance market shrunk to a fraction of its previous size. You can't have it both ways. If you want to tell insurers they can't discriminate, you need an individual mandate and subsidies to make sure that healthy people come into the pool.
COSTELLO: But why couldn't the government put price controls on insurance companies?
GRUBER: The government could try to put price controls on insurance companies, but then insurance companies could, a, exit the market and say I'm just not going to offer insurance in this market. There's nothing the government can do about that. Or, b, deny sick people coverage and say at that price I'm just not going to offer coverage to sick people. The point is the government cannot force --
COSTELLO: I --
GRUBER: I'm sorry, go ahead.
COSTELLO: It's OK.
GRUBER: So basically the bottom line is, you can't have it both ways. If you want insurance companies to cover everyone fairly, you have to bring healthy people into the pool. And the only way to do that is with a combination of carrots, which is tax credits to make health insurance affordable, and a stick, which is a mandate to bring the healthy people in to buy insurance.
COSTELLO: I have heard -- I've heard a lot of people say, you know what, you know, there's 22 million people in Obamacare right now. A large majority of them are -- are poor people who can't afford insurance. But if they're kicked off of Obamacare, they'll just go to Medicaid. Is it as simple as that?
GRUBER: No, it's not. The 22 million people who are on Obamacare right now are on parts of Medicaid that didn't exist before. So, for example, before on Medicaid if you were a, say, 25-year-old, or say a 30-year-old single woman with no children, and an income of $5,000 a year, you had no access to health insurance. That simply didn't exist. Obamacare expanding Medicaid said, we are going to guarantee our poorest citizens, very poorest citizens, a right to health insurance coverage in those states that choose to expand Medicaid. If you take that away, then a woman like that simply has no coverage options.
[09:40:30] COSTELLO: All right, Jonathan Gruber, thanks for stopping by. I guess we'll all see what happens together. Thank you so much.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, texts are warning people in Aleppo, Syria, flee now or face heavy bombing within 24 hours.
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COSTELLO: Imagine getting a text that your city is going to be bombed within 24 hours and you better get out as fast as you can. Well, people in eastern Aleppo, in Syria, are not imaging that. They're living it. That's the text they got and Syrian rebels in the city are being told to lay down their weapons or die. CNN's Jomana Karadsheh is following this from Amman, Jordan, for us.
[09:45:11] Good morning, Jomana.
JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.
According to residents of eastern Aleppo that we've spoken to, they say early on Sunday they received these various text messages that they believe are from the Syrian regime, really with a warning addressed to the rebels in besieged eastern Aleppo, but also to the residents, a warning, an ultimatum, giving people 24 hours, telling the rebels to lay down their weapons or even leave the city. And they're really warning of a military assault that they say is going to be launched on eastern Aleppo.
The people that we've spoken to, Carol, say this is something they've seen in the past, these sorts of messages. They've received them in the past on leaflets that have been dropped on their neighborhoods or broadcast through state media. They feel this is part of this psychological warfare, an intimidation tactics to spread fear amongst the population in eastern Aleppo.
But, at the same time, there is this real sense of apprehension amongst the people in eastern Aleppo. Those that we have spoken to are absolutely terrified, Carol, of what they feel might be an all-out military assault by the Syrian regime, and their Russian allies, that could start any minute now.
COSTELLO: All right, Jomana Karadsheh reporting live for us from Jordan. Thanks so much.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, more Americans picked Clinton but Trump won the White House. Now some, well, some mostly on the left are saying it is time to change the electoral system.
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[09:51:10] COSTELLO: Donald Trump riding his populist wave to the White House. But here's the thing, he's not winning the popular vote. Right now, Hillary Clinton is up more than 600,000 votes. And while Donald Trump won with the Electoral College, he says he still doesn't like the system.
Let's talk about this with Larry Sabato. He's the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Good morning, Larry.
LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Good morning, Carol.
COSTELLO: So even Mr. Trump says, you know, I don't like the electoral system, but I won, so why should I complain. And that's true, right?
SABATO: That's true. What's interesting is that a number of people on the right, not just the left, have called for the abolition of the Electoral College over the years, including, by the way, Newt Gingrich.
Now, look, Carol, is this going to have any practical effect? Well, in one sense, no. Hillary Clinton, in the end, will win the popular vote probably by a record in American history. Right now she's up, as you mentioned, 700,000 or so. The estimates are that she will end up winning by one and a half to two million votes. That's a lot of votes.
You may remember Al Gore won the popular vote, but he won it by 540,000. Much, much fewer than Hillary Clinton. So, you know, it has practical effects on a president because it gives his critics a useful retort to any proposal he makes. Well, you weren't elected by the people. You were elected by this antiquated invention of the founders that fit the 1790s but doesn't fit the 21st century.
COSTELLO: Although his new chief of staff, Reince Priebus, put it another way on "GMA" this morning. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REINCE PRIEBUS, RNC CHAIRMAN: He played the exact strategy that a smart person would play in the 12 states that mattered and he won significantly. So I get the obsession over the popular vote, but that's really not what this election was all about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: OK. This was not what this election was all about. He said, you know, if Donald Trump had gone to California, he probably would have won California, but he didn't choose to go there.
SABATO: There is absolutely zero chance that he would have even come close in California. And Newt Gingrich made the same argument yesterday that why, if the popular vote mattered, Donald Trump would have campaigned in California and won at least two million more votes, which is, of course, absurd on its face.
But you also have to ask, well, what would Hillary Clinton have done? Well, her campaign, which was well organized and had tons of money, would have organized the blue parts of red states. They didn't bother to organize the college towns and the big cities in red states because they knew it was hopeless. They weren't going to win the electoral votes. But if they had done so, she would have picked up millions of additional votes. So this is an argument that is a non-starter.
COSTELLO: So how likely is it that anything will change when it comes to the Electoral College?
SABATO: Carol, do you know that the Gallop poll for many years, even decades, has shown that a very large majority of Americans wants to abolish this crazy institution, the Electoral College. We're the only democracy in the world that doesn't count a popular vote. You can win the popular vote, you can lose the presidency. It's already happened five times in American history. It's going to be happening more frequently as long as we have close elections and the Democrats will be disproportionately disadvantaged by this.
So all I can tell you is, if the people have their way, it would be abolished, because we are incapable of reforming our system. And I say that sadly. The Electoral College will be abolished on the 12th of never.
[09:55:03] COSTELLO: And just quickly, remind us why there's an Electoral College anyway.
SABATO: Well, there's an Electoral College for a number of reasons. Certainly one reason was it was a request slash demand of smaller states, particularly those who were -- that were slave states. But it was mainly because the founders did not trust the people. We had no popular election in the beginning. You know, we went through five presidential elections before we got to -- or five presidents before we got to a popular vote in the 1820s. And even then it was extremely limited to a relative handful of white men, mainly propertied men. No women, no African-Americans and so on. So it's been a long, hard process to broaden the franchise. And this is an important point to make. It still shows that the franchise is not universal because the people don't pick the president.
COSTELLO: I have to leave it there. Larry Sabato, thanks for stopping by. The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.
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