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Shooting Takes Place in Alabama Shopping Center During Black Friday; President Trump Makes Thanksgiving Day Call to U.S. Troops; Interview with Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 23, 2018 - 8:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Authorities are saying it could have been far worse if security wasn't already so beefed up for the shopping holiday.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go! Let's go!

GALLAGHER: 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: A 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.

GREGG RECTOR, CAPTAIN, HOOVER POLICE DEPARTMENT: We were fortunate that Hoover officer was there where he needed to be. And we believe at this point that maybe he 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 are 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 said that the visitors that was in the stores.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GALLAGHER: You're fine. And just a couple updates here. That 12- year-old girl, she is in stable condition. We're told she already went through surgery this morning. She was shot once. The key here is they're not sure who shot her. That's still under investigation right now. The 18-year-old was shot twice in the stomach area. He is in serious condition. And of course, because the investigation continues, that's being done by a neighboring county's sheriff deputies. The officer who shot the suspect, he has placed on administrative leave, which is pretty typical, John, Alisyn, in situations like this with officer involved shootings. But again, people already inside shopping again just a few hours after this happened.

JOHN AVLON, CNN ANCHOR: Well, as Dianne notes, it is surreal to have shoppers coming back to the mall even after a gunman terrified them. But holiday shoppers and bargain hunters are hard to deter, and this morning they're up early already hitting the stores.

CNN Alison Kosik is live inside of a Best Buy store that just opened its doors in Paramus, New Jersey. How does it look out there, Alison?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the doors just opened here at this Best Buy in Paramus, New Jersey. And about I'd say a little over 100 people just streamed in with their lists in hand and smiles on their faces ready to buy on this black Friday. A lot of them went straight here to the flat screen TVs and then they went deeper into the store where you will find some of the hottest item of the year, game consoles, drones, games. And here's we've got -- what kind of TV you got here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a 65 inch.

KOSIK: He's got a 65 inch and he's dragging it out. These are the door busters, if you're wondering, the door busters mean you can't get these prices online. But speaking of online, a lot of people already have been spending online. Adobe analysts expect that $3.7 billion was spent yesterday just on Thanksgiving. Today online for Black Friday an estimated $6 billion is expected to be spent. And on Monday for cyber an expected $7.8 billion is expected to be spent. Between November and December, the National Retail Federation is expecting that you will see consumers spent anywhere from $717 to $720 billion on holiday shopping. And there is just a lot of consumer confidence out there. Unemployment is low. So that's revving consumers up to get out there and spend during this holiday shopping season. And there they go.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, a lot of enthusiasm, Alisyn, as we can see behind you. Honestly, it kind of makes me break out in hives.

KOSIK: What can I pick up for you, Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: I don't know. Whatever you see that you think I'd like.

(LAUGHTER)

KOSIK: I didn't mention it. These are the echo dot, the smart speakers. They're another hot item of the year as well. A lot of people going for these.

CAMEROTA: Yes, but I don't want something listening to me all the time, other than our viewers.

KOSIK: I'm with you on that. I concur.

CAMEROTA: Yes. But keep looking. I'm sure you'll find a great Christmas present for me. Thank you very much, Alison. Thank you.

Now to politics. I was doing a little bit of a President Trump impersonation.

AVLON: You were?

CAMEROTA: Well, only his Thanksgiving as we'll get to, did feature how he feels also about himself.

[08:05:00] The president used a Thanksgiving Day call with troops to praise himself and air his own grievances about federal judges, about asylum seeking migrants. The president is now actually threatening to close the southern border with Mexico. He's also warning that his desire for a border wall could trigger a government shutdown.

And President Trump is siding with the Saudi crown prince and his story rather than the CIA and their assessment of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. So we have a lot to talk about it. Joining us now, we have senior editor at "The Atlantic," and CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein, former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign and CNN political commentator Symone Sanders, and host of CNN's "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered," S.E. Cupp. Great to have all of you guys with us this day after Thanksgiving. Hope you guys had wonderful holidays.

S.E., we have some very interesting color about how the president spent his Thanksgiving holiday, mostly on the golf course. And then he also made some phone calls to people serving overseas. And, listen, I have been asking this question all morning. I am just curious, you as a Republican, is it OK to break with the tradition of presidents going to war zones to visit the troops on Thanksgiving? Is it time to retire that custom?

S.E. CUPP, CNN HOST, S.E. CUPP UNFILTERED: Well, I don't think just de facto. You know, the ceremonial, the traditions that these presidents usually take up are important. But I talked to a lot of men and women in service, I'm sure you do, too. And for them it is not the ceremony that matters. They want funding. They want attention for PTSD, they want attention for veteran suicides. And to that end, this administration did sign the largest V.A. defense budget bill ever, and so that matters.

But the fact that the president would use the military on a special holiday to score political points is appalling, but it's not surprising. His perspective of the military is, like everyone else at his disposal, to be used, to be used for his advantage. We saw that with the deployment of troops to the border unnecessarily before an important election. We see the president's disregard for the military in refusing to honor them at Veterans Day in Arlington. The military is just like everything else for the president, like the DOJ, like Congress, a lever, a lever of power. And again, that's appalling, but it's not at all surprising.

AVLON: Appalling but not surprising. That's the headline. We could just make that the evergreen tweet.

But Ron, what about the politics of this? Because when the president does him and gives thanks for his own leadership for the nation, in the face of losing 40 house seats, how does that change Republicans calculus about indulging some of his more shoot from the hip moments?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's really the right frame to look at this at. I mean, the clear message from yesterday was both in tone and substance, full speed ahead. No change in direction, no course correction. The president was, he used this rational infused language on immigration. He continued his scattershot attacks on any institution that he believes can threaten him, the courts. There was utterly no kind of course correction or acknowledgment of what just happened.

And, as you point out, Republicans are now on the brink of losing 40 seats in the House, the most they have lost since Watergate, at a moment when unemployment was four percent. And they suffered their biggest losses in the places that are doing the best in this economy, in white collar suburbs all over the country, where they were really routed to a degree that certainly we have not seen in modern times. They will lose the popular vote by more than Democrats did in the Tea Party election of 2010.

Despite all that, there has been virtually no kind of alarms raised from within the Republican elected official class that are focused on the wins in a few rural states that allowed them to expand their Senate margin, plus Florida, and really not a grappling with what happened here earlier this month. And I think that has emboldened the president to feel as though there really is no resistance in the party to the direction he's taking them.

But if you look at what happened a couple weeks ago on Tuesday, it is a very clear signal. Whether it is young people, whether it's white collar suburbs, whether it's elevated turnouts among African-Americans and Latinos and margins, the people who should have been offended by what the president has been doing were, and came out and took it out on other Republicans.

CAMEROTA: Symone, one of the things the president talked about yesterday was the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and whether or not he will ever have any retribution or Saudi Arabia. And it doesn't sound as if though the U.S. will, because the president said something that sounded very familiar.

[08:10:03] He is believing the crown prince and his denial that he ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi over the CIA. And that sounds familiar because he believes Vladimir Putin's denial of election interference over intel agencies. Here's what the president said about it yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Symone, it is the CIA's assessment that the crown prince ordered it.

SYMONE SANDERS: It is the CIA's assessment. And I think something that Donald Trump does very well is tell his version of the story so many times to the point where many folks find themselves questioning what, in fact, the right. And the truth of the matter is the CIA did issue an assessment, and their assessment was that the crown prince did order the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, that he was aware of what happened.

And many people were appalled by what Donald, myself included, by what Donald Trump said in this very lengthy statement he put out I believe last week from the administration about his positioning and what he was, or, if you will, what he was not planning to do when it came to Saudi Arabia.

But I would like to remind folks that it took the killing of Jamal Khashoggi for so many people to wake up to the atrocities that Saudi Arabia has been participating in across the globe. When you look, there is a war in Yemen. People are literally starving. And the Saudis have been complicit in that actually. And the United States and others have literally turned the other way. And So I think now with this quote-unquote, awakening, if you will, my question is, will there be a policy change? I think Donald Trump's state was blunt, and, again, it was appalling to me, but I think it was the physical embodiment, if you will, on paper of putting, one, our geopolitical interests over our, quote-unquote, values of what we saw we stand for in the region. And the question is, will that last? I don't know.

AVLON: But S.E., Symone points out that previous administrations have been very cozy with the Saudis, even when they've done some questionable things. But this is a step further than we have ever seen. This is the opposite of a freedom agenda. And the question now for you is what do you think Republicans in the Senate, where they still have control, can and should and will do to send a message to the president about essentially sanctifying the assassination of an American resident journalist? CUPP: That is the question. Trump is not the first, as you say, the

first president, this is not the first administration to make these kinds of geopolitical calculations. He's really the first to do it so openly and nakedly and tell us the quiet parts essentially. And doing it in the place of such a horrific, brazen attack not just on Jamal Khashoggi but on an institution. And that institution is freedom, that particular freedom of the press, to do it so brazenly and have our own intelligence admit, yes, they did it. They're behind it.

Trump, frankly, looks fairly scared, fairly meek and weak in the face of this. When we first heard this story, he came out very quickly and said, if Saudi Arabia is behind this, there will be severe punishment. That has come and gone. There has been no severe punishment. He's not just making a geopolitical calculation, which is important. They're an important ally in the region. He's signaling to the world, to our allies and enemies, that an attack on free press, that an attack on freedom, if you are real important to the tune of $110 billion, will go unnoticed, will go without consequences. And that's effectively putting a bounty on the heads of a lot of journalist who work in very, very difficult conditions.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Ron.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. To S.E.'s point, what's striking about this was the president has portrayed himself from the beginning as a tough deal maker in a tough world. Yet everything he has said about this is that essentially the Saudis hold all the cards. They buy stuff from us. Therefore, they have leverage. They sell stuff to us, oil. Therefore, they have leverage. And on both fronts, he's acting as though we don't have our own cards to play and our own ability to exact consequences for this egregious violation.

And again, I come back to your correct question. What will Congress do? The political -- where this connects to what we were just talking about, how do you lose almost 40 seats with four percent unemployment? The only way that happens is because you have many voters who are uneasy about the way the president approaches the presidency and felt that the Republican Congress was simply never going to restrain or even oversee him in any meaningful way. And once again, the ball is in the court of Congress. Particularly, a Congress that is still controlled by Republicans.

[08:15:01] You have the usual grumbling around the edges of the Republican caucus and it almost never has converted into anything practical before. And the question again here, with such an egregious case, will they act in any way to reject this judgment by the president?

JOHN AVLON, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Ron, S.E., Symone, thank you very much. Great conversation. More to come.

Now, President Trump made a Thanksgiving call to troops stationed overseas. Should he visit troops in person, in a warzone? We're going to ask a key Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) AVLON: President Trump taking sides with the Saudi government yet again. He's doubling down on his rejection of the CIA assessment of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and defying call to punish the Saudis.

Joining me now is Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed. He's a Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

Senator Reed, great to have you on NEW DAY.

SEN. JACK REED (D), RHODE ISLAND: Thank you.

I want to start with the president's comments on these really refuting the CIA findings. Let's listen to what he said yesterday and I want to get your reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, they didn't conclude. They did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings certain ways, but they didn't have the report.

REPORTER: What were they?

TRUMP: 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)

AVLON: Senator, is the president lying?

REED: Yes. The CIA concluded that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was directly involved in the assassination of Khashoggi.

[08:20:09] They did it, as has been reported in the press, with high confidence, which is the highest level of accuracy that they will vouch for. It's based on facts. It's based on analysis. The notion that they didn't reach a conclusion is just unsubstantiated. That the CIA has made that clear.

AVLON: Senator, why do you think he's covering for the Saudis and what can the Senate do about it?

REED: Well, I think he feels that he has an arrangement with the Saudis in terms of the region where they will act on behalf of their own interests, but he hopes the United States interests. I think he also has made this claim about their financial input into the United States, although it is widely exaggerated. Then I think he probably has relationships going back to business relationships and he might be thinking in the future of business relationships with the Saudis.

So, he's put himself in a compromised position where he can't look at the intelligence reports in a detached, objective way, make a conclusion and then introduce evidence and introduce policies to affect a better outcome. He seems to be a captive of the Saudis actually.

AVLON: So money over morality, that's a clearly a pattern. But the question I have for you is, what about use of the Magnitsky Act? Because a bipartisan coalition of your colleagues have put forward it to try to get to the truth and force the administration's hands on the Saudi killing of Khashoggi?

REED: That is one of the most important ways that we can get some kind of reconciliation here. My colleagues, principally Senator Corker, Senator Menendez from the Foreign Relations Committee have sent a letter, along with many others, on a bipartisan basis, it is important to emphasis bipartisan basis, to the president to ask, demand in fact under the law, that he indicate the level of participation of the crown prince, MSB, in this situation. In that case, if there is conclusive evidence, which I believe there is, as CIA has indicated, that we should take steps under the Magnitsky Act to impose sanctions on the crown prince and others.

AVLON: Senator, well, you are the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee going forward. What do you make of the call, president's call with the military on Thanksgiving Day? Because you have been a tough critic of the president about his decision not to visit troops to date, which seems to depart from presidential tradition.

But why is that so important?

REED: Well, it's important because you're there. You're physically there. You're for a moment at least, not for a long time, for a moment you are sharing the kind of dangers, sharing the tensions, the difficulties.

You are also sending a message back to the families who are tremendously supporting these young and women that you understand their suffering also. And it's nice.

He mailed it in yesterday basically. It was easy. You're sitting in a palatial estate on Florida on a phone call for a few minutes and gee, guys, you do a great job. That's nothing.

To go someplace, even briefly, to go through the rigors of the travel, to be there with the troops, to stand in a mess line, to have an MRE with them, that's something that sends a message that I'm trying my best. I'm trying to you. It's about you.

Yesterday's phone call was all about Donald Trump. The troops were just, you know, ploys. They were being used to exploit his ideas.

This is a time when he should have been honestly and deeply and sincerely thankful for their efforts.

AVLON: Well, the president says he is -- nobody is a bigger booster of the troops than he is and he signed a very generous V.A. bill that would back some dollars behind that sentiment. Let's take a listen to some of what the president said about the troops and I'll have a question for you in the other end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If they have to, they're going to use lethal force. I have given the OK. If they have to, I hope they don't have to. But you know, you are dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals. So, I'm not going to let the military be taken advantage of. I have no choice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Senator, that's about the border. And the broader question is, given the troops that were deployed to the border before the election, that order being given down and some reporting that they're now being withdrawn, do you think the president is politicizing our military?

REED: Oh, absolutely. In the case of the border, this is not an effort to defend the nation, this is an effort to divide the nation for the politics of the last election.

[08:25:01] The troops are just sort of extras in his political campaign.

Under federal law, posse comitatus, they cannot be used as law enforcement. They can be used, and they have in the past by other presidents, to provide support, engineering support, other type of technical support. But the notion that Trump tried to convey was that they were going to be shoulder to shoulder on the border, that they would be firing at civilians.

Women and children included, that would be coming across. That's actually preposterous. That's illegal and it's unprofessional.

And it would put these soldiers, sailors and marines, all the personal on the border in a very difficult position where they would be flirting with violating the Constitution or else themselves, perhaps even subject to some recriminations after the fact. That's not what you want to do as the commander in chief.

There's a role for the military. It's support. It's logistics. The proper role is by the border control. They train law enforcement officers.

If we need more law enforcement officers at the border, the president then can summon other agents within the federal government who are civilians, law enforcement officers and conduct this mission. The whole operation was just a political stunt.

AVLON: That's a big accusation, tough talk, that the troops were being used as extras in his political campaign.

Senator Reed, thank you for joining us on NEW DAY. And I should note that you have been to Iraq and Afghanistan more than a dozen times each during your term in Congress. Thank you, sir.

REED: Thank you very much. I think 17 to Afghanistan and 20 to Iraq.

AVLON: That's a good example to set for us all. Thank you, sir.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Just weeks before the next big women's march, there is a major rift among the organizers. Next, the founder of the movement tells us why she wants her two co-chairs to step down.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)