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Gunman Killed After Shooting 2 in Alabama Mall; Shoppers Looking for Electronics, Toys in Black Friday Deals; Trump Calls U.S. Troops to Air Personal Grievances on Immigration, Judges GOP House Judiciary Chair Subpoenas Comey & Lynch. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 23, 2018 - 07:00   ET

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

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Traditionally, presidents wish them happy Thanksgiving.

[07:00:05] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A lot of bad decisions from the Ninth Circuit that have become a big thorn in our side.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You want the president to be presidential when he's calling the troops on Thanksgiving.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Unfortunately, this took a little turn. It really shouldn't go that way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. John Berman is off. John Avlon joins me. Great to have you here.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST/ANCHOR: Great to be here.

CAMEROTA: Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving?

AVLON: I did. How was yours?

CAMEROTA: Good. Delicious. Absolutely delicious, and when I get home I'm going to eat leftovers.

AVLON: More.

CAMEROTA: More, yes.

We do begin with breaking news for you, because there was another night of gun violence in America, this time on Thanksgiving. A gunman opened fire inside a crowded Alabama mall. You can see terrified shoppers here having to run for safety.

AVLON: Police say two people were shot, including a 12-year-old girl. Authorities say armed police officers inside the mall confronted the gunman within seconds, shooting and killing him. The Galleria, Alabama's largest mall is set to re-open in just moments. CNN's Dianne Gallagher, live in Hoover, Alabama, with breaking details

-- Dianne.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And John, it is a little bit surreal, to be quite honest. The parking lot is starting to fill up. I can see people much farther out there who are lining up, waiting to get in.

Just eight hours ago a man was killed inside this mall after gunfire erupted. Many are saying, thankfully, there was extra people on hand with those officers for those Black Friday crowds. And instead, they probably made this a lot less deadly than it could have been.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A shooter! A shooter! Everybody out. Out!

GALLAGHER (voice-over): Chaos erupting inside an Alabama shopping mall packed with Black Friday shoppers.

MAVENY WHITE, WITNESS: All of a sudden, I heard, like, my manager just yell, "There was gunshots."

GALLAGHER: The shooting at the Riverchase Galleria near Birmingham after two people got into a fight. The alleged gunman shot an 18- year-old man outside a store and then tried to run away from the area.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I heard one, and then, bang, bang, and then right after that people started screaming and going crazy to just get away from it. And then cops ran by us with their guns drawn.

GALLAGHER: Police officers on duty for the holiday season reacting quickly.

LEXIE JOYNER, WITNESS: And they stuffed us in supply closets and locked the doors. They seemed prepared. And then we sat there for five to ten minutes, all freaking out. And then they opened the escape route doors, and we escaped through the escape route doors.

GALLAGHER: Alabama.com reporting, "Several shoppers were also seen with their guns drawn." Police say one officer encountered the suspect, quote, "brandishing a pistol," then shot and killed him.

RECTOR: We were fortunate that that Hoover officer was there, where he needed to be, and we believe at this point that -- that maybe he prevented -- prevented further injuries.

GALLAGHER: Also caught in the crossfire, a 12-year-old girl.

RECTOR: We believe, last we heard, that she was alert, conscious and talking.

GALLAGHER: Those who were inside say they're grateful for mall employees who helped keep the scary situation calm.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As soon as everybody started screaming, they was, like, "Shut the doors, shut the doors." They was very courteous of the -- you know, the visitors that was in the stores.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GALLAGHER: Word of the shooting here, though, has not kept people out. Again, we just saw people walking through the doors of that JCPenney a couple seconds ago.

Update on the victims here: That 12-year-old girl, she was shot once, we're told. She is in stable condition, has already has been through surgery this morning.

The 18-year-old was shot two times in the torso area. He is in serious condition at that nearby UAB hospital.

And the officer who fired that shot, he has been placed on administrative leave. A neighboring county, the deputies there are investigating it, since it is an officer-involved shooting -- John, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, Dianne. Please, please keep us posted on the victims' progress there. Thank you.

And as Dianne noted, it is surreal to have shoppers already going back to that mall even after that gunman terrified shoppers last night, but holiday shoppers and bargain hunters are hard to detour. This morning they are up early. They are already hitting the store. CNN's Alison Kosik is live inside a Best Buy store in Paramus, New Jersey.

What's the situation there, Alison?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It's hard to detour these shoppers from coming out. You know, it's 12 degrees outside, and already, there's about a dozen people outside this Best Buy in Paramus, New Jersey.

What are they looking to get? Most of them looking to buy these door busters, TVs. Those door busters are deals that you can only get inside the store and you can't get online.

But that online shopping has already begun in earnest. On Thanksgiving, it's expected that a total of $3.7 billion was spent. I'm talking about Thanksgiving day when people are eating their turkey. They're also on their phones shopping. By today, Black Friday, $6 billion is expected to be spent. And on Cyber Monday, $7.8 billion is expected to be spent.

[07:05:07] What are they spending on? They're buying drones. They're buying HP laptops. Electronics are really a big draw for holiday shoppers this year.

What else is drawing shoppers? Game consoles. Anything gaming, people want. The big game this year, it's Call of Duty: Black Ops. You're going to see a lot of people gravitate toward that. And of course, the usual toys and other items, as well.

The National Retail Federation expects November and December, we're going to see people spend anywhere from 717 to $720 billion in just two months on holiday shopping -- Alisyn and John.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

AVLON: Thank you.

Well, Festivus came early this year with President Trump using the traditional Thanksgiving call to service members stationed overseas to have some airing of annual grievances, jumping on the situation at the border and ripping federal judges. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We get a lot of bad court decisions from the Ninth Circuit, which has become a big thorn in our side. We always lose, and then you lose again and again, and then you hopefully, win at the Supreme Court, which we've done. But it's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect your border. It's a disgrace.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: The president went on to take questions and threatened to shut down the border and the government. Also, undermining the CIA's assessment that Saudi Arabia's crown prince was behind the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Joining us now, White House reporter for "The Washington Post" and CNN political analyst, Josh Dawsey, who was in the room when this all played out.

Josh, you've got a great piece in "The Washington Post" today. It is brilliantly written, really capturing the surreality of that scene. Among my favorite lines was the background, the extended Trump family wearing ath-leisure behind the mangrove bushes. Really quite choice.

But let's just get into the specifics of what the president said. In particularly, you've reported and your colleagues at "The Washington Post" have reported that the CIA has said that the crown prince was directly involved with ordering the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the president saying that's not true. Where's the truth?

JOSH DAWSEY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: These were not traditional Thanksgiving tidings, John. Obviously, yesterday the president began his call with the service members talking about a whole array of issues. Then he took questions from the assembled reporters in that gold foyer at Mar-a-Lago.

When we asked him about the CIA assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist from "The Post," the president said that that was their feelings, but they had not conclusively ordered that and that he was not planning to do much about it.

When he was asked directly who he thought should be held accountable for the killing, he said, the world, because the world is a vicious place. And he said, somewhat inexplicably, that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, felt even worse about it than he did. It was hard to -- it's hard to believe how that could be true, because there's not been any sort of remorse from the crown prince, MBS. And in fact, you know, the CIA's concluded that he wanted it to happen and ordered it.

AVLON: Josh, let's play that sound just for folks so they can hear the president himself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: No, they didn't come to -- they did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings certain ways, but they didn't have the report. And you can ask -- you can ask, Mike (ph) -- they have not concluded. Nobody has concluded. I don't know if anybody is going to be able to conclude that the crown prince did it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Josh, presumably, what he's referencing is the high degree of confidence statute which the agency uses. But as you point out, he really blamed, quote unquote, the world, essentially, the human condition for killing Jamal Khashoggi, not the crown prince.

But that was only one nugget out of this entire conversation. Among the other issues he had, asking commanders in the field what they thought about certain issues, from migrants to propulsion on their boats. That seemed to put them in kind of an awkward position.

DAWSEY: Well, frankly, these calls are often filled with pabulum. It's the president saying, "Thank you very much," the troops thanking him.

The president made these calls pretty interesting. He was asking the commanders in real time what was going on in their countries. He began asking about how catapults work off of boats to propel planes off of ships, and gave his opinion that a certain kind should be used, of steam. The commanders in the field disagreed.

He began talking about the border with some of the commanders, and he said that they were using barbed wire plus to secure the border. He also was talking about trade when some of the commanders in Bahrain, a Bahrain official kind of pushed back on the president and said he didn't see any problems with the trade. The president and the commander both seemed pretty startled on how the conversation went.

AVLON: Pretty remarkable, it should be said, for soldiers in the field and commanders really taking issue and pushing back on their commander-in-chief in real time. It's a form of radical transparency, which I suppose is the silver lining to this president's approach.

[07:10:13] But it really is a scene unlike any other that you described, the opulent table being set in the background, beneath the sort of gilded ceiling. Just put this in a presidential context for us.

DAWSEY: Well, the president, obviously, is proud of his property. He wanted the world to see it yesterday. He wanted to do the call with troops there. We had dinner there last night. He had a press conference there. Most of the day was spent, you know, beneath the very lavish ceilings of Mar-a-Lago.

There were hundreds of guests filing in, coiffed hair, dressed to the nines, for the Thanksgiving dinner. The president sat out in the middle of the room with his whole family, kind of you know, shaking hands, kissing ladies on the cheek, grinning over at us. You know, it was kind of a showman's day.

The president is most kind of solicitous when he's in host mode. And when he's down here, he certainly loves the idea of being, you know, kind of the titular head of the club and have everyone kind of come and kiss the ring and say hello to him. And he was in that mode yesterday all day.

AVLON: Fascinating stuff. Josh, thank you for your reporting. I look forward to the next installment.

CAMEROTA: All right. Joining us now, we have Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast" and CNN political analyst, Jackie Kucinich; plus CNN political commentators Simon Sanders, former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders's 2016 campaign; and former special assistant to President George w. Bush, Scott Jennings.

Happy post-Thanksgiving to all of you.

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Great to have you here with us.

SIMONE SANDERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: So Scott, let's -- I want to start with you, because I think that Josh Dawsey's reporting was so interesting, all of the color behind the scenes at Mar-a-Lago. And the president, as we know, doesn't abide by customs or sort of presidential traditions. He does things his own way.

So he spent the day golfing -- much of the day golfing yesterday, instead of making any sort of visit to see troop in war zones. And I'm just -- look, I personally believe that he will go, OK, at some point, in the relatively near future to see troops in war zones, because there's been enough kind of clamoring for that. I think he will. But until then, are you OK with him breaking that Thanksgiving tradition and doing it his way instead?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm OK with it, as long as he and Secretary Mattis are talking about getting him out to a war zone, because I do think it's important for the commander-in-chief to go out and visit the troops and see what they do close-up.

But again, I think I want the Pentagon and Secretary Mattis to make that call and help the president go at the right time that's the least disruptive time for the troops and the most safe for them and the president. So as long as that's in the works, then I am -- I, like, you, Alisyn, believe that it is -- then I'm fine with it. AVLON: Jackie, the president has been on quite a tear of Thanksgiving

week. I mean, he's surrounded in his comfort zone at Mar-a-Lago, but he's been attacking the chief justice. He's been attacking the courts, wrangling with law enforcement, wrangling with the military. What's behind this ratcheting up of anxiety, and how is Washington responding to, for example, idle threats to shut down the government that get tossed in the context of the overall conversation he had yesterday?

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, I think Republicans in Washington are sort of used to this bluster in terms of, you know, it's what McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan have been dealing with since go. I think they're pretty much used to it. And whether they shut -- whether he shuts down -- tries to shut down the government or not is an open question.

You know, Republicans already lost the House. There isn't a whole lot to lose on that side at this point.

But I do think you've heard some -- people like Mitch McConnell and Ryan say they're not going to shut down the government. So whether this is just bluster this time, we'll have to see.

But, you know, what isn't bluster is the fact that the president did send thousands of troops down to the border who were there during Thanksgiving for a mission that is still, you know, kind of up in the air. Some of them are on their way back. So, you know, this politicizing of the military, sadly, isn't -- isn't new.

CAMEROTA: When he had an opportunity, Simone, to thank the troops and to say what he was thankful for on Thanksgiving, the president took a different tact. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you most thankful for, Mr. President?

TRUMP: For having a great family and for having made a tremendous difference in this country. I've made a tremendous difference in the country. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office you wouldn't believe it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: He's thankful for him.

SANDERS: Alisyn, it makes me feel like he didn't even bother to read the briefing book, or at least woke up and checked his Twitter time line to know what yesterday was.

It's just disappointing. You know, it's just disappointing. I would love for one day, the president to have to engage in a presidential act and actually be presidential.

[07:15:07] But I think, actually, it's more than just being presidential. It's about, I think, understanding the gravitas of the moment, and what is and is not appropriate. I just don't think that the president grasps that.

You know, I said last week on CNN that I thought the president had been giving the proverbial middle finger to the military for a really long time. And this reinforces what I thought last week. I think that the president could have used this time to thank the military, to tout how much he loves them, and could have used this time to do a whole host of other things. But instead, he used this time to reinforce some of his, frankly, unpopular policies and really put military members, I believe, in a tough spot; and that's just unfortunate.

AVLON: Scott, the president has sent pretty clear messages that Congress seems to be following. Republicans in the House with their final weeks in office seem to be calling on James Comey and Loretta Lynch to testify in Hillary's e-mails. What is the Republican sense of how to handle the, potentially, 40-seat loss in the House but the maintaining of the Senate? Were they -- do you think they're going to change their strategy in trying to channel this president as they look towards the next elections?

JENNINGS: Yes, this strategy to get Comey and Lynch back up there reminds me of when I take my children to the arcade, and I tell them it's time to go. And they say, "But Dad, we just need one more game. We just need one more quarter."

And we say, "OK, fine, fine. Here's another quarter. Have fun."

Look, it strikes me that you can delay anything in a process like this for 30 days. So I don't know if these folks are ever going to wind up back on Capitol Hill.

I think the Republicans need to focus on a couple of things. One, how do we get back in touch with people in the suburbs? No. 2, how do we get back in touch with the upper Midwest? And No. 3, if they want to do something productive to close out this Congress, pass the Farm Bill. It's the last piece of business that didn't get done that matters to a whole lot of Trump voters out there.

So if they want to help President Trump get re-elected, if it's a forward-looking strategy you're asking me about, it's get back in touch with the voters you lost and do something for the voters which got you there, which is pass the Farm Bill.

CAMEROTA: Jackie, do you think the Judiciary Committee, in addition to re-litigating Hillary Clinton's e-mails, will they be looking into Ivanka Trump's e-mails?

KUCINICH: You know, Alisyn, I don't think they're going to.

CAMEROTA: Why is that?

KUCINICH: it just doesn't seem like that's where their focus is. Never mind that there has been an inspector general's report looking into Comey and Lynch and, you know, other investigations into Hillary Clinton's e-mails. But that's not what their focus is. We're at the point, especially in

the House, where there's sort of -- it's kind of a really long FOX News segment at this point that's just going on in the Judiciary Committee.

That said, I would imagine the incoming Congress will be looking into not only what happened with Ivanka Trump but the whole plethora of instances in the Trump administration.

AVLON: A plethora of things to look into. Yes. Simone, look, Democrats coming in, obviously, there is a long laundry list of to- dos, to try to put some checks and balances on this president. Inquiries the Democrats have been champing on the bit to pursue, from his taxes on down.

Do you think, as someone who worked for Bernie Sanders, that there are areas where the Democrats should try to find common ground with this president? There's been discussions Nancy Pelosi has raised at CNN, conversations about infrastructure or prescription drug pricing.

Do you think that's a politically and practically wise thing for the Democrats to do for the country?

SANDERS: You know, look, it's not just -- it's not about actually coming to ground with the president. I think it's about going in and doing what the American people elected a Democratic-led House to do. And they wanted them to get things done.

Now, to be clear, oversight is part of those duties. Oversight, frankly, that the Republican-led House of Representatives has just not done, i.e., calling James Comey and Loretta Lynch back to testify is not part of exercising real oversight and putting a check and balance on the White House.

And so I think that you will see a lot of hearings, some oversight hearings. You will see some inquiries. But you will also see some legislation getting done.

I think that no one would argue that Obamacare is perfect, but that there are some fixes and tweaks we need to make to the program. I think infrastructure is absolutely a place where things can get done.

Maybe, I mean, it looked like a couple weeks ago criminal justice reform, i.e. prison reform. I don't necessarily know, but at least conversations are happening.

So I think Democrats are going to arise in this next, 116th Congress, ready to go and ready to get work done. The question is will the president and the Republicans in the Senate be willing to do the same?

AVLON: Wouldn't that be something?

CAMEROTA: Simone, Scott, Jackie, thank you all very much.

So President Trump making it clear he believes Saudi Arabia over his own intelligence agencies on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. So now what will Congress do? A newly-elected member of the House joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Saudi Arabia apparently getting a pass from President Trump in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Officials tell CNN the CIA assessment shows the crown -- the Saudi crown prince ordered Khashoggi's death. President Trump does not believe that assessment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: No, they didn't conclude. They did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings certain ways but they didn't -- I have the report. And you can ask -- you can ask Mike, they have not concluded. Nobody's concluded. I don't know if anyone is going to be able to conclude that the crown prince did it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now is Congressman-elect Tom Malinowski of New Jersey. He is a former director of Human Rights Watch and an assistant secretary of state under President Obama.

Good morning, Congressman-elect.

TOM MALINOWSKI (D), NEW JERSEY CONGRESSMAN-ELECT: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: So you heard the president there. It's impossible to conclude, I guess, with 100 percent certainty. So what do you do?

MALINOWSKI: Well, this is why the stakes are so high here. The president is basically saying he doesn't care if Saudi Arabia murdered a journalist for "The Washington Post," so long as Saudi Arabia keeps paying us. And that's a -- that's a signal to Russia, to China, to governments all around the world that basically they can get away with anything, including with respect to Americans. And I don't think Congress can accept that.

Congress, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has already invoked something called the Magnitsky Act and has asked the Trump administration to determine whether the Saudi crown prince was, indeed, responsible for this killing. They have 120 days to do that, to impose sanctions on the crown prince or to explain why they're not doing so and after that Congress can act on its own.

CAMEROTA: but let's just look at the president's position a little bit more closely. Because it sounds like, if I can paraphrase him accurately, that basically that the administration feels is that there are a lot of human rights abuses all over the world. And yes, this was a grisly, hideous murder, from what we can tell, but this was one man, not a U.S. citizen, a resident.

And so is it -- is it that important to blow up the alliance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, where Saudi Arabia can help the U.S. in other venues, over this?

MALINOWSKI: Oh, my goodness. Well, first of all, it's not just a human rights abuse. This was something that actually happens very rarely. Saudi Arabia reached out across its borders and murdered somebody who was lured from the United States to go into one of its embassies in Turkey. This is something that we cannot allow to become the new norm. Dictatorships killing their critics on foreign soil.

We -- the United States is full of thousands and thousands of refugees from countries like Russia and China and Saudi Arabia who are critics of those governments. Do we want them to start being murdered in Washington, in New York, in Paris and London? It's really important to send a signal that this is a line you can't cross.

And as for Saudi Arabia, you know, when they help us, it's because it's in their interests, not because they are close allies or they love the United States of America. They're going to continue to help us on Iran, because Saudi Arabia is threatened by Iran; and they need our help there.

And this is not about blowing up the relationship. It's about sanctioning an individual. It's about separating a relationship with Saudi Arabia from our relationship with this incredibly volatile, dangerous and unpredictable young man who is campaigning to be the ruler of the country for the next 50 years.

CAMEROTA: You know, you were in the Obama State Department, and you are one of the people who went to Congress with intelligence to show them, to try to get their attention, that Russia was interfering in the 2016 election, something, as you know, President Trump has been very reluctant to admit or get his arms around.

And so what does it mean to you that he's using that same sort of logic now with a different dictator, where he believes their denials and their world over the CIA and U.S. intelligence officers?

MALINOWSKI: Well, it seems like the president instinctively sympathizes with powerful leaders who are accused of moral transgressions, and I don't think it's too hard to figure out why that is.

The result, though, is that he believes foreign dictators, whether it's Putin or the crown prince of Saudi Arabia or Kim Jong-un, over the conclusions of our own intelligence community. And that's not just a ridiculous thing that we should laugh at; it's very dangerous to our national security.

CAMEROTA: I want to ask you about what the House Judiciary Committee is doing. They are issuing subpoenas to James Comey and Loretta Lynch, because I guess they have more questions about Hillary Clinton's e-mails. When Democrats come into the House and are the majority, should they investigate Ivanka Trump's e-mails?

MALINOWSKI: I think Ivanka Trump's e-mails are the least of our problems. I mean, obviously, the Republicans are hypocritical on this issue, but the voters didn't send me and other Democrats to Congress to litigate e-mail -- minor e-mail scandals. They sent us there to pass legislation on infrastructure, on health care, on gun violence. They also sent us to deal real oversight, to protect the Justice

Department and the FBI and the judiciary from the president's attacks. These are very, very serious matters. I don't think we should get into a tit-for-tat over e-mails.

CAMEROTA: So what should be the first investigation or oversight that Democrats take up when they get there in January?

MALINOWSKI: I think what we have to be totally militant about is protecting the independence of the Justice Department, protecting the integrity of the Mueller investigation and of the FBI. Let the investigators do their job in defense of our Constitution, and let the Congress do its job that the American people elected us to do.