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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Defense Secretary Mattis Resigns; Trump to Pull U.S. Troops from Syria; Examining the Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Afghanistan; Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Passes. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired December 21, 2018 - 05:00   ET

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


[05:00:00]

ALISON KOSIK, CNN ANCHOR: To enter the cannabis market, that's a little vague, because the reality is, a lot of consumer brands are trying to figure out how to really capitalize on the cannabis market.

DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it's a gold rush, my friends. Early Start continues -- Green rush, I suppose -- Early Start continues right now

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: The president has taken a wrecking ball to every pillar of stability and security we've erected over the past 60 or 70 years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSIK: You can just hear the frustration boiling over, after James Mattis resigns as Defense secretary. The breaking point? The president's decision to pull troops from Syria.

BRIGGS: The government on track to shutdown at midnight. The president vowing to follow through on the sudden demand for a border wall.

KOSIK: The acting attorney general defying ethics officials and will not recuse himself from the Mueller probe.

BRIGGS: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Early Start on an extraordinary news day. I'm Dave Briggs.

KOSIK: Good morning, I'm Alison Kosik. It's Friday, December the 21st. It is the first day of winter, its 5:00 a.m. in the east.

BRIGGS: It is pouring rain.

KOSIK: And its 56 degrees outside I think here in New York.

BRIGGS: The world is upside down. It's only fitting that the weather is too.

KOSIK: There you go. The president -- I'm talking about President Trump scouting for a new secretary of Defense. James Mattis considered by many the guardrail of this administration will leave at the end of February. He tendered his resignation just a day after the president revealed the plan to withdrawal U.S. troops from Syria. His departure shaking Washington and creating uncertainty at the Pentagon and at military bases around the world.

BRIGGS: Mattis' resignation in essence, a rebuke too many of president's foreign policy views. Mattis is using his letter to promote the importance of U.S. alliance and, quote, unambiguous approach to adversaries Russia and China. But no doubt, the last straw for Mattis was President Trump's planned withdrawal from Syria. Two Defense officials tell CNN Mattis was quote, "livid" For more, here is Barbara Starr at the Pentagon.

BARBARA STARR, PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Alison and Dave, an administration official tells CNN that secretary Mattis decided early Thursday morning around 7:30 that he needed to go to the White House one more time, meet with President Trump and try to convince him not to withdrawal U.S. Troops from Syria.

Mattis was very concerned about the fate of the Kurdish fighters that the U.S. has backed. As a military man, it would be a terrible thing in his view, to leave your friends on the battle field that you promised to stay and support. That became a big problem for Jim Mattis, to leave the Kurds behind and withdrawal U.S. troops.

He met with President Trump about 3:00, expressed his views. The president did not change his mind. And Mattis had a resignation letter ready to go telling the president in that letter that he deserved someone who was more aligned with his views. That essentially means Jim Mattis quit under protest.

He talked in that letter about the need to support alliances, about the need to support U.S. interests around the world at the time when President Trump is taking a much more isolationist view and believes the U.S. does not have a frontline role anymore in fighting terror groups like ISIS. Alison, Dave.

KOSIK: OK Barbara Starr, thanks for that. Secretary Mattis' decision to quit, literally stunning Capitol Hill. One conservative House Republican who supports President Trump, wondering whether the wheels may be coming off. After reading the resignation letter, Marco Rubio of Florida, he tweeted, "It is abundantly clear we are headed toward a series of grave policy errors." He calls on fellow Republicans who support Mr. Trump to help persuade him to choose a different direction.

BRIGGS: Democrats also shaken. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia tweeting, "This is scary. National defense is too important to be subjected to the president's erratic whims." Also weighing, William Cohen, a Republican who served as Defense secretary for bill Clinton.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: Our credibility and our reputation for reliability has now been called into question. And the president can say I made a campaign promise. You can make a campaign promise, but some are made to be broken. The president has taken a wrecking ball to every pillar of stability and security we've erected over the past 60 or 70 years. He systematically is demolishing them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: General Stanley McChrystal, the former U.S. Commander of forces in Afghanistan telling CNN, the kind of leadership that causes a dedicated patriot like Jim Mattis to leave should give pause to every American.

KOSIK: News of Secretary Mattis' resignation came moments after we learned the U.S. military had been ordered to begin planning the withdrawal of about half of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It could take months to pull out the nearly 7,000 troops. This decision prompting a dire warning for the second straight day from the president's top senate allies, Senator Lindsey Graham called American troop withdrawals a high risk strategy.

[05:05:00]

He says if we continue on our present course, we are setting in motion the loss of all our gains and paving the way toward a second 9/11.

Senior International Correspondent Ivan Watson is live with the latest. Good morning to you, Ivan. Do you agree with the Senator's Tweet?

IVAN WATSON, SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well I do have to say this, this is America's longest running foreign war. I was there when the bombing campaign first began in 2001 against the Taliban, and the war is not going well Alison. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have called it a "stalemate".

And look at these statistics, you have the special investigator general, it's a U.S. military officer who is kind of like an accountant for the war in Afghanistan says that the government there only controls about 55 percent of the territory, about 65 percent of the population.

The Afghan security forces are 11 percent below their target strength right now and some 12 percent of the territory is under the direct control or influence of the insurgence there, the Taliban and ISIS -- which has emerged there in the last couple of years as well.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, however recommended as recently as December 6, against drawing down U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and President Trump's pick to take over Central Command, he also testifying in front of a Senate Committee on December 4, he said that a precipitous U.S. withdraw would leave the Afghan security forces incapable of defending the country.

Now the Afghan government has reacted in the following way, I'm going to show you a Tweet from the Chief Advisor to the Afghan president, who is kind of sounding a patriotic tone saying, "if the few thousand foreign troops that advise, train, and assist leave it will not affect our security. In the past four and a half years our security is completely in the hands of Afghans and the final goal is that the Afghan Security Forces will stand on their feet to protect and defend soil on their own."

And they have, the Afghan president says some 29,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed in this war since 2015. So this is a bloody conflict that is not getting any better. Alison, Dave?

KOSIK: All right, Ivan Watson thanks so much for your reporting.

BRIGGS: A cold, harsh reality on the first day of winter, a partial government shut down is looking likely over Christmas here's your countdown clock 18 hours, 52 minutes. It looked like democrats and republicans were coming together on a short-term plan to fund the Federal government through early February. That is until President Trump derailed the deal, he says if there aren't billions for his border wall, he's not onboard.

[BEGIN VIDEOCLIP]

DONALD TRUMP, UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: I made my position very clear, any measure that funds the government must include border security -- has to. Not for political purposes, but for our country for the safety.

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KOSIK: House and Senate republicans assured everyone the president would sign a stopgap funding measure, then he magically changed his mind after hearing from right-wing media including Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

[BEGIN VIDEOCLIP]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To many conservatives republicans allow democrats to win on this talking point of government shutdowns. So many people have been out there saying it's not a government shutdown, it's a partial shutdown. So much of the government still remains open in that shutdown and if you allow democrats to play that talking point over and over again you're never going to get funding for the wall

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's been a republican failure, not just a failure by the...

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BRIGGS: So where are we now? The House scrambled Thursday to pass this spending bill that includes an additional $5 billion for that border wall, but here's the problem -- the House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate. Three reasons -- opposition to the border wall, money, frustration over how the president is handling the negotiations and AWOL lawmakers, roughly 40 members from both parties have missed recent votes.

KOSIK: Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell still hoping to head office shutdown, he's expected to schedule a vote today to debate the House bill, and if the Senate votes it down, as expected the two chambers can try to negotiate a compromise or the House could approve the Senate bill that does not include border wall funding.

If that all fails, shut down. President Trump is schedule to travel to his Mar a Lago Resort in Florida today for a two week break, the White House saying he will not travel if there is a shutdown.

BRIGGS: If there is a partial shutdown the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the State Department would be among the agencies effected. More than 420,000 federal employees deemed essential would continue to work but their pay would be withheld until the shutdown is over.

Another 380,000 would be placed on leave without pay, that includes most of the staff at NASA and the National Park Service, right before the holidays.

[05:10:00]

And they're all real concerned about what a shutdown might do to the already rattled financial markets.

KOSIK: Making them even more rattled, Dave. The last thing Wall Street needs is a partial government shutdown. Fear has really gripped the markets this week. The DOW dropped 464 points or 2 percent on Thursday. The average closed below 23,000 for the first time since October, 2017. The NASDAQ lost 1.6 percent, just avoiding closing in its first bear market since the great recession. A bear market is when the index falls 20 percent from a recent high. The S&P tumbled 1.6 percent. So clearly investors are still rattled by the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates for the fourth time this year despite evidence of slowing economic growth.

Worries of a supply glut that knocked oil into a bear market. Crude plunging to 4.8 percent on Thursday to $45.88 a barrel. This is the first time since August of 2017 that oil has closed below $46 a barrel. Investors are moving way from risky stocks. We're seeing Tesla losing 5 percent. JC Penney falling 6 percent. Twitter plunging 11 percent. Now, if you are invested in the market, your returns are actually in the red. We've seen the DOW, NASDAQ and S&P all wipe out all of their gains and then some for the year.

BRIGGS: Still up 18 percent under President Trump, if you're keeping score at home, they were up 45 percent this time during President Obama's presidency.

KOSIK: Nice stats.

BRIGGS: Not a scorecard he wants to see this morning.

Ahead, a top Senate Democrat says William Barr has disqualified himself for being attorney general. New uproar over Barr's memo, calling the Mueller investigation fatally misconceived.

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[05:15:00] KOSIK: Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker rejecting advice from Justice Department ethics officials to recuse himself over the Mueller investigation. Before his appointment by President Trump, Whitaker publically criticized the probe, suggesting on CNN last year it could be curtailed by quote "choking off funding." The ethics officials concluded there was no legal conflict, but based on Whitaker's past public comments, it was close call and he should recuse himself.

BRIGGS: but a tight group of lawmakers are Whitaker's own advisers -- his own advisors who are engaged in the ethics review, they did their own assessment. They recommended he not recuse himself. Refusal to heed ethics officials will certainly raise questions from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Assistant Attorney General Steve Boyd defending Whitaker's decision, he notes the acting A.G. has not made public comments about the investigation for 16 months and has quote, "a lot of respect for Mueller." Stayed tuned to that.

Mark Warner, the top Senate Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, calling on President Trump to withdraw the nomination of William Barr to be the next attorney general. That request, coming one day after it was revealed Barr sent the memo to senior Justice Department officials in June, calling Mueller's obstruction of justice investigation, fatally misconceived.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR MARK WARNER: It appears that the number one qualification Donald Trump is looking in an attorney general is someone that would try to undermine the Mueller investigation. The most tacky way he has used the memo as a way to solicit the position is at the very least. unseemly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein insists the Barr memo had no impact on the Mueller investigation. He says all DOJ decisions are informed by knowledge of the actual facts, which he says Mr. Barr did not have.

KOSIK: In what's being hailed as a bipartisan victory, the House passed criminal justice reform legislation. It is a big win for President Trump who is expected to sign the measure today at 11 a.m. The so called First Step Act will allow thousands of federal inmate's early release. It also eases mandatory minimum sentences and gives judges more leeway in sentencing.

BRIGGS: All right ahead, another setback for a star, wide receiver Josh Gordon of the New England patriots suspended indefinitely by the NFL. Andy Scholes has the details in the Bleacher Report next.

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[05:20:00]

BRIGGS: Our wide receiver Josh Gordon says he's leaving the New England Patriots to take care of his mental health. He's once again suspended by the NFL for violating the league's drug policy. Andy Scholes has this sad story in the Bleacher Report, what a mess.

ANDY SCHOLES, SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning David. And there's really no question, you know Josh Gordon is one of the elite receiver talents in all of football but he says he needs time away from the game to get himself right.

In a Tweet yesterday Gordon said in part, "I take my mental health very seriously at this point to ensure I remain able to perform at the highest level. I have recently felt like I could have a better grasp on things mentally. With that said, I will be stepping away from the football field for a bit to focus on my mental health."

Now Gordon had caught 40 passes from more than 700 yards from Tom Brady this season, before being traded to the Patriots from the Browns, Gordon missed time during training camp to take care of his mental health.

He was suspended for nearly four seasons from 2014 to 2017 for violating the league's substance abuse policy, the NFL announcing yesterday Gordon has been suspended indefinitely for violating the terms of his reinstatement.

All right, it was an emotional night in Texas at the 3A state championship game, Newton head coach, W.T. Johnson told his players in August that he probably wouldn't live to see the end of the season. Johnson had a double lung transplant in 2015, and earlier this year doctors told him he had eight months to live. Well Johnson's not only still here, but he lead Newton to a state championship.

W.T. JOHNSON, NEWTON HIGH SCHOOL COACH: I've been given a great gift, and people just don't understand that. The gift is I've been able to see how my life could effect people before I die.

And these guys, I mean they've touched my life and it's been a mutual thing, but I've been able to teach them a lesson that you don't get to see most times (ph). And I told them last night, we talked about they -- talked about wanting to win for me. This is their time, I've had my time.

SCHOLES: Just a -- I don't even know what else to say about that David, just so amazing Coach Johnson given eight months to live, this is month nine and his team got there and won that state title for him - something special.

[05:25:00]

BRIGGS: What an incredible inspiration, thank you for that Andy Scholes. Great story, and have a great weekend.

SCHOLES: You too.

BRIGGS: Alison over to you.

KOSIK: OK, Dave thanks. Now this was not just another day, I'm talking about what happened yesterday, the Defense Secretary resigns, the acting A.G. won't recues himself from a probe he dissed (ph). The stock markets tumble again, half our troops are leaving

Afghanistan -- oh, and the government is on track to shut down over Christmas all that and more believe it or not -- next.

[COMMERCIAL]

[BEGIN VIDEOCLIP]

WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: The president has taken a wrecking ball to every pillar of stability and security we've erected over the past 60 to 70 years.

[END VIDEOCLIP]

[05:30:00]

BRIGGS: Frustration boiling over after Jim Mattis resigns as Defense Secretary, the breaking point? The president's decision to pull troops from Syria.