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New Day

Massive Wildfires in California; Pelosi on House Win; Florida and Georgia Braces for Recount; Growing AG Backlash. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired November 09, 2018 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:31:09] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We do have more breaking news.

Look at this. Wildfires raging out of control in southern California. Hundreds of homes have burned. Thousands of people being told to evacuate to safety.

Our Nick Valencia is live in Paradise, California, a town that's just been devastated by these fires.

Look at that around you, Nick.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, this, 24 hours ago, was completely gulfed in flames here in Paradise, California. And the scene that you see behind me, it's what much of this town now looks like.

It was an incredibly fast moving fire. At the height of it, it was probably going about a football field every three seconds. In less than a day, the fire that hit here in Paradise, California, and has now moved north, grew to the size of half of San Francisco. And part of that reason were the conditions. In California, not just here in northern California, but also in southern California, I believe we have some live aerials out of Ventura where Cal Fire is also dealing with a major fire going there.

This is untypical for this time of year. Usually around Halloween is when you start to see the rain that signals the end of fire season. But you're still dealing with what we're dealing with now. Most of this area has been evacuated. The only people left behind here are firefighters and police trying to maintain the integrity of the structures that are left behind.

We have seen countless stories on social media of people being caught off guard and trying to escape, making these harrowing journeys on roads that were lined with flames. We want to show you one of those.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are evacuating Paradise, California. We can't even see -- we don't know where the fire is. So, please, please, please, please pray for us that we get out of here OK. VALENCIA (voice over): The family of a local TV reporter frantically

racing to escape the raging flames of the camp fire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is unreal. Never seen anything like it.

VALENCIA: Blinded by smoke, the family struggles to navigate their way down streets, blinded by flames, unsure if they were driving away from the fire or toward it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, God, no, we passed it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We passed it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are we going to do?

VALENCIA: The heat taking its toll on young children in the car.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hope mom's going to be all right. God, it's so hot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know, baby. Hold on. I can't see.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It will be all right. We just -- it will be OK.

VALENCIA: The family quickly realizing that they had left two of their five cats behind.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How many cats do we have in the car?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have three.

VALENCIA: Losing hope, the children's father encourages his terrified family to pray.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's everywhere.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. It's all right. We'll be OK. Just pray. Please help us, Lord. We've got to get out of this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything is going to be gone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, Lord Jesus, please be with us now.

VALENCIA: Eventually the road clears. The family's prayers, answered.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go, go, go!

We made it through, Christian!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got it!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, my brothers!

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VALENCIA: Just absolutely terrifying. That family so lucky to be alive.

No injuries -- or I should say a handful of injuries, no deaths reported officially here so far. And some good news is all of this, John and Alisyn, is that this fire, the winds have changed direction, pushing this fire north back towards the canyon. I spoke to a Cal Fire spokesman earlier this morning who says the plan now is to contain this at the edges and work its way back.

John. Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Oh my God, Nick, that video is so terrifying where the family doesn't know if they're going towards the fire or away from it. And yet, I mean, we've heard the -- the videos like this before where people in the car are calm enough to pray. It's just -- that is really remarkable. Thank you for bringing that to us.

BERMAN: And calm enough to film, too, which is a little bit strange.

CAMEROTA: I know. I mean we get to see it because of that --

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: But I don't know how they have the presence of mind.

OK, we're following some other breaking news. Wait till you see this video. Six people are injured after this plane crash lands in Guyana. Look at this. One hundred and twenty-eight people were on board. This is a Fly Jamaica flight. It was headed to Toronto when the pilot reported technical difficulties and turned around. Incredibly, there were no lift-threatening injuries.

[08:35:09] BERMAN: Somehow they managed to land that plane. Well, that is incredible that no one was seriously hurt.

All right, for the first time since Democrats re-took control of the House, the Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, sat down for an interview. She did so exclusively with CNN's Chris Cuomo.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST, "CUOMO PRIME TIME": What is your level of confidence that you will be the speaker of the House?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Ooo.

CAMEROTA: Ooo.

BERMAN: What does she say?

CAMEROTA: What does she say?

BERMAN: What's her answer? And what really happened when President Trump called her after the election?

CAMEROTA: Who cut the volume?

BERMAN: That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: And now to a CNN exclusive.

For the first time since the midterm elections that gave Democrats control of the House, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi speaks out. She sat down with our Chris Cuomo and Chris asked her about her chances of again becoming House speaker.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST, "CUOMO PRIME TIME": It was no surprise that the president of the United States would try to distract from the big win for your party in the House.

[08:40:03] But when that came in the form of a big move of firing Jeff Sessions and putting in as acting AG Mr. Whittaker, do you see this as a move not just to distract from politics but to interfere with the Mueller probe?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), MINORITY LEADER: Well, I think the latter is the primary purpose, is to interfere with the Mueller purpose. The timing -- of the Mueller investigation. The timing of it is, of course, to distract from the big defeat that the president suffered in terms of our taking the House.

CUOMO: What's your concern about the move politically and what can you do about it?

PELOSI: Our concern is, of course, that they will interfere and say the president is above the law. Our concern -- what we can do about it is what many of our chairman and ranking members now seem to be chairman in the House have sent a letter saying we must preserve the documents of the Mueller investigation. We must preserve the documents. The preservation of the documents is essential. Leader Schumer and I, early on, have called upon our leadership counterparts in the Congress, the speaker and the Leader Mitch McConnell, to include in one of our appropriations bill legislation that would say that the counsel, Mueller, could not just generally, doesn't name him, counsels cannot be fired if they are -- without due cause.

CUOMO: But you do know that public sentiment is not that great when it comes to the Mueller probe. Many people see it as politically motivated.

PELOSI: Yes, well, I do think -- I do think everybody cares about our Constitution. And when they see this, this is a perilously constitutional movement. I don't say it's a constitutional crisis quite yet.

CUOMO: This call from the president to you.

PELOSI: Yes. CUOMO: My reporting suggests that he called you and said, Nancy, I want to make deals. I'll make any kind of deals. I'm here to make deals. We should make deals. Is that your recollection of how the call went?

PELOSI: Well, I don't know if he said deals. It was very noisy in the room. There was a jubilant, jubilant crowd in that room celebrating our taking back the House for the American --

CUOMO: Well played, madame leader.

PELOSI: For the American people.

CUOMO: If you could hear over the throng of enthusiasm from your victory, what did you hear in the call?

PELOSI: I hear him but I heard the word -- I heard the word infrastructure. That came through clearly. But he said, you know, let's talk how -- I'm sure we can come to agreement on some things. And we have an obligation to try to find common ground.

CUOMO: What is your level of confidence that you'll be the speaker of the House?

PELOSI: Total.

CUOMO: One hundred percent?

PELOSI: One hundred percent, yes.

CUOMO: Do you think there will be another nominee, other than you?

PELOSI: It doesn't matter. I've had a nominee every time. Except maybe the very first time.

CUOMO: You don't think that you'll have to deal with unusual opposition?

PELOSI: If I do, I mean, that's politics. I mean, this is not a day at the beach. This is politics. And here I am. We've delivered the victory because we had the best possible candidates. And we had the best possible candidates who inspired the grassroots. I feel very confident about where I am and I feel very encouraged and overwhelming support in my caucus.

CUOMO: I wonder, with all that you've done and all that you've achieved, is there any part of you that says, yes, I'm about to dive into what may well be the most contentious and difficult period of your public life. Do you have any reservations about whether or not you want this in your life at this point?

PELOSI: No. None whatsoever. I've had -- it's an urgency that I can't resist. I mean, if Hillary Clinton has won, my -- our Affordable Care Act would be protected and I could go home. So this is something that I feel that I have all of my experiences geared to, all of my legislative -- CUOMO: Do you think you can handle Trump on a regular basis, the way he is, as personal as it can be, as constant as the attacks can be?

PELOSI: You know, I've been the workhorse and people say, well, you're not a show horse. Well, I have to be a workhorse and a show horse now because I'll be center stage. But all of these candidates, all of our incumbents, they'll be taking their message home. So the public will see -- the public will see what this discussion is about, where we have our agreements and we have our disagreements and what it means in their lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Interesting discussion with Nancy Pelosi, who is 100 percent sure that she will be the next speaker of the House.

So, remember what the president was focused on just about every minute of every day prior to the midterm elections, what he called the caravan that was invading the country, even though there was no real proof of that. Well, the president's got some planned action on it again today. We'll get "The Bottom Line," next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:48:39] BERMAN: So you only thought the election was over on Tuesday. Doesn't look close to over in Florida. We could be seeing 2000 all over again.

Look at this. This is the race for Senate there. Rick Scott's lead over Bill Nelson down to just 15,000 votes. Still more to be counted in the governor's race. Ron DeSantis, his lead down to 36,000 votes over Andrew Gillum. Now, Gillum conceded on election night, now has said let's count all the votes. And those are only some of the close races where they're still counting ballots around the country. Arizona, some California House races, in Georgia.

CAMEROTA: Georgia.

BERMAN: Stacey Abrams hasn't conceded.

Let's get "The Bottom Line" with Josh Green, CNN political analyst, national correspondent for "Bloomberg BusinessWeek."

Wow.

JOSHUA GREEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I mean I was -- I'm old enough to have lived through 2000. You know, I thought after they got rid of hanging chads, there wouldn't be any more south Florida ballot problems. Well, there are. And so we're right back, plunged into the same kind of dragged out drama that we saw in the presidential race in 2000.

BERMAN: Is there a lesson for Andrew Gillum, who did call Ron DeSantis to conceded on election night?

GREEN: You know, I think there is. On election night early on, Democrats were very despondent. They thought they'd lost that Florida race. They thought they'd lost the Georgia governor's race, their two highest profile races with charismatic African-American candidates.

What's interesting to me is the disparity in how those two candidates reacted. Stacey Abrams in Georgia did not concede on election night, still has not conceded, has a larger margin of votes outstanding. That too may be headed to a recount.

[08:50:06] But Gillum, by conceding, I think he made his PR problem more difficult now because you've got President Trump coming out, you've got Rick Scott coming out alleging election fraud, of course, with no evidence at this point, but it's a tougher mountain to climb, I think, if you're Andrew Gillum and you've conceded on election night to come back three days later and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, it looks like this racer is closer than we thought it was going to be, even though it's clear the race is closer than anybody thought it was going to be.

CAMEROTA: None of this inspires confidence. We had Maeve Reston on who said that they found -- you know, we always hear these stories every election cycle, they found in a closet a cardboard box that was labeled provisional ballots and somebody said like, hmm, did these need to be counted? And like brought it out to their trunk and somebody's now counting it.

BERMAN: The dramatic reenactment, by the way, is everything to me.

CAMEROTA: I mean, thank you. I could go on. I could go on because this is absurd.

GREEN: It is. Look, the American electoral system is tragically flawed in all sorts of ways. It seems to be particularly flawed in Broward County, Florida, which we've now got about two decades of evidence to back that up.

You know, going into the election, a lot of people thought Russian hacking might be the problem. Well, it turns out it's just, you know, old-fashioned sloppiness and incompetence.

CAMEROTA: Incompetence, yes.

GREEN: And it is amazing that states haven't, especially Florida of all states, haven't figured out a way to clean up and fix that problem.

BERMAN: It's American counting that's the problem, not Russian hacking. That's the problem.

I do want to ask about the perception of everything. And you sort of touched on it with Gillum conceding, Abrams fighting.

There was a point on election night where we hadn't yet heard about Nevada, where that flipped from red to blue. Jon Tester was losing.

GREEN: Yes. BERMAN: You know, Arizona, it looked like the Democrat was going to go down. It looked like a very Different night for Democrats. It looks much different on Friday morning where Tester had his best victory ever, his biggest victory ever. Nevada did flip. And Arizona could go to the Democrats.

GREEN: Look, I think two things happen on election night. First of all, it was a big, emotional loss for Democrats early in the night because it looked like the marquee candidates, Beto O'Rourke, Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams were all going to go down, even while Democrats were in the process of winning back the House of Representatives.

The other thing that happened is, the longer the vote has gone on, the more votes have come in, the clearer it's become that rather than a blue ripple, this is a blue wave. Democrats are probably going to win 35 to 40 seats in the House. A lot of governorships. They wind up, in insight, having a better night, I think, than most people realized at the time.

CAMEROTA: Yes, but I don't know if you can retroactively go back and be excited about (INAUDIBLE) --

GREEN: No, I don't think -- there's no such thing as retroactive excitement. That's their problem. But if you look at it from a raw numbers standpoint and a power standpoint, they have oversight power, they have subpoena power by taking control of the House. It's still going to matter going forward.

BERMAN: That's why wedding videos are stupid things, by the way.

CAMEROTA: Why's that?

BERMAN: Because you can't go back and re-live the moment.

CAMEROTA: Yes, you can.

BERMAN: No, you can't. You can't.

CAMEROTA: Yes, you can.

BERMAN: No.

CAMEROTA: You can show your kids your first dance.

BERMAN: No, no, no. No, no, no.

CAMEROTA: They can see everybody young.

BERMAN: I fear I've digressed a little bit.

Speaking of weddings.

CAMEROTA: Oh?

BERMAN: George Conway, Kellyanne Conway. CAMEROTA: What's George Conway doing? OK, George Conway put out this

op-ed going aftermath Matt Whitaker, but it's not his first time. I mean George Conway has trolled the Trump White House time and again. He went -- so he said that the AG pick now is illegal. He's called the proposal to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional. He's called Trump's rhetoric ceaseless, shameless and witless. I mean it goes on and on. This is the husband of the president's counselor Kellyanne Conway.

GREEN: So how is this marriage not a Bravo reality show? I would -- I would watch this thing every night just to see what the interactions were like.

Look, no, I give -- I give Conway a lot of credit. It's got to be difficult being married to the wife of a prominent Trump adviser and coming out publically and standing up for your beliefs. But Conway is a legitimate conservative intellectual, has well thought out views on the court, on the Constitution, on power and clearly has no compunction about airing those views, even if they embarrass the president, even if they contradict what his wife would probably prefer that he'd be talking out.

BERMAN: I mean he comes out on almost every controversial issue now.

GREEN: Well, he really does. And he does it on Twitter. And he does it in "The New York Times." I mean he has a voice and he wants to be heard and he is being heard.

CAMEROTA: I just wonder how the president feels about this. What does President Trump say to Kellyanne?

GREEN: I -- you know, I can't imagine. And one of the things I have marveled at is Trump's -- well, Trump isn't a guy who's known for restraint, right? And yet so far as I know, I don't think he's tweeted anything about George Conway at all. It's got to get under his skin. It's got to bother him that his, you know, his pick for AG is being called unconstitutional by the husband of one of his senior advisers, but so far no reaction.

BERMAN: Josh Green, great to have you here with us on set. We really appreciate it.

Much more on wedding videos coming up, too, because we disagree on this.

CAMEROTA: Yes, yes. No, I like them.

BERMAN: They're a bad idea.

CAMEROTA: I'm a fan. I want to see yours.

BERMAN: So, here in the United States, young minors are being lured, threatened, beaten, sold every day. They are sex trafficking victims forced to have sex for money. Susan Munsey was one of them. Trafficked at 16, now she's speaking out and offering safety to women who have escaped sex trafficking. [08:55:02] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUSAN MUNSEY, CNN HERO: Nobody wakes up and just decides one day, I'm going to go sell my body and give the money away.

Traffickers or pimps know exactly what they're doing. Much of it's on the Internet now. They're going on dating websites and they're gaming. They're looking for young, vulnerable women anywhere where young women might hang out.

My vision was to have a home where women could come and find safety and find themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, Susan's organization Generate Hope has been a refuge for more than 100 survivors. If you think Susan should be this year's CNN Hero, vote for her at cnnheroes.com. We're, what, a few weeks away from the live CNN Heroes event.

CAMEROTA: Choose. I mean our crop of heroes are always so impressive, I don't know how people choose.

OK, so it's been a long week.

BERMAN: It has. You know what, it's not even close to over. It's Friday. I have to say it's Friday. We haven't heard from Robert Mueller for months at this point. I'm not say he's doing anything today, but at the rate we're going this week, stay close to your television set.

CAMEROTA: Good point.

BERMAN: CNN "NEWSROOM" is next.

CAMEROTA: Have a great weekend.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:00:05] JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Friday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto. Poppy