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Interview with Democratic Congressman Anthony Brown of Maryland; Transformer Exploding in Queens Causes Glow in New York Sky; House Democrats Prepare for Investigations into Trump White House; Undocumented Immigrant Suspected of Shooting and Killing California Police Officer. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 28, 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] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: -- over the city lit up after a transformer explosion in Queens. But man, oh, man, people on social media, they were going nuts as this was going on, and I have to say, understandably so, right? That is a sight you do not see very often.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: No. I have never seen anything like that. It is a beautiful blue, just for the record. But it lasted for some time, too, so that throws you off in an of itself.

BERMAN: We all made it through in one piece. No one was hurt, no major power outages, and no Zuul, which is last time I'll make that joke today.

HILL: That's "Ghostbusters" in case you weren't following.

BERMAN: Speaking of power disruptions, the government shutdown is now in its seventh day. It's going to stretch into the New Year for certain. The House and Senate both adjourned yesterday. They held these minutes long meeting and then gaveled out. Both sides still far from any agreement on funding for the president's border wall. That means about 800,000 federal workers remain on furlough or are working without pay. The politicians, though, they will continue to collect their paychecks.

HILL: When the new Congress convenes next week, Democrats will of course gain control of the House for the first time in eight years. Republicans, meantime, widen their majority in the Senate. And in case you are wondering what Democrats plan to do in the House, take a look at this. CNN has learned committees are hiring the lawyers, laying the groundwork for investigations.

BERMAN: All right, want to bring in CNN political analyst and White House correspondent for "The New York Times" Maggie Haberman. Let me read you, because you need to see this job posting from the House Judiciary Committee to have it really do justice. They're looking for people with legal expertise in criminal law, immigration law, constitutional law, intellectual property law, commercial and administrative law, including antitrust and bankruptcy and oversight work.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It would be briefer just to say the law, right?

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: But they're looking for people with all this vast experience in oversight. Do you get the sense that the president is ready for this?

HABERMAN: No, I don't think the president is ready, and I don't think the White House at least until this point has been ready. They might get ready. The White House counsel's office had been one of the areas that remained pretty well staffed, despite the hiring woes this president has had in other areas. A bunch of people have left but my understand that the incoming White House counsel Pat Cipollone has done a lot of work to bulk it up.

That doesn't mean that anyone in the White House or the president is psychically ready for what this means. And if you talk to veterans of the Clinton White House in particular, which is the last time you really had this kind of lengthy level of Congressional oversight, having endless investigations, the gears grind to a halt. It is exhausting on the staff. You typically have to set up additional staff and wall them off to deal with it. There isn't enough staff in the current White House to deal with what is in front of them right now. So I don't know how they're going to deal with this. And I don't think the president who was very used to being able so paint his own reality or try to, understands how much the ground is going to shift on January 3rd with this new Congress.

HILL: Also with the breadth of these investigations, because John, you pointed out earlier this morning, this isn't necessarily just going to be about tax returns or Russia. But it could be we want to hold a hearing with the Armed Services Committee to learn a little bit more about this decision to pull out of Syria.

HABERMAN: That's right. And I think a lot of it is going to be governmental. I think if they only target the president and what looks like his personal life, his taxes, his business, bringing his children in to testify, I think that actually could be a problem if that is where the bulk of the focus is, less on the tax returns than on his family and on the business.

There is a lot in terms of government that we know already they want to look at. They want to look at security clearances and how that was handled across the board within the West Wing. They're going to want to look at the immigration policy. There's a number of issues that I think this White House just doesn't understand what's coming. And the question is going to be how easily and readily, not just the White House but do other departments respond to requests for information. Do they stall? Do they try to drag it out? Do they not respond to subpoenas? We don't know. We're not -- whole new area.

BERMAN: I can imagine the House Armed Services Committee calling then former defense secretary James Mattis to Capitol Hill, sitting him down and asking him a whole lot of questions. It could lead to very uncomfortable answers. HABERMAN: I think that he will get called, most likely. And again, we don't know. So there's a diminishing value in predictions. But to the extent we could see where they'd be interested, Mattis is likely to be one person. John Kelly is likely to be one person, not just because he was the White House chief of staff but he was at the Department of Homeland Security for many, many moons.

HILL: Rex Tillerson.

HABERMAN: Rex Tillerson. I think you're going to have Gary Cohn in terms of the tax policy. I think you're going to have a number of people who are looking at getting asked to appear before Congress. And I think, look, there is always a risk of looking like you are overreaching if you are in the majority. And I think they are going to have to balance that with what is the legitimate duties of oversight. And it is pretty clear that Republicans have done extremely little by way of oversight of this White House.

BERMAN: We are in this government shutdown. It will continue until 2019, which granted, isn't that long from now. But it may not end very quickly.

HABERMAN: If you are a worker who is on furlough or if you're worker who is not getting paid, then it probably doesn't feel like it's not that long. That's a while.

[08:05:00] BERMAN: That's a good point. That's a good point. Every day matters, every day counts if you are one of the 800,000 people either without work right now or without pay. The president today, and we don't need to put them up, but just so people know, the president has already put out three tweets and counting on the government shutdown and the non-negotiations that are taking place. What's interesting, though, Maggie, is that this seems to be it. This seems to be all he's offering right now on this subject, which is tweets.

HABERMAN: He's offering tweets. There was some misinformation coming from folks close to the White House yesterday suggesting that there had been some discussions between the president and Democratic leaders. That's not true based on my reporting and the reporting of others. And I don't really know what game they were playing by trying to suggest there had been talks when there clearly were not.

He is offering spin, which is generally speaking what we have seen him do, and sometimes he's very good at it. But Nancy Pelosi has made very clear that their strategy is going to when the new Congress comes in on January 3rd, they are going to vote on a bill. And they're going to say, look, we're trying to open the government, and the president who said he wanted to own this shutdown is just thwarting it. He does not have a great hand to play here. He seems like he's going to keep playing it out, but I'm not sure what the endgame is for him because I'm not sure he knows either.

HILL: It's also fascinating, just some of the tweets yesterday, in terms of not knowing what the endgame is, but going after federal workers, right. And most of the people who aren't getting paid, and again, with zero evidence here, are Democrats. That alone, too, I'm not sure --

HABERMAN: It seemed unwise.

HILL: -- what the narrative is for him in setting that up. It's fascinating. But it also just speaks to what we know about this president, that he operates in the moment, and he goes on his gut and he goes with what he's feeling in the moment. Not looking forward, not looking back.

HABERMAN: That's right. Everything is these 10-minute increments of time. He acts as if there was no past and there's no future and that there's therefore no ramifications of anything that he says from one minute to the next. I think that insinuating that the body of government workers who are part of a partial government shutdown are out to get you in some way, because that is really what he's saying is these are people who are in opposition to me, and even though he's saying Democrats are hurting their own people, I don't think they will take it that way. There is no evidence behind what he said. It is more just kind of putting top spin on the ball. And it's not a way out. At a certain point, he is going to have to sign something to reopen the government and it is very unlikely to be what he has claimed he wants.

BERMAN: He will. We know he will sign it.

HABERMAN: The government will reopen at some point.

BERMAN: And we also know he'll claim victory for it at some point.

HABERMAN: Correct. No matter what, he will say that he got what he wanted. He had already started changing what the definition of a wall was before this shutdown. You will see more of that, I suspect.

BERMAN: Back to the idea of these tweets for a second that we're seeing today now that he's home, there is something predictable about it, which in a way makes them lose their potency. Yes, he still has the power to shock people because he's willing to say things that no other president has, but each time he tries something like this, it's less effective.

HABERMAN: Look, he's still the president. So when he says something, it has a news value. It is up to all of us to decide what that news value is, and we might not also see it the same way, but there is some value to it.

He has devalued the currency of his words, not just with the tweets, which are incredibly frequent and sort of similar at this point. They are very repetitive. If you look back at anybody who has charted the tweets, there is a similarity over the type of them over many months. There's this misconception that the tweets are just a window into his brain. They're actually part of a persona, and he workshops a lot of these tweets with his aides.

There is also a devalue in the currency of his interviews. He gives countless interviews. It's hard to tell the difference between the interviews in the Oval Office and the gaggles on the south lawn on the way to Marine One at this point. It is harder if you are a president, you want your words to matter. You want it to have meaning when you say something. You want it to have impact. And he is undercutting himself with the frequency and with the conflicting nature of his statements. It was easier to do that as a candidate. It's much harder as a president.

BERMAN: Can I ask one final question, and we're just about out of time, about WikiLeaks? Rudy Giuliani yesterday once again, moving the goal posts a little bit saying, well, even if there were Trump associates who talked to WikiLeaks during the campaign, no law was broken there.

HABERMAN: Yes, I don't know what that was about. And I haven't had a chance to catch up to him and try to understand what he was talking about. I don't know if they're expecting something more. I don't know if this is about the contacts Roger Stone had and so forth. I just -- no idea.

BERMAN: It does raise the question, though, for sure.

HILL: It'll make you wonder.

BERMAN: Maggie Haberman, great to have you with us.

HILL: Thank you.

A massive manhunt in California for the man police say killed a fellow officer. The sheriff is not naming the suspected killed but did say he is in the country illegally. And that alone really catching the president's attention. CNN's Sara Sidner is live in Los Angeles this morning with more for us. Sara, good morning.

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Certainly, the timing of this had a lot to do with why the president touched on this and tweeted about this particular story. Let's talk about what happened. There was a police officer, his name is Ronil Singh, here in California.

[08:10:00] He went out on Christmas Day. He was working an extra-long shift. By the next day at 1:00 a.m. he was involved in a shoot-out with an illegal immigrant.

Now, here's how the story turns. It turns out that Ronil Singh had also come to this country with the same hopes and dreams of other immigrants. He came here through legal means, learned the language, and always wanted to be a police officer. His life ended at the hands, according to authorities, of a man who came here in a very different way, decided to come here undocumented, ended up being pulled over. Ronil Singh trying to pull him over, suspected of drunk driving, and indeed ended up in a shoot-out with him at 1:00 in the morning on Wednesday. Ronil Singh ended up dying, his family devastated obviously.

He is survived by his wife and a five-month-old child. They said that they sort of looked at him as their action hero. And you can tell how devastated the community is just by listening to his police chief who talked about Ronil Singh, who talked about the man that he was and the officer that he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANDY RICHARDSON, NEWMAN POLICE CHIEF: I did not know Christmas morning at 4:00 in the morning when I said good-bye to him and sent him off to his family that it would be the last time that I saw him.

Please remember the man. Please remember the husband. Please remember what he was, what he came to this country to do. Yes, he was a police officer, but more importantly he was a human being.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: A human being, husband and father.

We should mention, of course, that this story got the attention of the president. We are in the midst of this battle over the border wall. The president mentioning this, and telling the truth here that there is a manhunt that is underway for the suspect. Now, we do not have the suspect's name. Police have not released that. But we do have a picture of him from surveillance video that police have released. They are looking for this particular person. They say that he did tom into the country illegally, and that there is a picture that the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Office did put out for the public to see. But certainly this has going to play and already has played in this political battle over the border wall. Guys, back to you.

BERMAN: Sara Sidner for us, thanks so much, Sara.

So check this out. This was caused by a transformer explosion. The spectacular bright blue glow over New York City. Con Edison says a, quote, nonsuspicious equipment malfunction at a power plant is what is behind it. And it does cause a temporary power outage at LaGuardia airport. That's what actually caused it, but man, was there a ton of speculation on social media. A lot of people insisting there was an alien invasion. The New York City police department and mayor's office actually sent out tweets, I think tongue and cheek, that aliens were not involved. Thankfully there were no injuries, no one it was hurt, and as I said, power pretty much completely restored.

HILL: And we got good pictures out of it.

BERMAN: We got fantastic pictures out of it, and I got to make probably too many "Ghostbusters" jokes this morning.

HILL: Is there such a thing?

BERMAN: Twitter seems to think I made too many.

HILL: OK, so we'll leave it at that, then.

Help is wanted in Washington, Democrats looking for lawyers as they gear up to investigate the Trump administration. A House Democrat joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:16:33] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All of Washington has basically punted for now on how to end the government shutdown. It will be up to the new Congress to fix it when it takes over next week. This is now the second longest shutdown in a decade. It's entered day seven today. Democrats will take control of the House next Thursday and CNN has learned that House Democrats were looking to hire lawyers to investigate the Trump administration. That's separate from the shutdown.

Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Anthony Brown of Maryland.

Congressman, thanks so much for being with us and early happy new year to you.

Let me read you the product of some of our great reporting from Lauren Fox, Jeremy Herb and Manu Raju. They found a job posting from the House Judiciary Committee, and it says it wants people with a variety of experience, including in criminal law, immigration law, constitutional law, intellectual property law, commercial and administrative law including antitrust and bankruptcy or oversight work. It looks like they're staffing up for investigations of this administration.

Is that a fair assessment?

REP. ANTHONY BROWN (D), MARYLAND: Yes, that's a fair assessment. There's a tremendous amount of oversight that has been neglected during the last two years under the Republican-led Congress. And as Democrats, we have made a commitment to resume that most important function of government.

So, you're pointing out that staffing up on the Judiciary Committee. But there is equal staffing up going on on other committees.

I'm on the Armed Services Committee, and there is much we need to look into. We need to look into what's happening at the southwest border and humanitarian crisis there, the strategy or lack thereof in Syria and Afghanistan, the role of transgender Americans that want to serve our country in uniform. So, there is a host of oversight issues that we will undertake and undertake aggressively in the 116th Congress.

BERMAN: And like you, I'm a big fan of the Article One of the Constitution and the role of Congress in government. However, there is a risk, or is there a risk in your mind of too much oversight and too many investigations as opposed to legislation?

BROWN: Well, it's been said before that you can chew gum and walk at the same time, and that's going to be the task of this next Congress. So we will engage in oversight. I think it will be important to lay out to the American people what our strategy is and the pace at which we are going to pursue oversight.

But there are many policy issues, important legislation that has to be addressed. HR-1, government reform, that will be the first order of business, looking at voting rights and protecting the right to vote, reforming government, ethics in government. We also have a transportation and infrastructure package that is paid for that we'll be introducing to create more jobs and to address the infrastructure needs in our country.

And, finally, let us not forget the number one issue that most Americans wake up to every day, is the escalating cost of health care. And we've got a plan to reduce the cost to address escalating prescription drug prices. So, we'll do the oversight and the policy work together.

BERMAN: It's funny. It is interesting. You brought up HR-1 which is what Democrats would like to be focused on next Thursday, January, when they take over. But you're also going to have to be focused on funding the government, figuring out a way to get out of the shutdown, because lawmakers this week have basically said we're done. We're done for now. It is your problem next week Nancy Pelosi when House Democrats take over.

My question for is that at this point, Democrats are offering a few options but more or less, it's $1.3 billion for border security, not the $5 billion for the border wall the president wants. But if that number comes down, if it does come down to $2 billion, and I know $700 million is a lot of money.

[08:20:05] But is that worth keeping the government shutdown in your mind?

BROWN: Well, in my mind frankly, we shouldn't be debating border security in the context of continuing resolution. We're holding federal government workers hostage, federal contractors hostage and the services that Americans expect from their federal government. The default setting should always be that government, the federal government stays open.

So, if we are going to negotiate border security, the president wants to talk about a wall, we talk about technology and surveillance on the border with some fencing, whatever you want to call it, we should be talking about border security in the context of pathways to citizenship for Dreamers and DACA and those on temporary protective status. We need to address the humanitarian crisis that this administration created at the border, and we need to be looking at broader issues like the reunification, the lottery program, how we use our immigration system to strengthen our local economy.

BROWN: That's the context in which the border wall, if that's what the president is focused on. For us it is border security. That's the context in which we should be debating that, not in the context of whether we keep the federal government open or closed.

BERMAN: You've tried. I mean, you tried last February to talk about it more comprehensive deals in the past. It hasn't worked out. It will fall upon you probably next week to figure out a way to at least keep the government funded until February, perhaps even longer than that.

Let me ask you a different question on a different subject because you are, among other things, a decorated military veteran. The president went to Iraq and spoke before troops. In his speech to troops, he did talk about the government shutdown and did criticize Democrats in that speech to U.S. troops overseas. What was your reaction to that?

BROWN: It was entirely inappropriate for the president to visit our troops and talk about a highly controversial issue and blaming Democrats for a shutdown. When I was in Iraq, I had congressional delegations come to visit me. As a member of Congress, I visited troops in Afghanistan and other combat zones.

There are a few things you talk about. One, you start by thanking them and their families for their sacrifice and their service. The other thing you do is express an interest in them. How are you doing? Where are you from? What motivated you to join the military? And what do you need to do your mission and to do it well here in Iraq?

The other thing that the president ought to be doing if he wants to talk policy, lay out for troops, hey, this is my strategic vision for your role in Iraq. This is what I see as the end state. This is the importance of your role. And that's what the president should focus on, not on speaking to policy issues, specifically controversial policy issues that don't affect the military because they are fully funded through the end of this fiscal year.

BERMAN: Congressman Anthony Brown, thanks so much for being with us. Again, happy New Year to you and your family.

BROWN: Happy New Year to you, too, John.

BERMAN: Erica?

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Bernie Sanders almost knocked off Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016. So, does that give him a leg up in 2020? We'll take a look at the new political reality, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Senator Bernie Sanders really did shock the political world in 2016 when he waged a very close primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. But as he mulls another bid for 2020, will his past success work against him? In an interesting piece in "The New York Times" explores the tougher political landscape for Senator Bernie Sanders.

Joining me now is one of the writers of that piece, CNN political analyst and "New York Times" national political correspondent Jonathan Martin.

And, J-Mart, I confess, I found this to be the most interesting story I read in the last 24 hours. And that's why we woke you up to talk about it.

JONATHAN MARTIN, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK TIMES: I'm honored.

BERMAN: And what's so interesting about this is it includes something that we don't always see in political stories, which is on the record quotes. People willing to go on the record to raise some of these issues, which is what should really concern Bernie Sanders, because if you are willing to be named, it shows how bold you are.

So, let me just show what the issue is here. This is a poll from Iowa Democrats. You can see that Bernie Sanders is running in second place to Joe Biden around 19 percent. But that 19 percent, even though he's in second place, you know there is a big difference between 19 percent today and where he finished in Iowa a couple of years ago.

MARTIN: Yes. And part of that's understandable, John, because the field is obviously much bigger now than it was two years ago when he ran against Hillary Clinton there. But you would think that with 100 percent name ID among Iowa caucus goers that he'd be better than in the teens. There is other polls that have him even lower than 19 percent in Iowa.

I think that's the challenge, is that he can't even get the half on his previous vote share there with everybody in the state knowing who he is. And that will show you that there is some erosion in that first state from what he had last time, which tells you the kind of larger issue here at hand, which is he was seen at the alternative to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for a lot of voters, that was the appeal, this was somebody in their eyes an unvarnished version of the establishment favorite.

It is a different scenario this time, John. It is an uncertain, vast sort of feel that is obviously still coming together. It is not the kind of either/or choice that the Dems faced in '16.

BERMAN: There is an erosion of support and there is also a very real erosion of his actual staffers or people who worked inside the campaign. Symone Sanders who works with us here who was his national press secretary is quoted in the piece saying she's still waiting to see who she might go work for and there are lots of other people quoted on the record on your piece who worked for Sanders who said ,we're not sure yet.

MARTIN: Yes. It's striking. It is a combination of some of his supporters from the early stages, some of the folks who endorsed him who were in Congress and also, yes, staffers and consultants, too, who were on his campaign in '16.