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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Brett Kavanaugh and Accuser Christine Ford Senate Hearing This Morning; Trump Accuses China of Election Meddling; Trump Claims Two- State Solution Will Happen; Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired September 27, 2018 - 04:30   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[04:30:49] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A major chance to speak. No, it's possible I'll hear that and I'll say hey, I'm changing my mind.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Today is one future generations will study in the history books. Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford both testifying with the Supreme Court balance on the line.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Will he stay or will he go? The president suggesting Rod Rosenstein will remain in his post. The meeting that could have changed the course of the Russia probe appears to be off.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election.

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BRIGGS: That came as a surprise as the president putting meddling and a trade war in the same category.

It was an extraordinary 83 minutes that included Elton John and George Washington.

ROMANS: It sure was. It sure was.

BRIGGS: And Mr. Kurd. And -- well, it was fascinating.

Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Dave Briggs.

ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. It is 40 -- it's 31 minutes past the hour.

One way or another today will be remembered as a history-making day on Capitol Hill. In about five and a half hours, Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford will testify at the Senate hearing that will likely make or break Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. As the hearing approaches, the number of allegations against Kavanaugh

grows. On Wednesday, he denied three more accusations bringing the total now to five. Now two of those allegations, very important to report here, they were anonymous, though a Twitter handle linked to one has emerged.

BRIGGS: In that case, a Rhode Island man said he had information about, quote, "a rape on a boat" in August of 1985. The other allegation is that Kavanaugh assaulted a woman he was dating in 1998. Regarding that claim, Kavanaugh said, "We're dealing with an anonymous letter about an anonymous person and an anonymous friend. It's ridiculous. Total Twilight Zone and no, I've never done anything like that."

ROMANS: His third accusation came hours earlier. A woman named Julie Swetnick submitted a sworn statement to the Judiciary Committee saying Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were present at a party in 1982 where she was drugged and, in her words, "gang raped." Swetnick did not identify Kavanaugh or Judge as her attacker.

BRIGGS: All 10 Democrats on the panel called on the president to either withdraw Kavanaugh's nomination or order the FBI to reopen his background investigation. But Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley says the hearing will go forward this morning. His office releasing a timeline detailing its responses to the allegations against Kavanaugh. The timeline includes interviews with one man who believes the incident Ford remembers may have actually involved him instead.

ROMANS: At a news conference in New York Wednesday, the president said it is possible he could be swayed by today's hearing.

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TRUMP: They're giving the women a major chance to speak. No, it's possible. I'll hear that. And I'll say, hey, I'm changing my mind. That is possible. I'm going to see what happens tomorrow. I'm going to be watching. You know, believe it or not, I'm going to see what's said. It's possible that they will be convincing. They're going to have a big shot at speaking and making their case. And you know what? I could be persuaded also.

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ROMANS: Susan Collins, a critical swing vote, also raised serious concerns at a private meeting about these new allegations. The senator from Maine also questioned why the Judiciary Committee has not subpoenaed Mark Judge, the only other person Ford says was in the room when she says Kavanaugh attacked her.

CNN's Phil Mattingly has more on what to expect today on Capitol Hill.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Now, Dave and Christine, the moment is very nearly here. The stakes, they are enormous. Basically senators have to decide not only to change the balance of the U.S. Supreme Court but also to change the balance of their institution, to change the balance of how people deal with sexual assault allegations. All of that will be on the line in a hearing this morning.

Now to give you a little sense of the dynamics here, this is going to be a pretty small and contained hearing. They're going to limit the number of press, they're going to limit the number of visitors, of people who can watch the hearing. So don't expect the protests like we saw in the first Brett Kavanaugh hearing. But do expect a high stakes drama.

[04:35:01] And here's why. Obviously Democratic senators have made clear they have a lot of questions for Brett Kavanaugh. They have a lot of questions for Christine Blasey Ford as well. Republicans, they have hired kind of an outside counsel to come in, bringing in a county prosecutor to ask questions, somebody with sex crimes experience, prosecution experience to ask those questions.

Most Republican senators I've spoken to say they plan to yield back their time. But the reality kind of looming above all of this is Brett Kavanaugh does not currently have the votes to be confirmed by the United States Senate.

I have been told that by several Republican advisers. That means, this hearing means everything for his nomination. And when you look at everything that's surrounding this hearing, it means so much more than that -- Christine and Dave.

BRIGGS: Phil Mattingly, great reporting.

A big fat con job. That's how President Trump describes the mounting allegations against his Supreme Court nominee. But he admits his thinking is affected by past allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

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TRUMP: I've had a lot of false charges against me. Really false charges. I know friends who have had false charges. People want fame. They want money. They want whatever. So when I see it, I view it differently than somebody sitting home watching television.

When you say does it affect me in terms of my thinking with respect to Judge Kavanaugh? Absolutely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: The opening statements for Judge Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford have been released ahead of this morning's testimony. Kavanaugh calls the allegations against him last-minute smears, pure and simple. He says, "I never had any sexual or physical encounter of any kind with Dr. Ford. I'm not questioning that Dr. Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person at some place at some time. But I have never done that to her or to anyone. I'm innocent of this charge." BRIGGS: Ford's testimony recounts her memory of Kavanaugh's alleged

assault. She adds, "I don't have all the answers. I don't remember as much as I would like to. But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget. It is not my responsibility to determine whether Mr. Kavanaugh deserves to sit on the Supreme Court. My responsibility is to tell the truth."

ROMANS: All right. The president at this 83-minus news conference playing the George Washington card, suggesting that even one of the founding fathers would be maligned by modern-day Democrats.

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TRUMP: Look, if we brought George Washington here and we said we have George Washington, the Democrats would vote against him. Just so you understand. And he may have had a bad past. Who knows? You know. He may have had some I think accusations made. Didn't he have a couple of things in his past?

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ROMANS: Mr. Trump did not elaborate on those couple of things in his past that Washington could have been accused of. There were of course rumors back in the day about him chopping down a cherry tree. That turned out to be not true. Also those teeth weren't wooden.

BRIGGS: Yes.

ROMANS: That was also another fake news. But --

BRIGGS: The original fake news.

ROMANS: Yes.

BRIGGS: Back to the founding fathers.

ROMANS: There you go.

BRIGGS: OK. President Trump trying to ease the tensions surrounding his upcoming meeting with Rod Rosenstein. He is even suggesting the embattled deputy attorney general may not lose his job after all. At least not yet. Rosenstein thought he was out after a stunning report claimed he spoke of wearing a wire to record the president with the goal of ousting him from office last year.

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TRUMP: He said he never said it. He said he doesn't believe it. He said he has a lot of respect for me and he was very nice and we'll see. And he is a member of the Trump administration in that sense, the Justice Department. I would certainly prefer not doing that.

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BRIGGS: The president also indicated he would postpone today's meeting with Rosenstein in order to avoid competing with Judge Kavanaugh's hearing. The meeting is not on the official White House schedule.

ROMANS: All right. The Federal Reserve ending its era of accommodated monetary policy. The Central Bank yesterday raised interest rates for the third time this year and said more rate hikes are on the way. Higher rates affect borrowing costs like on loans, mortgages and credit cards. They could lead to slower corporate growth. But Fed chair Jerome Powell thinks the economy -- this economy -- can handle it.

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JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: Our economy is strong. Growth is running at a healthy clip. Unemployment is low. The number of people working is rising steadily and wages are up. Inflation is low and stable.

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ROMANS: The Fed forecast the U.S. economy would grow for at least three more years, but noted it's heard the rising chorus of concern about the U.S.-China trade war. Powell said the economic impact is still relatively small but could lead to higher prices for consumers. Powell also said the Fed does not bow to political influence just as President Trump once again criticized the Fed hiking interest rates. He's long complained it hurts his efforts to boost the economy. Jerome Powell says we're the Fed. We don't do politics.

BRIGGS: Yes. He is not fazed at all by those attacks.

[04:40:00] Ahead, one day after saying he has great respect for Chinese president Xi Jinping, President Trump says China is meddling in U.S. elections. But what exactly is the evidence here?

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ROMANS: President Trump declaring a foreign power is trying to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections. But it's not the country you might think.

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TRUMP: China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election. They are trying to meddle in our election. They would like to see me lose an election because they have never been challenged like this.

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ROMANS: The president made that claim three times on Wednesday.

CNN's Alexandra Field is getting reaction. She joins us live from Hong Kong. And it seems as though the president is talking about China's very strategic response to the trade war. The way they're putting in advertisement in a newspaper in Des Moines, right?

[04:45:04] The way they are targeting their tariffs on places that the Trump supporters would feel the most. Is that -- the president calling that election meddling?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. He has a very specific word for it. Interference and meddling. And this is a claim that he has repeated now three times in the last day and we've seen him allude to it even prior to this. So expect to hear him repeat it again.

Of course there was no mention yesterday of Russian election interference. It was China, China, China, at least three times, and once during that U.N. Security Council meeting. The president making these claims that this interference is happening as retribution for a budding trade war with Beijing. But he didn't offer any evidence to back up the allegations. He did, however, later in the day, tweet a picture of a China Daily insert that ran in an Iowa news paper, "The Des Moines Register."

That insert had articles supporting Beijing's stance on the trade war. The China Daily has in the past paid Western publications to publish its inserts and also its advertisement. This seems to be the evidence, though, that President Trump is pointing to. A senior administration official later in the day backed up the president's claims of interference saying that Chinese tariffs targeting regions of the United States that supported President Trump in 2016 also amount to election interference.

And then he teased that Vice President Mike Pence would have more details of interference coming next week. A Chinese official who is the representative to the U.N. Security Council foreign minister, flatly denying any accusations of interference -- Christine.

ROMANS: Fascinating. And we know next week I think those -- I think those bailout checks to soybean farmers in Iowa and the Midwest start coming next week. So interesting that the Chinese --

(CROSSTALK)

FIELD: All about the timing.

ROMANS: Yes. All about the timing. All right, Alexandra Field, thank you so much.

BRIGGS: All right. The president has a new view of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He now fully supports it.

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TRUMP: I think the two-state will happen. I think it's in one way more difficult because it's a real estate deal because you need lots of leaps and bounds, and you need lots of carve outs and lots of everything. It's actually a little tougher deal. But in another way it works better because you have people governing themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Early in his presidency Mr. Trump broke with precedent and backed away fully supporting a two-state solution.

CNN's Oren Liebermann joining us live from Jerusalem with more on this real estate deal.

Good morning, Oren.

OREN LIEBERMAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Dave, his calling it a real estate deal is something that has been ridiculed and criticized by diplomats, by Palestinians and by others. And yet it came up once again. President Donald Trump now for the first time clearly in black and white endorsing the idea of a two-state solution. He said it at the press conference later in the day and he started his day with it in a meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He was asked repeatedly, do you support a two-state solution. And again and again he said yes, I like the idea of a two-state solution. And then once again saying it at that press conference. Netanyahu sitting just a few feet away was silent during this entire exchange. Trump also said that after the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the embassy to Jerusalem Israel would have to give something back to the other side, give something to the Palestinians. Netanyahu silent during as well. Trump offering few details.

CNN checked with the White House to see if there were more details on the peace proposal itself or on Trump endorsing a two-state solution but there was no comment in response to that. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas speak at the United Nations General Assembly. So we'll get a better sense of any the reaction to Trump's sudden endorsement of a two-state solution.

Trump also said the Palestinians would 100 percent come back to the negotiating table.

Dave, in fact they have done the exact opposite.

BRIGGS: Right.

LIEBERMANN: Saying they reject any proposal the Americans will put out.

BRIGGS: Yes. They pulled further away. Oren Liebermann, for us in Jerusalem this morning, thank you.

Ahead, not exactly "Jaws" but worth seeing. Check this out.

What made a seal launched an octopus at a kayaker in New Zealand?

ROMANS: And McDonald's going for a healthier burger?

BRIGGS: Ish.

ROMANS: Oh come on. Ish. Yes.

(LAUGHTER) ROMANS: Details on "CNN Money" next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:53:51] BRIGGS: San Francisco's brand new Sales Force Transit Center shutdown causing days of gridlock downtown. Now a second crack has been discovered in a steel beam supporting the $2.2 billion, three-block long structure. Officials say they're investigating the cause noting it could be an issue with fabrication, welding, installation or design. The transit center is a key commuter hub uniting San Francisco with the East Bay. It will likely remain closed through next week.

ROMANS: A man who had been deported from the U.S. six times is suspected of beating and killing a series of homeless people in Southern California. Ramon Escobar now facing murder, attempted murder and robbery charges in connection with seven attacks dating back to early September. Escobar was arrested Monday in Santa Monica following the assault of a man who remains in a comma. Escobar also a person of interest in the disappearance of his aunt and uncle in Houston. Escobar has not entered a plea. His arraignment was postponed until November.

BRIGGS: In Mexico, federal and state authorities seizing control of the police force in Acapulco. The dramatic step coming after a recent spike in homicides raised suspicions that drug gangs had infiltrated the department.

[04:55:02] The entire force was disarmed. Weapons, ballistic vests and communication radios were confiscated. Two police commanders were arrested on suspicion of murder. Officials say the state will evaluate and overhaul all police and security recruitment, training and operations.

Once a popular resort for foreign travelers, Acapulco has been plagued with violence in recent years. Murders surging more than 2300 last year.

ROMANS: Kayaking is usually not a contact sport, but watch this.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Under water?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoa.

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ROMANS: That kayaker just got slapped in the face by the tentacles of an octopus delivered in the mouth of a seal. This bizarre encounter in the waters off New Zealand. Kyle Mulinder says he and his friends are watching the seal tussle with the octopus before it suddenly burst out of the water, smacked him in the face.

I love that story.

BRIGGS: Can we get a slow mo of that, all right?

ROMANS: Love that story.

BRIGGS: OK. Slow and steady wins the brace. That's the miniature wheelchair made from Legos helping this injured turtle heal. He was found at a park near the Maryland Zoo in July with severe fractures under his shell. Workers say it was likely from being hit by a car.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we are trying to find something to keep him off the ground since he has the fractures on the bottom of the shell. We didn't want him touching the ground to reduce his pain. We thought of attaching Lego wheels to something that we could put above him like a brace. And so that's where the idea of the wheelchair came in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Bravo. Zoo officials say the eastern box turtle is doing great and riding in style. They plan to return him to the wild once he is fully healed.

ROMANS: All right. Let's get a check of "CNN Money" this morning. Global stocks falling following Wall Street lead. The Federal Reserve ended its era of accommodative monetary policy. The Central Bank raised interest rates for the third time this year, said more hikes are on the way. The Fed chair Jerome Powell says the economy can handle it. That announcement initially sent U.S. stocks higher but then they fell as bank stocks dropped.

Higher interest rates of course affect borrowing costs, cutting into bank profits. It also means higher rates on your loans, mortgages, and credit cards. Watch those mortgage rates, by the way. Yesterday I saw a mortgage rate that was knocking on the door of 5 percent for the first time in a long time.

Uber will pay a record $148 million fine. Settling an investigation over its big data breach. In 2016 hackers stole the personal information of 57 million Uber users. Uber did not reveal that info until, oh, late 2017. So the investigation claims Uber intentionally concealed the breach. Uber's fine is the largest ever for a multistate data breach. The payment will be split among all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

All right. McDonald's burgers are getting a bit healthier. McDonald's is stripping all artificial ingredients from its classic burgers like the quarter pounder with cheese -- my personal favorite -- and Big Mac. It won't cost more. McDonald's says it will absorb the price hike which was minimal. Customers want healthier options so this is just the latest change McDonald's has made to its menu like switching to fresh beef and removing preservatives from its chicken nuggets. The only pickle is well, the pickle. It's still made with artificial preservatives. So McDonald's says customers can just leave the pickle off. BRIGGS: Got to have the pickle.

ROMANS: Got to have the pickle.

BRIGGS: So you're a quarter pounder with cheese gal?

ROMANS: I am. I get --

BRIGGS: OK. I got to write this down on my Romans notes.

ROMANS: I get the whole thing, you know. Large fries, large Diet Coke. Oh god, I'm hungry.

BRIGGS: You're hungry.

All right. EARLY START continues right now with a historic day ahead on Capitol Hill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: A major chance to speak. No, it's possible I'll hear that and I'll say hey I'm changing my mind.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Today is one future generations will study in the history books. Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford both testifying and the Supreme Court hanging in the balance.

ROMANS: Will he or won't he stay? The president suggesting Rod Rosenstein will remain in his post. The meeting that could have changed the course of the Russia probe appears to be off.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: That came as a bit of a surprise. Is the president putting meddling and a trade war in the very same category?

Folks, it was an extraordinary 83-minute press conference the president gave in New York yesterday.

Good morning. Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Dave Briggs.

ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. It is Thursday, September 27th. Last Thursday in September. It is --

BRIGGS: And a significant one at that.

ROMANS: It is the top of the hour. 5:00 a.m. in the East.

All right. One way or another today will be remembered as a historic day on Capitol Hill. In about five hours, Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford will testify at the Senate hearing that will likely make or break Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

As the hearing approaches, the number of allegations against Kavanaugh grows. On Wednesday, he denied three more accusations bringing the total now to five. Now two of the allegations very were anonymous. A Twitter handle, though, linked to one of those anonymous accusers has emerged.