Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Trump Faces Credibility Crisis as He Addresses Nation Tonight; TSA Leaders Scramble to Keep Screeners Working Despite No Pay; Manafort Lawyers Appear to Miss Filling Deadline on Alleged Lies. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired January 08, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump is artificially creating this emergency.

[07:00:20] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is no justification at all on border security grounds for a wall.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The president is standing firm. He wants to secure our border.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I expect the president to lie to the American people. Why? Because he has been lying to the American people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whatever it takes, I don't care how he pays for it, we need this wall built.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Money unifies everybody. It's not about red or blue. It's about green.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turkey's leader slamming President Trump's national security advisor over the administration's changing message on Syria.

JOHN BOLTON, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: We're going to be discussing the president's decision to withdraw and to take care of those who have fought with us against ISIS.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was just another example of the president not having any idea whatsoever what he was talking about. There's no consistency.

(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.

It is day 18 of the partial government shutdown, with no end in sight this morning. President Trump will make his case to the nation tonight in a primetime address from the Oval Office. Mr. Trump will reportedly address the shutdown and his demand for a border wall.

Sources tell CNN the president's allies have told him his border message is not resonating. Democrats, meanwhile, are calling the speech a publicity stunt and demanding equal time for a rebuttal.

So this morning, the fact checkers are eating their Wheaties and getting extra rest since they will be working overtime tonight to separate fact from fiction on this border situation.

BERMAN: Just one of the president's claims that happen to be a lie, for example, President Trump claimed he'd had conversations with his predecessors about a border wall. And some of them, some former presidents, President Trump claimed, have told him they wish they had built a wall. But every living president now says that's not true. Think about that.

Congress is back today, just three days before nearly a million federal workers miss their first paycheck because of the shutdown. TSA officials are concerned about how to keep the airport security agents working without pay, how to keep them on the job. And millions of low-income Americans could lose their food assistance if the shutdown drags on.

Joining us now is Marc Short, former White House director of legislative affairs for President Trump; Seung Min Kim, White House reporter at "The Washington Post"; and CNN political analyst David Gregory.

Marc Short, I want to start with you. We're just hearing from our Hill reporters that Republicans are getting antsy over this shutdown. Republicans on the Hill, we already know three in the Senate, want to end it now. Fifteen to 20 in the House say they will vote along with Democrats. Republicans are getting antsy about the shutdown.

Other sources tell that the president's allies are telling him his message is not resonating. Why isn't it resonating?

MARC SHORT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I don't know, John. I think that the president will have a chance to make his case tonight to the American people. I think that if you step back and say the president asked for $5 billion for wall funding and the Democrat objection was they would not support a concrete wall, the president shifted and he said he was comfortable with steel barriers. They said 5 billion was too expensive. Yet, they passed a budget just recently with $20 billion in additional spending. Five billion represents one-tenth of one percent of the overall budget.

I think the president has the opportunity to make his case in a way that is compelling to the American people.

BERMAN: What would be different about it tonight, Marc. And I put these numbers up on the screen, because support for the wall has not budged. I'm talking about from September of 2016 to now. Fifty-seven percent oppose it. It was 58 percent in 2016. It has not budged. The president talks about this all the time, hasn't convinced them yet. Why will tonight be different? SHORT: Well, I think that the president can make this a broader case

about border security, and I think that polls show that over 85 percent of the American people think that we need to have border security. I think this is one element of it, and to something that is -- you and I have talked on your show, that it's more effective when Customs and Border Patrol is making the case to say this is something we've asked for even since before Trump was president. And to make it less partisan and say this is an important element of what we're trying to do, secure our border. Ninety percent of the heroin in the United States comes from the southern border. A large percentage of the fentanyl.

CAMEROTA: Through the legal -- legal pathway. Through the legal ports of entry. We just need to be clear, Marc, OK? Because what the administration has been telling the American public has been erroneous. They've been using erroneous numbers, and they've been conflating with the southern border. That is misleading.

And so let's be clear. The heroin that is gripping our country comes, mostly, the vast majority, through legal ports of entry in tractor trailers and private passenger cars. And you know what people who want border security are calling for? Those scanners that can pick it up better than people who are just visually waving these vehicles through.

SHORT: And Alisyn, that's been part --

CAMEROTA: And that's what the president should be talking about.

SHORT: That's been ipart of the president's budget request, is to have more money for those tools. It's also part of the request to have additional beds and have additional ICE agents and have some additional judges, that each time Democrats have refused to provide that funding over the last couple of years in each of the appropriations bills.

CAMEROTA: Marc, that is -- that -- I feel that you are also being misleading. The president --

SHORT: I'm not. Alisyn -- Alisyn --

CAMEROTA: -- hammers the border wall all the time.

SHORT: -- go look at our budget.

CAMEROTA: He doesn't mention all these things. He doesn't talk about that. He has the biggest bully pulpit in the world.

SHORT: But you just asked me what would be effective, and I'm trying to explain to you. Those are all the things that we've asked for the last couple years the Democrats have refused to fund each of the last years. They were part of our appropriations in 2017.

CAMEROTA: Marc, they've given you 25 billion in one of the bipartisan offers that never got anywhere. It was 25 billion -- SHORT: Alisyn, they were part of our budget request in 2017 and part

of our budget request in 2018 and part of the budget request for next year. Democrats refuse to fund ICE agents. They refuse to fund the judges. They refuse to fund additional detention beds each and every time.

BERMAN: Seung Min, I want to bring you into this conversation right now. And I'll show people some of the key dates that are facing the American people. And I'll remind you that 800,000 people will miss their paychecks this week, January 11. They will not receive a paycheck. It will soon be the longest shutdown on record.

And by February, the food assistance program will be out of funding, SNAP, Food Stamps. People will not be getting money to buy food. The pressure seems to be mounting, and the impact on real people being felt. Is the president facing this pressure, Seung Min?

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "WASHINGTON POST": I think the stories are definitely out there. But I think what the president in the past has shown, that he really cares about what the base feels, especially about this border wall.

And for the time being, this is something that he is still hearing from his allies and from his base that this is something that they want. Because he knows that this was a critical campaign promise.

But I can tell you that the real-life impact of the shutdown, the stories that you're hearing on the airwaves and newspapers are really hitting Republican lawmakers. And that's the calculus we're going to be watching or the next several days, especially as they return to Washington and try to figure a way out of this impasse.

I mean, you're talking -- we're talking about some of the Republican senators who have already said, "Look, we should just pass legislation without funding for a border wall, just get the government back open and work on resolving the border wall and pass there."

And I would expect as the shutdown goes on, those numbers -- those numbers would increase and put the pressure on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who so far has kind of extricated himself from this situation and kind of left it to President Trump and congressional Democrats to figure it out.

We're talking about House Republicans also getting a little nervous. Our reporting last week showed that Vice President Pence had to call several House Republicans before House Democrats put up legislation funding the government on the floor, because he was afraid -- because the administration and its allies were afraid that a lot -- there would be a lot of House Republican defection.

So it's the real-life impact stories that could influence Republican lawmakers, and that's something that we'll be gauging this week.

CAMEROTA: David Gregory, back to the argument that Marc Short and I are having, which is that, as you know, congressional Democrats say that they've been willing to offer in the past much more money than the $5 billion now on the table for border security but that it hasn't gone anywhere.

GREGORY: Well, look, I think the challenge for Marc, who is not here today speaking for the president, but what he is articulating is a more comprehensive view about a real problem around border security for which there'd probably be a broader discussion.

And it's different than how the president and more hardline advisors lay it out, because the president has kind of occupied this space, emphasizing a hardline border politics that says there's gangsters, gang members, and terrorists, and others who are going to commit violent crime against you; and there are some examples of that. And that's what he uses as a basis to put up a big wall and keep all those, you know, Mexicans and Central Americans out.

They also pursued a border separation policy, family separation policy which was a disaster, as the president might say, which he had to backtrack on. So the opportunity here is for the president to come out and actually take the American people to school on this in primetime and say, "When I call it a disaster, this is what I mean. There is a spike in illegal crossings, there is a spike in violence. And this is what a wall would do, along with other things to solve this problem."

He has not done that heretofore, which is why I think, John, those numbers have changed, because it's just a singular symbolic issue instead of really dealing with all the issues which would force Democrats to concede that there are real problems that we face with border security and that our border agents do need support. So how do we go about doing that?

And again, Marc has to -- he doesn't have to be accountable, you know, right here, but he was part of the administration when they had more money being offered by Democrats for the wall. And they said no to that deal, because they didn't like some of the other aspects of it.

BERMAN: You have a question for Marc?

CAMEROTA: Well, Marc, I just want to get back to this. Because you say that the president wants all these things. But what we hear time and again from the president is about the wall.

[07:10:06] So if you're right and the president does want more equipment for scanning and does want more personnel to cut down on the drugs that are coming in through the border, why did that poster, that "Game of Thrones" poster that he had on prominent display say, "The wall is coming"?

BERMAN: It didn't say scanners are coming.

CAMEROTA: It didn't.

SHORT: I don't know, Alisyn. I think David expressed it more accurately than -- than I did. I think the reality is that the administration should make this a broader case, and I think that --

CAMEROTA: But they haven't. SHORT: -- they have -- that's fair, Alisyn. But they have put

forward the plans to ask for these things, and Democrats can be painted into a corner when they say they're for border security to show their record doesn't support that.

But David is right. The rhetoric so far has been totally focused on the wall. It should be broader to say, "Here's comprehensively what I'm trying to do to secure the border." And I think you're going to hear that tonight.

BERMAN: Seung Min, the national emergency argument. The president's people yesterday used the word "crisis," what, 37 times in one briefing. The president himself has floated the possibility of declaring a national emergency. Is that a way out for him, at least to end the shutdown in the next few days?

KIM: That could be considered as one, and our reporting shows that he is -- the president is definitely considering it and looking to that as an option.

I think -- I talked to a number of legal experts after the option was publicly floated last week. And there are powers in the National Emergency Act that the president could conceivably invoke to declare a national emergency over the wall.

But again, the same legal experts also say that this would almost certainly be immediately challenged in the courts. And it just follows the pattern, we've seen how often this administration's immigration actions have gotten tangled up in the courts, obviously, in some instances. Like, the travel ban ended up in their favor. In other instances, it has not.

So it's how -- if it will be an effective option legally, it will be -- it will be something to wait and watch. But clearly, this is something that they're looking at.

GREGORY: You know, can I just say one of the -- part of the calculus for Democrats here is they see an opportunity to really hurt the president further politically by having him kind of own, as he said he would, all of the pain that will come from the shutdown.

Otherwise, they could be in a position of taking the reins of defining border security and saying, "Here's what we'll sign onto, because these are real problems and saying we have to give a little bit on the wall, which we're totally opposed to."

But there are some other things that we can do that would be effective. They could -- they could own part of a more comprehensive solution, including getting relief for DREAMers. Again, a broader package that broke down the last time they were all talking about this.

CAMEROTA: Marc, part of the problem with what we'll be hearing tonight is that the president and the people around him at the moment don't have a great track record in terms of presenting real facts about what's going on at the border. As I'm sure you saw it Sunday, Sarah Sanders was, like, handily shut

down by Chris Wallace on FOX, because she tried to say that 4,000 terrorists were somehow, you know, threatening the southern border. And he made the point that the facts show that they were attempting to get visa applications while they were in foreign countries or in foreign airports or stopped at the airports here. It had nothing to do with the southern border.

And of course, you'll remember that Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, had said in June -- I will quote her tweet -- "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period." That was disproved by the 3,000 families who were separated at the border, which all of us could see with our own eyes.

And so how will people know what to trust tonight?

SHORT: Well, I think there's plenty of facts to back up the president's case, and they don't have to misrepresent them. In fact, even just this past weekend, "The Washington Post" had a cover story in which their correspondent went down and characterized as a crisis at the border.

"The Washington Post" has not exactly been friendly in their coverage to the president. So even they're saying that there's a crisis down at the border. There's plenty of evidence to suggest it. I just think the White House has to lay out the case, and I do think the president will do that tonight.

BERMAN: So the president may have some facts on his side. The question then is, "Why does he misrepresent others?"

And let me play for you what he said about conversations that he apparently invented with former presidents about the border wall. This is President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This should have been done by all of the presidents that preceded me, and they all know it. Some of them have told me that we should have done it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: "Some of them have told me that we should have done it." Well, all of them have come forward and said, "We didn't have that conversation." President Carter just put out a statement yesterday. He said, "I have not discussed the border wall with President Trump and do not support him on this issue," Marc.

So if he has facts -- you say he has facts to support his claim -- why does he say things like that?

SHORT: John, I don't know why -- why he said that. I don't know what the correspondence was or what it wasn't. But again, I think --

BERMAN: Does it hurt the case? Does it hurt the case -- does it hurt the case, or once Sarah goes on FOX News and says 4,000 terrorists are coming over the order?

SHORT: Any time -- any time one of us is wrong with data and facts, it's going to hurt our case, because it hurts our credibility. There's no doubt about that, John.

[07:15:04] But I think that there's plenty of reasons to support what has been a Customs and Border Patrol plan to secure our border that includes a wall or includes steel barrier fencing. And I think the president can make that case.

CAMEROTA: Yes. The question, Seung Min, is you know, the boy who cried wolf. The credibility has been so damaged, and the facts been so disproved is that, you know, that it's been a real conundrum for networks to try to figure out how to handle it tonight. There's been suggestions of having it on a delay, having real-time fact checking, having fact checking immediately afterwards.

As you know, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer demand equal time, because they believe there will be so much erroneous information. Tonight, these seven to eight minutes, it's hard to know what to expect, other than, if history shows us, we can expect some misleading facts.

KIM: I think there's certainly going to be scrutiny to the facts that the president lays out tonight and that, you know, us in the media will be looking at those -- looking at what he says very closely.

But I also find it interesting, too, that this is -- the president really does seem to be ramping up his public relations campaign here for the wall this week. We're talking about the address tonight is the first address from the Oval Office from -- of his presidency, he's going down to the border on Thursday to make his case again for a border wall.

This is something that he perhaps should have been doing in the lull of the Christmas-time when he was at home. He did not go to Florida, and he had kind of the airwaves to himself, because the Congress was out and people were enjoying the holidays with their family. But at the same time, I don't know if this moves Democrats.,. and I don't think it will.

CAMEROTA: I do think that, look, the president is doing only what a president can do, which is uniquely seize the microphone, even though he has ways of doing it that other presidents have not through social media.

He can seize the microphone. He can put attention on this issue. He can try to educate. He can -- he can, you know, create the narrative. But it's going to be scrutinized. I mean, we live in a media age where, at CNN we do it. They do it on social media. Other news organizations will scrutinize him up and down in this address. We're going to have to watch Republicans to see if they stay on board after tonight.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much for all of the perspective. It will be interesting. Right now airports across the country are already feeling the impact

of the government shutdown. Sources tell CNN that senior TSA leaders held an urgent call, and they discussed ways to keep security screeners at their posts.

CNN's Rene Marsh is live at Reagan National Airport with more information about this.

What have you learned, Rene?

RENE MARSH, CNN TRANSPORTATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Alisyn. We know that, according to two sources, one of them, actually, on the call, that the TSA will now start tracking these sick call-outs from TSA employees nationwide. We also learned that the agency talked about, with security directors from airports across the country, they talked about incentives to entice workers to show up to work.

A source on the call also said that the head of the TSA, David Pekoske mentioned that he does want to be transparent about the number of people calling out sick from the agency, so that travelers can be better informed and they know exactly how long it will take for them to get through the security -- through security checkpoints.

He also pointed out the security standard will remain the same at the airports. That is what he is vowing.

But really, this call is an indication that the increase in sick calls really has the attention of top agency officials at TSA. That is despite very public rebuttals from the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the Transportation Security Administration that this isn't really a significant issue.

And of course, this all comes, John, after we broke that story on Friday, saying that hundreds of TSA officers started calling out sick since this shutdown began, John.

BERMAN: I know that story caused a great deal of concern inside and outside the government. Terrific reporting on your part. Rene Marsh, thanks very much.

We did expect a major development in the Russian investigation overnight but didn't get it, at least we don't think we got it. The important paperwork that Paul Manafort's lawyers apparently did not file. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:23:09] BERMAN: So we expected attorneys for Paul Manafort to respond to special counsel's office, the accusation that Manafort lied after agreeing to a plea deal.

The deadline for the paperwork to be filed was last night. It didn't happen. The lawyers missed that deadline. It's also possible that the legal team filed the documents under seal, but if they did that, normally, they would have told us. They didn't this time. Here to discuss what this all means, Garrett Graff. He's the author

of "The Threat Makers: Inside Robert Mueller's FBI and the War on Global Terror"; and former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rogers.

Jennifer Rogers, let's start with this filing that either didn't happen or we did not see happen. What do you think went on?

JENNIFER ROGERS, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, it would be a real rookie move to miss the filing deadline. So I suspect that they did file something and we just haven't seen it yet on the electronic system, because it's probably under seal. That's my best guess.

BERMAN: The importance of this filing.

ROGERS: Well, they were asked a question by this judge, which is do we need to have a hearing here where we go in and have witnesses and documents and evidence? And they kind of waffled on that. At first, they said yes, they're lying. We need to have a hearing, and then they kind of backed off. So that's an important question that they have to answer, which is why I'm pretty confident that they did file something, because they needed to answer that question. But I think ultimately, their answer is going to be, "No, we don't need to have a hearing here. Let's just proceed to sentencing."

BERMAN: It's interesting, because what's going on here is, again, the special prosecutor saying, "Paul Manafort lied to us in his conversations after the fact. What's your response, Paul Manafort's liars [SIC]? Do you think maybe -- lawyers?" You think maybe they're just going to say, "We don't really have a good one?"

ROGERS: Well, I think their initial response is, "No, we weren't lying," you know. But when it comes to "We're going to go to court. We're going to bring people in. We're going to have documents. You have to establish that these people are not telling the truth about this," then they kind of say, "Oh, wait a minute, this is a judge who's going to sentence me. I'm going to maybe take this a little more carefully and back off."

BERMAN: All right, Garrett Graff. That brings us to where we are now on January 8 in this investigation. You have a piece that's either about to come out or came out moments ago on "WIRED" on your questions that will be answered this January: "Robert Mueller's 2019 To-Do List."

[07:25:09] And I've cherry-picked some of the ones that I think are really interesting and worth going into. One of them is, "Find out who else lied to Congress." Explain.

GARRETT GRAFF, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, so this is one of the biggest new developments that we can imagine is unfolding in the special counsel's probe this week. Which is, remember, when he charged Michael Cohen with lying to Congress, that was a new investigative approach by him. That was not something that we had seen so far.

And immediately, what you heard from Democrats on Capitol Hill, was well, Paul -- "Michael Cohen was lying. We think lots of other people were lying before our committee during the House Intelligence Committee investigation into the Russia 2016 attack."

And so Adam Schiff takes over the House Intelligence Committee this week as Democrats come into power and he said this week, and he said in December that he expects to turn over interview transcripts and evidence to Mueller to show other people who were lying.

And so that's potentially evidence that Mueller doesn't have, but then also remember, this is stuff that Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman for the last two years, has been actively trying to keep from Mueller. So there's likely damaging information, some possibly new information; and all of that is being handed over to Robert Mueller to continue to investigate and possibly charge additional defendants with lying to Congress.

BERMAN: And it's really important. We don't know if it's damaging, and we do know that it's new. This is a new development, Jennifer. All of a sudden Robert Mueller will have these transcripts that were withheld from his investigators for months.

ROGERS: That's right. And what's really important about this, you know, most of the charges in the Mueller investigation to date have been lying type of charges. Because they're not easy to prove, but it's a pretty clean charge if you can get it.

So if they get ahold of these transcripts and they find out that there actually were lies told to Congress, those are fairly clean charges for the Mueller team to bring. And that's why they'll so interested in seeing them.

BERMAN: They'll have their investigation, their testimony. They'll match it up to what was said in Congress. That could happen pretty quickly.

Jerome Corsi, Garrett, what's going on with him?

GRAFF: Well, this is one of the weirdest sort of trails that went cold in this flurry of activity that we saw in November-December.

Jerome Corsi, the conspiracy theorist associated with Roger Stone, potentially tied to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, mixed up in the question of whether the Trump campaign had early knowledge or some possible about the release of the stolen e-mails by WikiLeaks of Democratic officials.

Jerome Corsi had this plea agreement underway with Robert Mueller that he blew up dramatically and released the plea agreement, the draft plea agreement in November.

We saw this sort of flurry of activity around Julian Assange, as well, in early November and early December. And then all of a sudden that disappeared. And we haven't heard anything about that in about a month now.

And I can guarantee you that Bob Mueller hasn't forgotten about that and that, you know, Mueller had enough evidence to push Jerome Corsi towards pleading guilty to begin with. And we can sort of imagine that this is one of the next shoes to drop, or at least it's sitting on Mueller's desk somewhere for him to tackle soon.

BERMAN: Jennifer, if Robert Mueller was ready to accept a guilty plea from Jerome Corsi, which we know that he was, if he was willing to accept that in the fall, why wouldn't he charge him with something along those lines now?

ROGERS: Well, he may be readying to do that. Remember, there's another associate of Roger Stone, Andrew Miller, who's also out there in the mix who has fought his subpoena, and that issue is being negotiated. So I do think that Mueller is tying up all of these loose ends and will see it, you know, fairly soon with Jerome Corsi, with Andrew Miller, with Roger Stone ultimately, so they're still working on all of that. But the Corsi thing, I think, will come.

BERMAN: Fairly soon. And in closing, Garrett, six months, right, the special counsel, the grand jury that has been hearing some of this evidence just got extended, at most, six months. That's pretty significant.

GRAFF: Yes. So this was an 18-month grand jury that Judge Beryl Howell how extended for an additional six months. It was set to expire over the weekend. We were expecting that she would extend it. But it does give us sort of that Punxsutawney Phil moment where that we know we've got about six more months of Mueller ahead. Six more months of Mueller, and that's following the 12 days of Mueller before Christmas.

Garrett Graff, Jennifer Rogers, great to have you here with us. Really appreciate it -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, John. She just started a new job and she is not taking her paycheck until the shutdown is over. Newly-elected Representative Mikie Sherrill tells what she's hoping to hear from the president tonight.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)