Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Trump Offers DACA Deal to End Shutdown, Dems Reject Plan; Pence Slammed for Quoting King to Defend Wall Proposal; Giuliani: 'So What' If Trump & Cohen Talked about Testimony. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 21, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The starting point of this negotiation ought to be reopening the government.

[05:59:47] MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What the president articulated was a good-faith, common-sense compromise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are compromising our own security. I worry that there will be a breaking point.

RUDY GIULIANI, LAWYER FOR DONALD TRUMP: As far as I know, President Trump did not have discussions with him, certainly had no discussions with him in which he told him or counseled him to lie.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), CHAIRMAN INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: If the president knew that a witness was going to lie but played no role in urging him, it certainly would be unethical.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to call in these witnesses and get to the bottom of all these allegations.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Monday, January 21, 6 a.m. here in New York. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill joins thus morning.

Isn't it a great morning?

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: It's such a great morning for John Berman, because in case you haven't heard, John, do you want to tell the world?

BERMAN: The Patriots are going to the Super Bowl, which only happens, like, once every year.

HILL: Amazing.

BERMAN: So it's only one or two days a year I can say the Patriots are going to the Super Bowl.

HILL: We've been in a little bit of a drought for the last, you know, 11 months.

BERMAN: Finally, they'll get the respect that they deserve. Thank you all for being with us on this special morning.

New this morning, the president very much aware he's losing the public opinion war on this one. That is a quote in "The Washington Post" as the country wakes up to day 31 of the government shutdown, and 800,000 workers start a week where they will miss their second paycheck.

Now, the president who initially announced he would own this shutdown does have a new proposal to end it. Temporarily extend protections for young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children in exchange for $5.7 billion to build his permanent border wall.

Now, the plan doesn't seem to have enough takers. Democrats are sticking by their demand that no border negotiations will happen until the government reopens while some conservatives accuse the president of embracing amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally.

HILL: As the nation today honors the work and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., there's growing outrage over Vice President Mike Pence's use of the civil rights leader's "I have a dream" speech to defend the president's border wall proposal. The NAACP calling it an insult Dr. King's legacy.

And the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, telling CNN's Jake Tapper it's, quote, "possible" the president spoke to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, ahead of his congressional testimony.

His comments, of course, come after a now-disputed report which claims President Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress about a Trump Tower project in Moscow. Cohen, of course, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project. He's now a convicted felon.

Giuliani went on to say if the pair did talk it's, quote, "perfectly normal."

We have it all covered for you this morning. Let's start with CNN's Lauren Fox, who is live on Capitol Hill.

Lauren, good morning.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Erica.

The president, of course, trying to mix up the shutdown over the weekend, saying on Saturday that he wanted $5.7 billion for that border wall; and he was willing to make a deal. He would extend DACA protections for three years, as well as protections for temporary protected status immigrants.

Now, Democrats saying it's a nonstarter. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, she rejected it immediately. And the top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, had had this to say about the Democrats' -- about the president's plan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), MINORITY LEADER: It was the president who singlehandedly took away DACA and TPS protections in the first place. Offering some of those protections that he took away back, in exchange for the wall, is not a compromise but hostage taking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: Now, what's going to change today is that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this week will bring a Bill to the floor that's the president's proposal. He's trying to put pressure on Democrats to make a deal.

But there doesn't appear to be enough Democratic votes. A couple of red-state Democrats have said that perhaps this is something to shake up the shutdown. Perhaps this is a way to get Democrats and Republicans in the same room negotiating.

But you know, from lawmakers last week, when I was talking to them, they were devastated to be going home without a resolution to this shutdown. It doesn't appear we have one yet, because until the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the president get on the same page, this shutdown won't end anytime soon -- Erica and John.

BERMAN: All right. Lauren Fox for us on Capitol Hill.

Joining us now, Joe Lockhart, former Clinton White House press secretary; Errol Louis, political anchor at Spectrum News; and Charlie Dent, former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania.

Gentlemen, thanks so much for being with us. Don't we all agree it's a great day? We can all agree it's a great day? Everyone's going to hate me so much by the end of this show.

HILL: Impossible to hate John Berman, just for the record.

BERMAN: I'm going to make it happen, one way or the other.

All right, Errol. Aside from the fact that the Patriots going to the Super Bowl, we are waking up this morning in a different place than we were on Friday. The president, whether you like the proposal or not, has a proposal on the table. Does that shake things up?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, that's step one of a multistep process. We've got to also see whether or not the Senate majority leader, who has said he's essentially going to be the legislative director for the White House, if he wants to actually convert this into something that has any shade of a chance of passing the Senate then, yes, we could actually on the road towards something.

But the reality is, I think we've already passed the deadline. We'll know for sure by tomorrow for federal workers to get their next paycheck. So, you know, the crisis deepens, regardless of whether or not they

actually arrived at an agreement, and it doesn't seem like they're going to. I mean, frankly what we've heard from Mitch McConnell so far has been really nothing publicly. He has not been a part of the public discussion. And without that, it's hard to see how we get out of this.

HILL: It's also fascinating and looking at this, Charlie Dent, you say that Democrats really shouldn't feel pressured at this point to necessarily step forward and work with this proposal. Why?

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, the Democrats don't feel pressured, because the president owns the shutdown. It's his shutdown. Everybody knows it.

But I think what the president did, he did lay down a marker. Now this Bill, McConnell's going to run this proposal. It will not pass the Senate.

But if I were the Democrats, I wouldn't ignore it. I would turn around and say, "OK, well, we offered 1 -- an additional $1 billion" -- Democrats offered an additional $1 billion -- "for border security. Why don't they take and add a permanent resolution to TPS and DACA, put it in there and send it over there to the Senate while they're reopening the government? I mean, because McConnell is not going to be able to pass that proposal from the president, so why don't the Democrats pass something that they like?

BERMAN: So Joe, I know for Democrats and for you, this deal isn't good enough. This proposal isn't good enough. But is there a deal that would be good enough here? Does this show that there is some movement from the president?

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, I'm not sure. There's several reasons why this deal isn't good enough. One is, you know, it's a little bit like Lucy and the football. A deal like this has been on the table three different times, and the Democrats come forward and say, "OK, we'll do it," and then President Trump pulls the football away, playing the Lucy part.

The second thing is, it's basically the same version of something that was offered before the election. And two important things have happened since the election: the election. Trump made it about the wall. Democrats won a landslide in the popular vote in the election.

The second is the Supreme Court's not going to take up DACA. So there's a whole year, at least, before this becomes a pressing issue. And, you know, Trump's reaction is "I'll deport 11 million people," which, you know, is ridiculous.

So I think the Democrats will stand firm on we have comprehensive immigration. That's the price now for this. But comprehensive immigration is not going to get done overnight, so open the government and then we'll start that conversation.

BERMAN: It's also more, in your mind, than three years. The idea that it's a temporary extension.

LOCKHART: Absolutely. Yes.

BERMAN: It means three years from now you're in the same boat.

LOCKHART: Exactly.

HILL: Right. And that they should push more for a permanent solution. Which has been the pushback, obviously.

You know, the other part of this, too, is that the president, not only is this a nonstarter for Democrats, as we know, which we touched on Errol, but the fact that this is also not sitting all that well with all Republicans, specifically on the far right. That's not helping the president, who going into this proposal, as we know from this reporting in "The Washington Post" and others, has been looking at the numbers and realizes that he's not looking good in this.

LOUIS: That's right. And look, every time you seem to get to a point -- and, again, the deal that came out over the weekend is a reduced version of something that was on the table that Schumer had negotiated a year ago. And they were going to give him $20 billion to actually build a wall. It was a much better deal back then.

BERMAN: The whole thing.

LOUIS: Yes, that was rejected out of hand. So now he's trying to sort of crawl back and maybe get some sort of face-saving piece of something, some steel poles or something. But that's not -- that's not kind of where we are right now.

You know, there has been an election. There is a country that's in a different mood. There are pending Supreme Court cases, if they're going to take up any of this stuff that really sort of changes a lot of this stuff. And so the president has to sort of find his own way out of this. It's not incumbent on the Democrats to help him rescue himself from his own sort of previous rejections.

BERMAN: I don't know. Charlie, if you can help us out here. Ann Coulter, who was been pressuring the president from the right on all of this, she wrote over the weekend, "Trump proposes amnesty. We voted for Trump and got Jeb," making it look like he's getting pressure from the right that he's offering too much.

I don't know whether I buy it or not. I don't know whether she's being disingenuous or not. Do you think the president really does feel pressure from the right on this proposal of his? Are there really people out there who are going to stop backing him, because he's proposing a three-year extension in protections?

DENT: No. I don't think the president should be paying any attention to Ann Coulter and these others on the fringe who are speaking to a very small audience.

The bigger problem for the president is he does not have fixed policy positions, and those positions shift. And so Democrats are in a position where they don't trust the president to make a deal. And Republicans can't rely on the president to honor a deal. So if they pass something and send it to him, will he sign it?

I mean, we've seen this before. Just before Christmas, obviously, McConnell he sent the continued resolution over and, you know, passed it only to have the president pull the rug out from under him.

I was on the Appropriations Committee. I saw this when we did the omnibus over a year ago, around a year ago, and the president was going to threaten to thwart a Bill that he had negotiator -- his people had negotiated on his behalf. No one is empowered to negotiate on behalf of this president. That is a big problem here.

[06:10:10] So the president needs to tune out Ann Coulter. She's -- there's never going to be a deal good enough for her. She has no interest in reopening the government. You know, she's trying to get ratings, and she's trying to get, you know, clicks and eyeballs. She's not trying to run the government. The president has got to understand what his role is, which is to run the government and serve the American people.

HILL: It's also fascinating, which touches on one of your points there in this reporting in the "Washington Post" from Phil Rucker and Josh Dawsey, pointing out, "The shutdown has accentuated several fundamental traits of Trump's presidency. His apparent shortage of empathy." It goes on to talk about his tendency for revenge and seemingly misunderstanding of Democrats' motivation.

Joe, in a nonpartisan way, and I mean this very seriously, if you're looking at this through the lens of you're in the White House, you're helping with the messaging here. You're helping the president with this communication before he goes out on Saturday, to not talk about the furloughed workers -- understandably, you don't want to own that too much, because you said you would own the shutdown, even if you don't want to be any more.

But to not address the 800,000 workers who are not getting paid, that would seem to me like, yes, an apparent short ang of empathy and also some questionable messaging.

LOCKHART: Yes, and in fact, it's a mistake not having empathy but it's a political mistake, because that's what could have put the Democrats on the defensive. If Trump made a big deal about "We need to get these people back to work there, living paycheck to paycheck, you know, we've got lines of federal workers, you know, lining up for free food in Washington, something you never thought you'd see in this country, but it just doesn't exist there.

And, you know, I don't know how you create it. I don't think he was sincere to his staff. He's got people on his staff who could tell him this. But I think, on these issues, you know, Stephen Miller takes -- takes the lead. And, you know, on the issue of Ann Coulter, you say, you know, on White House messaging, that's a gift to President Trump.

BERMAN: When she says that. LOCKHART: When she says that. And, you know, it's -- he doesn't have

to go full triangulation of Bill Clinton. But, you know, what my former boss used to tell me is you know you're doing something right when both sides are criticizing you. You know, the far right and the far left.

He's got a place here, but he seems so intent on either pleasing his base or so afraid of disappointing his base, and that is a characteristic for the whole presidency. That he only seems to govern for the people who voted for him.

BERMAN: The empathy thing is fascinating to me also in that. That's the wildcard here, if you look at the negotiation, the difference between this shutdown and other shutdowns is that you have a president who is not perceived as having empathy for the people who are suffering from the shutdown, and that's having an impact as we reach day 31.

Errol, another development over the weekend, Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States went out and talked about Martin Luther King. Today is, you know, Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Day, remembrance. And he compared the shutdown or tried to use Dr. King to argue that the president was handling this correctly. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PENCE: But one of my favorite quotes from Dr. King was "Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy." You think of how he changed America. He inspired to us change through the legislative process to become a more perfect union. That's exactly what President Trump is calling on the Congress to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: The NAACP came out very quickly and said, "This is an insult to Dr. King's legacy."

LOUIS: Well, he got the history all muddled and wrong. Right? Frankly, this was not about -- marching in the streets was not about legislative change, right? It was in order to sort of maybe provoke legislative change, but the entire point of the civil rights movement was that there were laws on the books. There were Supreme Court rulings on the books, including Brown versus Board of Education that were not being honored in hundreds of counties all around the country.

And people took it into their own hands and put their bodies on the line and their lives on the line in the case of Dr. King. So something completely different.

Mike Pence should probably, you know, go back and study history a little bit more and maybe stay away from this particular issue, because it's -- it doesn't work for the White House. It doesn't -- it just doesn't work for the White House.

BERMAN: Why? LOUIS: Well, first of all, they're screwing the legislation. They

can't get a bill passed, right? They couldn't get a bill passed when they had complete control of the government.

So the notion that, you know, in the spirit of Dr. King, what we're going to do is, what? Shut down the government, fail to persuade our own party to pass basic legislation? Harm a bunch of workers who, at least in the D.C. area, are disproportionately people of color, the very kind of folks that Martin Luther King was trying to work on behalf of, it's just -- it's just wrong.

I mean, you can claim a lot of different things for this administration. They have supporters. They have issues. They won an election. You don't get to claim Dr. King.

BERMAN: All right. Errol, Congressman, Joe, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

[06:15:05] Rudy Giuliani's defense of President Trump on television continues to raise more questions than provide answers. Now he says it's perfectly normal that the president may have spoken to a key witness about upcoming testimony. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani leaving open the possibility that the president spoke with Michael Cohen about his testimony before Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, LAWYER FOR DONALD TRUMP: As far as I know, President Trump did not have discussions with him. Certainly had no discussions with him in which he told him or counseled him to lie. If -- if he had any discussions with him, they'd be about the version of the events that Michael Cohen gave them, which they all believe was true.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: But you just acknowledged that it's possible that President Trump talked to Michael Cohen about his testimony?

GIULIANI: Which would be perfectly normal. Which the president believed was true.

TAPPER: So it's possible that that happened, that President Trump talked to Michael Cohen about his testimony?

GIULIANI: I don't know if it happened or didn't happen. And it might be attorney/client privilege if it happened, where I can't acknowledge it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: We're joined now by John Avlon, Joe Lockhart and Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor.

Shan, I want to start with you on this one, because the way -- the way that Rudy Giuliani lays it out there, even if he did, so what if he talked to him? It would be perfectly normal. If there was no guidance given by the president, if it was simply a conversation, not one in which he, in any way, directed Michael Cohen to say anything, is it a big deal?

[06:20:04] SHAN WU, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's a really big deal. It's quite preposterous, actually, that any criminal defense attorney would allow that conversation in those circumstances. That's rules No. 1 through 20 that you don't want to have your client commit obstruction of justice.

And for him to talk to Cohen about that upcoming congressional testimony, Cohen's under investigation. Obviously, his office has been raided. It makes no sense; to say that's perfectly normal is just simply silly. It's spinning, not lawyering.

BERMAN: Yes, I mean, it is not normal at all for someone to speak to a witness about their testimony beforehand, particularly the president of the United States, who may be connected to that investigation.

John Avlon, first of all happy birthday.

HILL: Yes, happy belated.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, thank you.

I got you another trip to the Super Bowl for the New England Patriots.

AVLON: I -- I --

BERMAN: You didn't want that. I got you that before.

AVLON: I know. I wanted the Saints/Chiefs. I've got to say.

BERMAN: All right, all right. Let's -- Buzzfeed happened on Friday.

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: I think we have to put that aside and almost pretend as if it didn't happen. It's the season of "Dallas" that doesn't exist.

However, a lot has happened since then, that if it happened in a vacuum would be fascinating. That claim that Giuliani made to Jake that would be perfectly normal for the president to speak to Michael Cohen before the testimony. That's astounding.

Also, the claim that Giuliani made over the weekend, not just to Jake, not just to "The New York Times" but also to Chuck Todd that the president and Michael Cohen talked about the Trump Tower deal in Moscow all the way until the end of the election. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GIULIANI: Well, it's our understanding that it -- that they went on throughout 2016. Weren't a lot of them, but there were conversations. Can't be sure of the exact dates, but the president can remember having conversations with him about it.

CHUCK TODD, HOST, NBC'S "MEET THE PRESS": Throughout 2016?

GIULIANI: Yes, probably up to could be up to as far as October, November. Our answers cover until the election. So anytime during that period, they could have talked about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Probably until October, November. He makes it crystal-clear in writing to "The New York Times" later, the -- this goal post moving is really, really interesting; and don't forget the president has said all along, "I have no deals with Russia."

AVLON: Right. This is, I think, in some ways the more significant of the slipups over the weekend, because it not only moves the goal protest from June, July, but through the election.

Why does it matter? Well, because the president the entire time is then-candidate Trump notably asking Russia to intercede on his behalf with the e-mails. Refusing to criticize Vladimir Putin, criticizing sanctions.

This is notable. And Rudy had a cogent defense that he offered from a businessman's standpoint. Look, if I have a request, if I have a proposal out, that's not business. Right? That's not actually a transaction yet.

That is true and makes sense except if you're running for president of the United States. In the context of running for president, it's insane to be having an active deal with a foreign power who is hostile, who you're refusing to criticize. So that, to me, is a huge deal that came out yesterday.

HILL: There's also, too, I mean, just to continue looking at this, there's also the number of times that it was denied. Right? Which we touched on. But that, too, it's not the first time that something has come up that the president may have denied repeatedly, but especially when we're talking about something like this, Joe, you can't ignore that.

LOCKHART: No, and I think the significance to the average voter is collusion, conspiracy is something that is -- you really have to wrap your head around. You have to spend a lot of time looking into things.

This is like a big piece of the puzzle, though, for people, which says, "OK, now maybe I understand why he did these things, why he was working with the Russians, why he was so open to easing sanctions and saying nice things about Putin. Because he was trying to make a deal."

And, you know, Giuliani talked there about, you know, it went through the answers they gave to the independent counsel, which led up to the election. Not -- they wouldn't answer anything about once he was president. We have no idea when these conversations now actually stopped. Did they go on through the transition? Were they going on through the presidency? But I think for most people, they look at this, and they say, "You know, I understand -- now I understand what the pro and the quid was."

HILL: Right. It also -- it also brings up the point, too, again and again, which can be applied in so many areas of the "if it wasn't such a big deal, right," if it wasn't such a big deal and if you weren't really that involved and there wasn't that much going on, why continue to deny it?

BERMAN: That's a fair point.

AVLON: The pattern of denials are, in some ways, the most compelling testimony. Trump team -- not just the president but his entire team -- has denied any interactions with Russia over and over again, from the campaign to the transition to the administration. And over and over again, the investigation, they are confronted with facts; and those denials are nonoperative. Dozens and dozens and dozens of times. That, itself, is a fact pattern that screams smoke, if not actual fire.

BERMAN: I will say from a communications standpoint and a political standpoint, it was interesting to me that Giuliani took this weekend in the wake of the Buzzfeed to get these facts out there. It was probably smart P.R. there, the timing of it.

[06:25:05] LOCKHART: Absolutely. I think they felt a boost.

BERMAN: Yes.

LOCKHART: I can tell you from my experience going through the Starr investigation, once every six to eight weeks someone would get something absolutely wrong.

BERMAN: Right.

LOCKHART: And it didn't make them terrible reporters. They just got something wrong. And we would take advantage of that.

And I think in this case, and what Giuliani does, is he sort of kind of bumbles and stumbles into his way of saying something that, two or three weeks later, we find out is absolutely true. And what he's trying to do is take a little bit of the sting out of it.

On the denials, I'll say something in defense of Donald Trump. He lies about everything. So the idea that he lied about this maybe doesn't mean as much as we think.

BERMAN: So, Shan, I want to go back now to the idea that the president talked to Michael Cohen, perhaps, about his testimony before Congress, before Michael Cohen gave it. What is the legal liability here for the president? Because this seems to be a gray area.

And this does touch on the Buzzfeed thing but, again, I want to now -- that's Bobby Ewing. We're not -- we're pretending that didn't happen here. But if the president knew that Michael Cohen was going to say something that he knew was going to be false to Congress here, when is it incumbent upon the president legally, and then I suppose morally is a separate question, to step in and say no?

WU: It's really not incumbent on him legally do anything. What is incumbent on him to not to do legally is to make any suggestions on what to say. And that can be done very subtly.

But if you look at that from the special counsel's point of view and find that there's corrupt intent, you might remember Manafort got into some hot water for really writing some communications suggesting something along the lines of "Maybe this is how it happened. This is how I remember it." And it can be done that subtly.

But if the intent is there to affect the testimony, that's going to be problematic for him. It does not have to be as blatant as "I want you to tell a lie and say such and such." Although given the way that the president talks, I would not be surprised if that's actually the way the conversation went.

But it can be nuanced. It can be subtle. And the point is, why would you have any business talking to him before then? That's something for his lawyers to do and not for you to be doing.

LOCKHART: And from a non-legal point of view, why would he need to coordinate testimony? If he knew he did nothing wrong and Michael Cohen did nothing wrong, why would they need to have a discussion about what he was going to talk about? It's only -- you only -- you compare notes and get straight on your story when there's something about your story that's wrong.

BERMAN: All right. Joe, John, Shan, thank you all very much for being with us this morning. Appreciate it.

HILL: Well, we know as of this morning who is going to the Super Bowl.

BERMAN: We sure do.

HILL: We do.

BERMAN: We do!

HILL: I bet John Berman could tell you who he's pretty sure will win, right?

BERMAN: I -- no, actually.

HILL: No?

BERMAN: I have no idea who will win.

HILL: OK. But we do know who he's rooting for.

BERMAN: Yes, that --

HILL: Oh, look, there's your boy.

BERMAN: Look how happy is he.

HILL: There's your boy.

BERMAN: He looks like a young boy.

HILL: You know why he's happy? Because he knows how much joy he's bringing you.

BERMAN: I think you're right.

HILL: Yes. Sorry, Chiefs.

BERMAN: I think you're right.

HILL: "The Bleacher Report" is next.

BERMAN: He was thanking his wife and mom and dad. I was waiting --

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)