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Government Shutdown Continues over Border Wall Funding; President Trump to Give Oval Office Address on Government Shutdown; Government Shutdown Affecting Federal Workers Outside of Beltway; Interview with Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired January 08, 2019 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: 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 of his predecessors confided in him that they believe they should have built a wall, but every single living president has come forward to say that is not true.

Meanwhile, here is the state of play from our reporters on the ground concerning shutdown negotiations. They say that there is no side of either side buckling or compromising some would call it. In fact, talks are stalled as the lawmakers wait for the president to speak tonight and make a move.

So joining us now, we have two of our newest CNN political commentators who just left congress. Mia Love is a former congresswoman from Utah, and Luis Gutierrez is a former Democratic congressman from Illinois. Also with us, CNN political director David Chalian. Great to have all of you as we try to figure out what we will find out tonight. Mia, you just left Congress. Are Republicans, your colleagues, your former colleagues in Congress, getting antsy about this border shutdown? Are they feeling the heat?

MIA LOVE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I can tell you there were antsy, at least I was antsy, at the very beginning when that meeting happened with Chuck Schumer and Speaker Pelosi where the president said that if you don't give me a border, I will own the shutdown. And everybody was just like, whoa, wait a minute. As we know, the legislative power is with Congress, and so who is really going to own the shutdown are Republicans. So I think he gave away a lot of leverage at that point. And they just said, OK, I don't have to give you the border and you can own the shutdown. Great. I'll take it.

So what ended up happening now everybody is trying to figure out what to do, because he, and I don't think anyone is going to give if he does not get the funding that he wants. I think there are a lot of people that are going after the president if he does not keep his promises. So now you are caught between trying to keep a promise and own a shutdown and still giving people what you have promised to give them.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we have been told that his allies are telling him that the message is not resonating. Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States, was out this morning trying to spread what I think that message will continue to be, and it is riddled with misleading claims. I want to play you what he continues to say after days of thinking about this about what he considers dangerous people coming over the border. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists were apprehending attempting to come into the United States through various means in the last year.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Overwhelmingly at airports, not at the border.

PENCE: Yes, but 3,000 special interest individuals, people with suspicious backgrounds that may suggest terrorist connections, were apprehended at our southern border. Last year alone 17,000 individuals with criminal histories were apprehended at our southern border.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BREAM: So the vice president of the United States who some refer to as the grownup in the room, just tried to pull a fast one on the American people. It's a shell game that. He continued Sarah Sanders' claim that 4,000 people on the terrorist watch list come into the game. Well, those are into airports, not at the southern border.

CAMEROTA: But then he pivoted to 3,000, which is also an erroneous number.

BERMAN: Then he brought up special interest aliens and tried to imply that they are all dangerous. Special interest aliens are people who come from countries that the United States has their eye on. They are usually Muslim countries, by the way, so what Mike Pence is trying to do is to tell you that the people who come from the Muslim countries with predominately Islamic populations are dangerous. The Cato Institute, a libertarian group, often right leaning in some ways, notes that not a single person who crossed the southern border who has been on the special watch list like that has ever committed an act of terror, not a single one. No special interest alien has ever committed an act of terror in the United States.

CAMEROTA: Not only that, the numbers from the Customs and Border Patrol from 2016 when they put out a report, it was reconfirmed in 2017, there was not a single terror suspect --

BERMAN: That's a separate list. From neither of the lists, from the terror watchlist there's not a single person who was apprehended. Now that number may be six or seven, not a lot. So Mike Pence tried to pull a fast one on us. So my question to you, congressman, can he be believed tonight?

LUIS GUTIERREZ, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think you just saw the ghost of Kellyanne Conway once again with the alternative facts, and it has now permeated to the vice president of the United States. But let me just say this. Mike Pence, when he was a member of

Congress, was actually a pretty moderate guy when it came to immigration. So was Speaker Ryan and so many others. And so you can see them just being transformed into xenophobes and anti-immigrants, and it's not really who they are. So I think that is a really a very sad commentary on this thing.

[08:05:00] I don't think the president can -- so Democrats look at this speech tonight and say, wow, if the president is telling -- this is widely reported and undisputed -- thousands and thousands of lies, dozens a day, why are going to expect that he is going to tell us the truth tonight.

So I think tonight, I don't believe we're going to hear anything new. I don't think we're going to hear anything productive, because we have a president of the United States, remember when he came down that escalator, the first words out of his mouth were Mexicans are murders, rapists, there are bad people, there are a few good ones, but we have got to get, and let's build -- and he began his campaign that way. And so the wall, for people like me it's the immorality, right, it's the racist undertones of building the wall.

CAMEROTA: And I do want to get to the point about how Democrats are feeling it and whether that is the right strategy. But first, David, what are we expecting tonight? Has the White House explained?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I do think -- yes. We're not going to get a new President Trump tonight. All of a sudden, we're not going to have a factual President Trump show up and address the American public, so I wouldn't expect that at all.

What is so intriguing to me is the different communication strategy that the White House is employing. I would say, and I don't use the word traditional with Donald Trump very much, but this is about as traditional a communication strategy from a White House, the bully pulpit, the Oval Office address, the vice president doing morning show interviews, this is a president and a White House who is trying to unleash an arsenal which is usually just left to his Twitter feed, and you only do that when you know you are not convincing the American people. You are doing that so that you can try and turn public opinion.

BERMAN: He is digging out, or trying to.

CHALIAN: Trying to.

BERMAN: And that is what we have been hearing, that his allies are telling him the message is not resonating.

GUTIERREZ: And he is going to make a superlative kind of comment tonight, because he has already said, just give me the money for the wall and I secure the country, $5.7 billion and we are safe. Nobody is going to believe that.

LOVE: With all that being said, I think there's a missed opportunity here. Speaker Pelosi can actually come to the table and say, give me TPS, give me DACA. She could ask for the moon and say, and I will give you the $5.7 billion and see who moves and see who budges. She could actually propose that.

GUTIERREZ: Mia is right, and I'm going to tell you why she won't do it, because they have tried it before, and it they sat down with the president of the United States, and they did bring up TPS.

CAMEROTA: Right, but now the government is shutdown.

GUTIERREZ: I understand now that the government is shut down. They've tried it before. I would suggest that the president closed the government down, he owns this. And I know that many of my Republican colleagues like to say, well, let's look at the Constitution. The Constitution says that the Senate and the House are co-equal branches of the government and they should not abdicate their responsibility as the majority leader, McConnell, is doing, and saying until the president gives me permission, we're not voting on it.

LOVE: I full-on agree with that. All of that should be in the hands of Congress. So we have involved the administration way too much and this is why we have these problems. These things should be done in the House of Representatives and in Congress, and whatever happens, put it at the president's desk and make him either sign is it or veto it.

GUTIERREZ: I don't disagree with you.

CHALIAN: But the Congress was ready to move forward. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republicans did pass these spending bills, so the Congress then reversed course because of President Trump.

So I think it is a little tricky to say this really should be in the purview of Congress. It was, the president pulled the rug out from his Republican colleagues, and they felt burned by it, and so now really it is back in the administration's corner.

BERMAN: David, shutdown reality here, shutdown reality, this week, 800,000 people will miss their first full paycheck. That has got to be weighing on the president in a shutdown that he promised to own.

CHALIAN: And a president that we know consumes media in ways that none of the predecessors really did. So he is going to see these stories of real American pain. And there is no doubt that is only going to increase as the shutdown persists, and therefore the political calculus is going to become that much trickier for them.

CAMEROTA: Congressman, I want to ask you how Democrats are playing this. so you say that the wall is immoral. Nancy Pelosi says the wall is immoral. She has said not one dollar for the wall. How is a wall more immoral than a fence?

GUTIERREZ: Well, the fence and the wall are really one in the same.

CAMEROTA: Right. So --

GUTIERREZ: Let me just say this -- and I have said this repeatedly, I've said it on CNN many times. Look, I still remember in 2007 when Senator Barack Obama called me and said that people are angry. I said why? Because I voted for the fencing in 2007, George Bush's first fencing. And he said why are they so angry? I said, Barack, Mr. President, Barack, what did we get? You use something, you built a wall, right.

[08:10:04] People die trying to cross that border. Children are held in the arms of -- and you built a wall. What did we get? Did we get any sensible immigration reform? And he said, no, we didn't. I said therein lies the rub.

I think Democrats -- look, we have doubled the number of Border Patrol agents, we have doubled them. We have done massive things that we will continue to give them money, right, for things that we consider immoral if there is a good to be gained. And I think that is why I go back to what Mia is talking about. If there is a good to be gained, I am certainly one that has said in the past, if you free 2 million Dreamers from the plight of deportation and allow them to integrate themselves.

LOVE: So what is the proposal? What do the Democrats want? That is what I want to see. OK, I will give you border security, but this is what I want, and then I think that conversation starts to happen. But right now, you have got two parties playing ping-pong and no one is getting it fixed.

CHALIAN: And they're in the majority now, and so there is a responsibility to show the American people, the Democrats in the House, are willing to actually govern. So I do think there is a potentially risk here for Democrats to not come to the table in any way.

GUTIERREZ: And I think this is exactly what Donald Trump wants. He closes down the government and then he wants to us to have a conversation, oh, you are both equally bad. No, you are not both equally bad. You shut down the government. Come with the proposal, because the last time, Mia, this was proposed, the started to talk about s-hole countries, racist spewing out of his mouth --

CAMEROTA: And just to remind you of that chapter.

(LAUGHTER)

LOVE: I was like, I wasn't in the room. I should have been in the room. We should have been in the room.

GUTIERREZ: We should have been in the room.

BERMAN: Let me just leave you all with this, again, because one of the issues with the president's address tonight is how much of the seven minutes can be believed. One of the things the president has said is he had conversations with his predecessors, and his predecessors told him that they wish that they had built a wall. Well, all the former presidents, living presidents, said that conversation never happened. This is how Mike Pence tried to clean it up this morning. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: That is his impression from previous administrations, previous presidents. I know that I have seen clips of previous presidents talking about the importance of border security, the importance of addressing the issue of illegal immigration.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is different from telling the president, though, right?

PENCE: Honestly, the American people want us to address this issue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That is his impression, David Chalian, his impression.

CHALIAN: How do you have the impression these former presidents told you they should have built a wall if they didn't tell you that.

CAMEROTA: More than you had a conversation with them, that you have an impression, you had a conversation with them?

CHALIAN: That is not an acceptable answer. Poor Mike Pence, he is an impossible situation there, but that is just an absurd answer on its face.

GUTIERREZ: And I think we cannot look at the shutdown if we don't look at it in the context of the Mueller investigation and the tightening and the grip, and the ability of the president to change the conversation and to own this one, because now it's the border wall, shutdown the government, I'm the king.

CAMEROTA: Quickly.

LOVE: A lot of presidents should have done a lot of things, but the president is the president right now, Congress is the Congress now, what are you going to do now?

BERMAN: Thank you, all, appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: On that note, employees of federal prisons across the country are feeling the pinch of the government shutdown, especially at one facility in Alabama. Workers there are expected to miss their first paychecks this week. CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich is live this in Aliceville, Alabama, with more. Vanessa, what's happening?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, the government shutdown fight may be happening in Washington, but 80 percent of the federal workers actually work outside of the beltway. You can see in the distance behind me the federal prison there is key to the local economy. Federal workers make on average between $40,000 and $50,000 a year. You compare that to the local median income which is just under $20,000. We spoke to three of these workers who frequent businesses here in town. We met at Jack's. And they called on Washington to do their job, stop using them as political pawns. And they also talked about how the stress of the shutdown is affecting them at work.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGIE ACKLIN, CORRECTIONAL OFFICER: The people that work in a high stress area anyway, and you have the stress of I'm not getting paid, I'm not getting a paycheck, and you have inmates who are just want to tease and mess with the officer and get up under the skin any way that they possibly can, they may start bragging about how they got their paycheck. It can make it a more dangerous place, so for the safety and the security, that puts that at risk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YURKEVICH: Republicans and Democrats in Washington may be on opposite sides of the spectrum on this, but when we spoke to these three federal workers, they came together under this one issue.

[08:15:03] They're from different political parties. They said it's not about red. It's not about blue. It's about green, the color of money.

And when they step behind that wall behind me, they come together under the stressful situation, and they are one -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Increasingly stressful situation, though, for so many people.

Vanessa Yurkevich, thanks so much for your reporting. Great to have you on NEW DAY.

So, do senators have any hope for progress as the shutdown enters day 18? One Democrat says the administration has taken minor but important steps toward a compromise. We'll talk to him next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Eighteen days and counting, lawmakers are no closer to reaching a compromise that would bring an end to the second longest government shutdown in history. Tonight, during an address from the Oval Office, President Trump will try to justify the shutdown and the battle over his border wall.

Joining me now is Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware.

Senator, thank you so much for being with us.

You said yesterday that you believed that the president's statement that he would now accept a steel barrier instead of a concrete wall was progress. Explain.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D), DELAWARE: Well, John, I said that it is a minor step and in the next sentence what I clarified is saying that the biggest challenge of anyone trying to negotiate with President Trump is that he is going to take one step forward and two steps back.

Let's take the Syria example first. Just two weeks ago, or three weeks ago now, President Trump made an abrupt, ill-conceived public announcement that we were going to withdraw our troops in Syria.

[08:20:08] It's taken weeks and the resignation of the secretary of defense to persuade him to change that to a lower conditions-based withdrawal. And just last night, he undermined his own national security adviser by tweeting, no, no, I haven't changed anything.

He has done the same thing on the campaign promise of the concrete border wall to be paid for by Mexico when his departing chief of staff John Kelly, former secretary of homeland security, several weeks ago said, we gave up on a concrete border wall months ago, we are serious about steel slats more effective. The president the next day said that we have never changed our mind on concrete wall.

So, I frankly don't expect him to hold to that position for more than a few minutes, let alone an entire day. So I was accepting that steel slats are preferred by the Department of Homeland Security over a concrete wall, and I was not saying that I think that we should be pouring billions of dollars into the a border barrier. We should instead, prioritize real border security investments at the land ports of entry which is where the vast majority of our challenges really are.

BERMAN: The president says it is a national security crisis at the border. Is there?

COONS: I will tell you what is a crisis is 800,000 federal employees, including 40,000 law enforcement officers, corrections officers who will be going without a paycheck. We have a problem with a broken immigration system, and with border security and like every other Democrats in the Senate, I have voted to spend more and to invest more on improving border security.

But frankly, if the president tries to reach out to extend the executive power and try to get our military to build the border wall to declaring this a national security emergency, I think that he is going to face a significant and likely successful challenge in court.

BERMAN: Let me ask you about something that the president has said, that Sarah Sanders has said and now this morning, Vice President Mike Pence continue s to say which is that there is this if not direct or at least implied threat of terrorists crossing the southern border. Listen to the vice president just a few moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists were apprehended attempting to come into the United States through various means last year.

INTERVIEWER: But that is only at the airports and not the borders.

PENCE: Yes, but 3,000 special interest individuals, people with suspicious backgrounds that may suggest terrorist connections were apprehended at our southern border. Last year alone, 17,000 individuals with criminal histories were apprehended at our southern border. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: He is throwing out numbers that are not related. Let me remind you that people on the terrorist watch list are very different than the special interest aliens and the countries they can come from, but what are you hearing the vice president saying there?

COONS: What I am unfortunately hearing from President Trump all of the time and reflected in some of the vice president's misleading use of statistics there is an attempt to create the mistaken impression that we face a flood of terrorists across an open southern border and the Democrats somehow welcome or support that. None of that is accurate.

At land ports of entry, which are the legal points of entry where we have got, you know, the tractor-trailers and cars coming in and out of the United States everyday, we have a problem. We don't have -- we have not invested enough in securing those ports of entry and that is where the vast majority of the folks with some criminal background have passed into the United States.

We should do that. There is bipartisan support for that. The idea that there are thousands of potential or real terrorists flooding across the desert between the United States and Mexico in Arizona for example or Texas is just not accurate. Most of the folks cited in that brief clip who came to the United States who are people of interest came in through airports.

We should work together -- we should reopen the government, and I hope to hear tonight from the president, some empathy for the hundreds of thousands of American families who work for the federal government who are going to be impacted by the shutdown. I hope that I will hear some movement towards recognizing -- I don't expect him to fully capitulate, but I'm expecting him to compromise.

He is the first American president to lead a shutdown of his own government, a shutdown that started while Republicans controlled the House and the Senate. This president has trouble hearing yes, and Democrats are saying, yes, we want to invest in the border security and find a fix to our immigration system, but demanding a border wall and threatening to use his executive powers to do so is no way to accomplish his goals.

BERMAN: There are those who have suggested that one of the reasons that the president is so eager to engage in the fight for so long is that it is going to keep some of the focus off of the Mueller investigation. Do you think there is anything to that?

COONS: That is right. I do. And one of the positive pieces of news out of Washington today, John, is that the Senators Tillis and Graham will join Senator Booker and me in reintroducing our Special Counsel Integrity and Independence Act.

[08:25:08] This is a bill that we worked together on in the last Congress to make it harder for the president to fire without cause special counsel Mueller. We often were told in the last Congress we'd never get a hearing -- we

did. We've never get a vote on committee. It got out of committee with a number of senior Republicans voting for it. But Majority Leader McConnell refused to give it a vote on the floor, even when Senator Flake joined me three times in forcing a floor vote which McConnell objected to.

The biggest criticism we faced was that the House would never take it up and pass it, and now we have a Democratic-controlled House where the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, has said it's his top priority. I think we need to move forward with protecting the Mueller investigation, particularly given what's happening at the Department of Justice with an acting attorney general.

BERMAN: Senator, I just learned moments ago that CNN, NBC and CBS all say they will carry the Democratic are response to the president tonight, and we are waiting on some of the other networks.

Who would you like to see deliver that response on behalf of the Democratic Party?

COONS: You know, I would suggest someone who is a former secretary of homeland security like Jeh Johnson, someone who is a military leader, someone who has nonpartisan, impeccable credentials and is able to speak to what we should invest in that would actually make us safer and how do we amp down the rhetoric, how do we fact-check some of the things put out there recently by the president and vice president and others, and how do we come to a compromised solution here that the average American can respect and understand and embrace that is going to improve our security, that's what Democrats want, and I hope that is the sort of the response we'll hear on behalf of the Democratic Party tonight.

BERMAN: When the vice president makes a suggestion that he did, the terrorists are coming over the border or threatening to, do you think he knows better?

COONS: You know, I can't speak to the president's mind. I think that he certainly has lots of advisers capable of providing him with factual and detailed briefings. One of the things we've heard repeatedly and widely covered in this administration is how he just doesn't read briefing materials of any depth or detail, and he spends a lot more time watching cable TV news than he does reading his intelligence briefings and meeting with his own senior advisers. So, that concerns me greatly, because the job of president is one of the most complex, most difficult, most demanding jobs in the world.

And part of having a government that's full of experienced, seasoned, nonpartisan professionals who can advise him on things like national security is so that he would listen. My hunch is that he is choosing to hear more of what is broadcast on a few news outlets than what is provided for him by the professionals from our intelligence community.

BERMAN: Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, thanks so much for being with us. COONS: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, John.

Kevin Spacey is in court. He was in court yesterday facing a felony and then hours later, he faced police again. Why he was pulled over, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)