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Sessions, Flynn and Pompeo Named to Top Posts; Trump to Meet with Fierce Critic Romney. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 18, 2016 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00] BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Brianna Keilar.

And the first U.S. senator to back Donald Trump for president is on his way to Donald Trump's cabinet. Jeff Sessions of Alabama is the president-elect's nominee for attorney general. It's one of three major hires the transition team announced this morning. Retired Army General Michael Flynn will be Trump's national security adviser, having advised Trump throughout his campaign and campaigning forcefully for Donald Trump himself. Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas, Trump's choice for CIA director. And you're going to hear much more from and about all of these men in the hour ahead, but first, here's the transition overseer and the vice president-elect showing up for work at Trump Tower.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT: We've got a great number of men and women, you know, great qualifications, come forward to serve this new administration. And I'm just humbled to be a part of it. Our agency teams have begun to arrive at agencies in Washington, D.C., this morning. We're beginning what we're very confidence will be a smooth transition that will serve to move this country forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: I want to bring in my CNN colleague, Sunlen Serfaty.

Sunlen, a lot of interesting picks today. A lot of movement there at Trump Tower.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Brianna, a lot of moment here, a lot of comings and goings. And we know that Donald Trump is going to be holding a two-hour meeting with his transition team here to really talk about some of his picks. Not only the ones he's made today, but reflections on the many, many interviews that he's held throughout the week. Trump Tower really has been a hotbed of activity all week and he's heading into some important meetings coming up as well.

Later today he sits down with Governor Mike Huckabee. This is someone whose name has been offered as a potential secretary of commerce, potential secretary for HHS, Health and Human Services. So they'll sit down together later today. And then going into the weekend, he, of course, has that big meeting scheduled with Mitt Romney. They're going to be sitting down in Bedminster, New Jersey, where Donald Trump has a golf course. And what we're hearing according to aides, that his name is also being considered for secretary of state. So certainly a lot of interesting meetings. Some picks made today, as you noted, but many, many more to come.

Brianna.

KEILAR: And, Sunlen, we're still seeing no picks for defense secretary, secretary of state. As you mentioned, Romney is a possibility. I think that made a lot of people raise their eyebrows. Donald Trump has a busy weekend ahead, though. What is he doing besides meeting with Mitt Romney?

SERFATY: Well, we know, according to aides, that it seems like it's going to be a breakneck pace of schedule. That he's going to be holding numerous meetings, not only people within his transition team, but potentially picks for cabinet positions, people he wants to do final interviews with, and certainly will be sitting down with his transition staff as well.

And looking forward to the weeks ahead. We know that likely some more cabinet picks will be announced. We're not sure in what order. And then he's going to be going on sort of a victory lap, so to speak, and he will likely have a tour in some of the states that he flipped from blue to red, kind of thanking Americans for their support. So busy days and weeks ahead for Donald Trump.

Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Sunlen Serfaty for us in New York. Thank you.

And I want to talk more about the Alabama senator who is likely to become the nation's highest law enforcement officer. And for that let's turn to CNN justice correspondent Evan Perez.

So, 30 years ago, this is what everyone's really talking about today, Evan, and really whenever Jeff Sessions' name comes up, this is something that I think has really haunted him now for decades. Before he was senator, he was nominated in the '80s for a federal judgeship by Ronald Reagan. He didn't get it and that was in part because of allegations of racism and something that has really stuck with him over the years.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: It really has, Brianna. And, look, with Jeff Sessions, you know what you're going to get. He's been in the Senate for 20 years. He's one of the most conservative members of Congress. And represented - he represents, obviously, a conservative state in Alabama.

I will say this. You know the 1986 hearings in which he was rejected for the judgeship that he was nominated by Ronald Reagan, by President Ronald Reagan, that really has stuck with him and it's almost become shorthanded and a bit caricatured as to what exactly happened. I think there's a lot more to that. Certainly we're going to be hearing a lot more about those hearings and about some of the people who testified. Some of them I think now are coming forward and saying things that they really said - that they didn't say back in 1986.

For example, we know some of them testified that he said racist things, but at the time they said actually that, you know, they didn't view him as a racist, they viewed him as an honorable man. So I think we're going to hear a lot more about that.

We do know, obviously, that as the head of the Justice Department, he is going to have - he's going to be oversee immigration judges. He's got a guy - he's a guy who has very strong views about immigration and about illegal immigration. We've known that for - for many years. So that is going to be an interesting part of the discussion as far as this confirmation is concerned.

[12:05:08] And also in 2009, when the Senate - when the Congress decided to expand hate crime laws to cover gays and lesbians, he voted against that. He said that he did not view gays and lesbians to be suffering from the same type of discrimination as African-Americans did when hate crimes laws were first passed.

So a lot of things that we will be talking about with Jeff Sessions. Obviously, the fact that he's been in the Senate for 20 years. He's got a big body of support there. Not only amongst conservatives, but probably some Democrats are going to vote for him as much as Donald Trump says he wants to drain the swamp, Brianna, as you know, people here in Washington, especially up there on Capitol Hill, they take care of each other. And we expect that he will be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate.

KEILAR: Yes, and a good reminder, this is someone who voted to confirm Eric Holder, who, obviously, was very controversial on the other side. So, Evan Perez, thank you so much for that.

I want to talk more now about this. So much going on. We have CNN political analyst and national reporter for RealClearPolitics, Rebecca Berg, and we have Glenn Thrush, he's chief political correspondent for Politico.

I want to talk about Jeff Sessions and I want to talk about some of what we just heard Evan say, but can we first talk about something that so many people are wondering, because you had Donald Trump, during that one debate saying, you would be in jail, when Hillary Clinton said, thank goodness you're not in charge of laws in this country, and he said, you would be in jail. It was sort of - it was a quip, but a lot of people wondered, is he going to do something? Is he going to have an investigation? And this is something, Glenn, that would fall under the purview of Jeff Sessions, who's raised questions about whether she's corrupt. So what do you think?

GLENN THRUSH, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: Well, it's a really interesting question. Obviously, "lock her up" was one of the big lines that he had in all his rallies and he really raised some eyebrows late in the game by joining his audience in saying, "lock her up." But lo and behold, after the election, in his "60 Minutes" interview, he said that appointing a special prosecutor and pursuing that case wasn't going to be a top priority. And I also want to point out something else. This entire matter was

about e-mails and compromising national security. We saw some reports out that he was having conversations with international leaders over unsecured phone lines without briefings from the State Department.

KEILAR: Maybe he opens himself up to that as well.

I wonder - today we heard Loretta Lynch, the outgoing A.G., and she made this announcement. She was talking, Rebecca, about how the feds are looking at alleged hate crimes and harassment arising from the election. This is the very end of President Obama's tenure. So where do we go from here with that when you're looking at potentially Jeff Sessions taking over for Loretta Lynch?

REBECCA BERG, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, already we're hearing some Democrats come out and say he is racist, pointing to the fight over his appointment as a federal judge, much earlier in his career, but some of the concerns that halted that nomination were over things he had said that people thought were racist. And also he has voted against the Voting Rights Act and so there are fundamental concerns among Democrats about Jeff Sessions and sort of how he would tackle some of these issues, racial issues, issues of hate crimes, as attorney general and whether he would really take a strong stance against them.

But I think this also highlights broader concerns about the Trump administration. We've heard concerns from Democrats about Steve Bannon working in a senior position in the White House. Concerns that so far the only people he has named to roles in his administration are nominated for cabinet positions have been white men. I think a lot of people, because of the sort of tension that this election has produced, are looking for any signs from the Trump administration that they are going to really work to unify the country and work to represent all Americans and all of their interests.

KEILAR: Retired General Flynn looks like he's in as the national security adviser. That's such an interesting position because Susan Rice has it now. That's someone who was discussed for being defense secretary and yet after what she said about Benghazi, it was pretty clear she would struggle to be confirmed. The NSA does not have to be confirmed, and yet, you know, they have the votes in the Senate and yet he's controversial enough that maybe it makes more sense for him to be in this position that doesn't need to be confirmed?

THRUSH: Well, yes. I mean they were talking, I should say, when the Clinton campaign thought they were going to win, they were thinking of putting Jake Sullivan, her policy advisor, in that role precisely because he had been involved in some of the e-mail stuff and that was a non-confirmable position.

Look, you've covered the White House. You know this. The NSC position, the national security adviser position, is a pinch point of information. More than anything else, it's about what the president gets to see in terms of facts on the ground.

KEILAR: That's right. THRUSH: Flynn had a reputation in his previous job for what were called Flynn facts, which were carefully picked out pieces, cherry picked pieces of information that supported his particular world view. And again, you have a guy, and, you know, there's no other way to say it, that has an Islamic - Islamaphobic view of the world. He has tweeted that the problem is with Muslims and Islam. He hasn't necessarily, in a lot of his tweets, in less temperate statements on the trail, differentiated between radical and violent Islam and the religion itself. So I think whether or not he gets confirmed or not, he's going to become a railing point for protests.

[12:10:23] KEILAR: Yes, he call it a political ideology rather than a religion, which is something that's important to point out.

I do want to talk about Pompeo and how he's going to be the pick for CIA director. This is someone that, you know, you covered The Hill. You know him. He came in, in 2010 and you were up covering Congress while he was there. So tell us a little bit about him. I know he's known as a very smart guy, but what are people saying about this as a pick?

BERG: Right. So this is actually a really reassuring pick for a lot of what we would consider more traditional Republicans. Republican leaders who maybe have been a little bit skeptical of Donald Trump and some of the people he might pick to serve in his administration. Pompeo is both someone who has military experience. He went to West Point. Was first in his class at West Point. But he's also an intellectual. He went to Harvard Law School, edited "The Harvard Law Review." So he's someone who's very accomplished in a broad range of area. And, of course, he also serves on the Intel Committee. So he has experience in that. Evan McMullin, who, as we know, ran against Donald Trump, he was so -

KEILAR: Gave him a run for his money in Utah at one point, yes.

BERG: Skeptical of his candidacy. Exactly. So Evan McMullin actually tweeted earlier today that he's very heartened by this pick of Pompeo. And, of course, McMullin also served in the CIA himself. So this is something that I think is going to give a lot of Republicans a lot of confidence, especially as we have someone like Flynn being picked as national security advisers who some people are a little more skeptical of.

KEILAR: In light of this pick, Donald Trump has expressed so much criticism over the intelligence community. The generals, too, but the intel community. So what does this tell us about what his plans actually are versus what he campaigned on doing?

THRUSH: Who knows, right? I mean he is - he is essentially a black box on all this stuff, or an orange box, or whatever you want to call it, right?

KEILAR: Yes.

THRUSH: I mean the issue here is, a lot of the people that he is appointing to these positions have world views that are somewhat at variance to his. I mean Pompeo, I think, would be considered to be a little more hawkish than Trump is. I mean Trump essentially ran on Barack Obama's position on Iraq, even though there was some controversy on (ph) that (ph).

KEILAR: He's to the left of Hillary Clinton on foreign policy.

THRUSH: Absolutely. And I think another issue that we're going to be dealing with, particularly with Flynn again, are these funky connections with Russia. You know, he was a paid contributor on R.T. He had some private business dealings -

KEILAR: State-run Russian Today.

THRUSH: State-run Russian television. He had some funky business dealings with Turkey. So the question here is, is this Trump's genius or is this just happenstance? We seem to get sort of a hot pick and a cold pick. We got Bannon in the White House, and Priebus in the White House. And now we have Flynn and Pompeo. I think a lot of nervous Republicans would be very happy if you kind of had this one-two punch keep reappearing.

KEILAR: Yes. Something for everybody, you know?

BERG: Right. Exactly.

KEILAR: Rebecca Berg, Glenn Thrush, thank you guys so much.

BERG: Thank you.

KEILAR: And as we mentioned, retired Army General Michael Flynn is Donald Trump's top choice for national security adviser. With several tours of duty on the battlefield, his experience cannot be disputed. It's his management style and also history of controversial remarks that's really in question here. We're going to talking more about that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:17:31] KEILAR: Donald Trump's choice for national security adviser, a retired Army three-star general whose name wrinkles a few people, both in and out of military circles, not because of Mike Flynn's military background, his education or his experience. Nobody has a problem with those. It's his style and whether he's the right man in temperament and in teamwork and in management to be at the president's side in such an important position in the country's most critical times. Here's Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LT. GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN, U.S. ARMY (RET.): This was not an election. This was a revolution.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, a one-time Army intelligence officer whose loyalty to Donald Trump likely will catapult him to one of the most important jobs in the Trump presidency. FLYNN: This is probably the biggest election in our nation's history since bringing on George Washington when he decided not to be a king.

STARR: Flynn is controversial in military circles after several jobs dealing with Middle East terrorism. In 2014, he was pushed out as head of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. One official who served with Flynn at the time tells CNN there were ongoing tensions. Flynn wanted more authority.

FLYNN: Wow.

STARR: After forced retirement, Flynn appeared to change, two senior military officers who served with him tell CNN. They describe a somewhat bitter officer who adamantly believes President Obama isn't paying enough attention to the ISIS threat.

FLYNN: We must regain our ability to truly crush our enemies!

STARR: The question now, can he operate on a global scale?

GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: He's going to have to expand his skill set after a 30-plus year career of dealing primarily in the military element of national security.

STARR: Flynn will have to work well with the rest of the Trump team.

HERTLING: There's a whole lot of pieces of input that come in to decision-making, rather than just the one you're providing.

STARR: But ultimately the new commander in chief will still set the tone in national security. But just what is Trump still trying to tell the Pentagon?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: We have great generals. They're going to have -

LESLEY STAHL, "60 MINUTES": You said you knew more that the generals about ISIS?

TRUMP: Well, I - I'll be honest with you, I probably do, because look at the job they've done. OK, look at the job they've done. They haven't done the job.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon for us there.

[12:20:01] And Kim Dozier here with me now. She's our global affairs analyst and a "Daily Beast" contributor.

You know General Flynn personally. You know him really well here. And I have so much to talk to you about so I've had to whittle it down. But I want to first start with one of the reasons that Donald Trump would have seen him as such an ally. Now, we know that, of course, a lot of people in the Republican national securities-sphere rejected Donald Trump and Flynn was one of the few who didn't, but he's also someone who brings as tremendous amount of experience to this.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: General Flynn helped build the machine that targeted al Qaeda after 9/11. He was part of the elite special operations forces that fused together not just U.S. special operations but brought in the CIA, the NSA, on the ground in Iraq, so that they all worked together, no rice bull fights between them, to gather the intelligence they had and they built an efficient hunting machine to go after militants.

I think what you might be going to see in this White House is a very tactical White House. People who know him well, even people like General Mike Hayden, the former head of the CIA, was saying this morning he was always brilliant as a tactician, at going after the enemy. It's looking at the bigger picture that he hasn't had as much experience doing.

KEILAR: And - and so let's speak - that's the positive that he brings. The negatives. He was pushed out, really, by President Obama and those around him. Why was that? And part of it was his management style. But just give us a sense of what happened there.

DOZIER: Well, for a couple of reasons. He was trying to do some groundbreaking things at the Defense Intelligence Agency, like bringing together the operators and the analysts. It's something that they later did at the CIA and at the NSA. So he was ahead of his time, but ran into road blocks with that.

It's his position, however, on the Muslim community that has really surprised a lot of his friends in the special operations community. They're all like, love Mike. He's the most loyal friend to have. But we don't know where he's coming from on this labeling of all of Islam as a political ideology rather than he was part of a team that used scalpel-like precision to try to get the Islamic militants, as oppose to the wider Islamic community. They thought that that was a way of - you need your friends in that world and there were many people in that world who were part of the effort to hunt terrorist who risked their lives for Americans. So - and risked their lives for special operators. So that leaves some of Mike Flynn's former comrades going, where did this extremist viewpoint come from?

KEILAR: They're puzzled. And so you said he talks about Islam as a political ideology, not a religion. And he tweeted at one point, he said, "fear of Muslims is rational." And, obviously, wants people, as you said this here, please forward this to other. The truth fears no questions. It's like he doesn't make a distinction between Islam and radical Islam. So what does that mean for his position where he will be advising the president, President Trump?

DOZIER: That's a very popular viewpoint throughout followers of the Trump campaign. So I don't think he's going to get a lot of pushback. I think what you could see as a matter of policy coming out of this point of view is Guantanamo will stay open. The U.S. will get back into hunting terrorists, bringing them back. They may bring back something like enhanced interrogation techniques, which President Obama has called torture. You will see a return to a stepped up covert war, probably starting in places like Syria, in Iraq, as much as the Iraqi government allows it, but across the wider world, including some statements coming from the White House that some of our Arab, Muslim and Gulf allies are really going to have trouble.

KEILAR: Before I let you go, I need to ask you about something that I've been hearing people on the left so concerned about, the idea that there would be a Muslim registry. And it's not that you, at this point in time are hearing Donald Trump or those close to him say, oh, we're definitely going to do this. The issue is, they're not saying we're not going to do this. So that is the concern, a registry of American Muslims. Tell us, in light of especially the opinions of General Flynn, what is - what is the prognosis on that?

DOZIER: Well, I think what you could see is a stepped up list, the one held at the National Counterterrorism Center, where maybe you'd put someone in a lower category, you're going to put - they're going to put more people in a higher category. I can hope as an American that that's as far as it's going to go, but some of Flynn's supporters have talked about taking profiling to another level and considering anyone in the Muslim community a suspect.

KEILAR: OK, we will see. That's the thing, there's so many unanswered questions and we just don't know how this is all going to move forward.

Kim Dozier, thank you so much. Really appreciate you being with us.

[12:25:01] The Trump transition team has also announced the nomination of Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo as director of the CIA. Just ahead, you will learn more about his background, we'll talk about his reputation and why his appointment is taking some people by surprise.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:29:42] KEILAR: As we heard earlier, President-elect Trump is asking Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo to lead the CIA in his new administration. Pompeo is already on the House Select Intelligence Committee. He put out this statement a short time ago saying that he was ready to take on this role. He said, quote, "I am honored and humbled to accept the president-elect's nomination to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. This was a difficult decision, but ultimately the opportunity to lead the world's finest intelligence warriors, who labor tirelessly to keep this nation and Kansas safe, is a call to service I cannot ignore."