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Trump Considering Mitt Romney as Cabinet Secretary; Clinton: Election Loss Not Easy for Me, Supporters; Mike Pence Meets with Congressional Leaders; Obama Asked about Trump, Russia in Berlin; New CNN Book Details Unheard of Events; "Post-truth" Chosen as Word of the Year. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired November 17, 2016 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[14:30:26] MITT ROMNEY, (R), FORMER MASSCHUSETTS GOVERNOR & FORMER PRSIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Here's what I know -- Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.
(CHEERING)
ROMNEY: He's playing the members of the public for suckers. He inherited his business. He didn't create it. A business genius he is not.
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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: What a difference a couple of months makes. That was Mitt Romney in Utah. Flash forward to the news now just broken by Mark Preston.
Mark Preston jump in, because you have broken this news that that same person who called him a fake and phony will be meeting with him this weekend.
MARK PRESTON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, CNN POLITICS: He will, Brooke. And Mitt Romney and Donald Trump will meet face to face. They've spoken over the phone. They had a cordial conversation after the election. Mitt Romney called to congratulate him.
It is stunning, when you have somebody who's been so critical of Donald Trump, being brought in and potentially being discussed as a cabinet secretary. Turning the tables. At the very least, we think Trump and Romney will talk about potentially being an outside advisor if he chooses not to accept an offer, if one is extended to him.
Again, a lot of people will be surprised by this. But it says something about both men. One, they are able to put aside their differences and, two, the fact that Donald Trump is reaching beyond this circle we've been talking about, which has been very, very closed as of late. We've seen Nikki Haley there today along with Mitt Romney. And was saw Ted Cruz there a couple of days ago. Again, these were enemies of Donald Trump. And for Mitt Romney to go in and have this discussion with Donald Trump, it says something about him as well.
BALDWIN: Agreed. Credit to both.
And then, Hillary Clinton, we saw her last night speaking out for the first time publicly since she conceded defeat. She was at this gala. How appropriate. Talk about a full circle moment with the Children's Defense Fund, who she started with back in the '70s. She admitted it was tough to appear. Her speech was emotional. It was personal. Here she was.
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HILLARY CLINTON, (D), FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE & FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Now I will admit coming her tonight wasn't the easiest thing for me. A few times this past week when all I wanted to do is just to curl up with a good book or our dogs and never leave the House again. I know this isn't easy. I know of people have asked themselves whether America is the country we thought it was. The divisions laid bare by this election runs deep. But please listen to me when I say this, America is worth it. We're worth it. Believe in our country. Fight for our values. And never ever give up.
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BALDWIN: Mark Preston, I cannot imagine that was easy for her, but what grace.
PRESTON: No doubt. Hillary Clinton, Brooke, has failed not once but twice on the world's biggest stage, so it's not to be humbling to have to stand there and acknowledge defeat. It's so raw, so soon. But the fact is Hillary Clinton goes on to say that this is how we're going to get through this. She finished her thought by saying, stay in there, stay engaged, continue to fight, that's how we'll get through this. So, I don't think we've heard the last of Hillary Clinton going forward.
BALDWIN: Quickly, since I have you, we have pictures. We just saw Leader Pelosi sitting with the vice president-elect. Now we have pictures. He is now meeting with Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, there on Capitol Hill. Why are meetings like this so important?
PRESTON: They're critical. Look, one thing Donald Trump has done -- he's done many things -- but one thing that is critical is that when he picked Mike Pence, he picked somebody that understands Washington, D.C., that understands personalities, that understands congressional leadership because he has served in congressional leadership in the House. Now, he does not see eye to eye legislatively with Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi but there has to have a dialogue.
There's been one criticism of the Obama administration and that is there was not a strong enough dialogue between his White House and Capitol Hill, whether that be with Democrats or certainly Republicans as well. So, if Mike Pence is able to keep this up, it will probably serve our nation a lot better to have a two-way conversation.
BALDWIN: Mark Preston, thank you. And thanks for breaking the news on Mitt Romney. We'll look for more on that meeting this weekend.
[14:34:56]Coming up next, though, here on CNN, President Obama on his swing. He is in Berlin today meeting with his closest ally, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. What she thinks of this Trump presidency. And President Obama's warning to Donald Trump about Russia.
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BALDWIN: President Obama on his final overseas swing in Berlin. He is saying thank you to what the White House calls his closed foreign partner, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The two held a joint news conference that echoed this recurring theme of the president's final overseas trip, reassuring world leaders that a Trump presidency will not disrupt the global economy.
When he was asked by a reporter about Russia, President Obama said he is hopeful Mr. Trump won't violate international norms.
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[14:40:01] BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't expect that the president-elect will follow exactly our blueprint or our approach but my hope is that he does not simply take a real politic approach and suggest that, if we just cut some deals with Russia, even if it hurts people or violates international norms or even if it leaves smaller countries vulnerable.
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BALDWIN: Let's go to White House correspondent, Michelle Kosinski, who is traveling with the president.
Did Chancellor Angela Merkel or the foreign press express concern that Trump won't stand up to Russia?
MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, absolutely, the press does, and that's embedded within their questions. But of course, President Obama and Chancellor Merkel want to be extremely diplomatic here. I mean, Angela Merkel says she keeps an open mind about a Trump president.
But from President Obama, what we've been hearing is less optimism and more warnings. He talked about that Americans can't be complacent or take our way of life for granted, that Americans have to vote. He's reinforced that several times after the election now. I mean, we all know what he means by this.
He also talked about politicians offering simplistic slogans, attacks, simplistic solutions and populism. And he's warning against that. At one point, he said America needs to keep being the voice of the vulnerable and against war around the world. Otherwise, it's going to be a much meaner, harsher, more troubled world. Listen.
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OBAMA: There are going to be forces that argue for cynicism, for looking the other way, with somebody else's problems, that are not going to champion people who are vulnerable because sometimes that's politicly convenient. And if we don't have a strong transatlantic alliance that's standing up for those things, we will be giving to our children a worse world. We will go backwards instead of forwards.
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KOSINSKI: I think it's pretty telling, when the president was asked about his optimism, he said he's always optimistic. But asked specifically about a Trump presidency, he expressed it as cautious optimism. And the only reason he said he was not because of any element of Donald Trump's personality but because of the job. He said the job forces you to focus and the job of president demands seriousness -- Brooke?
BALDWIN: Michelle, thank you. Michelle Kosinski in berlin.
Coming up, I'm a word nerd. When I found out one of the new words being added to the Oxford Dictionary, I thought, wow. We'll tell you what that word is and what it signifies after our past year here in the United States.
Also, the Ted Cruz/Marco Rubio headline from the 2016 presidential race we never knew about until now.
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[14:47:16] BALDWIN: American voters know how historic this season has been, from the campaign rallies to the presidential debates to the shocking unscripted moments. CNN was there to document every last bit of it. Now we're publishing a book detailing what you did not see and hear about the 2016 race. It's called "Unprecedented, The Election that Changed Everything." It comes out December 6th.
David Chalian, who was there all along the way, our political director, joins me with a preview.
We cover everything. And I the last bit was written until a week ago.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Exactly.
BALDWIN: But I wanted to ask you about --
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CHALIAN: Surprise ending.
BALDWIN: Right.
(LAUGHTER)
If Senator Mike Lee -- this is the question for you -- succeeded in uniting Cruz and Rubio, would we be in a different place today? CHALIAN: I don't know. But this fascinating chapter of the book, my
colleagues, Thomas Lake and Jodi Edna (ph) --
BALDWIN: Kudos.
CHALIAN: -- who had this great assignment for the last year and a half, being able to work behind-the-scenes details, nuggets that would be embargoed until it was over. So, it takes you behind the scenes in a way the daily headlines don't.
we learned that -- Jake Tapper was moderating the Republican debate in Miami.
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BALDWIN: In Miami, OK.
CHALIAN: Towards the end of the primary. A couple days before, the week before the Florida primary, Mike Lee had spoken -- the Senator from Utah, big Ted Cruz emissary supporter -- had spoken to Marco Rubio, set up an appointment, was getting on a plane going to Florida a couple days before the debate to say, hey, we're a week out before the primary, let's join forces, make a Cruz/Rubio ticket and see if we can stop Donald Trump. All systems were go, until the last moment when Marco Rubio called off the meeting, and said, I can't do it, I am a Florida Senator, I have to go through this Florida primary, I can't avoid that. And that was a decision that could have altered the course of the race. Could have, we don't know.
Donald Trump obviously had a movement that got him all the way to becoming president-elect. But at that moment in the campaign, it was not yet 100 percent clear that Donald Trump was going to be the nominee. And if Cruz and Rubio had teamed up as a final firewall that Donald Trump would have to go through, it would have been a different dynamic certainly. And how Donald Trump responded to that, whether or not his supporters were able to overcome the establishment coalescing, it would have been a totally different race to watch.
BALDWIN: Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
CHALIAN: Yeah.
BALDWIN: We need to get those two, like following, and then getting the nuggets for the year after. Because of everything, everyone's head spinning just even in the last week.
Let me ask you about the news we broke about how Mitt Romney will be meeting with Donald Trump this weekend. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is at Trump Tower right now. What does this signal to you?
CHALIAN: I think this is a different side of Donald Trump than we saw during the campaign. I think during the campaign Donald Trump didn't seem -- I can't think of many examples where he seemed all that open to embracing people who were opposed to him. He made it a cottage industry in his Twitter feed that if you were against opposed to him -
[14:50:14] BALDWIN: Against him.
CHALIAN: -- he was against you. He always said he'd punch back harder, right? That's not the case here. It was a counterpuncher.
That is not the case here. Here are two of his hardest critics, Nikki Haley, Mitt Romney, coming to meet with him, coming to talk with him. The fact he wants to embrace that conversation -- listen, this serves Donald Trump well. It makes him seem more open, more accepting of viewpoints that were not always his view points. That's a good signal to send to the country as you try to go beyond just the coalition that elected you to government the entire country. I think it's showing the country a slightly different side.
We'll have to see what this -- do any people get jobs or -
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CHALIAN: Is this just a transition meeting and accomplishing a political goal. But I think the question is open and so you have to give him credit for having these meetings. It's not really something he did during the campaign.
BALDWIN: OK. So, that's happening.
What an awesome stocking stuffer. This CNN book is on sale December 6th. You can pre-order your copy. Go to CNN.com/book.
And don't miss tonight, a special report on "Anderson Cooper, 360," 9:00 p.m. eastern. Don't miss it.
Mr. Chalian, kudos, and thank you.
CHALIAN: Thank you, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Up next, in a world of tumultuous politics, a new word of the year. The people in charge of the Oxford Dictionary saying 2016 has seen the year of the post-truth. What does that mean. We'll talk about that after the break.
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[14:55:55] STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, THE LATE SHOW: That brings us to tonight's word: Truthiness.
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Now, I'm sure some of the word police, wordinistas at Webster's are going say, "Hey, that's not a word." Well, anyone who knows me knows that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They are elitist -
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-- constantly telling us what is or isn't true or what did or didn't happen.
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BALDWIN: Love me some Stephen Colbert. That was 2005. I think I've used the word "truthiness." A year later, Merriam Webster made it their word of the year. Fast forward to now, Oxford Dictionary has announced its word of the year, "post-truth," an adjective defined as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotional and personal belief." The term has been around for a while. And thanks to the Brexit
referendum and the visceral U.S. election, it's seen a spike in use.
So, let me bring in - to quote Colbert - a member of the word police, who we love very much, Katherine Connor Martin, the head of U.S. dictionaries at Oxford University Press.
And it's your job to add words to the dictionary.
KATHERINE CONNOR MARTIN, DIRECTOR, U.S. DICTIONARIES, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS: That is right.
BALDWIN: That is so cool. "Post-truth," was this an easy decision? What does it signify for this country?
CONNOR MARTIN: Well, that's a question that is beyond -
BALDWIN: We can go deep.
CONNOR MARTIN: -- what I can answer. But what we noticed this year is that post-truth, a word that's existed with more or less its meaning since 1992, suddenly was spiking in usage and not only here in the United States but also in the U.K. around the Brexit referendum, and internationally as people talk about filter bubbles and whether -- how we're absorbing media. And as we looked at the words we've been tracking over the past year, this one really struck us as resonating with the kind of themes and spirit of 2016.
BALDWIN: Is it resonating because it infers the truth is occasionally dead?
CONNOR MARTIN: Well, it's based on a critic that says that it -- that the truth has become less important or less difficult to identify. You know, "post" usually means after, like post-war, but in post- truth, it's more like post-racial or post-national. It means something more like no longer relevant, no longer as important as it used to be.
BALDWIN: Does it makes you sad as a lover of lexicon?
CONNOR MARTIN: It's not brightest word we've ever chosen to --
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BALDWIN: OK. You're being very diplomatic, Katherine. Appreciate it. Let's look at other words on the short list, Alt-Right, Brexiteer,
glass cliff, woke. They all semi have a theme.
CONNOR MARTIN: There's a lot of politics there. This is a really heavy list of potential words of the year. Sometimes it's light, but 2016 wasn't a light year. It was a year in which we were grappling as a society of English-speaking people with heavy issues, so that's reflected in our list.
BALDWIN: We were joking in the commercial break. We were looking at the emoji. It wasn't a word, it was a feeling from last year, the smiley face with tears. And your point was, quickly, "Such a simpler time last year."
CONNOR MARTIN: Last year, we anoint the "face with tears of joy" emoji, and that was a fun story at a fun time, but this is a different time.
BALDWIN: Flash forward to 2016 and "post-truth."
Katherine Connor Martin, over at Oxford University Press, thanks for swinging by. I appreciate it.
CONNOR MARTIN: My pleasure.
BALDWIN: Thank you.
Now this.
All right, we continue along. Thank you so much for being with me on CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.
A couple hours from now, a landmark meeting. President-elect Donald Trump will sit down for the first time face-to-face speaking with a foreign leader, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on a very busy day over at Trump Tower where this -- we'll call it -- a parade of potential picks for his cabinet and White House staff, descending upon what has become transition central.
Let's bring up some faces here. Among some of the visitors, you have Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state; the mayor of Cincinnati; the governor in Florida --
