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New Day
Rosenstein Leaving Justice Department; Calls for Impeachment; Shutdown Stalemate; Woman in Coma Gives Birth; Standing-up to Stereotypes; Geopolitical Risks in 2019. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired January 09, 2019 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[08:32:35] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking news.
CNN has learned that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who launched and has overseen the Robert Mueller Russia investigation for more than a year, will leave the Justice Department in the coming weeks after a new attorney general is confirmed.
Joining us now is the House majority whip, Congressman James Clyburn. He is the number three Democrat in the House.
Congressman, we're going to talk about the shutdown negotiations and these speeches last night in just a moment. But I do want to get your reaction on the news about Rod Rosenstein. Given that he has been the one overseeing the Russia investigation, does his departure, in your mind, raise the stakes or increase the need to pass some legislation protecting Robert Mueller?
REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D), SOUTH CAROLINA: I really think so.
Thank you so much for having me.
But I do believe that we need to act in the Congress to protect this investigation. We're hearing more and more every day how great this threat to this great democracy is all about. And so we must protect that investigation. We must protect the product. It is already produced. And hopefully continue to go forward to make sure we can root out what it was that we were confronted with two years ago and to make sure that we do not fall victim to that going forward.
So, yes, we hope to protect this investigation and we have to do it legislatively.
BERMAN: You have heard some of your newer members call for impeachment and some using rather colorful language. As a membership of leadership, what is your message to them?
CLYBURN: My message is that we should not get out in front of this investigation. Protect it, let it go forward, get the product that's produced from it and then we will determine whether or not we would act and how we would act. BERMAN: I want to ask about the government shutdown, which is
approaching the longest in our nation's history. The president delivered a speech last night talking about the need in his mind for border barrier funding. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, then gave their response. How close are we to a deal?
CLYBURN: Well, I think we're very close to a deal. I think that when we put up these bills today, we will start, be looking at financial services to do what we can to protect those people who, like I used to do when I was a public school teacher, I always claimed zero every year and looked forward to getting a return on my tax investment. And, of course, we want to protect that.
[08:35:20] So we're going to put up a bill today so that people can get their tax returns. Then we are going to visit agriculture. We are going to visit transportation and HUD. And then we'll look at the resources to open up our (INAUDIBLE). I believe that if we continue with this, we -- and send these bills to the Senate, I think that in the not too distant future the Senate will act and the president will respond in a positive way.
BERMAN: Well, Mitch McConnell has shown no sign that he's willing to take that road yet, nor has the president of the United States. And while the House will take actions on those individual appropriations, that doesn't directly address what the president was talking about last night, which is border security.
There are actually a lot of areas of agreement between what the president said and what I know that Democrats in the House believe. So what do you think is important in terms of border security? What do you want to spend money on in border security?
CLYBURN: Well, I would love to spend money on what I call a smart wall rather than a concrete edifice. We cannot protect the border with concrete. We can protect the border using the technology that's available to us to wall off intrusions by using that technology. And so a smart wall is what we Democrats have been talking about.
BERMAN: So --
CLYBURN: And we will give the president what is required to erect such a smart wall.
BERMAN: What material is the smart wall made out of? Because the president has given up concrete. He's no longer talking concrete. He's using the phrase steel barrier. Can a steel barrier be what you're calling a smart wall?
CLYBURN: No. What I'm calling a smart wall is the technology that we have, drones, using the Internet to effectuate that. Now, there may be places along where we can shore up the fencing that's already been there by doing better fencing, replacing it with these steel slats, whatever you may call them. But there are places where we cannot erect fences without taking people's property. It's kind of interesting to me that my Republican friends have been talking about eminent domain being such an intrusion on people's freedoms. You cannot build a wall without eminent domain, taking people's property, and that's not the way we ought to go.
We talked to the people down there. They do not want a wall. And we ought to accommodate them as we should.
BERMAN: So, to be clear, no new fencing?
CLYBURN: Yes, to replace fencing that needs to be replaced.
BERMAN: OK, but not -- but not new.
CLYBURN: But to add on --
BERMAN: OK.
CLYBURN: Right. No, new but not additional.
BERMAN: Is there a crisis -- so new but not additional, which is interesting --
CLYBURN: Yes.
BERMAN: If that's going to be the Democratic line.
Is there a crisis at the border? The president said there's a humanitarian crisis at the border. Is there?
CLYBURN: Absolutely not. We have a challenge. All our humanitarian issues are challenges for us. But no crisis. Six apprehensions do not make a crisis when you have thousands and thousands of encounters.
BERMAN: The people who delivered the Democratic response last night were the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. They were standing side by side. The performance of both the president and the House speaker and the minority leader made fun of by the late night comics. Did this go, in your mind, as you planned, as you had hoped? Was it the optimal Democratic response?
CLYBURN: Well, you know, people deal with images. They make fun of whatever they would like to make fun of.
I like to focus on substance. And I think the substance of what the Democratic response was all about is very clear and not lost on the American people. I think if you look at the president's performance, as I said to a friend this morning, we saw a reckless president morph into a feckless presidency. And that, to me, is what we saw in the president last night.
BERMAN: Congressman James Clyburn, thanks so much for being with us this morning. Happy New Year.
CLYBURN: Same to you. Thank you.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, John, here is a really sickening story. A woman in a coma for more than a decade has given birth. The disturbing details in a live report, next.
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[08:43:41] CAMEROTA: This is a really disturbing story.
Police in Arizona obtaining DNA from male employees at a nursing home after a woman who has been in a coma for a decade gives birth.
CNN's Sara Sidner is live in Phoenix with all of the details.
Oh, my God, Sara.
SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That is just basically the way to describe this. It is absolutely horrifying. That's the way that Hacienda Health Care officials describe this. The family says they are traumatized and they are trying to get through this.
But there are still a lot of details that people who have patients that are inside of this facility want to know that have not yet been answered. And they want answers and they want them now.
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SIDNER (voice over): A stunning revelation at a health care facility in Phoenix. The San Carlos Apache Tribe said one of its members, a 29- year-old woman, living in a vegetative state for more than a decade, was impregnated and had a baby while in the care of Hacienda Health Care. Legal analysts and attorney Brian Claypool says there is only one explanation for what happened.
BRIAN CLAYPOOL, ATTORNEY: If the woman in Phoenix was in a vegetative state, and she gave birth to a child, then she was raped because she could not have consented to a sexual relation.
[08:45:02] SIDNER: Karina Cesena, whose 22-year-old daughter is also a patient living at the facility, says she and another mother panicked when they heard about the case.
KARINA CESENA, MOTHER OF PATIENT: We were just so scared because who knows what would happen, if it was a staff member, if it was a family member, if it was a stranger. We have no idea.
SIDNER: Cesena's daughter is unable to walk and barely able to talk after suffering brain damage, leaving her extremely vulnerable.
SIDNER (on camera): What did you decide to do personally to make sure your daughter, who's inside, is safe?
CESENA: Well, I stay here 24/7 now to make sure that she's in a safe environment as well and just move forward because trust has been severely broken.
SIDNER (voice over): As for the company's CEO, Bill Timmons, he resigned earlier this week. And Hacienda Health Care's board sent out a statement calling what happened an absolutely horrifying situation and an unprecedented case, without giving specifics of the case. CNN witnessed several police cruisers stationed at the facility during
the day and Phoenix Police say they are investigating but have offered no additional details about the case.
Then, on Tuesday, Hacienda Health Care sent this statement saying police served a search warrant to obtain DNA from male staffers. The company said it welcomed the development in the investigation, but Cesena says the health care company didn't even inform the families of other patients at the facility about the incident until about five days after the birth and only after local news reports exposed the situation.
CESENA: I think that there's an underlying blanket somewhere that they're trying to hide under, you know, instead of being transparent. They're not being very transparent at all.
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SIDNER: Again, there are so many questions that people want answers to.
We did get a chance to hear from the attorney for the family. The family is not talking at this time, too traumatized to talk. However, they said that a baby boy was born and that that boy was born into a loving family and will be cared for.
John. Alisyn.
BERMAN: I don't know what to say.
CAMEROTA: There's nothing we can say.
Sara, thank you very much for the reporting.
SIDNER: Yes.
BERMAN: Simply horrifying.
All right, so what are the biggest risks facing the world as 2019 begins? The new report you will want to see.
CAMEROTA: But first, Josh Blue is a comedian with cerebral palsy who's using humor to break down stereotypes. His story in today's "Turning Points."
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JOSH BLUE, COMEDIAN: There's no better feeling in the world than making a room full of strangers laugh and being heard. And as a disabled person, I feel like a lot of times we don't get to be heard. I'm a comedian that happens to have cerebral palsy.
So I do have some CDs and DVDs and t-shirts. And I also have some handicap placards.
The way that my body works, people are always going to stare at me. I was like, well, then I might as well give them something to stare at.
Why can't Spiderman have cerebral palsy?
The thing about my comedy and my life is that I'm so comfortable with my disability, that you don't have a right to be uncomfortable. You leave my show with a different perspective of disability. I've done over probably 2,000 shows all over the world.
Do you have some type of brain injury? I was like, does it show?
Stand-up is my first love. I would really love to help bring disability into the limelight and keep breaking down the stereotypes of what disability is.
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[08:52:32] BERMAN: So what are the biggest geopolitical risks facing the world in 2019? A new report is out and it brings some stark warnings for the United States in the coming year.
Let's discuss with one of the authors of the report, Ian Bremmer. He is the president of the Eurasia Group.
It is your job to scare us. No.
CAMEROTA: In the nicest of ways.
BERMAN: In the nicest --
IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: In the nicest of ways.
BERMAN: In the nicest.
Look, U.S. negotiators have been meeting with Chinese negotiators trying to work out some kind of a trade deal is (INAUDIBLE) politically. But the president needs to get something out of this. Where do you see this headed?
BREMMER: No question, the U.S. markets down, what, 10 percent, 15 percent from the peak. Chinese markets down about 25 percent. Neither want to see this blow up.
I would be stunned if at the March 1st deadline we moved to 25 percent tariffs across the board on Chinese goods. At the very least, I think we'll have some kind of overarching framework agreement between the two sides that says we can keep talking and pushes off a trade war.
But to be clear, that doesn't mean that the Chinese are actually going to stop stealing our intellectual property, doesn't mean that their markets are suddenly going to be open to FaceBook or Google, it doesn't mean we're suddenly going to have a decent way to move forward on 5G Huawei. It's compartmentalized, but U.S.-China relations over all are actually heading in a tough direction.
CAMEROTA: So, for 2019, you see U.S.-China relations heading downward?
BREMMER: No trade war. The markets aren't going to be disastrous over this. But, overall, the world's two largest economies are heading towards greater confrontation over time.
The issue will be the reaction to the next major crisis. So when there's a downturn. Like after 2008, everyone worked together. After 9/11, everyone worked together. After the next crisis in this geopolitical environment, we're going to be looking for folks to blame inside our country and outside.
BERMAN: Let's shift gears to Syria right now and the U.S. policy.
BREMMER: Yes.
BERMAN: What is the U.S. policy? That's the open question. The president initially said U.S. troops would get out now, then within 30 days, then four months.
BREMMER: Yes.
BERMAN: Now with conditions. How does the world see the split between the president and his national security adviser?
BREMMER: The world sees the United States as having very little interest in the outcome in Syria. You've got 500,000, 600,000 dead. You've got five million refugees, 11 million displaced. That happened under Obama.
Let's be clear, the Turks, the Russians and the Iranians are the ones that care what happens on the ground in Iran. That's why the Kurds are getting squeezed in Syria -- excuse me, that's why the Kurds are getting squeezed in Syria. That's why Assad has won the war. There is no question that the way that Trump has handled talk of a pullout has been a farce. And that clearly unnerves our allies. It clearly agitates the Turks. And if we suddenly pull out 2,000 special forces, we're not going to have eyes and ears on the ground of what Hezbollah is doing, what the radicals are doing. So we will lose influence.
[08:55:05] But let's not kid ourselves that the Americans were actually getting anything done seriously in Syria. We were not. We've abdicated that conflict.
CAMEROTA: OK, the situation at the southern border of the U.S. Is it, in your assessment, a crisis?
BREMMER: Let's be clear about this, Trump's speech last night was by far his best Oval Office speech of his presidency.
CAMEROTA: It's the only one.
BREMMER: Yes.
CAMEROTA: But, seriously, in your assessment, I mean he calls it -- he might declare it a national emergency. He calls it a crisis. You look at crises around the world. What's going on at the southern border? BREMMER: The number of migrants that we have actually detained at the
border in the last several years is at its lowest levels since the 1970s. So, no, it's not a crisis. It is a bit of a crisis for Trump that the thing -- the single thing he was talking most about for his constituents as he was trying to get elected, building the wall, is something he's incapable of actually doing.
Having said that, Trump has shown himself as more capable of switching completely on a dime on almost every issue, saying black is white and back again. Why can't he do that on the wall? Like, I actually don't understand why --
CAMEROTA: Why can't he just give up now?
BREMMER: Not give up but just pretend he's winning on something else. They give him $5 billion on border security and it will have some wall-like features. I mean, you know, that's the kind of thing that Trump can sell, right?
BERMAN: On this subject, you wrote on Twitter, Trump's incompetence continues to be his most defining trait. What did you mean by that?
BREMMER: What I mean by that is sort of all of the people that think we're about to become an authoritarian state in the United States, for all the people that say, oh my God, Trump is so corrupt and this really matters and it's undermining the fabric of America, two years in, the single thing we should take away from the Trump administration that's most important is how strong American political institutions are. It's not Hungary. It's not Turkey. It's not Russia. And how little Trump has been able to actually implement on the really more radical things that he's said. And even the things he has done, pulled out of the Iranian deal. The Iranian deal is still standing and they're trying to run out the clock, right? Pulled out of TPP. The rest of the country has all decided to move and do their Trans-Pacific Partnership. Pull out of the Paris Accord? Most American governors, mayors, corporations are sticking with it and the accord's still in place. I think that's important.
BERMAN: Ian Bremmer, you scared us a little, but also reassured us a little.
CAMEROTA: As always.
BERMAN: He brings it all.
BREMMER: I do. Happy New Year's.
CAMEROTA: Thank you. You too.
BERMAN: Thanks. Happy New Year to you.
Deputy Attorney general rod Rosenstein set to leave the justice department soon. What does that mean for the Mueller probe? That's next.
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