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President Trump Faces Credibility Crisis As He Addresses Nation Tonight; Democrats To Introduce Gun Background Checks Bill Today; Parkland Massacre Survivors Push For Gun Background Checks; CNN Reality Check: President Trump And Top Officials Using Misleading Stats To Push Border Crisis. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired January 08, 2019 - 07:30   ET

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

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[07:33:54] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump is facing a credibility crisis as he prepares to address the nation tonight. The president and his administration are under fire for repeatedly using some false and misleading statistics to make their case for a border wall but he will make that case, once again.

Joining us now is Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat from New Jersey who just began her work in the U.S. Congress, recently elected. Congratulations -- thank you so much for joining us this morning.

REP. MIKIE SHERRILL (D), NEW JERSEY: Oh, thanks so much for having me.

BERMAN: As one of your first acts in Congress, you have decided not to accept a paycheck until this government shutdown ends. Why?

SHERRILL: You know, I was working at the U.S. Attorney's Office when we were anticipating a shutdown. And I'll tell you, I still remember a single mom sitting next to me in a brief on that, turning to me and saying, I have no idea who I'm going to pay my bills.

I think it is the job of Congress to run government and if we can't keep it open, then we should be facing the same issues that the people that are affected by this are facing.

BERMAN: So, President Trump, we understand, will speak for seven or eight minutes tonight. What can he say that will convince you to move off the Democratic line which, at this point, is no more than $1.3 billion for border security that doesn't include funding for the wall?

[07:35:10] SHERRILL: You know, we just passed, in Congress, the most bipartisan bill we could. We passed the Republican Senate's bill to reopen government.

I think we've got to immediately get government open -- like I said, a lot of families are being affected by this right now -- and start to move forward on what's next.

We've -- you know, we believe in strong border security. We just sent -- you know, the president still has a billion dollars he hasn't spent yet. We've just sent -- appropriated another billion dollars for border security.

But we need to now move forward on opening the government, making sure that places like our ports of entry, our airports are safe and secure.

BERMAN: The president says it is a humanitarian and national security crisis on our southern border. Is there a crisis?

SHERRILL: You know, I'm from New Jersey and I can tell you that 9/11 was a national security crisis -- a national emergency. No, we're not facing that same type of threat and I don't think that tossing around that term is helpful.

BERMAN: He says that there are people pouring over the border. And, Vice President Mike Pence just went on all the morning shows and said that some 3,000 special interest aliens have tried to cross from the southern border.

Does that pose a security threat?

SHERRILL: You know, I'll tell you the security threat I'm worried about. In my area, we have some of the largest airports in the nation and we know that that's where a lot of people attempt to enter our country illegally and that's where a lot of illicit drug trafficking comes from.

So we have to make sure that we're paying our TSA agents. We've been hearing about the crisis of people calling in sick. We've got to make sure that we get the government open again and that we're paying our federal employees.

BERMAN: Do you feel or could you support any new fencing -- additional fencing on the border? The president has moved off of his demand that it be a concrete wall and is now suggesting there be steel.

Democrats in the past -- who served in Congress in the past, have voted for various forms or barrier that included fencing.

Would you support new fencing?

SHERRILL: You know, I'd have to look carefully at that. We already have fencing where appropriate and even then, we know that drug traffickers have made incursions over the fencing. In five years, there were, I think over 9,000 incursions over the fencing. So they have better technology than we're using.

We need drone technology, we need towers, we need border patrol agents, we need sensors. These are the kind of things that will really help keep our borders safe.

BERMAN: What will you be listening for tonight when the president speaks?

SHERRILL: I want to hear some empathy. I want to hear an understanding of the plight of our federal workers. I have been a federal worker much of my life. I have always been incredibly proud of that. And I want to hear our commander in chief understanding how important the role our federal workers play is and get them their paychecks.

BERMAN: Can he be believed?

SHERRILL: You know, we'll see. We'll see what he has to say. But like I said, I think the first priority of the president and Congress should be getting government open again.

BERMAN: You served in the Navy for many years flying a Sea King helicopter. Obviously, national security is of intense interest to you.

Do you understand what the U.S. policy is towards Syria this morning?

SHERRILL: So, you know, I've heard various things from security experts. I think that we need to move a bit more cautiously in this area.

I'm glad to see that even though the president wants to pull out of Syria, it's not happening as precipitously as I originally anticipated, and I hope we can keep a measure of peace there.

BERMAN: So, the president initially said he wanted U.S. troops out of Syria within 30 days. He went on camera and said now. Then it was four months.

And now, the national security adviser John Bolton says U.S. troops will stay in Syria until conditions are met.

Well, overnight, the President of Turkey, Erdogan, lashed out at John Bolton, saying nuh-uh. You know, no conditions. President Trump promised me no conditions.

So who do you believe? Is it President Trump's version or John Bolton's version?

SHERRILL: I think what we're doing is making sure that when we pull out of Syria we're taking care of our friends and allies. So the Kurds, for example, have been fighting alongside American soldiers. We need to make sure that we don't precipitously pull out and put our allies in danger.

BERMAN: You said you served as a federal prosecutor. One of the arguments the president might make tonight in his speech is there is a national emergency, and he'll try to circumvent Congress and use military dollars that have already been appropriated to build a border wall.

Do you think that is a legal maneuver?

SHERRILL: You know, we will -- I think it remains to be seen if that's a legal maneuver.

But again, being from New Jersey, I know national emergencies, you know. We've seen Superstorm Sandy, we've seen 9/11.

[07:40:00] This is not a national emergency and certainly, I don't want to see any money taken away from our military forces who we have stationed all across -- all over the world to keep us safe. This would not be a good use of military funds.

BERMAN: All right, Rep. Mikie Sherrill. One week on the job. Thank you very much for being with us this morning -- appreciate it.

SHERRILL: Thanks so much for having me.

BERMAN: Alisyn --

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right.

They survived the Parkland school shooting and now, these students are trying to keep it from happening anywhere else. The new proposal on background checks, next.

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CAMEROTA: Today is exactly eight years after the mass shooting that nearly killed former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and left six others dead.

Democrats will introduce a bill today requiring universal background checks on most gun sales. They'll be joined by some survivors of the Parkland high school massacre.

Joining us now, the co-founders of the student-led gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives, David Hogg and Jaclyn Corin. They are both survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Great to see both of you this morning.

JACLYN CORIN, SURVIVOR, MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL MASSACRE, CO-FOUNDER, MARCH FOR OUR LIVES: Thank you for having us.

DAVID HOGG, SURVIVOR, MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL MASSACRE, CO-FOUNDER, MARCH FOR OUR LIVES: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: David, so you will be appearing -- both of you, alongside Speaker Pelosi and former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords to push for this legislation.

What's your message to the country?

HOGG: This legislation could have been passed a long time ago. This is long in coming but because of the work that all the America -- that all the Americans that we've been working with and those fellow survivors have put in, we've been able to get this legislation, at least, introduced in the first place, which is quite remarkable in and of itself.

[07:45:11] CAMEROTA: There is a bipartisan quality to it. Peter King, a Republican, is supporting it, Jaclyn. So what are its chances?

CORIN: I think chances of passing it in the House are very likely. The importance is that the American people push the Senate to pass this as well.

Twenty-two Republican senators are up for reelection in 2020 and only one of them have actually spoken about gun violence prevention bills. And so, the American people need to speak up and they need to vote against the people that refuse to actively save lives through a bill like this one.

CAMEROTA: I mean, here is the crazy part. There's so many crazy parts of the spate of school shootings that we've seen in this country and mass shootings, but as you both point out in an op-ed, 97 percent --

CORIN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- of the country -- of the public says they support these expanded background checks and closing these loopholes.

CORIN: Yes. I mean, right now, the most dangerous gap in the federal firearm law system is this universal background check loophole. I mean, right now, unlicensed dealers can still sell firearms without having a universal background check on the prospective purchasers.

And so, people die every single day because this bill isn't law yet. And we, as American people, need to step up, especially young people, to tell our elected officials that it's not cutting it anymore. They're not going to keep taking NRA money without consequences.

CAMEROTA: We all remember, of course, so tragically what happened at Parkland. Seventeen students and teachers were killed there and then, that hashtag #NeverAgain was born.

But, of course, tragically, it has happened again. And the graph that we can show our viewers in terms of just school shootings -- I mean, I'm not even talking about mass shootings -- that 2018 was higher than 2017.

And so, David, you know, people -- after these school shootings people always say -- well, the people who don't want any more gun control say well, no more laws would have prevented this.

Is -- would background checks have prevented what happened at Parkland?

HOGG: I think there's many instances and instances of gun violence that could have stopped further acts of gun violence. There's 40,000 people that die of gun violence every year and a very small minority of them end up being in school shootings because when we're talking about hardening our schools and different things, what we're not talking about is how are we going to make our communities safer.

When we're talking about school safety we're neglecting that thousands of students that die either coming to school or coming back from school every day, or simply just outside of their house because our Congressmen and our elected officials have said that they don't care about them or their violence because of the zip code they live in or the number of figures in their bank account.

And if we really want to start talking about a national emergency, like the president likes to talk about, 40,000 Americans dying annually from gun violence is pretty damn one -- good one to start out with because it is an issue that is nonpartisan. At least I would hope so considering the fact that both Democrats and Republicans die from gun violence. Bullets don't discriminate and neither should our legislators.

Neither -- no legislator should look at these laws and think to themselves oh, I can't vote on that because I've taken campaign contributions from the NRA. And that's what they're thinking.

The American people need to wake up and realize again and again, the reason these laws are not getting passed -- the reason why -- for example, disarming people like the shooter at our high school could have happened through an extreme risk protection order, but didn't.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

HOGG: That's because that law was actively advocated against by the National Rifle Association that uses due process to disarm people like terrorists and domestic abusers. But they actively tried to stop -- because it stops these things from happening in the first place, which they benefit from because after every single mass shooting, gun sales go up significantly and the NRA benefits from that.

CAMEROTA: That is such a great point in terms of what we define today as a national emergency as we wait to hear the president's special address tonight on a national emergency. And to your point, the numbers of gun violence certainly register at that level.

You know, I want to talk about both of your futures because I know that our viewers are certainly so invested in you ever since we met you a year ago, tragically, in Parkland.

And, David, I remember interviewing you back in March when you had been rejected by various colleges that you wanted to get into.

And I remember that Fox News had even sort of mocked you that you'd been rejected by four colleges. And after that, they lost some of their advertisers.

And I don't know if you recall, I said at that time, what dumbass colleges would reject you? And now, I'm just curious what dumbass college has accepted you for next year?

HOGG: Well, I plan on going to Harvard next year and -- but I think what the important thing to remember is I'm looking to advance my education so that I can work towards saving more lives.

And that's the real story here is that the fact that the youth of America have had to walk out -- over 3,000 high schools and middle schools walked out during the student-led walkouts on March 14th. And over two million people marched in over 800 marches across the country on March 24th.

[07:50:15] And that's what this story is about. It's not about my college or my experience. It's about how are we going to go out and save lives when our Congress and other people have not in the past and how are we going to force Congress, no matter whether or not they're Democrats or Republicans, to disarm people like domestic abusers that --

For example, one of the number one predictors of a mass shooter is a history of domestic violence in the home. And we if we can predict those things before they happen and disarm them through due process with things like an extreme risk protection order, that's a bipartisan solution I think we can all agree on.

And another thing is we need to fund the CDC, the NIH, and the National Science Foundation to do gun violence prevention research because right now, they are given zero funding for that and that is something that has to change.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Jaclyn, quickly.

CORIN: I think it's really important to understand that although we receive tons of opposition, young people all around the country continue to move forward because preventing gun violence is an issue that we all care about because we don't want to have our children grow up the same way we did where we wake up to a mass shooting and just see it as normal.

Or we see everyday shootings happen in black and brown communities and we just accept it as normal. And that's not acceptable anymore.

CAMEROTA: Listen, you guys personify turning pain into action and we applaud you and we appreciate you always checking in and updating us on what you're working on. And best of luck to both of you, of course, on your future paths.

Thanks so much for being here.

CORIN: Thank you very much.

CAMEROTA: John --

BERMAN: I saw what you did there with the dumbass college thing.

CAMEROTA: Did you?

BERMAN: It was noted.

CAMEROTA: And --

BERMAN: It was noted.

CAMEROTA: -- what -- I'm just curious. What college did you go to?

BERMAN: A dumbass college.

CAMEROTA: The same one that David Hogg will be going to.

BERMAN: I saw what you did there.

Up next, the White House is putting out facts about what is happening on our border. So, what's true and what's spin? Well, they're putting out things that aren't facts, which is the problem.

Our reality check points it out, next.

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[07:56:07] CAMEROTA: President Trump will make his first Oval Office address in prime time tonight to make his case for the border wall, but some of the statistics that the administration has been using are misleading and do not add up.

Our John Avlon is back --

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- and not a moment too soon, and he joins us with a reality check. Hi, John.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, guys.

So, yes, in a prime time address tonight, President Trump may declare illegal immigration on the southern border a national emergency. Now, that's usually reserved for urgent events like 9/11.

But as John Berman's favorite chart shows us, border arrests have been declining for the past two decades and this prime time gamut occurs on week three of the government shutdown which is now just four days away from being the longest in American history.

We all know President Trump's made a lot of fact-free, fear-based claims when it comes to immigration, but a clear pattern has emerged.

The president stakes out an extreme policy position that fires up his base, but broadly unpopular with the American people and often unrelated to reality. White House staff then scrambles to find alternative facts that back up the president's position and this goes about as well as you'd imagine.

For example, the travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries first announced during the campaign. But the policy was very popular with Trump's base. Some 80 percent of conservatives supported it, but only 40 percent of moderates and 17 of liberals putting the policy under water, broadly.

Trump's core claim, of course, was that people from those countries disproportionally represent a terrorist threat, specifically from ISIS. But let's look at the facts. About 91 percent of people arrested for ISIS-related claims between 2014 and 2017 were American citizens or from countries not covered by the ban. And more recently, the president's been focused on so-called migrant

caravans heading towards the southern border. He says those folks are a threat to public safety. But we know that nationally, as immigration has gone up, violent crime has gone down.

And according to the Cato Institute -- not exactly a liberal organization -- undocumented immigrants in Texas, for example, were responsible for less crime per capita than their native-born counterparts. That's true in key areas from theft to, yes, murder.

Now, Trump is invoking the Presidents Club to defend his policy, saying that some of his predecessors told him they supported the wall and wished they'd built it themselves. The problem is that every living president has either opposed the wall or explicitly denied that they've ever talked to President Trump about it. That's called a Heisman.

Finally, there's Trump's claim that terrorists are streaming across our southern border. Now, this is a longtime right-wing conspiracy theory that's simply not rooted in fact. Trump's own DHS has undercut this claim and when suspected terrorists are stopped at the U.S. border, it's overwhelming at airports, not barren stretches of the Arizona desert.

But maybe we've been too hard on President Trump. After all, there are at least three documented cases of would-be terrorists sneaking into the United States to commit an attack across our porous northern border with Canada.

And that's your reality check.

BERMAN: All right, John Avlon. Thanks so much.

I want to point out that Vice President Mike Pence, who has had days and days to think about this, just did a round of interviews this morning where he is spewing the same misstatements and misleading facts that you just called out there about terrorists pouring over the southern border. They are not.

John, thank you for pointing that out -- appreciate it.

All right, good morning, everyone.

CAMEROTA: Oh, hi.

BERMAN: Welcome --

CAMEROTA: Good morning.

BERMAN: -- to your NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, January eighth. It's 8:00 in the east.

The president is breaking new ground today, his first-ever prime time address from the Oval Office. So, why? Sources say the president's allies have told him his border wall message is not resonating. Our congressional reporters are finding that Republican members are antsy about the shutdown -- the shutdown that the president promised to own to get funding for his border wall.

We're told the president will speak for about seven minutes to argue there is what he calls a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

CAMEROTA: But as you just heard, the administration has repeatedly used misleading or false numbers about the situation at the border to try to make their case.

President Trump also claims that some --