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President Trump Comments on FBI Raid on Roger Stone's House; Negotiations Continue Between President Trump and Congress on Border Wall Funding; Extremely Cold Weather Hits Midwest; Interview with Marianne Williamson, Democratic Candidate for President. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired January 31, 2019 - 08:00   ET

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


[08:00:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: -- that Russia is attacking the U.S. justice system. While that's going on, President Trump appears focused on how that justice system is treating his friend Roger Stone. The president told "The Daily Caller" he's considering asking the Bureau to review its use of force policies in the wake of this predawn arrest of Roger Stone in Florida. Stone was indicted on seven counts including obstruction of justice. The Mueller team believed that Stone was a flight risk and worried he might destroy evidence. But the president seems to think that he knows better than the FBI here. He says "when you have 29 people, and you have armored vehicles, and you had all of the other -- you know -- many people know Roger is not a person they would have to worry about from that standpoint."

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Meantime the Justice Department alleging a pro Russia Twitter account targeted the Mueller investigation, stealing and spreading nonpublic material from the Special Counsel's team in an attempt to discredit the Mueller Russia probe.

Joining us now, Joshua Green, national correspondent for "Bloomberg Business Week, Jonathan Martin, national political correspondent for "The New York Times," and Laura Jarrett, CNN Justice Reporter. There is a lot going on. And even though it seems somewhat quiet on January 31st, there is a lot going on. One of the things that fascinating is we are learning about this information that we know has now been put out by this pro Russia Twitter account is how they got it. And Laura, something that stood out to me, and I brought this up to you during a break, is it's fascinating to me that they were pursuing this at all, that they were fighting these charges against a number of people who were never going to be extradited by Russia to face charges here. So why go after them? Could it be simply that they wanted to get their hands on information so maybe they could put it out there?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Absolutely. And I think the special counsel's team has hinted at that idea in filings before. And even within the Justice Department, bringing charges against Concord was seen as a little controversial. There were lawyers who thought maybe this should be an unindicted conspirator, because if they you make them a formal defendant they are entitled to discovery just as they would be in any criminal case, except in this case it's a little bit different because the evidence is then going potentially into the hands of the Kremlin and something that this disinformation campaign like we're seeing on Twitter is something that has been uninterrupted even though people have been indicted and they're facing serious charges. They haven't seemed undeterred by all that.

BERMAN: And Josh Green, Russia is attacking the Russia investigation. The president is, in some way, offering a defense or expressing sympathy for a target of this investigation, Roger Stone. The president really parroting what have been conservative talking points, suggesting that the FBI went in too hard when they arrested Roger Stone in Florida. What do you make of the president's defense here when the president suggests that he might review the use of force here?

JOSHUA GREEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think it's par for the course with how the president has responded throughout this investigation, implying or often stating outright that he thinks something was unfair, was done wrong, shouldn't have happened, anything he can to discredit and undermine that investigation. We saw a lot of these same complaints when Paul Manafort's house was raided by the FBI, not the least from Manafort himself, saying, why did their need to be all these agents, and this upset my family and my wife. I think it is a way of trying to cast some doubt on the integrity of the investigation with the hope that it might undermine a conclusion if that conclusion turns out to be negative for the president.

HILL: We are hearing, Jonathan Martin, too, we should point out we are also hearing now from Lindsey Graham who wants to know more about exactly what the protocol is, how things went down, why it went down like this.

JONATHAN MARTIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I think in the case of Senator Graham he obviously is facing a primary next year in South Carolina. And I think he sort of made pretty clear that he wants to silent with the president when he can going forward. I think that explains that.

As far as the president, I think it sort of largely depends on who the target is, right? If it's Manafort or Stone who have indicated that they are not going to cooperate with the feds and they are not going to flip, as the president often puts it, then he tends to be more sympathetic. If it's folks like Cohen, his former attorney, who are cooperating with the feds, then he doesn't have a lot of sympathy for the nature of their arrest or indictment. It's much more hostile.

So, look, I think if Roger Stone had come out of the courthouse the other day and said he was now going to cooperate with Mueller, do you think the president would have been really concerned about why he was being woken up in a predawn raid? I don't think so.

BERMAN: It's interesting. Laura, obviously, first of all, the president doesn't always express concern about the subjects of law enforcement investigations.

[08:05:00] JARRETT: Right. Since when have we ever seen him outraged about law enforcement tactics, except when it has to do with people who are connected to Mueller's investigation. And even with Cohen, remember originally he was outraged on Twitter, saying who raids an attorney's office even though there are Justice Department protocols that one can follow when you do perform such a search. But he's only outraged selectively.

BERMAN: And again, Lindsey Graham, the Judiciary Committee in the Senate, it's their job for oversight. If he wants to ask the questions, go ahead and ask the FBI. But what will the FBI tell him in terms of when they decide to use that type of posture?

JARRETT: The FBI will say this is what we do every day. The FBI will say, this is what we do to protect our agents. And I think there are fair questions to be raised about whether those are good tactics to be using in any case where there isn't a fear of violence. But then those should be raised in every case, not just in the cases where it happens to be the president's former advisers or lawyers or fixers or campaign chairmen.

HILL: Not picking and choosing.

BERMAN: No.

HILL: Interesting. That's an interesting angle there.

Looking at what else we are learning, there were some fascinating moments in the "Daily Caller" interview with the president, not just that, but also in the way that he's even looking at the investigations, talking about the resources being used for the Mueller investigation versus the resources, for example, in the Las Vegas massacre and that investigation. We should point out, he was asked specific questions and he's answering them. So he's not just pulling this up on his own. But just when you look at this, it's fascinating to see that this president still can so quickly move topics and just craft his own message to make it fit whatever he thinks will be most appealing in that moment.

GREEN: That's what Trump does. He does it on every subject, but he does it especially in the Mueller investigation. And I think as I said before, anything he can do to cast doubt on the integrity of that investigation, he's probably going to push. The one thing from "The Daily Caller" interview that stood out to me and surprised me a bit was Trump seemingly saying he's going to let this investigation continue. He's not going to interfere. To me that showed uncharacteristic restraint since Trump generally doesn't miss an opportunity to take a punch when one presents itself.

BERMAN: It's interesting. We should note the president has had five days with no public schedule. Today we don't know whether we will see him in public. But he's made a whole bunch of statements online, and that's why I keep scrolling through here.

And Jonathan Martin, there is one that is interesting to me, and I feel as if Kellyanne Conway may want to see this, where the president says, let's just call them walls from now on and stop playing political games. A wall is a wall. Now, there is a bipartisan group of members of Congress trying to negotiate some kind of a deal to move forward on border security. The president worked so hard and Kellyanne Conway worked hard to stop calling it a wall, call it a barrier, call it steel slats, but it's not a wall. And now this morning, the president is like, never mind. It's a wall.

MARTIN: Yes, it's the 147th time he's undercut his own advisers. It's not terribly surprising in that sense. It does speak to this nature of his presidency, the stream of consciousness, watching TV, responding to something he sees on TV, and also the fixation that he has on getting this wall which has become so self-reinforcing that he's boxed himself in now. And it's going to be hard for him to do what I think a lot of folks thought he would do last year, John, which is ultimately just declare victory somehow. Get some money for border security and declare victory, call it the wall. And most of the base would probably believe it was the wall if he sold it effectively. But now he's gotten himself so wrapped up into this that he may actually have to get some kind of a wall to call it a victory.

BERMAN: But he did both, he did both of those things in simultaneous statements this morning, Jonathan. Again, let me read what he wrote prior just to saying that the wall is a wall. He said "Large sections of wall have already been built and much more either under construction or ready to go. Renovation of existing walls is also a very big of the plan finally after many decades properly secure our border. The wall is getting done one way or the other!" So on the one hand he's saying I have already won. He's trying there maybe there to make it easier to reach a deal, and then he sort of beats himself up with the other hand.

HILL: And there's a 180.

MARTIN: Yes. There's not a lot of consistency there. That's a hallmark of his comm strategy. This is the whole thing, is the Democrats and Republicans have supported physical barriers, walls, fences, what have you, on the border for years now and have spent billions of dollars appropriating money. It's not terribly controversial on a lot of parts of the border. It's been seen as effective in some places. And to his point there, there are already parts of the wall already down there.

So yes, this is something from a P.R. standpoint he could certainly sell as a victory depending upon what he gets. And he can get the photo ops down there on whatever new construction he gets appropriated.

[08:10:01] But he just does seem to have created a dynamic where he's worried about a critique from his conservative allies if it's not somehow seen as the wall.

HILL: And we saw that red line that he drew yesterday before the meeting even started, saying if you're not talking about this, basically it's a nonstarter, you shouldn't even be in there.

MARTIN: Right, what does that mean?

HILL: Right. Josh, you make the point, though, in a new piece about when we look at what the president has, there is another shutdown that's looming, he actually has something else looming over him in terms of the arsenal this time around. GREEN: That's right. One thing I laid out in the piece was that the

shutdown could get worse next time if he were to attach a debt limit increase, which is everybody's worst nightmare. Lindsey Graham, the Robin to his Batman, suggested that the other day. So there are potentially bad outcomes here if Trump decides he isn't satisfied with whatever Democrats are willing to agree and pushes us into another shutdown.

BERMAN: When is the Mueller report coming, Laura? We don't have Laura here every day, I don't get to ask you this. When is it coming?

JARRETT: Trust me, when it comes, I'll come back.

BERMAN: Fantastic. I appreciate that. We have booked Laura for the morning of the Mueller report.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Jonathan, Josh, Laura, great to have you here. Thanks so much.

MARTIN: Thanks, John.

HILL: Millions of people across America waking up to historic, brutally cold temperatures yet again this morning. This polar plunge shattering record lows all across the map. It's already being blamed as well for several deaths. CNN's Ryan Young is live in Chicago off Lake Michigan where that is amazing, Ryan. Behind you, we just see the steam rising off the water. It's beautiful, especially when we are not out in it.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is beautiful, absolutely. We wanted to bring you this shot to you. We are not protected by the buildings, so I can tell you today feels colder than it did yesterday. But to step out to show you guys something, because this is unbelievable, just to see this. The water temperatures is warmer than the air temperature, so that's what creates this amount of steam that's coming off here. You think about this, Lake Michigan is one of the fifth biggest lakes in the area. But this is brutally cold. The Midwest is really dealing with winter's punch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

YOUNG: A brutal arctic freeze sweeping over nearly a quarter of the country, bringing the coldest air in a generation to parts the Midwest.

ROCHELLE DAVENPORT, CROSSING GUARD: It's freezing cold. My face, me toes, everything.

YOUNG: With a low temperature of negative 23 and a wind chill of negative 52, the windy city's temperatures lower than parts of Antarctica and Alaska, causing giant ice breaks to blanket the river and a wall of ice steam to form along Lake Michigan and across the skyline. The dangerously cold weather even showing its strength inside. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The steam froze around where the leaks in my front

door.

YOUNG: In Minnesota, a wind chill of 65 below zero. These ultra- marathoners crossed the finish line with their faces fully covered in ice. Police uniforms frozen completely upright to showcase the freezing cold. Residents of both Minnesota and Michigan asked to turn down their thermostats to conserve natural gas.

Meanwhile, snow squalls ripping through the northeast, bringing near whiteout conditions and winds of up to 30 miles per hour in New York and Philadelphia. This time lapse video showing a squall blowing through New York City, lake effect snow creating blizzard-like conditions in upstate New York. Dropping two to three inches of snow per hour in Buffalo where temperatures dipped to negative 35 below zero. Near Rochester, a 21-vehicle wreck brought this highway to a standstill. A snow squall also to blame for this 27-vehicle pile-up near Reading, Pennsylvania.

ROBERT STRAUSE, DRIVER: We couldn't see anything because the snow is being driven perfectly horizontal.

YOUNG: First responders across the country forced to brave the treacherous conditions.

DEPUTY CHIEF JOSH BUSH, MAHAFFEY COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT: The temperature not only affects the manpower but also the hose lines freeze up instantly.

YOUNG: Firefighters in Indiana covered in ice as they battled this house fire in negative 22 degree weather.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

YOUNG: So you guys can see this now. It looks like it's even more dramatic. The sun is starting to rise. Of course, we're an hour behind you. When you think of people standing outside for long periods of time, they are still warning about the potential for frostbite. So you think about the folks who have been trapped outside, especially even the homeless people who live here in the city. I can tell you one of the things I read in the "Chicago Tribune" this morning is some good Samaritan decided to buy 70 hotel rooms last night for some of the homeless people throughout this area. Today now you have dozens of people who are showing up here around our location to take pictures of this because I'm sure they will be talking about the weather for quite some time.

BERMAN: All right, good for those good Samaritans. Good for you, Ryan, to bring us that picture. It is really stunning behind you. Thank you to you and your crew. Now go get warm.

So how cold is it, exactly, how long will it last? CNN meteorologist Chad Myers with the forecast.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It's record-breaking, John. We know that. The old record in Chicago this morning was minus 12. We are at minus 21 now. But it feels worse than that, because the wind is blowing as well. It feels like 34 below where he was just standing.

[08:15:00]

Now, later on tonight, it will feel like 11 below. That's 7:00. The warmest part of the day for Chicago around 6:00 Central Time. Tomorrow, not as cold, three below will be the wind chill in Chicago.

And then the warm air tries to get here. And there's going to be a rub that happens every time we get brutally cold air. We go from zero tomorrow and we try to warm up to 41.

It doesn't with happen -- it doesn't happen without consequences. We are going to get humidity that's going to go over this land. The land and the roads are likely zero degrees, six inches deep.

When you try to get rain on top of a road that's below 32, you are going to get an ice event, rough, rough ice event. Probably Saturday morning into Saturday afternoon depending on when the rain gets to you up here. A little bit more salt in the wound, if you don't mind.

Guys, back to you.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks for that. We always like that. All right, Chad. Thank you very much.

So, a number of candidates jumped into the Democratic race for president. Who was the announced candidate with the most Twitter followers? You might be surprised. We're going to talk to her next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: The race for 2020 is on. The wide range of potential candidates includes several members of Congress, a billionaire former Starbucks CEO, and our next guest who is the one with the largest social media following of any declared candidate so far.

[08:20:08] Marianne Williamson, Democratic candidate for president, bestselling author and activist.

Marianne, thank you so much for being with us. You are well-known to millions of people who have read your books, including "A Return to Love". But some people who followed politics closely might not have seen you. So, I want them to get familiar with where you are coming from politically.

You said: We have a problem with the psychological fabric of the country as a low level emotional civil war has begun to rip us apart. In order to deal with that, we must address it on the level of our internal being.

That's on your campaign website. So, how exactly does a president address this?

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We need a moral and spiritual awakening in the country. And nothing short of that is adequate to fundamentally change the patterns of our political dysfunction. There are many things we need to discuss, many things we need to name.

We have an economic and amoral economic system. We need to discuss this.

We have millions of American children live in chronic despair and trauma. We need to discuss this.

We have systemic racism -- layers of systemic racism that are leftovers from slavery. We need to discuss this.

And while we are good at preparing for war, we do not wage peace on the levels we need to. We need to discuss this.

You know, Franklin Roosevelt said the administrative aspects of being president were secondary. What really matters, he says, is moral leadership. We need someone to articulate what's really happening, the deeper levels of our moral dysfunction. I have had a 35-year career in naming and transforming those dynamics. And I think that that's my qualification for the presidency at this time.

BERMAN: Your campaign has a number of proposals already out there listed on your website. Some very specific. You call for universal health care, Medicare for all, make permanent middle class tax cut, provide free higher education, including free tuition for public colleges, government support for children's services, establish a green new deal. All of these sound like many of the policies from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Do you feel it's necessary to come up with a way to pay for these all?

WILLIAMSON: Well, that's such a canard in this country. Anytime somebody wants to have a $2 trillion tax cut, where you give 83 cents of a dollar to the richest among us, nobody is supposed to ask how to pay for it. Any time somebody wants to have a $2 trillion war that turns out to be the biggest foreign policy blunder in our history, nobody is supposed to ask how we're going to pay for that.

The truth of the matter is, every dollar that we invest in education is money we are investing in our economy. If you really want a vibrant economic system 10 years from now, 20 years from now, you take care of your children today.

Our current economic system does not lead to a vibrant economy. It leeches. When you have short-term profit maximizations for huge corporations as your bottom line, you're allowing market forces to replace democracy as your organizing principle for your society. You're not building a strong economy. We need to name that, see it for what it is.

It is propaganda that serves a veiled aristocratic system. We want, of course, a vibrant economy in the United States. What you do is unleash the creativity and the productivity of the American people.

BERMAN: You know, it's interesting, again, some of the policies, not dissimilar to what Bernie Sanders ran on four years ago. And you supported him in the Democratic primary four years. WILLIAMSON: Absolutely.

BERMAN: Why haven't you waited to see if he jumps in before declaring your own candidacy?

WILLIAMSON: I certainly agree with many of the things Bernie Sanders says, many of the things that Elizabeth Warren says. I'm simply having a more expanded conversation.

It's like an integrated model of health and healing. You need more than external remedies. You also have to address the psychological and emotional and spiritual issues that both cause disease and help ameliorate it when it occurs. We need an integrated model of politics.

The political conversation is so stuck on externals but that is inadequate. We need to talk about the larger panoply of what is actually happening. Otherwise, you do what our political system does, you water the leaves of our democracy, but you're not watering the roots. And that's what I'm introducing, a conversation that I feel is the only one that is adequate to navigating and transforming.

BERMAN: Is it that what you would do as president? Is the conversation what you are promising as president?

WILLIAMSON: Well, first of all -- well, first of all, the bully pulpit of the presidency is not to be undervalued. But even more importantly, it is the consciousness of the president that then drives his or her policy decisions, both in our domestic policies and in our international policies, where underlying ways in which we are not addressing our deeper humanitarian values and our deeper democratic values.

Our democracy and our capitalism has swerved off course from an ethical center.

BERMAN: Right. Let me --

WILLIAMSON: I believe, yes, it is the job of the president to name this.

BERMAN: We have a short time. And you do have specific proposals and policies and I'd like to get to a couple more of them right now.

[08:25:03] You are a candidate who believes that African-Americans should receive reparations for slavery, specifically $100 billion paid in a 10-year, annual installment of $10 billion. Is this symbolic or do you think this money goes to a practical purpose?

WILLIAMSON: This is not symbolic at all. At the end of the civil war, General Tecumseh Sherman promised to every formerly enslaved person 40 acres and a mule. And those 40 acres and a mule would have given a formerly enslaved population an opportunity to reintegrate -- to integrate into free society.

What happened instead, of course, was black code laws were passed in the American South which ensured sub-par social and political and economic opportunities for the former slave population. This was not addressed for a hundred years until the civil rights movement. And while the civil rights movement gave Voting Rights Act although that was chipped away since 2013 and gave a lot of political opportunities that had not been there for the hundred years previous.

It did not address the fact that we have not yet paid that debt. Germany has paid $89 billion in reparations to Jewish organizations since World War II. And Ronald Reagan signed the American Civil Liberties Act, by which we paid every surviving member who had been interned during World War II in the Japanese internment camps $22,000.

BERMAN: All right.

WILLIAMSON: I believe a hundred billion dollars given --

BERMAN: OK.

WILLIAMSON: -- to a council to apply this money to economic projects and educational projects of renewal for that population is a debt to be paid. Until we pay it, we will deal with these issues.

BERMAN: You are not a novice to politics. You have been an activist for years. You also ran for Congress, people don't know this, in California, in 2014. What do you see as the path to victory here for the Democratic nomination? Do you think you can win?

WILLIAMSON: First of all, Donald Trump is president. This idea of predicting who can win, we should throw that out the window.

BERMAN: Fair.

WILLIAMSON: My strategy isn't strategy. My strategy is that I seek to speak as deeply, articulately and passionately as I can what I see as the deeper truths confronting our nation, challenging our nation to live up to them.

I'm speaking from the depth of myself to the depth of the American in all of us. This is not strategy. The whole strategic mind is part of the corruption of the political system.

I'm not trying to figure out what to say to get people to vote for me. I'm seeking to have the conversation that I believe we need to be having. These are very serious times. We need to be very serious deep thinkers.

I'm not trying to get shallow or superficial so people will hear me. I'm inviting the American people to get deep with me. It's time for that in order to address these times and to transform them.

BERMAN: Well, Marianne Williamson, we appreciate you coming on and having the conversation. You're in Iowa today, in Des Moines. You're headed to South Carolina.

I know this is a real campaign. Again, you've got a campaign manager. There is a website with a lot of policies. We look forward to speaking again as the campaign season continues.

WILLIAMSON: Thank you. I appreciate your having me on.

BERMAN: Erica?

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: New clues in the attack on a television actor being investigated as a possible hate crime. What Chicago police are saying about a surveillance photo, next.

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