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New Day
May Faces Vote; Trump Concealed Talks with Putin; Trump Discussed NATO Pullout; Snowstorm Aims At Midwest and Northeast; Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired January 15, 2019 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[06:34:02] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It is judgment day for British Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal. She faces the prospect of a crushing defeat and a possible no confidence vote if her plan fails.
CNN's Bianca Nobilo live outside Parliament with the very latest.
Bianca.
BIANCA NOBILO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you say, John, it is decision day for Brexit, the biggest political crisis to face the UK since World War II. It's divided the country as much as it's divided the politics. From the protesters you might be able to see behind me, it's reverberated to every corner of the U.K. And it split the ruling conservatory party apart that's lost three prime ministers over the issue of Europe and could yet lose a fourth in Theresa May. That's because today Parliament votes on the prime minister's unpopular Brexit deal. So she's asked lawmakers to think about how history will remember them.
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THERESA MAY, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: People will look at the decision of this house tomorrow and ask, did we deliver on the country's vote to leave the European Union? Did we safe guard our economy, our security and our union or did we let the British people down?
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[06:35:20] NOBILO: The prime minister has warned lawmakers that if they don't back her compromised deal, they could risk a chaotic, crash-out Brexit or even no Brexit at all. And it's quite startling to think that it's about three years since the initial referendum and almost two months until Brexit and we still don't know what shape Brexit will take or if there will even be a Brexit at all.
Alisyn.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Bianca, thank you very much. The soundtrack behind you also makes it very dramatic. Thank you for that report. So here at home, President Trump's Inaugural Committee is facing new scrutiny. A report in "The New York Times" details how they spent nearly $100 million on the inauguration. That is twice as much or more than Barack Obama and George W. Bush raised for their inaugurations. According to "The New York Times," spending by the Trump Inaugural Committee included $10,000 for makeup, another $30,000 in per diem payments to dozens of contract workers, in addition to their fully covered hotel rooms, room service orders, plane tickets, taxi rides, even some laundry drop-off. The report also says $1.1 (ph) million was spent at the president's hotel in Washington. Disclosure of these spending details comes as federal prosecutors are investigating the Trump Inaugural Committee over the donations that funded all of this.
BERMAN: Yes, Greg Jenkins, who ran George W. Bush's second inaugural, told me, he can't figure this out because Trump had a smaller staff running his inauguration and fewer events and spent twice as much money.
CAMEROTA: How do you get to $100 million?
BERMAN: Very carefully.
CAMEROTA: Very quickly, apparently.
BERMAN: Practice, practice, practice.
CAMEROTA: Exactly. That's right.
BERMAN: All right, the suspect in the Jayme Closs kidnapping case told investigators he tried to abduct the 13-year-old girl twice before actually going through with his plan. According to a criminal complaint, Jake Patterson first noticed Jayme boarding a school bus and did not know her name until he murdered her parents and took her captive for 88 days. Jayme escaped last week. She tells investigators Patterson lost -- shot her mother right in front of her as they tried to hide from him in a bathtub. Closs says she was forced to stay under the suspect's bed and he threatened her during much of her time in captivity. Officials have now released the 911 call from the neighbors who took Jayme in after she managed to escape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DISPATCHER: Douglas County 911.
CALLER: Hi, I have a young lady at my house right now and she has said her name is Jayme Closs.
DISPATCHER: OK, have you seen her photo, ma'am?
CALLER: Yes. It is her. I a hundred percent think it is her.
DISPATCHER: OK.
CALLER: A hundred percent.
So, we're kind of scared because he might come. DISPATCHER: Yep.
CALLER: So, if the cops could get here soon we would --
DISPATCHER: I have -- I have many deputies headed that way. I'm going to keep you on the line.
CALLER: OK.
DISPATCHER: And she said, I am Jayme Closs?
CALLER: Yes. She said he killed my parents. I want to go home. Help me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Oh, the calm of that dispatch officer, so impressive. Patterson --
CAMEROTA: And the neighbor.
BERMAN: Complete -- I had a chance to talk to the neighbor. She was incredibly poised through this whole thing. Patterson is charged with intentional homicide, kidnapping and armed burglary. His bail set at $5 million.
CAMEROTA: Well, obviously, this is just hideous on every single level. And it is so rare, you know, for a strange abduction. OK, that's the -- thankfully extremely rare. But this is one of these cases where he saw her. He didn't know her. I mean according to the court documents, he targeted her and in the most heinous way got rid of any of the obstacles for getting her.
BERMAN: Incredibly heinous. And, again, you've covered so many of these and you point out, almost always there's some kind of connection.
CAMEROTA: Always there's a connection. Often it's family.
BERMAN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: But in this one --
BERMAN: Nope.
CAMEROTA: Much like Elizabeth Smart, there wasn't.
So we will have an FBI profiler coming up to tell us about what it takes for that suspect to be able to do what he did.
Also, there's a new report that says White House aides are becoming increasingly concerned that President Trump will pull out of NATO. That also happens to be Vladimir Putin's number one goal. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [06:43:17] BERMAN: We are learning more about the extraordinary lengths President Trump went to, to keep details of his conversations with Vladimir Putin away from his own administration, even going as far as to confiscate interpreter's notes.
Joining us now is the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Thomas Pickering.
Ambassador, thank you so much for being with us.
Have you ever heard of a president confiscating the notes from an interpreter from a bilateral meeting.
THOMAS PICKERING, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA: No, I haven't, John, thank you.
BERMAN: It's a pretty easy answer. And you've been in service for a long, long time. What's the impact or what message does it send when a president won't brief his own staff about what happened in a meeting and goes as far as to confiscate the notes?
PICKERING: Well, it sends two messages. The general message that the government doesn't know what went on, which is something the government needs to know in order to act in intelligent and careful ways. And the second is that the gentleman may be hiding something that he doesn't want anybody else to know. But he puts himself very much in the hands of President Putin and President Putin's interpreter for whatever that may be and that in itself is perhaps a third egregious mistake here.
BERMAN: Have you thought about what he might be hiding?
PICKERING: One can only speculate at this stage. And I'd rather not speculate because, in fact, it is not very helpful to do that.
But one can see a long series of events here. There was a story this morning about, in fact, reviving the deep concern the president seems to have about NATO and wanting to get out of NATO, which would be surely a huge victory for Mr. Putin. There's the egregious Helsinki press conference we all know about and a number of other things. These all add up to some, I think, source of concern. Do they add up to distinctive and clear proof? No.
[06:45:03] We go back in some ways here, even as far as the Steele report, which is essentially not confirmed either, but which is very typically Russian, the ability to seek to find what the Russians call kompromat, information that way -- one way or another may influence people. So there is clearly again a new need, I think in many ways, to wait for the Mueller report and to count on former Director Mueller and his enormous capabilities and his very careful preparation of material, obviously, to give us the answer to this kind of question, is the president in some way compromised? Is there collusion with the Russians or perhaps conspiracy is the legal word. Were there influences in the Russian election one way or another, Manafort and others fed into? That whole series of things that we have here all laid out before us, all-in-one way or another subject to conclusions but not, I think, informed conclusions --
BERMAN: Right.
PICKERING: Until we see what this apparently very careful, very capable investigation will show.
BERMAN: Now, you don't want to speculate, and I understand that completely. We no longer have to speculate on what the president has discussed in terms of NATO. You alluded to this "New York Times" report overnight. And it is a big one. It says that senior administration officials told "The New York Times" that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from NATO. He wanted to withdraw. That is different than wanting Europeans to pay their fair share, ambassador. That is threatening to withdraw from one of the pillars of security over the last 75 years.
PICKERING: I couldn't agree with you more, John. That conclusion is a very serious one. NATO has been a stalwart defense arrangement. It brings us together with our European allies on a basis that from the very beginning was developed to counter Stalin's obviously egregious occupation, if we can put it this way, of eastern Europe after the second world war and the threat of long standing red army presence in eastern Europe gave to the western European partners. And so it has been the basis of many ways of a security stability for 70 years that would be in one way or another totally destroyed by U.S. withdrawal. And we need to contemplate that very, very carefully because it's one of a number of things that is going on apparently in the president's mind.
BERMAN: Right.
PICKERING: The president's mind seems to work on the basis -- I've been talked out of it today, but in a month I'll bring it up again and worry it and see if I can't put it through in my own way.
BERMAN: Right and that there --
PICKERING: We saw some of that with the Iran agreement, for example, where that seemed to be saved off for a while and then certain people disappeared. Jim Mattis is gone. I think we ought to worry about this a great deal.
BERMAN: And, of course, it is particularly important on these days when we're talking about allegations of Russian influence on the president, no one wants the U.S. withdrawal from NATO more than Vladimir Putin, correct?
PICKERING: Oh, I -- I couldn't agree with you more. I think that for a long time he's been deeply concerned. He -- and the Russians have been concerned because they've turned NATO into an organization that surrounds and helps to compress, if I could put it this way, Russia and its efforts to expand its sphere of influence, something that Mr. Putin is very attached to because it relates, in part, to his survivor as leader of Russia.
BERMAN: Ambassador Thomas Pickering, always a pleasure to speak with you. Thanks so much for getting up this morning.
PICKERING: Thank you. Thank you, John.
BERMAN: Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: All right, not one but two snowstorms are taking aim at large parts of the U.S. in the coming days. What you need to know, next.
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[06:52:58] CAMEROTA: Apparently a lot of snow is set to deliver a one- two punch to the Midwest and the Northeast this week. You heard me, John Berman, this is happening.
CNN meteorologist Chad Myers has our forecast.
Am I wrong, Chad?
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: No, you are right. Not -- maybe not so much for New York City right now. We'll have to see if the forecast changes. But upstate New England, even Ohio, Indiana, feet of snow.
This is what it looks like right now. Not a lot of snow still on the ground. Yes, Ontario, Quebec, you do have a lot. Also New England still with quite a bit of snow.
This weather is brought to you by Zantac, eat your way, treat your way.
So, wait, there's more. Here it comes. A couple of storm systems, one that will make some light snow on Friday, but the big one will be later in the weekend. And this is a monster storm that will put out big-time snow on the north side of the low. It just depends where that low goes, north or south, to seeing what you're going to see for snowfall.
John, for you, Sunday may be one of the coldest days in Kansas City of the year. Morning low somewhere around 6 below. Why do I say that? Because when it's -- you know what they say, John. They say, you know, it's going to be a cold day in Kansas City when -- and you can fill in the rest. I know you --
BERMAN: There's the AFC championship game there. Tom Brady will be there. He will have cold hands but always --
CAMEROTA: A warm heart.
BERMAN: A warm heart.
CAMEROTA: Oh, my God.
BERMAN: Chad Myers --
MYERS: Here's your snow for the next couple of days. It is going to be deep in some spots. BERMAN: Excellent, Chad. Appreciate it. Thanks very much.
CAMEROTA: Wow.
MYERS: You're welcome.
CAMEROTA: Is there no end?
BERMAN: There is no end.
CAMEROTA: No.
BERMAN: The comics taking on the bombshell report that the FBI opened an inquiry into whether President Trump had worked for Russia. These are your late night laughs.
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JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON": Back in 2017, the FBI started investigating whether Trump was secretly working for Russia. When asked if Trump ever worked for him, Vladimir Putin said, no, he was more like unpaid intern.
SETH MEYERS, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": Wow, the FBI was investigating whether Trump was working for the Russians. I mean what tipped them off? Was it Trump's secret meeting with the Russians in the Oval Office, his son's secret meeting with Russians at Trump Tower, his lawyer's secret deal to build Trump Tower Moscow, Jeff Sessions' secret meeting with the Russian ambassador, Jared Kushner's secret back channel with the Kremlin, Michael Flynn's secret back channel with the Kremlin, Prince's secret back channel with the Kremlin, Paul Manafort sharing secret polling data with the Russians, his foreign policy advisor's secret meeting with the Russians, the Russian hackers, who helped Trump win, Trump asking the Russian hackers to help him win, or Vladimir Putin's smile every time he sees Trump?
[06:55:16] STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": What did the FBI find? We don't know yet because just days after they opened the comrade trumpski investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over the inquiry. That must be an interesting first day at work. OK, Bob, here's the washroom, down there's the spry closet, over there's the coffee maker, the president might be a spy, good luck, bye!
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CAMEROTA: Why is Seth Meyers able to sum it up in 20 seconds in a way that has taken us a year and half.
BERMAN: Yes, they're always wrapping us. We've got to get Seth in here to make sure we make it in time.
CAMEROTA: Let's do that.
A high stakes hearing for President Trump's attorney general nominee with major implications for the Russia investigation. Does he support the Mueller probe or not?
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