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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
President Trump Rallies Supporters Around Kavanaugh; NY Times: Trump Helped Parents Evade Taxes; Democrat Cites PTSD to Leave Mayor Race; Rosa Floods Arizona; Rockies Eliminate Cubs in Epic Wild Card Game. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired October 03, 2018 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't remember.
[05:00:01] How did you get there? I don't remember.
Where is the place? I don't remember. How many years ago was it? I don't know.
(APPLAUSE)
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. What neighborhood was it in? I don't know. Where's the house? I don't know.
Upstairs, downstairs, where was it? I don't know. But I had one beer, that's the only thing I remember.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Now, that comment was met with laughter and applause from the audience of loyal Trump supporters. The president went on to essentially warn mothers in this crowd that their sons and husbands could also be falsely accused.
One thing not said at all was any mention about women who have come forward to make credible allegations about sexual assault or misconduct, the force of the #metoo movement.
Clearly, the president believes that this is a rallying point. Some five weeks before the midterm elections. He believes it's unifying Republicans.
The open question, though, what it's doing to independent voters and Democrats who are so inspired and infuriated by this same movement?
Dave and Christine?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Christine Blasey Ford's lawyer outraged by the president's comments, Michael Bromwich, accusing Mr. Trump of a, quote, vicious, vile, and soulless attack on his client. He went on to call the president a profile in cowardice.
DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: The president's message about false accusations against men echoed his words earlier at the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of. Somebody could accuse you of something -- and you're automatically guilty. But in this realm, you are truly guilty until proven innocent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: The president was asked if he had anything to say to young women. He replied women are doing great.
ROMANS: In the 1983 letter written by Kavanaugh and obtained by "The New York Times," the future judge describes himself and his friends as, quote, loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers. That is not exactly the image Kavanaugh tried to project in his Senate testimony.
Of note, Kavanaugh signed the letter "Bart." You might remember a book written by Kavanaugh's former classmate, Mark Judge, features a character named Bart O'Kavanaugh. The nominee refused to answer last week when Senator Patrick Leahy asked if he was Bart O'Kavanaugh.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT: Are you the Bart Kavanaugh that he's referring to? Yes or no? That's it.
JUDGE BRETT KAVANAUGH, SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: You'd have to ask him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: So how does all this affect Kavanaugh's confirmation vote? Well, Senators Jeff Flake and Lisa Murkowski say they are waiting to see what the FBI reports before making up their minds. But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insists the FBI report will not be used as another reason to delay a vote which he claims will take place this week.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wants an FBI briefing for all senators before a vote is scheduled. For now, the only people who can read the FBI file are the 100 senators and a handful of staff, although some members are pushing for some or all of the FBI report to be released to the public.
ROMANS: All right. And then this, this morning, a blockbuster "New York Times" investigation says Donald Trump helped his parents evade taxes for years, quote, including instances of outright fraud, end quote. Now, the 14,000-word story takes up the entire front page above the fold in "The New York Times." It jumps to several full pages inside.
The reporting wrecks Trump's carefully built image as a self-made man, and it may be at least one reason he's not released his personal tax returns. This months' long investigation by the "Times" draws on more than 100,000 pages of financial documents, some public, some confidential, including 200 Trump family tax returns. BRIGGS: Some of "The Times'" key findings, over the years, Donald
Trump received at least $413 million from his father's real estate empire, adjusted for inflation, starting at the age of 3. By eight, he was a millionaire. That, of course, is a far cry from the $1 million that he claims his father gave him when he started out with.
"The Times" says the president and his siblings helped his parents build their wealth by hiding millions in gifts in a sham corporation. "The Times" also reviewed records showing the president helped formulate a strategy to cut his parents' tax bill by systematically undervaluing their real estate holdings.
ROMANS: The New York state tax authority say they are reviewing the allegations. A lawyer for the president called "The Times" story 100 percent false and defamatory, threatened a possible lawsuit. The White House meantime said in a statement, quote: Many decades ago, the IRS reviewed and signed off on those transactions. "The Times" notes that the statute of limitations on possible wrongdoing has long since expired.
BRIGGS: Law enforcement officials scrutinizing a letter addressed to President Trump that contained a substance suspected to be the deadly poison ricin. They say it appears to be connected to similar envelopes delivered to the Pentagon Monday. The envelope addressed to the president was not received at the White House and did not enter the building. All mail received at the Pentagon screening facility Monday is now under quarantine.
[05:05:02] A spokesman says it poses no threat to Pentagon personnel.
ROMANS: Be prepared to receive a presidential alert on your cell phone today. The government is conducting its first test of a new designed to push an emergency message to nearly all cell phones in the U.S. The alert will be sent out starting at 2:18 Eastern Time this afternoon. It will look and sound like other emergency notifications like Amber alerts, and, you know, severe weather alerts. You cannot opt out, but, of course, you can just turn your phone off. This test was originally scheduled for mid-September but was postponed because FEMA was responding to Hurricane Florence.
BRIGGS: A rising star in the Democratic Party is ending his campaign for Kansas City mayor to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Jason Kander served as an army intelligence officer in Afghanistan returning home 11 years ago.
He says he appreciates all the support he's received but adds, quote, I'm done hiding this from myself and from the world. When I wrote in my book that I was lucky to not have PTSD, I was trying to convince myself, and I wasn't sharing the full picture. I still have nightmares.
Kander says he visited the V.A. in Kansas City on Monday. He tends to start getting help there regularly.
Best of luck to Mr. Kander.
ROMANS: Yes.
All right. A Chinese actress missing since June is apologizing. She's vowing to pay up after being ordered to pay $130 million.
BRIGGS: And widespread praise for Amazon's decision to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Hear what one Amazon execs says, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:1039] ROMANS: Missing Chinese actress Fan Bingbing ordered to pay back taxes and fines. China state media reports she's China's most famous actress, being investigated for tax evasion for misreporting earnings from various film projects. Tax authorities say they will not file criminal charges if he shakes the payments.
The actress has not been seen since June. She essentially disappeared from public view. Overnight she posted an apology letter on social media saying she will pay the taxes and fines, and it is unclear if she wrote that or was forced to by the Chinese government.
BRIGGS: The death toll from Indonesia's earthquake and tsunami disaster has now jumped to 1,407. President Joko Widodo is meeting with survivors and visiting some of the most devastated areas including a hospital and hotel in Palu. His government taking heat for its slow response as displaced survivors desperately wait for aid and as Indonesia deals with the aftermath. There are reports of volcanic eruptions in the Northern Sulawesi and Java.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo travels to North Korea this weekend to meet with Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang. He's expected to lay the groundwork for a second Trump-Kim summit. This will be Pompeo's fourth visit to North Korea. The president canceled his last trip citing a lack of progress on denuclearization. Pompeo will also travel to Japan, South Korea, and China.
ROMANS: Amazon receiving praise from two of its biggest critics, the White House and Senator Bernie Sanders. On November 1st, the minimum wage will raise to 15 bucks an hour for all U.S. employees, 350,000 full time, part time, and temp workers. And also, Amazon will lobby to hike the federal minimum wage $7.25 an hour, the first hike since 2009.
Amazon says it listened to critics unlike rest of big tech. Amazon relies on low-paid labor. Economic adviser Larry Kudlow praised Amazon, telling CNBC he favors the higher wages.
Senator Bernie Sanders has long bashed Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, for paying low wages. Now, he says credit where it's due.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: What Mr. Bezos today has done is not only enormously important for Amazon's hundreds of thousands of employees, it could well be -- and I think it will be -- a shot heard around the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Amazon wants other companies to raise their wages, too. But, you know, this is also necessary. The labor market is tight. Unemployment is at 3.9 percent, and retailers like Amazon are fighting for talent.
Here's what Amazon's SVP of global operations told me.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVE CLARK, SVP GLOBAL OPERATIONS, AMAZON: It's really setting us up for the future here. So, we've added over 100,000 jobs in the last few years. We expect to add tens of thousands more as we go forward. This does help, I think, hire and retain the best people over the course of time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Target and Walmart also hiked their wages in the past year.
BRIGGS: The federal government charging four alleged members of a militant white supremacist group with inciting riots, and assaulting counterprotesters at last year's deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Prosecutors described the defendants as serial rioters. The criminal complaint says they were among the most violent individuals at the Charlottesville rally. Photos show some of the men are seen kicking and slamming counter-protesters to the ground.
The four men face riot and conspiracy charges with a maximum five year prison sentence for each count. Three of the four appeared in federal court Tuesday. It's not clear if they have attorneys.
ROMANS: Inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration seizing thousands of documents from the San Francisco headquarters of e- cigarette manufacturer Juul. The surprise inspection last Friday focusing on the company's sales and marketing practices. The FDA calls it part of an ongoing effort to keep tobacco products out of the hands of kids. Last month, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb called the teen use of e-cigarettes an epidemic.
And, you know, it's so fascinating -- a friend of mine is a high school nurse. And she said every parent should be asking their parents about this, because a lot of kids have this, and their parents have no idea.
BRIGGS: I have no idea. I think we're clueless to what it is, how many kids are doing it and what the damage is. Very important.
ROMANS: Yes.
BRIGGS: All right. Ahead, a woman finds a burglar in her garage. Wait until you see what she does to protect her kids and nab the suspect.
And then Chicago Cubs, they can go golfing, knocked down in the playoffs by a third straight catcher of the Colorado Rockies. Andy Scholes has the "Bleacher Report", next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:19:28] ROMANS: The internal watchdog for the Homeland Security Department says DHS was not fully prepared for the rollout of that zero tolerance at the U.S.-Mexico border. The new report says Customs and Border Protection detained at least 861 unaccompanied children beyond the legally allowed 72-hour time period. It says DHS provided inconsistent information that left some parents unclear that they would be separated from their children. After three days of unannounced visits to nine detention facilities in Texas that hold immigrant children, inspector general's office found them, quote, mainly in compliance with federal standards.
[05:20:05] BRIGGS: Police in San Jose, California, using a murdered woman's Fitbit to track down her alleged killer. Ninety-year-old Anthony Aiello was arrested for the murder of his 67-year-old stepdaughter Karen Navarra last month. Navarra's Fitbit recorded a significant spike in her heart rate before a sudden drop off to nothing. The data helped police investigators construct the timeline and arrest the stepfather. Aiello is being held without bail and is due in court tomorrow.
ROMANS: Some beaches in Palm Beach County, Florida, are set to reopen after test results showed a reduction in levels of red tide. Testing by the Florida Fish and Wildlife officials showed very low to medium concentrations at 11 sites. But some nearby beaches from Lake Worth, north to the Martin County line, they will remain closed.
Lifeguards and staff at these locations are reporting continued irritation. Red tide, of course, is the overabundance of algae, makes it harder to breathe and making affected seafood dangerous to consume.
BRIGGS: Some 400 guns stolen from a UPS facility in Memphis over the weekend have been recovered. The Chicago office of the ATF says the weapons cache was found in Midlothian, Illinois, about 20 miles south of Chicago. Two suspects have been charged, one in custody. Authorities are still looking for the other suspect, 24-year-old Roland Jackson of Chicago.
ROMANS: In Arizona, millions of people drenched by the remnants of Tropical Depression Rosa. Watch here as firefighters rushed to rescue at least eight drivers from their flooded vehicles. North Phoenix hit hard. People going to work had a hard time getting around.
This baseball field in Phoenix's park submerged. In south Phoenix, torrential rainfall causing a river to swell. Just two full days into the month, it's already the fourth wettest October on record in Phoenix, and there are 29 days to go.
All right. This brave mom in California holds a burglar at gunpoint until police arrived and it's all caught on surveillance video. The 25-year-old suspect caught here stealing a laptop in Brittany Morse's home. Her daughter found the suspect in the family's garage. Morse quickly shuttled her kids into a room, grabbed a gun she bought two weeks ago, cornered the suspect and called 911. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRITTANY MORSE, HELD BURGLAR AT GUNPOINT: I had told the dispatch, I believe he has a knife on him. And I told him, you come near me, you take one step towards me, I will shoot you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Taft City police showed up in two minutes. They arrested the suspect who had been in the garage for several hours. He was booked on first-degree burglary charges, Dave.
BRIGGS: Yikes.
Rock-tober continues for the sleep-debriefed Colorado Rockies and their sleep-deprived fans.
Andy Scholes with more in the "Bleacher Report."
Scholes, the Rockies playing in their third time zone in three days. And there was almost one hour between the end of that game and when my alarm went off. Good morning, my friend.
ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'm sure you had a long night. At least a successful one for you and all Rockies' fans that stayed up late for that.
I tell you what, there's nothing like post-season baseball. You hang on every single pitch. And Rockies and Cubs fans certainly doing that for nearly five hours last night. This wild card game an absolute classic.
John Lester and Kyle Freeland both throwing gems. Cubs down 1-0 in the bottom of the eighth. Javier Baez comes through with the clutch double. That scores the tying run.
This game would go to extra innings. In the 13th, Tony Wolters, who was 0 for the last 15 at-bats, comes through with the RBI single. He's your unlikely hero. The Rockies win 2-1 in the longest winner- take-all game in MLB post-season history in terms of innings.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TONY WOLTERS, COLORADO ROCKIES: We didn't give up. We make comeback wins all the time this year. Something that wasn't new to us. So we're used to coming back and win. This is a great win for us and the Rockies. We're going to keep on doing it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHOLES: All right. Colorado now moves on to face the Brewers in the division series which gets going tomorrow. Tonight, as the American League wild card game, the Yankees hosting the as. New York's the first team ever to win 100 games and have to play in the one-game winner-take-all match up. First pitch tonight set for 8:08 on our sister network, TBS. All right. LeBron James making his L.A. debut as a Laker last night.
He had the fans out of their seats in the first quarter. LeBron going coast to coast here for the one-handed slam. King James in 13 points in 15 minutes of action. Lakers' fans hoping the new energy will end up with more wins. The Lakers missed the playoffs every season since 2013.
And, Dave, you know, this is one of the best sports weeks of the year. You got NHL starting tonight, NBA going, of course, football and baseball's post season. No shortage of sports to watch on TV.
BRIGGS: A lot of the couch time ahead for yourself and me. Thank you, Andy Scholes.
[05:25:00] SCHOLES: All right.
BRIGGS: Romans, not so much, right?
ROMANS: Yes. No. No.
All right. Thanks, guys. 25 minutes past the hour.
The FBI report on Brett Kavanaugh could come out today. First the bureau is expanding the probe as the president takes direct aim at Christine Blasey Ford, mocking her in Mississippi.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: How did you get home? I don't remember. How did you get there? I don't remember. Where is the place? I don't remember. How many years ago was it? I don't know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: The president mocking Christine Blasey Ford, the FBI meantime expanding the investigation. Who they are talking to now?
BRIGGS: Fraud, sham corporations, and more. A revealing "New York Times" report on President Trump's family taxes suggesting he's not the self-made millionaire he claims.
ROMANS: A rising star in the Democratic Party pulls out of a mayoral race citing post traumatic stress from his military service.
BRIGGS: Some of the highest rain totals ever for the city of Phoenix as a tropical depression rolls through the desert.
And an instant classic. It took 13 innings, but the Rockies are headed to Milwaukee and the Cubs, to the golf course. It was the longest post-season game in Wrigley field history.
