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WH: Senate to Introduce Trump's Proposal Today; NYT: People Close to Trump 'Exasperated' with Giuliani's Appearance. Aired 6- 6:30a ET

Aired January 22, 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: It's very important that we're making this offer and saying, "Come on. Now let's negotiate a solution."

[05:59:30] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Democrats have made clear they are opposed. The hope from McConnell's side is this at least gets Democrats to the table.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: Let's reopen the government. Mitch, do your job.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Giuliani just throws so much B.S. out there nobody knows what to believe.

REP. GERRY CONNOLLY (D), VIRGINIA: He sounds like a crazy old uncle, admitting things the White House have steadfastly, absolutely denied.

DONALD TRUMP JR., DONALD TRUMP'S SON: Ultimately, it was Michael Cohen trying to get a deal. I don't think anyone took it all that seriously.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, January 22, 6 a.m. here in New York. And today, the Senate is expected to take up President Trump's proposal to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which is now entering day 32.

White House officials worked with Senate staff over the weekend to try to hammer out the details. But this proposal is called a non-starter by Democrats. It is doubtful it will even clench the 60 votes it needs to advance, because Republicans have snuck all sorts of things in the Bill that Democrats do not want.

And as lawmakers remain at this impasse, the impact of the shutdown continues to be felt by real people across the country. Ten percent of TSA workers called out on Sunday because they say they cannot afford to come to work. JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And then, there's Rudy Giuliani, the

president's lawyer. Some might say he continued to muddy the waters overnight, but really, there's no water, just mud.

He gave a new interview with "The New Yorker" before getting in the shower, the shower being the only part of the interview easy to understand without a decoder ring. I think the mayor is now denying the president had discussions about a Trump Tower in Moscow all the way through the election. This after telling several news outlets that he did have those discussions.

I say I think that's what Giuliani said, because the interview is filled with hedges, reversals and internal contradictions. You might call it a word salad, but only if you put that salad in a Cuisinart.

The former mayor did say, "I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. 'Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Mr. Trump.'"

We have it all covered for you, including the shower. Let's start with CNN's Lauren Fox live on Capitol Hill -- Lauren.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this morning on Capitol Hill, John, this is a Congress divided. You're going to see two very different strategies out of the Senate and the House.

First, in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will put a bill on the floor. He'll introduce the bill today, which will look a lot like the president's proposal that he introduced on Saturday. That's $5.7 billion for the border wall, as well as temporary protection for DACA recipients and those with temporary protected status.

But we don't expect it to get enough votes from Democrats. It's just intended to put pressure on Democrats.

So fast forward to the House of Representatives where Nancy Pelosi is in charge, and she will put a series of spending bills on the floor that will include more money for border security but not money for the president's border wall. And that's an important distinction there.

So, you have two chambers doing two completely different things, and no one is actually getting in a room and talking as scheduled right now. So that's pretty vast differences.

And this all comes as folks are really getting hurt. You know, we're going to have a second missed pay period this week. And I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record up here. But until the president and Pelosi can agree on something, don't expect these messaging bills to get anywhere on the president's desk -- John and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Lauren. That is really helpful. Thank you very much.

Joining us now to discuss a way out of this, if possible, is Rachael Bade. She's a congressional reporter at Politico; Matt Gorman, the former communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee; and Joe Lockhart. He is the former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Rachael, I want to start with you for what Lauren just told us. Two separate chambers doing two separate things. Two separate messages, two separate bills. So I know that, you know, you're keeping your ear to the ground of what's happening in Congress, and I know that both sides are feeling pressure from their constituencies. So what's going to happen today?

RACHAEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think that the president this weekend sort of set up this test for Democratic unity this week. Yes, we have two different chambers doing two different things, but what the president did was offer some sort of middle ground and offered Democrats something that they have in the past wanted. And that sort of changes, or could potentially change the narrative in the next couple weeks and couple days.

Look, I've talked to moderate Democrats, both blue dogs in the House and watched people like Joe Manchin in the Senate to see what he does in the next couple days on this proposal that Trump put forward.

You know, a lot of these moderate Democrats are hearing complaints back home, and they are getting really concerned. And they agree with their Democratic leadership that they don't want to give the president his border wall. They don't want to reward, quote, "bad behavior," when they feel like he sort of took the government hostage to get something he wanted.

But at the same time, they're getting really concerned, because they're getting heat from some constituents. And so that's why you saw Nancy Pelosi come out in the past couple days and say, "We're going to vote on $1 billion in border security in the House." She hadn't done that before. Now, this is not wall money, per se, but again, it just shows the pressure that some of these Dems in red districts are feeling right now.

And I think we're just going to have to watch to see do the polls change and see that people are starting to blame Democrats for rejecting a compromise? If that is so, then we could really see some negotiating in the couple -- next couple of days here.

BERMAN: All right, Joe Lockhart, what about the seat that Rachael is talking about? Does it exist and how hot?

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I don't think it's as hot for Democrats as it is for Republicans, but there is. I mean, it's -- from a negotiating point of view, it was smart for the Republicans to put something out there to try to put the pressure on Democrats.

But you have to look at what they put out there and the context for what they put out there. They have, in one -- on one hand, said, "We'll extend DREAMers for three years." But then, there's a poison pen -- pill in there about making applying for asylum so much more difficult.

So they knew the Democrats were going to reject this when they put it out there.

Democrats, again, the context is important. When Democrats were looking at border security last year, you know, and doing some sort of compromise, they didn't control the House; they didn't control the Senate. We hadn't had the election. We had the election.

Trump made it about the wall. The voters went with the Democrats' position. So to now turn around and say, "Well, I'll give you what you wanted last year" doesn't make any sense.

CAMEROTA: I mean, Matt, I thought it was interesting that, in the cover of darkness, they tried to put in -- Republicans are putting in these limits --

MATT GORMAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- on who can seek asylum, for how long, where, how. So Central Americans must apply for asylum in their home country.

And I understand logistically, sure, why that would make sense. But if you're being persecuted in your home country, that could be complicated to apply for asylum.

GORMAN: Yes, yes.

CAMEROTA: And so did they think that Democrats wouldn't notice that? It's hard to believe that they're sincere -- this is a sincere offer when those are poison pills, as Joe said.

GORMAN: Well, I think as Vice President Pence said, this is a negotiation. It's a starting point. As Jim Clyburn, leadership in the House has said, he's willing to look at this for permanent status for DREAMers and TPS. So I think we're going to start here. Democrats have not put anything forward yet. They're starting to, at least for border security, but they're also claiming they're not going to negotiate over the wall until the government is re-opened. So the message doesn't really match up from what they're doing. So it seems like they're getting pressure.

And let's face it. I think President Trump, for most of this time this shutdown, has been stymied by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. He's miscalculated this a bit. He thought he was going to get more leverage with the Democratic Congress. Certainly not true. He thought he was going to separate Schumer and Pelosi, again not true. So at least this is a way to get things moving in the right direction. Get on offense a little bit, if you're Republican.

BERMAN: Hey, can I get your take on something that Joe has said yesterday and again today, which is that this was put up for a vote for the election.

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

BERMAN: You were running communications for the congressional campaign committee. You have the scars --

GORMAN: Yes.

BERMAN: -- to prove it.

GORMAN: Yes.

BERMAN: So immigration, in your view, did it work as an issue for Republicans for congressional races?

GORMAN: Certainly not in some districts. You look at districts in South Florida, Houston, Orange County. These were districts Hillary Clinton won. Immigration was certainly a part of it. And you look at the polling that we had at the end of the cycle. Certainly wasn't helpful. I think in the Midwest, we made gains in Minnesota. I think it might have been helpful. But it wasn't helpful writ large in some of these swing seats and just ask, you know, John Culberson, Carlos Curbelo, or Mimi Walters or Young Kim. Wasn't helpful in those seats.

BERMAN: All former members of Congress or never members of Congress --

GORMAN: Yes, yes.

BERMAN: -- because of the immigration issue.

GORMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: So Rachael, what about that? The idea that, as you know, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have said, "No negotiating until the government is open. We don't negotiate with, you know, hostage takers and that you can't just -- whenever you don't get your way, shut down the government. It doesn't work."

Is that starting to erode, or are constituents starting to say, "Let's just start the negotiations."

BADE: Constituents in some moderate districts, absolutely. But KI -- I mean the Democrats bring up a valid point here, which is if they give the president what he wants on his border wall, what's to keep him from doing this again next year to fulfill some other campaign promise?

And then we just have shutdowns galore. Granted, we already have that right now. But this is really a test case, I think, where the president was getting advice from conservatives who were saying, "Shut this down. You'll get a win out of this." Establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan saying, "Please don't do this. They didn't want him to do this."

This is really a test for him to see if he gets something out of this. And so in that regard, I think, you know, Democrats really do have a valid point here.

At the same time, if -- if the president were to offer, say, in the next couple days, a tweaked proposal here where he offered a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers in return for the wall, minus a lot of these sort of conservative policies that he's currently attached to the proposal, then that would really put a lot of pressure on Democrats right now.

The biggest thing, the best thing he can do is look like he's out there willing to make a bargain and willing to give the Democrats something that they want. And remember, they shut down the government to try to get protections for DREAMers just a year ago. So it really does put pressure on them. We're just going to have to see where it goes.

BERMAN: Let's listen to Jim Clyburn right now. Matt brought this up before. Jim Clyburn is the No. 3 member of the House of Representatives. I'm going to read it for you or we're not going to hear him now.

This is the House Democratic whip. The majority whip says, "We are all for negotiating, and we would love to have a permanent fix for DACA and TPS, just as he wants a permanent wall."

Joe Lockhart, if the president -- I actually think it's, you know -- I'm going to put it as a hypothetical, and then I'm going to smash the whole thing after your answer here. But as a hypothetical, if the president did say permanent DACA fix, permanent fix for TPS, then Democrats, would they say, "Yes, let's negotiate"? That's back to February of last year.

[06:10:16] LOCKHART: Listen, I think Democrats desperately want a comprehensive negotiation plan. And if there is a pathway for citizenship, then I think you've got a real conversation and real negotiation going on. But that's hypothetical. That's not Trump.

I don't think he feels he can. He's -- you know, he has governed from day one from the basis of, "I'm going to do everything for my base. If there's something I can do for other people, but I'm not going to cross my base." I don't see it changing.

BERMAN: And that's where I blow up my hypothetical.

CAMEROTA: Here's your sledgehammer.

BERMAN: Here's the sledgehammer here. I have a hard time believing, based on the fact that this did not pass last year when the Republicans had the House also, that he could convince the right of the party. And Matt, you can weigh in here. You know, he already -- Ann Coulter is already saying this is amnesty.

GORMAN: She wasn't saying anything.

BERMAN: Right. But soon I imagine that chorus, the Coulter chorus, would get even bigger if the president did offer a permanent -- permanent path to citizenship for the DREAMers.

GORMAN: Well, I'll say this. If Donald Trump would be willing to offer permanent path to citizenship for DACA or for the DREAMers or something on DACA, it would be enshrined in law, no matter who's president. Certainly, a Democrat. I think most Republicans.

He did allude to over the weekend with that, quote, amnesty tweet, didn't define what that was. But I'll say, the irony of this whole thing is, in '06 and '13, the border wall, fence, those are the type of things would get 75, 85 votes in the Senate.

The really hard stuff was, you know, unification, legal status. We talked about how the window has shifted now, how even just the border wall has become radioactive for both parties and such a flash point.

CAMEROTA: Joe, since we're on day -- what day is it?

BERMAN: Thirty-two.

CAMEROTA: Day thirty-two of the government shutdown. Do you think the Democrats should give a little bit on there? I mean, they had been very unilateral on terms of whatever the word, whatever-- unequivocal, I should say, in terms of we're not going to negotiate until the government is shut down. Now that it's day 32, should they start these negotiations?

LOCKHART: I think if the president and the Republican leadership puts something real on the table, you'll see a negotiation.

You know, so much of this debate is not real. I mean, look at -- look at Congressman Will Hurd, who is a Republican who has this large border who has said this isn't a real debate. The wall isn't a real thing. It's a political symbol. It's become a symbol of strength for Donald Trump and his supporters.

And for Democrats, it's become a moral question. What kind of country are we? Are we going to be a country that builds a great wall around or are we going to be a welcoming country? Those are hard -- it's hard to negotiate those.

CAMEROTA: But that one is confusing for me. Let me just -- we have a fence. We have border fence.

LOCKHART: Sure.

CAMEROTA: So that's -- and by the way, and now that the president has worked his way around to slats, what is the difference if we're stuck on that moral point?

LOCKHART: Because we're talking in symbols, not in -- not in concrete, to use the right word. It's -- it's Trump -- what Trump's vision of what this country is up against what the Democrats' vision is.

And Democrats at this point, particularly -- and I keep coming back to it. We had an election. They won. They are not going to succumb to this idea that we're a country that deals in fear, dears in -- deals in bigotry, all of this stuff about rapists and drugs, every time Trump goes down that line, he fires up his base; and the Democrats dig in more, and they're going to continue to.

BERMAN: We have to go, Rachael, but very quickly, I'm asking not just for America but my own travel plans. Will there be a State of the Union address next week? BADE: I wouldn't plan on it at this point.

Berman: Thank you very much for that. Rachael, Matt, Joe, thank you.

BERMAN: So Rudy Giuliani, the president's TV lawyer, he took a shower, but not before saying a bunch of things which get to the idea of what the president knew or didn't know or what he talked about.

CAMEROTA: Did they get to that, John?

BERMAN: About the Trump Tower project in Moscow. We're going to try to understand what Rudy Giuliani said before taking a shower, next.

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[06:18:04] BERMAN: All right. I'm holding in my hand here several pages of weird.

CAMEROTA: I can't stop reading it.

BERMAN: OK. This is an interview that former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, gave with "The New Yorker" prior to getting in the shower. Now, I'm hung up on the shower admittedly.

CAMEROTA: You are. Shower curtain you're still hung up on.

BERMAN: The only thing that's clear in this entire interview, right? It's the only salient fact that I can take from it.

Before we get to The New York interview, I want to sort of frame what's going on here. Because Giuliani keeps on changing timelines here about what President Trump knew about the Trump Tower project in Moscow. He keeps changing that time line.

Maggie Haberman of "The New York Times" reports that Giuliani's statements are starting to trouble people. She says, "Several people close to Mr. Trump have grown exasperated with Giuliani's public appearances. They also expressed concern that he is increasing prosecutors' anger with him and potentially creating a misimpression about the Trump Tower project in Moscow."

CAMEROTA: All right. And now -- oh, well, first we'll bring in our guests.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: And then we have a treat for you. Let's discuss with John Avlon, Joe Lockhart and CNN justice reporter, Laura Jarrett. I feel that, in order to do this justice, Laura, we must do a dramatic reading for you and the people at home.

BERMAN: All right. I am playing the part of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

CAMEROTA: I am playing the part of "The New Yorker" reporter. Not a stretch for me, though I have been practicing. BERMAN: All right. Here we go. Giuliani: "The president had no

conversations. I shouldn't say he had no conversations. He had a few conversations about this early-stage proposal that he ended somewhere in 2016 and doesn't have a recollection of anything else, and there was nothing to support -- to support anything else. This is a story that is completely exaggerated and made up."

CAMEROTA: "'The New York Times' just made that quote up?"

BERMAN: "I don't know if they made it up. What I was talking about was, if he had those conversations, they would not be criminal.

CAMEROTA: "'If he had them,' but he didn't have them?"

BERMAN: "I didn't say have the conversations. Lawyers argue in the alternative. If we went to court, we would say we don't have to prove whether it's true or not, because even if it's true, it's not criminal; and that's why Mueller will not charge him with it."

[06:20:04] CAMEROTA: "Do you ever worry that this will be your legacy? Does that ever worry you in any way?"

BERMAN: "Absolutely. I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid it will be on my gravestone, 'Rudy Giuliani, he lied for Trump.' Somehow I don't think that will be it, but if it is, so what do I care? I'll be dead."

Scene.

CAMEROTA: Scene.

OK. Now, you guys make sense of it. John, you speak Giuliani.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

CAMEROTA: You worked with him for many years. You wrote for him many years. This seems to me that he has decided relevance over legacy. OK. So that's -- that's my first take. My second is, why is he so confusing?

AVLON: All right. Let's break that down. By the way, I appreciate the beret-cladden scene at the end of that.

Look, I think, one, Rudy's always had a fatalistic streak when it comes to his legacy. And God knows I've said -- he has an exemplary record as mayor of New York, and he hasn't really taken a lot of care at focusing on that legacy.

He's been all in for his client, the president of the United States. And I think Rudy has done himself a disservice and his legacy a disservice by being so all in on this. I think he's being radically transparent to the extent that he's not parsing his words carefully, certainly not as a former prosecutor. He is sort of saying whatever is coming to his mind, because he's gotten very used to playing the court of public opinion, and he's picking up the phone when almost any reporter calls, whether he's on the way to the shower or not. And when you look at a transcript of it, it seems dissembling. I

think he is trying to be honest, but I don't think he's doing himself and arguably, his client any favors.

I think you can == you can track a flow-through there, but you've got to work real hard. The line about St. Peter, by the way, classic Rudy.

And -- and I think Donald Trump, in some ways, has told -- has sent the message to a lot of people in politics and public life that be your loudest, most authentic self, even in the case of Donald Trump, if that's an authentic liar. And, you know, you will be rewarded for it, and people won't remember some of the details.

Won't remember the details. In this case, it's not details. It's just rank incoherence. You know, he says at one point, "I've been through all the tapes. The reporter goes, "Wait, what tapes have you gone through?"

He says, "I shouldn't have said 'tapes'."

The reporter says, "So there were tapes you listened to, though?"

CAMEROTA: Why are you doing my part?

BERMAN: "No," he goes. "No tapes." I mean, it just -- it's like tapes and -- it just doesn't make any sense.

AVLON: And here's where, you know, the time line may be getting confused in Rudy's ability to communicate it. What he may have been referring to -- and Marshall Cohen made this point before to Laura. Is that he may be referring to the Michael Cohen tapes and that voluminous information which was seized by the Southern District that Rudy did listen to.

However, if there's anything specifically about Trump Tower Moscow, that's a bit new information. Also, in the time line thing, he's contradicting himself and what he said over the weekend. But it sounds like that's the brushback pitch he got from the president's team.

Remember, the White House and the lawyers are really not in a great deal of communication. He's not checking with Sarah Sanders when he goes on TV. And what he's trying to say now is the back half of '16, it looks like they're trying to draw a line around July, rather than the into October, which raises real questions.

BERMAN: Well, that's why I want to bring Laura in here, because why, legally speaking, why did Rudy Giuliani have to walk back the statements that I think he so carefully and intentionally made this weekend?

Over the weekend, he opened the possibility and just clearly stated that the president talked about the Trump Tower project through the election, and now he's taking it back. Why does he have to do that? LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, two reasons, I think,

could be possible here. One, when he spoke to Maggie Haberman, and he talked about his conversations with the president, that's stunning. This is the president of the United States' lawyer talking about, presumably, privilege. Giuliani is somebody who likes to talk about privilege. Presumably privileged conversations. He's repeating back to Maggie, saying what Trump said, apparently, that "The Trump Tower Moscow discussions were going on from the day I announced to the day I won."

Now, Giuliani says, "I never said that." And apparently, "The New York Times," according to Giuliani, is just making that up. And so I see -- you see here "The New Yorker" reporter sort of pressing him. He says, "I can't talk about my conversations with the president. I'm his lawyer. I couldn't do -- I couldn't possibly do that." Well, you just did, less than 24 hours ago.

And so I think there's real questions here about whether privilege could arguably be made, because once you open the door to conversations with the president, that is ripe grounds for an aggressive prosecutor to say, "Well, tell me more about what those discussions were like."

We have no indication that Mueller is the type of person who wants to press the point like that. But you see this all the time. You can't use the privilege as a sword and a shield. And I think that that is an interesting way for Giuliani to sort of clean that up here. Whether that was successful or not, I don't know.

The other question is, we've all been discussing the past day or so is all of the other events that were running in parallel to the time that this deal is going on.

So if we're through the summer of 2016 up through November 2016, as he has said repeatedly, we're now into the times where we know that Trump is calling upon Russia to look into Hillary Clinton's e-mails, almost goading them to hack the e-mails. That's an issue.

[06:25:12] CAMEROTA: And setting policy.

JARRETT: Sanctions.

CAMEROTA: I mean, and announcing this policy. All of that. And helping to change the Republican policy platform, all that stuff, which is why the Trump Tower would be relevant. Is Giuliani helping or hurting?

LOCKHART: He's helping in the sense that people are getting tired of this, and they're having trouble sorting through it.

CAMEROTA: And that helps.

LOCKHART: And that helps for, you know, voters, where ultimately, if it goes to the Senate and it is impeachment, that does help.

He's hurting as far as the investigation goes and the prosecutors. Because I think he is putting the -- you know, we know that Mueller's not going to come out and say, "Rudy, that's wrong." He's not Ken Starr. He doesn't walk to the end of his driveway and do a press conference every morning and tell us what's up and what isn't.

JARRETT: I wish he did.

LOCKHART: The other thing is, and when you -- the key piece of this, I think, is, is it faithful to the written answers that Trump has given under oath?

And my guess is that he strayed from those answers. And the real lawyers in this case, because Rudy is not acting as a lawyer. Let's be honest. He's a P.R. person. I love P.R. people. But he is -- he is a P.R. person --

AVLON: Speaking as one.

LOCKHART: Speaking as one. But the president is now on the record.

BERMAN: Right.

LOCKHART: And if he didn't tell the truth in those written answers, again, we say, "Game changer" a lot. That's a game changer.

BERMAN: There might be three different things here. Three different things her. There might be what the president said in the written answers. There might be what Giuliani has been saying out loud, and there might be the truth.

AVLON: Yes. Yes.

BERMAN: Figuring out how those three things line up, that's hard.

AVLON: Look, and with respect to Joe, P.R. people aren't necessarily paid for telling the truth. Lawyers usually are.

And Rudy said many times, you know, the law is supposed to be a pursuit of the truth. I think the distance between that and his current role and responsibilities is troubling. The other distance that's troubling, especially for someone like me, is see someone who's, you know, America's mayor a decade ago; led the city through 9/11, who you know, turned around New York City at a time when Donald Trump was a recently bankrupted reality show TV star. That gap and where we are now, itself is stunning (Ph).

CAMEROTA: All right. Thank you very much for all of that.

Anthony Scaramucci, "The Mooch," is back in action.

BERMAN: This doesn't feel like a big leap, frankly, after that last discussion.

CAMEROTA: He made his debut Monday on CBS's "Celebrity Big Brother." What he revealed about his relationship with the president, next.

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