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Government Shutdown Continues over Border Wall Funding; Senate to Hold Votes on Two Proposals to Reopen Government; Reporting Indicate Rudy Giuliani Will Continue as President Trump's Attorney; Interview with Republican Senator from South Dakota, Mike Rounds. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 23, 2019 - 8:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] MITCH MCCONNELL, (R) SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: That's why we'll vote on this legislation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The second vote is just re-open government while we work to see if we can find a compromise.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We cannot have the president every time say I will shut down the government until you come to my way of thinking.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She has a standing invitation here. Any time she wants to come, she has to come here and negotiate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are really playing with fire here. There is a lot of business that can't get done.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I find it unacceptable that Coast Guard men and women have to rely on food pantries to get through day to day life as service members.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The United States Secret Service addressed those concerns. We are moving forward until something changes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the leader of the free world. I would encourage him not to do it in a rally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota on John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Wednesday, January 23rd, 8:00 in the east. We have a few realities brought to you by the United States of America -- 800,000 federal workers will miss their second paychecks this week. The FBI Agents Association warns that investigations into terror and drug trafficking are being damaged forever. "The Washington Post" reports that hundreds of IRS employees are skipping work which could mean your tax refunds will be delayed. Again, realities brought to you by your government as we are now in day 33 of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The good news, if there is any, is that the Senate tomorrow will vote

on two competing proposals to end it. The bad news, neither plan is expected to get the votes needed to pass.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So don't pop the champagne yet is what you're saying.

So what exactly is the Senate voting on? Number one, a Republican proposal for nearly $6 billion for President Trump's wall, and some temporary protections for DACA recipients. Number two is a Democratic plan to reopen the government without providing any funds for the wall. And as lawmakers struggle to break this impasse, the White House says it is moving forward with the State of the Union plans, though they are not sure if they are truly invited to Capitol Hill. A Trump adviser tells CNN they are also considering holding a rally instead of the typical address. Conservative allies are even suggesting the president give the speech at the southern border.

As for the Russia investigation, sources tell CNN that despite his contradictory and often bizarre interviews, the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, will not be getting the ax.

Joining us now is Maggie Haberman, "The New York Times" White House correspondent and CNN political analyst. Maggie, great to have you help us sort through all of this this morning.

Let's start with the shutdown. From inside the White House, from your sources, is the president pleased with how this is going? Is this considered good deal-making that we are in day 33?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: The president is not pleased with the news coverage, certainly, but he is often not pleased with news coverage about the goings on around the White House or his engagement with Congress. But he does feel, according to everyone I've talked to, good about his position. He is happy where he is. He believes that he is going to be proven right.

And then I think that at moments where he has -- I wouldn't say faltered, but at moments where he has been anxious about the news coverage or about where this is going, he has had allies and some advisers in the White House tell him, you need to just keep going, you need to get through to the State of the Union and then they can figure it out from there. The president is not somebody who deals in long- term strategy, as you know well. He tends to think in very short increments of time, and right now he is bringing the rest of us along with him in those short increments of time. There is no reason to believe that any of the bills that are being put to the floor this week in Congress are going to do anything to reopen the government. And here we go on day -- whatever it is, 30-something.

BERMAN: Day 33. A couple other new numbers that I'm not sure the president will like particularly as they are covered. CBS has some new polling out. First his approval rating in this new CBS poll out moments ago, 36 percent approval, 59 percent disapproval. That 59 percent disapproval is pretty much an all-time high in the CBS poll. And the other number which caught my eye, and this is the one that I think, and you know the president very well, Maggie, that he'll particularly dislike, who is doing a better job with shutdown negotiations? This is P one, two, three, who is doing a better job with shutdown negotiations, 47 percent say Nancy Pelosi, 35 percent say Donald Trump. So in this poll Americans are saying the president is being out-negotiated here. I have to believe that's the kind of thing that upsets him.

HABERMAN: I think so. I think he dismisses poll numbers that he doesn't like, so I think that could end up going in that pile. But certainly that number will not please anybody in the White House. I think that is the perception is that Nancy Pelosi has outmaneuvered him. Again, she doesn't need -- he is coming up against something he has never come up against before in political life, or in business, or certainly as president. She does not need anything from him. He does not help her with her caucus. He does not help her become speaker. To hurt her would be to take away her power as speaker, and that's not happening right now.

So in the same way he has a lot to gain with his base of support by standing firm on this, so does she. She's got voters in a caucus who do not want to do anything that would be giving the president something he could claim as a victory on a border wall. And so here we sit.

[08:05:06] CAMEROTA: Here is one of the great ironies of the shutdown. The very things that President Trump has been laser focused on at least rhetorically for the past few months about cutting down on terrorism, terrorists coming across somehow, or getting into the country somehow, MS-13 and the opioid crisis. All of those things in the past basically 24 hours the FBI has come forward and says that they are being hurt and they are trying to crack down on these things. With MS-13 they have lost valuable informants. In terms of interdicting heroin, they are losing their money to try to do that. And their counterterrorism investigations are being hurt. So they believe that we are having a national security issue because of this shutdown.

HABERMAN: It is once again a reminder that noise helps President Trump. So there is so much focus on other stuff, other controversies, other issues that are taking place related to the shutdown, that it drowns out certain things. And one of them is what you just described, which is this law enforcement concern that started brewing about a week and a half ago. The FBI agents' union voiced a lot of concern about what the shutdown is doing in terms of their ability to do their jobs.

Under normal circumstances -- and we are not living in normal circumstances, but under normal circumstances that is the kind of story that you would see a president or a mayor or a governor react to with concern when it comes to crime fighting and law enforcement. That is a key issue for President Trump. And I think that the more attention that gets, I think that could be something potentially that moves the president toward accelerating the end of this.

BERMAN: We just talked to Tom O'Connor who is head of the FBI Agents Association. He said two things. He said, number one, that they can't do their jobs as well. They simply cannot. These investigations can't be done as well without the funding they need. The other thing he said is it's utterly disgusting that FBI agents and people working at the FBI need to struggle right now to get food and go to food banks and get donations for that. And it's the last part that also I think is an issue for the president because it gets to empathy. It gets to the notion that the president isn't necessarily showing the concern for the people being directly affected by this shutdown.

HABERMAN: One of the things that has really bizarre about how the White House has handled this is that they have had no messaging plan beyond the president's Twitter feed. It's not bizarre. As we know, he likes to be his own messenger and he likes to be his own spokesman, and strategy is not something that tends to get adhered to. But he had this window where he was allotted the White House, everybody else had left Washington despite the fact that it was still a house in Republican control. There was a chance he could have tried to set up what he wanted to say about this. He could have done events, he could have done a big speech, he could have done interviews. He could have gone to visit with workers. He's done none of that.

And I don't think that helps him as he goes forward because, you're right, this is a president who has struggled repeatedly. He's not the first official in history who ever has, but he is doing it in a very extreme way who has struggling to show empathy for the people who are suffering. His daughter-in-law Lara Trump, issued a statement through the Trump campaign about how, yes, some people are going through some pain but really at the end it is going to be worth it for this wall. And I don't think individual workers see it that way.

This does not mean that if the government reopens that in six months it's still going to be what folks are focused on. But this is going to last for a while in terms of people's memories.

CAMEROTA: Rudy Giuliani, Maggie. Is the president pleased with Rudy Giuliani's latest appearances on TV where he has made wildly contradictory statements and seemed to sometimes get out ahead of a story and then have to walk some things back?

HABERMAN: Look, I think the goal over that Rudy Giuliani and President Trump share is sowing confusion around the case, around Michael Cohen, around Robert Mueller. And so to that end I don't think the president is upset. I do think that he has been advised by several people close to him that this weekend's media tour du de force by the former mayor was not ideal.

Among other things in terms of the confusion that it created about dates involving the president, it took the thunder away from where the White House was feeling fairly good that Robert Mueller had said that a "Buzzfeed" report that the president personally directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress was inaccurate. Again, we don't know what specifically he was talking about, but that was seen by the White House as a win, and that was seen by Trump advisers as a win. And so the former mayor went out and turned the camera on himself and made it all about himself and his statements. And I don't think he was pleased with it. That said, it is true that there are people who are encouraging him to

part ways with Giuliani. That is absolutely not going to happen, certainly not any time soon. He is generally happy with the job Giuliani has done, and Giuliani has served as something of an extension of the client's id over the last several months. It might make other people unhappy. It's not going to make the president unhappy.

[08:10:00] BERMAN: Maggie, you have been to an extent in the middle of part of this Giuliani thing where the former mayor has made comments directly to "The New York Times" and then said he didn't make them, at least in an interview with "The New Yorker." What's your current understanding of what Rudy Giuliani now believes or is saying happened, and what's the evolution there?

HABERMAN: Boy, I'm not going to speak for him. If you want to ask him what he thinks --

BERMAN: OK, he told you in no uncertain terms what?

HABERMAN: He told us in now uncertain terms in an interview that the Trump Tower Moscow project was going on from the day the campaign began until the day I won, quote/unquote, was how he said the president said this to him, and then later on that same day, in fact, and that was in our story, tried to say, no, no, no, that wasn't what I meant. That was a hypothetical. He said that again the next day.

And look, as he has on CNN he has said he didn't say things that he said. He can only answer for why he's doing them. I'm not even going to begin to venture a guess, but I do think that confusion is something that they favor. And I think this is certainly adding to that.

CAMEROTA: As you know, another White House insider, Cliff Sims, has come out with a tell-all book. Anything juicy, attention-grabbing in there to you?

HABERMAN: A bunch of juicy and attention-grabbing things. What's amazingly unusual about this portrait is it is, number one, it is accurate. It is not a sycophantic book. It is not explaining that the president can do no wrong. Cliff Sims is clearly a Trump supporter, was in the White House, and I believe still is. But it does affirm much of the real time reporting that has taken place over the last two years, the kind of reporting the president calls fake news. It paints a pretty ugly portrait of what happens inside the West Wing in terms of people fighting with each other, leaking against each other.

And there are a lot of anecdotes about the president that are not necessarily how the president wants to be seen. It affirms the television-watching the president does that he hates when people talk about it. It affirms some of the president's more ad hoc ideas, like let's get somebody to Mars by 2020 for my reelection. It affirms a lot of what was happening around Anthony Scaramucci, the 11-day communications director, being there and how members of the Trump family thought that he was a useful weapon to get rid of Reince Priebus. A lot of these are things that had been denied at the time. And Cliff Sims is attaching his name to them. It's not being done anonymously.

BERMAN: We keep on seeing more trickle out from that book. Maggie Haberman, thanks so much for being with us this morning, appreciate it.

HABERMAN: Thank you.

BERMAN: The Senate set to vote on two dueling deals to end the shutdown. Is this a step toward something genuine that can get this shutdown over with? A Republican senator joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:16:27] BERMAN: The Senate is set to vote tomorrow on dueling proposals to re-open the government as federal workers prepare to miss their second consecutive paycheck on 800,000 federal workers.

Joining us now is a Republican senator from South Dakota, Mike Rounds.

Senator Rounds, thank you very much for being with us this morning.

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R), SOUTH DAKOTA: Good morning.

BERMAN: If I can I would like to get you on the record on two votes that will take place in the Senate tomorrow. First, just a very quick yes or no, do you plan to vote yes on the president's plan to re-open the government for $5.7 billion in border wall funding and a temporary three-year extension for DACA?

ROUNDS: I plan to vote yes on the first one which would be the one which is being offered by leader McConnell. I plan to vote no on the second one which will be the Schumer proposal. That will be part of the positioning that we'll find within the Senate to begin with.

Hopefully once that occurs and all sides have laid out their position, we can begin using this as a catalyst to take the next steps.

BERMAN: Why vote no on a plan that would re-open the government long enough for 800,000 federal workers to get a paycheck and provide some time to have further discussions to reach an agreement?

ROUNDS: Because simply voting yes on the second amendment won't re- open the government because until the president and the speaker actually agree on something, it would take a two-thirds vote to override any veto by the president. The president made it clear he doesn't support it. So, rather than wasting the time of going through the whole process and still not having government open, having to respond to a veto, we are better off to try to find some common ground before it goes to the president.

The president has taken the first steps. He's proposed his deal. It may not be acceptable in its current form to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but it was a step forward from where he was. We are still waiting for our Democratic colleagues to respond to it. We think that has to happen. It would be better if it was done

privately, if they would get together and even if they don't like each other, to sit down and find out what it takes so when it's all said and done we can get government operating again.

BERMAN: Last year, you were part of a bipartisan bill, along with Senator Angus King who we're going to speak to, by the way, in five minutes that would have done something much bigger than it's being discussed today. It would have provided $25 billion in wall funding in exchange for a permanent path to citizenship for Dreamers.

Do you still support that idea?

ROUNDS: I do. In fact, Angus and I were speaking just before I came on camera. He's on next. We think it may be time to see what we have to do to rekindle the idea again. It's bigger. It would have provided $25 billion for funding the wall, $2.5 billion over ten years.

But then it would have taken the next step, the first steps in permanently establishing legal status for those Dreamers. It also would have stopped chain migration which is where they would have been able to have allowed their parents or the ones who committed the crime to come into the country and have picked up citizenship. It would have stopped that.

BERMAN: The bill didn't pass because it didn't get enough Republican votes. If memory serves, it didn't get the endorsement of the president of the United States of America.

What makes you think he would do it this time? The problem seems to be he fears some in his base would call it amnesty.

ROUNDS: Right. And you saw the other day where the president suggested just this one proposal suggesting he would give a three-year extension brought down the wrath of some of the radicals in the party, saying that this is a step towards amnesty and the president made it clear this is not amnesty.

[08:20:05] In fact, he said amnesty is part of a bigger deal that could be worked out later.

And so, what we're saying these young people who have been here. They are going to college, they're working in our military. These folks deserve to have legal status.

It doesn't stop them from moving on and applying for citizenship but it doesn't provide them citizenship. And it also, as I said before, and this is important, it starts to address the issue of their parents. That was the major stumbling block before.

BERMAN: So, you think Jared Kushner -- "Axios" is reporting Kushner wants to go big here. Do you reasonably think there is a chance you could all go big here?

ROUNDS: We most certainly could go big. Whether or not there is enough gumption out there --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Who lacks gumption?

ROUNDS: -- both sides to do it is the question.

BERMAN: Both sides you think lack the gumption?

ROUNDS: Both sides. That's right.

Look, right now, what you will find and I don't mean to speak for them, but some of our Democratic colleagues are saying we need more than that. We are not interested in doing anything for the president.

Speaker Pelosi made it clear she'll give him nothing. I think that's a serious mistake on her part. It puts her in a limited position.

And once again, I will say this. I know it's hard for the president to take the first step, but he did. He actually stepped forward. This is with Leader McConnell's urging, to say we have to break the log jam. Let's put together a bigger package.

It may not be perfect. But it certainly was a step forward on the part of the president. The speaker needs to be able to respond to that.

BERMAN: What Democrats do you say what the president is proposing is giving something temporary he had taken away which is a three-year extension of protections for Dreamers which he had taken away and also loading this bill with things Democrats consider poison pills, amnesty, making it harder to seek asylum in the United States. That's the Democrats' view here.

ROUNDS: I guess I didn't see it that way. I thought by providing $13 billion in disaster relief was something the Democrats did want. I thought they wanted to see all the bills moving forward until next September. I thought they wanted to talk about trying to fix some major issues at the border including having more border security agents. So, it may not be perfect, but it certainly is a step in the right direction.

BERMAN: If you're looking for pure talking, you could make the case that the Democratic bill that's up for a vote tomorrow opens the door for talking. It doesn't set boundaries as to what you can or can't agree to. The Republican plan you say you will support actually does set the parameters beforehand.

So, just finally, the Coast Guard. I know South Dakota doesn't have a lot of coastline here. The commandant of the coast guard, Admiral Karl Schultz, he made a remarkable statement yesterday. I just want to play it for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADMIRAL KARL L. SCHULTZ, COMMANDANT OF THE U.S. COAST GUARD: We are five plus weeks into the government lapse in your nonpay. You as members of the armed forces should not be expected to shoulder this burden. I find it unacceptable coast guard men and women have to rely on food pantries and donations to get through day-to-day life as service members.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Do elected officials in Washington need to apologize to these 800,000 people, many of whom are working without pay right now?

ROUNDS: Yes. No question about it. In fact, I will tell you the Coast Guard should have been funded from the very beginning. They shouldn't have been involved in this at all. There are folks leaving on deployments now that don't know how they'll feed their families back home again.

I thought this was being handled. I talked to the White House reps this morning. They told me there were Democratic colleagues here that had a hold on the bill that would have specifically addressed it.

I don't know anything more about it than that right now. I can tell you this much. We should have that issue resolved today.

There is absolutely nobody that wins in a government shutdown, period, end of story. If Congress could get its work done on time, we wouldn't be wedged like we are now. As a matter of fact, we've got a proposal out there now that I have signed onto as a cosponsor that would prohibit members of Congress from actually getting paid if they didn't get this work done on time before September 30th.

Even if they went to November 1st, they didn't get paid at all between that time period. We wouldn't have this problem anymore if we could put teeth into a law that allowed us to actually -- that would require us to get our work done on time.

BERMAN: Senator Rounds, I appreciate it. There will those that will say there was a deal in place to prevent this in December, but the president backed off on it. But I know what you're saying, go back to regular or get it all done on time the way you are supposed to.

Senator Mike Rounds, thank you very much.

ROUNDS: Thank you.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We'll hear now from the other half of the duo. One year ago exactly, we had Senator Angus King appear with Senator Rounds on NEW DAY. They were telling us how close they were to a bipartisan deal. So, next, we're going to bring back Senator Angus King to find out why he tricked us a year ago and his plan today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:29:01] CAMEROTA: Tomorrow, senators will vote on two opposing bills to try to end the government shutdown. But both are likely to fail. Exactly one year ago today, a bipartisan duo launched on NEW DAY their last ditch effort to protect Dreamers and enhance border security. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROUNDS: We all recognize Republicans and Democrats that the issue of the Dreamers is not going to go away and we really have to address it, just not only because it's the right thing to do, but because politically it is as well.

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: I think we can come up with something pretty good that he can endorse and we can get it done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now is Senator Angus King, independent from Maine, who you just heard there exactly one year ago.

Back then, Senator, you were hopeful. You said, I think we can get it done. How have we gone from the hopeful bipartisan moment to this impasse today?

KING: Well, I have to say I did think we could get it done. I thought we could get it done until the night before the vote when the White House absolutely torpedoed the bipartisan bill. We ended up getting 54 votes. We needed 60. We had 60 the night before until the White House threatened --