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Acting A.G.: Mueller Close to Wrapping Up; Sen. Kamala Harris Makes Her Case in CNN Town Hall. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 29, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATT WHITAKER, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: I am comfortable that the decisions that were made are going to be reviewed. And the investigation is close to being completed.

[05:59:23] JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: The idea of saying that an investigation is almost over is something the Justice Department just never does.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The American public wants to know what is going on. They're demanding that.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: People who vote, they're going to make decisions based on who they believe is speaking truth.

HOWARD SCHULTZ, FORMER STARBUCKS CEO: Nobody wants to see Donald Trump fired more than me. I am in this because I love the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An absolute gift to Donald Trump. This would reduce the ceiling he would need to win.

(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 January 20, 6 a.m. here in New York.

And new this morning, the man who oversees the Mueller investigation is in the spotlight, literally, figuratively and perspirationally (ph).

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, boy.

BERMAN: It's a word.

CAMEROTA: Is it?

BERMAN: Not really.

Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker said some stuff out loud that sent reporters, lawyers and politicians scrambling. The big headline is a statement that the investigation could be close to being completed.

He is the most senior person in the know to say so on the record. He also said that he's been fully briefed on the probe and that the decisions that have been made with be reviewed. So some major questions about all this this morning.

Did he really mean to say this? Is he right? If he has been briefed on everything, has he told the White House everything? What does he mean that decisions will be reviewed?

That is what some members of Congress want to know this morning as they present new bipartisan legislation requiring the special counsel, that the report be made public. We will speak to some of these lawmakers over the next couple hours.

CAMEROTA: And in just hours, Roger Stone will be blocks away from the White House, appearing before a federal judge. The longtime Trump confidant is expected to plead not guilty to charges that he lied to lawmakers, engaged in witness tampering and obstructed a congressional investigation, into coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

BERMAN: Joining us now, David Gregory, CNN political analyst; Laura Jarrett, senior justice reporter; and Elie Hoenig, former U.S. assistant attorney for New York's Southern District, or I should say assistant U.S. attorney, but I had all the words, just not in the right order. Which is something maybe Matt Whitaker can appreciate.

Laura Jarrett, to you. I want to play what the acting attorney general said out loud yesterday that caused so many people to scratch their heads. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WHITAKER: You know, I've been fully briefed on the investigation. And, you know, I look forward to Director Mueller delivering the final report.

But right now, you know, the investigation is, I think, close to being completed, and I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as we -- as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. There is a lot there to dissect, Laura. I raised some of the questions in the intro here. First, did he mean to say it? Is he right the investigation is almost over? And what does he mean that Mueller's decisions will be reviewed?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I have to tell you, John, being in the room when he said it, all the reporters sort of looked at each other, like, "Did he just say exactly what we think he said?" Because they never do this.

The Justice Department does not discuss the timing of the Mueller investigation when it may or may not wrap, as much as we ask every day. They just don't go there.

So to have the senior-most official at DOJ, the man who is overseeing the probe, at least formally -- the deputy attorney general is still managing it day-to-day, but Matt Whitaker is the man in charge of what happens to Mueller, at least for right now.

So to have him say it's close to being completed, all of our ears perked up. And there's no reason to believe that this isn't true, that he doesn't know what he's talking about. He says he's been fully briefed, so we have every reason to believe we should take him at his word at this point.

But the big question is whether there are still any indictments left to come. We obviously saw Roger Stone, Trump's long-term advisor, arrested last Friday. But the question has always been, is the hammer going to drop on anyone else? Or could there be a superseding indictment against Stone. Because as of right now, he's only been charged with witness tampering and obstruction of justice, essentially for lying to Congress, not for anything related to the hacking of the DNC, WikiLeaks or anything related to sort of a larger conspiracy against the U.S.

CAMEROTA: But Elie, explain how this works. How could the report be close to being completed when we just watched Roger Stone be arrested on Friday and his house searched? Don't they need weeks to comb through whatever it is they may or may not have found in Roger Stone's house before a report is released? At least.

ELIE HOENIG, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY FOR SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: Yes, I have a couple of big problems with what Matthew Whitaker announced yesterday.

The first one, it's a complete amateur move. It is something that, as Laura said is absolutely not done for good reason. It is a strategic fumble. It is -- it is a tactical give away to announce, "We're almost done investigating." It's like being in the middle of a poker hand and announcing, "I'm almost done betting, guys." Right? You're going to incentivize targets and witnesses to drag their feet, to try to wait you out.

Look at the Rudy Giuliani/Robert Mueller negotiation that's been going on over a sit-down interview. Now, Rudy is going to see this and think, "OK, if they're almost done, if they're under time pressure, they're not going to subpoena my guy. Because that's going to take months in the courts.

So I'm just going to tell him no dice. We're not talking to you, and there's nothing you can do.

Also, Alisyn, as you said, it creates false expectations, this notion of close to being completed. I can't tell you how many times I've been privately, confidentially close to what I thought was the end of an investigation and never say it out loud, and then something new pops up. You get a new witness. You get a new cooperator. You find new evidence maybe, like in the search that was on the other day of Stone's homes, and the investigation can take on a whole new life, gone in a whole different direction. And so it creates a real problematic expectation.

You know, it's interesting also. There is an additional witness in the Roger Stone case, Andrew Miller, who we know because attorneys have told us, the grand jury, Robert Mueller wants him to testify to a grand jury.

[06:05:08] And by definition, that has to be for something that would be for an additional charge, because it can't be for what he's already charged with, by the Justice Department's own rules. So we know that the Stone investigation isn't over yet at all.

David Gregory, I mean, politically, we know Matt Whitaker is a close ally to the president. We know the president was talking to Matt Whitaker behind Jeff Session's back when he was still the attorney general. So when Matt Whitaker says, "I've been fully briefed," is it reasonable to expect that whatever he's been told the White House has been told?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think so. It's also reasonable to scrutinize him and the hypocrisy of the Justice Department.

When the president dismissed Jim Comey, the real reason he didn't like the investigation that was underway into him. But they also said, you know, that, look, Jim Comey violated Department of Justice procedures by drawing conclusions about Hillary Clinton and announcing all this publicly when they decided not to actually bring charges.

And yet here is Matthew Whitaker at the Justice Department doing something similar, which is to comment publicly on an ongoing investigation when that's simply not done.

The other piece of it is the potentially chilling effect that he's sending, saying that we'll review what Mueller puts before us when we know the ongoing debate is whether the report that is ultimately produced, separate from indictments, whether it ever sees the light of day publicly.

That's something that the Justice Department would review. Right now, it would be Matthew Whitaker. Ultimately, it will likely be Bill Barr, who is presumed to be the incoming A.G., if he's confirmed in the Senate who would review all of that. And that's the big question here is ultimately, what the Justice Department does with that information that Mueller puts forward.

CAMEROTA: And doesn't that stand to reason, then, Laura, that Robert Mueller, after all of this work, after all these months, that he'll wait for an acting -- for an attorney general not to be acting anymore, to actually be installed. He'll wait for Bill Barr. He won't release this report to Matt Whitaker.

JARRETT: You know, that's honestly always been our thought, given the timeline here. It's not clear that Matt Whitaker will be around for any report. Right? So it could also be the case that Mueller still has some investigative

or prosecutorial work but that the report would come much later. So there may actually be a gap in time there, which would certainly allow, if Barr is confirmed, as Gregory mentioned, for it to be up to him what ultimately happens to it.

And I think when Whitaker mentioned it being reviewed, it was an artful way of saying that Mueller is going to submit a final report to him, explaining all the prosecution and declination of cases that he didn't bring. That gets submitted to the Justice Department. I think that's what he meant when he said that it was going to be reviewed. But it came out a little bit jumbled there.

GREGORY: Can we also just allow for the fact that he may have screwed up, you know, and that he doesn't have a lot of experience.

JARRETT: Sure.

GREGORY: And this may just be a mistake. And I think we're in a position where you have to speculate and try to interpret something based on that. He may have messed up. He may hope it's done soon? But he may have gone out too far.

JARRETT: I don't think he messed up on that. I think that was a pretty big statement to make, and I asked repeatedly last night, "Do you want to correct that statement?" And there was no comment.

So I think they had an opportunity, if they wanted to say, you know what? He misspoke. We want to walk this back in some way or soften it in some way. They had no comment, the special counsel's office certainly had no comment.

BERMAN: He certainly didn't speak clearly. I mean, that's for sure. If you try to really diagram the syntax there, it's a bit hard to do.

But Elie, can we play the hypothetical game here? If he meant to say it, if he's right, it's almost over, does it mean then -- or what does it mean, I should say, about the possibility of more charges that would include conspiracy to defraud the government? Collusion-like charges. If it's almost done, wouldn't it be hard to have a charge of that magnitude still to come?

HOENIG: No, I think it could be ahead. Look, a lot of times, the most interesting things happen in the end game. Right?

And so if -- if you are sitting on a big indictment or major charges, a lot of times you want to make sure you have all the pieces locked in -- they're still negotiating with Andrew Miller, other witnesses -- before you roll that out.

So no, I wouldn't -- I wouldn't roll that out. Think of it like, you know, an NBA -- every NBA game is tied 100-100 with five minutes left to play, right? The real interesting stuff is what happens in those last few minutes.

So -- and again, that gets back to the problem with creating this expectation of close to complete. Close to complete means one thing, I think, to the lay public. But to a prosecutor, close to complete can mean there's still an awful lot of important things that lie ahead.

CAMEROTA: And Laura, Roger Stone being arraigned today. You know, in public, he is saying all sorts of things about how he would never testify against the president, he says, because he has nothing to testify about. And so people are wondering if that means that he's fishing for a pardon. So how do you see this playing out?

JARRETT: Well, once people are indicted, sometimes they change their tune on cooperation. I mean, we might not have ever guessed that Paul Manafort would be cooperating.

Obviously, that deal has fallen apart in certain ways because of the allegation, at least by the special counsel's office, that he lied. But still, that is the campaign chairman cooperating. And his deputy, Rick Gates, cooperating. Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor, these are all people who were very close associates, very loyal to the president who have cooperated and essentially flipped.

Now, Roger Stone may be the lone hold-out here, and it may be that Mueller doesn't have anything that he needs from him and may not even be looking for a cooperation deal here. But I don't think we should necessarily rule out the possibility, because things change when someone is facing serious time.

BERMAN: If he's looking for a pardon, you know, he certainly wasn't ruled out or overruled with that notion at the White House press conference yesterday.

Listen to what Sarah Sanders said when pressed on this issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Has the president ruled out a pardon for Roger Stone?

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I'm not aware of that. Haven't had any conversations regarding that matter.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you guarantee that the president won't pardon Roger Stone?

SANDERS: Again, I'm not going to talk about hypotheticals that are just ridiculous, things I haven't talked about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: If she hasn't talked to the president about it, first of all, she's smart not to, because it would put her in a bad position, David Gregory. But it is interesting there. And ultimately, this will be a real test for the president. If Stone is convicted, and these are serious charges that some have looked at and said are air tight , if he is sentenced to prison time, what does he do? GREGORY: Right. And I mean, I don't think reporters are going to get

very far pressing the press secretary on whether he's going to rule out a pardon. Clearly, he's not. But if you're -- you're not going to go talk to the president about that in any case.

The reality is that what Stone represents, I think, as Laura says, you know, you can change your tune once indicted, if you're feeling that pressure. But right now, publicly, he's got a lot of mileage out of holding firm. And certainly, the president would reward that.

We are -- there's the potential in all of this that we get to a final place where there's a lot of people who have lied to investigators, lied to Congress. And maybe Mueller can't prove the underlying collusion or coordination with the Russians. It's similar to what happened after the special prosecution -- prosecutor's case did to Valerie Plame, the former CIA officer. So you know, that is a distinct possibility, and that will play in, at least politically and rhetorically, into the president's hands as he makes some kind of defense in all this.

BERMAN: All right. David, Elie, Laura, thank you very much for this.

Senator Kamala Harris making the case why she is the most qualified, at least in her own mind, the most qualified Democrat to take on President Trump. At a CNN town hall last night, the California senator vowed to pass a middle-class tax cut as her top priority, and she laid out a vision of what a Harris White House would look like.

Kyung Lah, live in Des Moines, Iowa, with a recap of a really interesting night -- Kyung.

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It was really interesting listening to her as she took the stage. She was fielding these questions, John. She never said the president's name. But he was certainly the undercurrent in much of what she said as she offered a sharp contrast and a populist platform.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you please respond to this so that this man has a response ready the next time a man tries to man-splain why a man would make a better nominee.

LAH (voice-over): Senator Kamala Harris, in her first town hall in Iowa, explained how she, a biracial woman, is electable as president.

HARRIS: My entire career, I've heard people say, "It's not your time. Nobody like you has done that before." I haven't listened, and I would suggest that nobody listen to that kind of conversation.

LAH: What Democratic voters in Iowa should listen to, Harris stressed, is her vision for a presidency.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do you stay on your message and not get caught up in his crazy? HARRIS: That's -- that's good, Deb. That's really good. Well,

first, it's very important that anyone who -- who presents themselves as a leader and wants to be a leader speak like a leader. And that means speaking with integrity. It means speaking truth.

LAH: Her populist agenda, Harris told the town hall, includes a middle-class tax cut, which she pledged would be her first act in office; supporting a framework for a Green New Deal to fight climate change; paid parental leave and widening access to education from preschool to college; what she called reasonable gun control; and Medicare for all.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: So for people out there who like their insurance, they don't get to keep it?

HARRIS: Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. And you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork. Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on.

LAH: Harris again pledged to note vote for a southern wall with Mexico and passionately spoke to a DACA recipient about the fear and uncertainty nearly 800,000 young people live within the Trump era.

HARRIS: We should not be trading on your life for the sake of the political games that this president is playing in trying to vilify young people like you who are doing nothing except being productive and believing in and living the American dream.

LAH: On the persistent criticism on her past as a prosecutor, Harris defended her record, saying she worked to reform the system, but she did not back down from her past.

HARRIS: There are some people who just believe that prosecutors shouldn't exist, and I don't think I'm ever going to satisfy them. But I will also say that there is so much more work to do. And do I wish I could have done more? Absolutely.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAH: She may have been speaking at this Iowa town hall, but certainly, she had an eye to a national audience, as well. The RNC was watching, sending out an attack over Twitter for that Medicare for all answer when she was speaking with Jake.

And something else, Alisyn. After this town hall, she did make it a point to try She met with drake students holding a watch party and she told them, "You are going to get sick of me" -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Kyung Lah, thank you very much for the recap on the evening.

So how did senator Kamala Harris do in the town hall of the -- first town hall in the 2020 campaign? Her case to voters, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [06:20:04] CAMEROTA: Senator Kamala Harris making her pitch to voters at a town hall in Iowa last night. She says her top priority is a tax cut for the middle-class. And she backs Medicare for all and doing away with private health insurance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So for people out there who like their insurance, they don't get to keep it?

HARRIS: Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. And you don't have go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through paperwork, all of the delay that may require.

Who of us have not had that situation where you've got to wait for approval and the doctor says, "Well, I don't know if your insurance company is going to cover this"? Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. Joining us now to talk about this, we have John Avlon, CNN senior political analyst; M.J. Lee, CNN national political correspondent; and Alex Burns. He's a national political correspondent at "The New York Times." Great to have you all at the table to discuss this.

There is a new poll out that we want to get right to. Hot off the presses, this is an ABC/"Washington Post" poll. And look at this. Kamala Harris is basically tied with Joe Biden. OK? So the former vice president and his name recognition, somehow Kamala Harris has leap-frogged Bernie Sanders. This -- if you ask, I think, Democrats, if the primary were today, for whom would you vote?

So Alex, I see your look of consternation. You're furrowing your brow. What are your thoughts on this?

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's sort of my resting furrowed brow face, actually. No, you look at a poll like that, and this is clearly a race that is extremely wide open. Right?

And the two candidates who are by far the best known, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, are nowhere near the kind of commanding front-runner status that you would typically want to have as a former two-time vice president or the runner-up for the party's nomination the last time.

Look, I think that when you talk to people who are sort of either eyeing this campaign from the outside or involved in this campaign, you know, already competing with someone like Kamala Harris, there is generally the sense that she is not the front-runner in the sense of Hillary Clinton in 2016 or even Jeb Bush in 2016 on the Republican side, but sort of the person who clearly has all the components of a successful campaign if she can put it together the way she's starting to try to do. BERMAN: If we can look at those numbers again, just to put them up

again, we're talking all within margin of error leads here. However -- and by the time, Michelle Obama, M. Obama is Michelle Obama, who is not running, as far as we know.

CAMEROTA: And who's "other." Because that person is getting a lot at 12 percent.

BERMAN: "Other" has a great staff, and I -- no, listen, this poll was taken before the rollout from Kamala Harris. It was taken before her announcement on Sunday. And it does tell you that there are people there receptive to her message. And it also tells you she's going to face tough questions starting now.

I mean, if she's going to be a frontrunner, she's going to have to face tough questions. And I thought her answer on Medicare for all was interesting to Jake last night. Can we just play that one more time?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So for people out there who like their insurance, they don't get to keep it?

HARRIS: Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. And you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require.

Who of us has not had that situation where you've got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, "Well, I don't know if your insurance company is going to cover this"? Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I mean, she didn't say "yes" or "no," but it was kind of a -- kind of a, yes, I'm going to do private insurance.

M.J. LEE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And I think a lot of people who are watching this town hall performance, they were wondering if she was going to stick mostly to sort of vague or talking points that would help her in terms of setting up her progressive platform or whether she would actually get into the details.

And I think the private insurance answer answered that question for a lot of people, though she is going to have dozens of more of these kinds of town halls and will face a lot more questions.

You know, the big picture thing that I was looking out for yesterday was how is she going to do in the face of very specific policy questions, because the one thing we know, especially about Iowa voters, they like to get into the nitty-gritty.

And also, when you go into these settings, you know, these are very, very unscripted settings. These are, you know, sometimes moments where emotions are running high, and you can't really prepare for those moments. And I think there's something about the retail aspect of this that you can't really judge until you throw a person into that setting. And I think that's what we saw last night.

CAMEROTA: So John, what do you think has allowed her to leapfrog the rest of the pack, I mean, since that poll was before the town hall and before her big announcement?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think Kamala Harris showed she is ready for primetime last night. She is smart, she is engaging, she is charismatic. She also provides, in some ways, the clearest contrast to Donald Trump.

If you buy into the theory that presidential elections and successions are about who is the antidote to the other person's negatives, the incumbent's negatives. Kamala Harris, the daughter of two immigrants, you know, a D.A., someone who's spent a lifetime in government can really bring together the parts of the Democratic coalition and provide a really clear contrast to Donald Trump.

[06:25:06] But her comments last night, particularly on Medicaid fraud, show how much the field has shifted to the left in terms of policy in the Democratic Party.

You know, if Republicans were running against Obamacare as government takeover of healthcare, be careful what you wish for. Because, you know, Democrats are actually running --

BURNS: Actually government takeover of healthcare.

AVLON: Yes, exactly. And unapologetically, with an actually simplicity argument, we're going to simplify your life by having the government take over all of healthcare. That may play well in a Democratic primary. It's going to be a tougher sell to the general electorate.

And -- but she is clearly, as that poll shows and as you know right now, she's automatically -- she's really vaulted herself to the top tier with Joe Biden right now. And it will be interesting to see what other candidates can claw themselves up to that sort of top tier of Democratic candidates.

BERMAN: There was another aspect of the "Washington Post" poll which came out overnight, which I thought was interesting, which is 57 percent of adults in this poll, which seems like a lot to me -- 56 percent say they will not consider voting for Donald Trump for president. If you've got 56 percent of the population saying they're not going to vote for you, that's a tough hill to climb.

AVLON: yes. You know, I was told there would be no math. But that definitely not vote for you, when it's well over 50 percent, would suggest he has more than an uphill climb. That's wind shear for re- elect -- from President Trump's re-elect. That's a very tough number, and it's be replicated in other polls. He has done very little to build out beyond his base, and you reap what you show. BURNS: Well, and when you look at his base coming in, he never had a

majority coalition in the country. Right? And the last president to win the presidency without taking the popular vote, George W. Bush, it was, you know, a smaller disparity than it was between President Trump and Hillary Clinton. And much of the whole Bush term was based on this idea of needing to broaden your appeal, needing to sort of gain legitimacy in the eyes of voters who didn't support you and sort of saw the election as tainted. This president has never even tried to do that, and if you were at this one poll, you know, 100 minus 56, it's actually less than the 46 percent, right, that he got. The electorate that is available to him in that poll is smaller than the electorate that supports --

CAMEROTA: But it's early days. This is kind of off a government shutdown.

BURNS: Sure.

CAMEROTA: And who knows what the numbers will be next month. But meanwhile, Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, is toying with a run as an independent. And people are not always giving that the warm reception.

Here he was, he's on a book tour. And so here's a moment where he's interrupted by a heckler.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHULTZ: I am seriously considering running for president as a centrist independent. And I wanted to clarify the word "independent," which I view merely as a designation on the ballot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. Well, it's hard to put a finer point on it than that, M.J. So people are not really -- I shouldn't say people. I mean, he's getting some pushback, M.J. Yes.

LEE: He is. And the thing uniting everyone against Howard Schultz, you know, jumping in the race, potentially, is this idea that he is going to be the spoiler, that he's only going to end up helping President Trump.

And the fury around that, I think, has been so striking. Democrats across the board say -- and even someone like Bloomberg,, who you could say probably has the best case of any one of the potential candidates to make a successful independent run, saying, "No, what this does politically is give support to President Trump and sort of break off and divide the anti-Trump supporters and the votes," do not do it.

But I think the point about the fury around the -- you know, what it would do to Trump -- the Trump support and helping Trump, I think goes to show that Democrats are going to have a lot of ground to make. You know, right now, we're hearing a lot of talk about, you know, so-and- so making a speech, without even mentioning Trump by name.

I think that calculation is going to change at some point. Because this is the thing that revs up voters on the Democratic base more than any other thing.

AVLON: It also shows the danger of the Democratic Party moving too far to the left. Remember, there are more independents than Democrats or Republicans. There are more moderates than liberals or conservatives. So those folks feel politically homeless. Schultz is trying to tape into it. Maybe the wrong guy at the wrong time for that kind of message. But it's just as dangerous for Democrats to go too far left, if they're trying to stop --

BURNS: Put that on a bumper sticker: "The wrong guy --"

BERMAN: It must be nice to have $3 billion and know a lot of business reporters, to be able to get this kind of coverage when you're announcing for president, when you're not really willing to answer hard questions about what your position would be across the front, because you're not willing to answer hypotheticals there.

He needs to be held to the same standard --

AVLON: Sure he does.

BERMAN: -- as any other candidate if he's going to toy with running for president.

All right. M.J., Alex, John, thank you very much.

Venezuela's self-proclaimed acting president tells CNN he is ready to do what's necessary to see democracy rule in his country. We have a brand-new interview with the opposition leader there, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)