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Trump Praises Congressman Who body-Slammed Reporter. Aired 6- 6:30a ET

Aired October 19, 2018 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Any guy that can do a body-slam, he's my guy.

[05:59:24] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Trump praising a reporter's assault as the world waits for answers about journalist Jamal Khashoggi's apparent murder.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We ought to give them a few more days so that we, too, have a complete understanding of the facts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an opportunity for the Saudis to create a narrative that takes the blame off of the crown prince.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's time to revoke the blank check the Trump administration has given to Saudi Arabia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Friday, October 19, 6 a.m. here in New York. And last night President Trump supported violence against journalists. He praised and joked about a Republican congressman who assaulted a journalist last year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I had heard that he body-slammed a reporter. Any guy that can do a body-slam, he's my kind of guy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: You'll remember that Congressman Greg Gianforte pleaded guilty and was convicted of grabbing a "Guardian" political reporter named Ben Jacobs by the neck with both hands before slamming him to the ground.

This as President Trump faces mounting pressure and criticism for his handling of the apparent murder of "Washington Post" journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi Arabia. President Trump concedes, quote, "It certainly looks like," end quote, Khashoggi is dead. This comes as the "Washington Post" reports that some conservative

lawmakers are planning to defend the president by mounting a smear campaign on Khashoggi's reputation.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So at his rally overnight, in addition to the glorification of violence against journalists, the president also launched into something of a roll-out of his midterm message. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: This will be an election of Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order and common sense. That's what it's going to be. It's going to be an election of those things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So not subtle. Also not subtle: a screaming match between White House chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton, so loud it could be throughout the West Wing, and so harsh that Kelly reportedly went home for the day. What they were fighting over very much tied into the new midterm message. We'll tell you what it was in a moment.

First, joining us now, Abby Phillip, Joe Lockhart, John Avlon.

And John, I want to start with you here. Nothing like glorifying violence around journalists. Nothing like making a joke out of body- slamming a reporter when another journalist was dismembered, his fingers cut off three weeks ago.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: And the administration has been dealing with that damage control and trying to provide cover for the Saudis, frankly, that very day. And that night, the president's impulse is to joke about an unprovoked attack on a reporter, Ben Jacobs, by this congressman.

CAMEROTA: Abby, there was a time that President Trump claimed that he didn't incite violence, that he didn't believe in violence at his rallies, that there wasn't any, that he wasn't calling for it, he wasn't joking about it. Let's remind people of what he tried to pass off as true.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I do not condone violence in any shape.

I don't condone violence.

I certainly do not condone that at all, Jake.

(via phone): I certainly don't incite violence, and I certainly would -- I don't condone violence, and I don't talk about violence. I certainly don't condone violence, and it's not acceptable to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK. So we can officially say now that that is not true that he's lying when he says that.

BERMAN: He literally just glorified an attack on a reporter, body- slamming.

CAMEROTA: He acted it out.

BERMAN: Body-slamming.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Remember, during the campaign one of the reasons we were talking about this was because the president from the podium, then candidate Trump, offered to pay the legal fees of one of his supporters who -- who was confronting a protestor in the audience.

So look, I mean, this whole conversation about civility and that we have been having over the last several weeks, it was always kind of believed by the fact that President Trump does not have a clean history on this issue. And he demonstrated that last night with this comment about -- about Ben Jacobs.

But I would also add that one of the -- one of the fascinating things about how this administration has dealt with Jamal Khashoggi's death, is that there has not been a lot about the importance of people standing up for people, columnists, people who are exercising their freedom of speech to speak out in that region. There has not been a lot of talk about that.

We've heard it from Mike Pence, who has had a long history of -- of, frankly, standing up for First Amendment rights here in this country. He's talked about it.

But when President Trump talks about this issue in Saudi Arabia, he does not talk about it in the sense that we have to, as a country, condemn the idea of silencing critics. And this is all part of the same idea that there is an uneven discussion of this issue of First Amendment rights and freedom of the press.

President Trump sometimes gives lip service to it and other times, praises a man for body-slamming a reporter for simply asking questions.

BERMAN: Yes, you look at what we have on the screen. This is the congressman who body-slammed the reporter. He actually is praising the body-slamming. It's not just saying the congressman is a good guy.

Let me shift things. I'll read you what "The Guardian," Ben Jacobs, the journalist who was slammed. This is what "The Guardian" said about this overnight. "To celebrate an attack on a journalist who was simply doing his job is an attack on the First Amendment by someone who has taken an oath to defend it. In the aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it runs the risk of inviting other assaults on journalists both here and across the world. They often face far greater threats. We hope decent people will denounce these comments and the president will see fit to apologize for them."

[06:05:06] I'm so glad, Alisyn, that you played the sound from the president before on this. And to quote John Avlon on another matter, Joe, here, this isn't a bug, though. This is a feature. It seems to me that it makes perfect sense that the president did this on the very night he rolls out his midterm message. He's trying to send this message to certain voters.

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He does it because it works with his voters. And he realizes at this point he's not going to get Democratic votes. He's not going to convince any Democrats, and he's not going to convince a lot of independents. It's all about getting his voters to the polls, and it works. It worked in 2016. It will have some effect, I don't know what will work.

But there's a byproduct of all of this. This idea that we're sending a message to the rest of the world that authoritarian tactics like that you can just, Orwellian, make up facts and you can condone this kind of things sends a message to people like the leaders in Saudi Arabia that it's OK to take a U.S. resident, kill him, dismember him and then SPENT two weeks trying to come up with a cover story.

AVLON: Well, I think they're figuring out that it's not, in fact, all right, that they couldn't get away with what they perhaps thought they could.

BERMAN: I don't know that.

AVLON: The pressure's that -- they thought they would be able to skirt away, the report today in "The New York Times" that, you know, some people in the White House are saying that, look, maybe this will all go away. Give it time to breathe.

But you're not going to reanimate this journalist, and the blowback's, I think, been bigger than they anticipated.

I want to point out one other thing about the president invoking this and praising the body-slamming of a journalist. And Ben Jacobs used to work for me. He's a great reporter. It is the same time that the -- one of the core pillars of his midterm message is that the Democrats are a violent mob.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

AVLON: This is -- this is one of the president's powers of sort of a projection. He is really stoking the fuel of the fires of anger and fear and saying the Democrats are the ones who are violent, but then he is praising violence on his side simultaneously.

CAMEROTA: And his crowd is lathered up and cheering and laughing. Oh, it's so funny to hurt a journalist. It's so funny to body-slam a journalist, but I will say that that slogan that he's come up with, Republicans are for jobs; Democrats are for mobs. That's a good line.

That's a good one. I mean, it's catchy. It conjures up, you know, violence. LOCKHART: But it is very much along the lines of "I'm going to protect pre-existing conditions," while his government -- his own Justice Department is in court this very day, challenging the idea of pre-existing conditions.

CAMEROTA: It's going to require voters to use critical thinking when they hear things like this and not -- and get past the slogan. You know, it's going to require voters to get to the facts. Look at any time frame you want. More jobs are created under Democratic presidents -- and it's not even close -- than Republican presidents.

Let me say it again: More jobs are created under Democratic presidents And for all of the angry people who are going to tweet, I would suggest that use -- rather than typing, use your phone and check it out. It is the truth. And we have a deficit now that's going to reach $1 trillion. It's going to cause another recession.

We're going to go through this cycle again of prosperity, Republicans take over. They break the bank. We go into recession. And you know, who's going to -- who's going to bail him out this time. It's going to be another Democrat.

CAMEROTA: Can you boil that into a slogan? That would be helpful.

LOCKHART: The president --

AVLON: Yes, make it rhyme.

LOCKHART: The president -- the president is full of it.

AVLON: It doesn't rhyme.

LOCKHART: It doesn't rhyme, but it's true.

AVLON: There's plenty of things that rhyme with "it."

BERMAN: Well, there is that. Abby, they've turned off the leaf blower behind you. I think the White House is trying to silence you in our early morning panels here.

But if you look at last night, the glorification of violence as journalists as part of his midterm rollout. The other part of it was to try to shine a spotlight on immigration and what the president considers to be a threat to the United States, illegal border crossings.

And the president has made -- there we go. They're trying to quiet you again, Abby. The president really is doing everything he can to make this a midterm issue, and he's been talking about that group of now maybe 4,000 migrants trying to make their way up from Honduras to the U.S. border. Why is this so important to the president?

PHILLIP: This is a symbol of everything that he does not want. I mean, think about the idea of President Trump explaining to his supporters that there is a caravan of -- of asylum seekers and immigrants coming up to from central America to the southern border, and there's nothing that he can do about it.

I think he hates that idea on a very visceral level, and that's why it set off so much controversy and rancor inside the White House. And it has been since the summer. It's been something that -- it angers President Trump, but it also motivates a lot of people, the hardliners within the White House, particularly Stephen Miller, who sees this as a key opportunity to use it in the midterm election to animate the base.

You know, but one of the things Joe just said and I think if really important -- we shouldn't lose sight of this. Immigration, the idea of mobs, these are not central issues to this election. Republicans know that.

[06:10:05] The central issue to this election is, in a lot of races, it's health care; it's preexisting conditions. And so all of these other ancillary issues -- immigration, Democrats being a mob -- the White House sees them as opportunities to do things along the margins to keep their base intact, that frankly, if they don't do it, it can be seen as a sign of weakness.

But they also understand that they -- they have a vulnerability here. Democrats are running on maintaining pre-existing conditions, and it's a message that is resonating in a lot of places. Even the message of Medicare for all is resonating in a lot of places. And that's why Republicans are also trying to shore up their base in that way.

So I think immigration for President Trump is -- he sees it as a hole that he needs to patch up, and that's why it angers him so much. But they also are aware that that's not nearly enough to -- to overcome what is a very salient issue in a lot of races, especially house races across the country.

CAMEROTA: Joe, immigration does animate his base and the numbers are going in the wrong direction for the president. No wonder he's frustrated. No wonder John Bolton and John Kelly are getting into a heated shouting match. These are not the right numbers that the president wants to be able to tout to his base.

So families coming across, the arrest of family units, as they're called, crossing the border has seen an 80 percent increase since July. That's a problem for the president. Of course, he's frustrated by this, and the numbers of just individuals coming across -- I don't know if we have those -- that that has also spiked in 2018 over 2017. So his -- one of his key issues that he promised he was going to fix and promise his base he was going to build a wall is going in the wrong direction.

LOCKHART: Yes, I mean, for them the way they look at it is Democrats have frustrated them. They haven't been able. They won't build them up. They control the rent. That's why it's nonsense.

I think there's -- I agree with what Abby said. This is what they need to do for their base. The caravan, they see it as a gift.

I think there's some risk in it. Because largely, you know, the way the news cycle works, you move on. We've moved away from one of the most damaging parts of this year for the president, which is family separation.

And when we get back to talking about immigration and bring it back up to the forefront, we're going to go back and look, we're now 12 weeks past the federal court, telling the president put these kids back together with their parents. They haven't done it.

It is -- it is a national shame that the president has no answer for this. And I think, you know, a day or two after the caravan and, you know, watching FOX News sell zombies from Honduras, we're going to get back to a primary Achilles' heel for the president.

BERMAN: One of the things that's interesting. And those statistics, I think, are very interesting, because the record number has to do with the record number of family units crossing the border, so how people are crossing the border has fundamentally changed. Apparently now, they're coming in greater numbers as families.

CAMEROTA: Or with children. I mean, what the president would say, is that they know they need to bring a child. I mean, this is what he's telling -- they know they need to bring a child in order to get across the border, and it may not even be their own child.

BERMAN: But the point I want to make is, if you look at this chart, and I'm trying to have this built so you can see it bigger. But look at all this.

This is 2000. This is how many illegal border crossings there were in the year 2000. Down here is roughly now. So you're still at historic lows in terms of the numbers of people crossing the border. It's just now they're just coming more as families. It's up a little bit from last year, but it's still way lower.

CAMEROTA: Agreed. That's an important compass, but it can't go up at all.

BERMAN: What I'm trying to say is the administration is trying to use these numbers and increases in certain types of crossings to stoke fear.

AVLON: Yes, but it also drives the president loco, because he wants to be seen as having shut it down. And he feels stymied in that regard, and that's why you have this report of this extraordinary screaming match between national security adviser and a chief of staff yesterday, because the disincentives that they intend to put back in place don't seem to disincentivize enough. If this a crisis for the country. No, nowhere near where it was in 2000, to your point.

But let's also not forget that there are still over 240 children being held by the Trump administration, by the U.S. government and that is not a good issue for the country.

CAMEROTA: Right. No, that is a problem. Because what they wanted to use as a deterrent to keep the numbers down didn't work. It had all sorts of hue and cry, as we know. So now what? And that's why, I think, that there's so much frustration.

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you all very much.

So when President Trump was defending Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, he singled out Democrats as, quote, "evil people," but his U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, feels differently about this. Her words, next.

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[06:18:23] BERMAN: So is Nikki Haley trying to send yet another message to the president? The outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations spoke at the Al Smith Dinner. That's that annual dinner.

CAMEROTA: I've been to it. You don't have to educate me about that.

Yes, it's white tail -- I mean, white tie.

BERMAN: So let's just make this about you, this segment. About the fabulous places you've been. What other fabulous places? Where else have you been?

CAMEROTA: Yesterday was fantastic. I had a little mental health day that we could talk about.

BERMAN: So Nikki Haley was at the Al Smith Dinner, which is something only fabulous people are invited to. And she apparently was sending a message to the president of the United States about his rhetoric. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY, OUTGOING U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: In America, our political opponents are not evil. In South Sudan, where rape is routinely used as a weapon of war, that is evil. And when a dictator in Syria uses chemical weapons to murder innocent children, that was evil. In North Korea, where American student Otto Warmbier was tortured to death, that was evil. In the last two years, I've seen true evil.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: In America our political opponents are not evil. That, from outgoing U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley.

The president of the United States, whom she still works for, within the last few weeks, has called his political opponents evil. And I quote, he's talking about the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation. He says it was a disgraceful situation brought on by people that are evil.

So what message is Nikki Haley sending? Joe Lockhart, John Avlon back with us, and Karoun Demirjian from "The Washington Post" here, as well.

What do you hear there, John?

[06:20:05] AVLON: I mean, you hear a very clear rebuke to the president's rhetoric, an attempt for her to define her own role in the Republican Party, to be a counterweight to the president, and possibly setting up a future presidential run, frankly, because she is developing her own center of gravity in the Republican Party, and she, unlike many Republicans in this administration, has chosen not to be a sycophant to the president's worst instincts. And that is a source of great strength for her, and she doubled down on that last night.

CAMEROTA: Including, Joe, the North Korea line. I mean, that's -- that's the same leader who President Trump said he gets love letters from. They're having something like a love affair -- I'm paraphrasing the president's words. And so pointing out North Korea and Otto Warmbier was also notable.

LOCKHART: She's doing something you don't hear very often from anyone in the Trump administration. She's telling the truth. It is rare now. She's actually telling the truth. And it seems to be weighty, but she's doing something they should have been doing all along.

And it does, you know -- you know, we're having this debate right now. And I think sometimes we lose the import of it.

The president has praised North Korea. The president has praised Russia. The president has praised Saudi Arabia while calling the press the enemy of the people, while calling Democrats evil, calling women coming forward, telling their stories about sexual assault, the hardest thing they've ever done in our life, a mob. It's crazy, but they're doing it on purpose and they think it's working for them. And we have, what, 18 days to find out.

BERMAN: And Nikki Haley picks her spots. I mean, she does pick her spots. Because it's just last week -- I lose track of time in this environment. I think she was sitting in the Oval Office praising the president.

CAMEROTA: I think so.

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: There's some other sound I want to play you from overnight, Karoun, if I can. And that comes from Carly Fiorina, who ran for president against President Trump. And you'll remember that Trump then had some not nice things to say about Carly Fiorina's appearance.

Well, Fiorina came on with Anderson last night, and was talking about the president's -- Joe was talking about this -- recent attacks on women and their appearance, going after Stormy Daniels. Listen to what Carly Fiorina said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLY FIORINA (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When people were shocked at Donald Trump's comments about my appearance, I wasn't. I think the habit of insulting one's political enemies is, unfortunately, longstanding in this country, and he has brought it to a new low.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: A new low there, Karoun. It's just interesting to hear that from Carly Fiorina the same night that Nikki Haley is saying our political opponents are not evil. You have two women, you know, fellow members of the Republican Party, warning the president, I think, about his rhetoric.

KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. And it's more powerful coming from women in the GOP than it is coming from women in the Democratic Party.

I mean, these are not the first people to criticize Trump's rhetoric. You've heard criticism of Trump's rhetoric from members of the Republican Party all the way through his presidency, as well. But it's usually fairly soft-spoken and saying he would really do himself more credit to back off this sort of thing. Not people coming directly at him and saying, look, this is wrong, or taking his words, really, even if they're not saying, "Look, President Trump, you are speaking too harshly here, and you are -- you are starting fights you don't need to fight."

But taking the phrases that he uses, as Nikki Haley did, and trying to basically put them in a context that, as Joe was saying, is more of a, you know, truthful context about what's going on in the world, is something that we haven't seen a lot of coming from the GOP. So if you're seeing various figures speak out, if they happen to be women, it serves as a counterpunch in a way, but it's nobody that's directly challenging President Trump's leadership of the party yet. So we'll see where this sort of thing goes, if anywhere, from here.

CAMEROTA: Karoun, I want to stick with you because of your reporting in "The Washington Post" about what people now need to listen for in terms of the narrative around Jamal Khashoggi.

And so what you are trying -- what you've heard and what we are beginning to hear on the air are conservatives who are besmirching Jamal Khashoggi, and trying to, I guess, give cover to President Trump's delayed response and if, in fact, there is never a response because the Saudis come up with some sort of narrative that this was all an accident and all a big mistake.

So here are the kinds of things that people are saying. Cory Stewart, a Republican in Virginia, said yesterday, "You know, one thing we have to understand is Khashoggi was not a good guy himself. Now, of course, we don't encourage any regime, including the Saudis, to do something so gruesome."

So two disparate thoughts woven together, as though whatever they can find about Khashoggi's past would somehow make dismembering a journalist in a consulate OK, and then I guess the U.S. doesn't have to respond.

DEMIRJIAN: Right. Well, it's pretty difficult to make the tactic seem like it's a reasonable thing, even in a vacuum. That's basically impossible to do. We're talking about all the allegations about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, about them all coming to fruition, being proven to be true.

But what's going on, basically, is that the president needs some cover for his reaction. This is potentially where he's going to get it.

[06:25:06] The president, everybody knows, is not that great about turning on the people that he thinks to be -- that he venerates. I don't even want to say allies, because some of the traditional allies of the United States he has turned on.

But he's made a very hard push towards reforming very strong ties with Saudi Arabia that this would potentially blow up. Look, senior members of Congress have said, "You should be sanctioning people, all the way up to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia." And that's not something that's going to sit well with President Trump.

It -- look, it recalls -- the situation recalls things like when Trump said, I believe Putin, he said he did not interfere in the elections, and so developing around him if he needs cover, attacking the victim is many ways that you can try to give the president for not having a response that goes as high up in the Saudi government or to any part of the Saudi government if he chooses not to do anything, as some other members of the GOP would like.

AVLON: Right. And, look, I mean, we all know he's got a soft part for strong men, but I mean, the -- Karoun's article with Bob Costa is fascinating, because it shows this pattern, not just of Cory Stewart and a couple of electeds, but a whole series of the conservagentsia, out with op-eds in the last 36 hours.

And the timing matters for this reason. You know, these things don't happen organically on their own. You have all of a sudden, a half dozen op-eds you have publications doing the -- you know, "Not to defend dismembering a journalist, but let's not forget this guy was an Islamist." And you know -- which is what they're arguing. There are pictures of Khashoggi with Osama bin Laden, who he covered early on in the days of the Mujahedeen. That is a coordinated response. That is not a lot of editors and columnists all coming to the same point coincidentally. That itself is sinister.

BERMAN: And it's interesting, too. It's coming at the same time that Jared Kushner --

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: -- is inside the White House, telling the president, "You know, you don't have to condemn this so fast. Just wait. Wait it out. You know, this will blow over."

CAMEROTA: It will blow over.

BERMAN: It will blow over, Joe. Maybe he's right.

LOCKHART: The reality is, it probably will blow over, and Jared is probably right. But -- and that should disappoint us as much as anything.

But there is -- there is a broader point here. And I don't mean to pick on Jared, but I'm going to.

Why is Jared Kushner the architect of our Middle East peace process? Jared Kushner, who's only experience in the Middle East was getting his real-estate developments financed? And I think there are serious questions now about whether there's payback for that.

It is -- this entire administration is built around the idea of people who can make us money get preference, and people who can't, don't. It is not American values. It's Trump greed and grift values.

And it's -- and you know, the people can do something about it, because you know, listen, if we had real oversight of any of these things, these people would be hauled before Congress, and they'd have to defend what they did, and we don't. And that is why it's -- you know, absolute power absolutely corrupts, and it has corrupted this government.

AVLON: And it's not just Saudi money and questions of Qatar and the crackdown there, and how that may relation -- relate to deals. But the reason I push back on this, will the news cycle move forward? Yes. Time marches on. We will not be talking about Jamal Khashoggi in two, three, four months in the same way.

And the problem for the administration is their strategy for the Middle East -- you can put air quotes around it, Joe, if you want -- but depended upon using the Saudis as a counterweight to Iran.

That said, the cost-benefit analysis, if we may be so crude, of the Saudis killing this American resident journalist has been terrible. This has destabilized their plans, and it is not something that I think we can cynically say will pass away and be a net benefit for the administration, for Jared Kushner or for the Saudi Arabian government. It won't. It can't be. You can't erase this.

BERMAN: All right. John, Karoun, Joe, thank you all very much.

Coming up, much more about the fabulous evenings you spent in New York and abroad.

CAMEROTA: I have a lot more to say about that.

BERMAN: Anything in Monaco?

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: Casablanca?

CAMEROTA: No.

BERMAN: No? All right. We'll get to all that.

Other news, as well. The Justice Department is opening a federal investigation into sexual abuse inside the Catholic Church and the alleged cover-up there. A live report, next.

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