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Trump Calls for Unity in State of the Union. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired February 06, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: An economic miracle is taking place, and the only thing that can stop it, ridiculous partisan investigations.

[05:59:09] REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: He is bridling under the Democratic majority. We're not going to turn and look the other way.

STACEY ABRAMS, DELIVERED DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE TO STATE OF THE UNION: The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the president of the United States.

TRUMP: Where walls go up, illegal crossings go way, way down. I will get it built.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a lot of signals for the base.

JOHN KASICH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The question is, what is his definition of compromise?

(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 Wednesday, February 6, 6 a.m. in Washington, D.C., where we are for the aftermath of the State of the Union address.

Alisyn is off. Poppy Harlow joins me this morning.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.

BERMAN: Great to see you down here in Washington.

So the speech itself lasted 82 minutes. The question this morning: will the tone or the message last even that long?

The president praised the strong economy, called for unity and shared victory, but was it a sort of bipartisan "Brigadoon," a plea that magically materializes for 82 minutes, then disappears? One sign: in the very same speech, the president seemed to threaten

Democrats over what he called "ridiculous partisan investigations." He also focused on immigration, calling the situation at the southern border an urgent national crisis that needs the border wall the Democrats so strongly oppose.

HARLOW: The president did manage to bring Democrats to their feet in one of the most talked-about moments of the night, noting there are more women in the workforce and also more women in Congress than ever before. Look at that applause.

The irony, though, not lost on the record class of Democratic women who hugged and high-fived each other in celebration at that moment.

Even though the president did not mention the historic 35-day government shutdown, Stacey Abrams pulled no punches, delivering the Democratic response, calling the shutdown, quote, "a stunt engineered by the president."

So let's go first to Joe Johns. He's live at the White House this morning with highlights from last night. Good morning.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy.

The president kicked it off with the kind of unifying appeal that Americans have come to expect from the State of the Union address, no matter who's delivering it. But this was still Donald Trump, contradictory at times, calling for compromise on his terms. And he really didn't move the needle much in terms of policy or the hot- button issues that divide the country.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution.

JOHNS (voice-over): President Trump calling for unity and bipartisanship but showing no sign of compromise on hardline issues that have left Washington divided.

TRUMP: As we speak, large, organized caravans or on the march to the United States.

The lawless state of our southern border is a threat to the safety, security, and financial well-being of all America.

JOHNS: With the threat of another government shutdown looming next week, the president referring to the situation at the border as an urgent national crisis and, again, calling on Congress to approve his wall.

TRUMP: The proper wall never got built. I will get it built.

JOHNS: Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams rebuking the request in the Democratic response. ABRAMS: The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the president of the

United States. America is made stronger by the presence of immigrants, not walls.

JOHNS: With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi behind him for the first time, President Trump issuing a stark warning to the new Democratic House majority.

TRUMP: An economic miracle is taking place in the United States, and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations.

If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.

JOHNS: House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff later signaling he's not backing down.

SCHIFF: We're going to do our job. We're not going to turn and look the other way when we see corruption or malfeasance. And we're going to get to the bottom of what Russia has done.

JOHNS: Democrats, many dressed in white in a nod to the suffragettes, stayed seated for most of the speech, a striking contrast with the Republican counterparts on the other side of the chamber. The tension inside the room broken by this moment of levity.

TRUMP: No one has benefited more from our thriving economy than women who have filled more than 58 percent of the newly-created jobs last year.

JOHNS: Freshman female Democrats seizing the moment and celebrating their achievement before garnering the president's praise.

TRUMP: Don't sit yet, you're going to like this. We also have more women serving in Congress than at any time before.

JOHNS: The president throwing red meat to his conservative base by calling on Congress to prohibit late-term abortion. But appealing to Democrats on issues like criminal justice reform, lowering prescription drug prices and fighting HIV/AIDS and childhood cancer. Abrams signaling that Democrats are open to working with the president.

[06:05:07] ABRAMS: Even as I am very disappointed by the president's approach to our problems, I still don't want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: On the -- on the foreign policy side, the president defended his decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan. He also revealed details on plans for a second summit with Kim Jong-un.

The president does not appear to be traveling to promote any ideas in his State of the Union address today. He'll speak about ISIS and reveal his pick to run the world bank.

John and Poppy, back to you.

BERMAN: All right. Joe Johns in the White House. Joe, thank you very much.

We're joined by David Gregory, CNN political analyst; Abby Phillip, CNN White House correspondent; Karen Finney, former senior spokesperson for Hillary for America; and Marc Short, former director of legislative affairs at the Trump White House.

The president gave us 82 minutes last night. We'll give you the world, as they say. I think we can, if we go down the line here, I'd love a lightning-round top line reaction to what you saw, David Gregory.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I just think the plea for unity while a more adult version of Donald Trump, a more normal version of this president just rings hollow.

I mean, the line that comes screaming through to me is "We should work together, unless you investigate me, in which case we won't." Which was a reprise, by the way, of his press conference the morning after the Republicans really got hurt in the midterms. He said the very same thing. So that's where his heart is. Hard immigration stance. That's where

his heart is. That's what he knows the most about. That's my big takeaway.

HARLOW: Abby.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I got the sense that the president didn't expect a whole lot of big-ticket items to happen in these next two years of divided government. And particularly right at this moment. Nothing in Washington is going to get done until this wall issue is resolved.

The White House had been saying for days that the president would offer some kind of way forward. I didn't hear one last night. I heard, basically, the same thing that has been said about this issue for the last six weeks.

And so in other words, today and tomorrow, it's not clear to me that there is a sort of plan to get through this. Maybe we're just waiting out the clock until the 15th, and we could be staring down either a shutdown or a national emergency and no resolution on the underlying political issue of the wall.

HARLOW: What struck you the most?

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The people. I mean, the most powerful moments of the speech were the various people that he talked about: the little girl who had cancer, the gentleman from Dachau sitting next to the soldier. And it seemed like, actually, people got more and longer applause than the president himself, which I, you know, as a Democrat I would say I feel like that is deserved, because in these last couple of years, it is the American people who have really had to endure without a tax cut for the middle class, despite what he said.

So I guess that's the thing that -- and most of the most memorable moments came from, you know, whether it was the women, the people who are in the room.

MARC SHORT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I thought it was a great speech of the president last night. As we were discussing backstage, I think, actually, he seemed far more comfortable than he has in these venues before. I thought he was in command.

And I was -- I was heartened by his stance on life that I think is encouraging to a lot of conservatives, that Donald Trump becomes the most pro-life president of our lifetime. I think it's probably not something we expected.

And there's one other element that I thought was important to get in there that gets less attention. And that is that when the president says, "I have over 300 nominations waiting in the Senate," the reality is there's been ten times as many filibusters of this president's nominees than the last four presidents combined in the first two years of the administration.

GREGORY: I think -- I think you make an important point that he is really emerging as a conservative champion. And when he's at his best, he's most conservative. Right? Whether it's -- whether it's the Supreme Court nominees, abortion. There's aspects of immigration I think that mostly is still divisive for the party.

But that's an important point. Taxes, deregulation, the strength of the economy, when he plays as a conservative, I think he unifies the party and that's where he's strongest.

FINNEY: But I think that's part of what was so frustrating about the contrast. Lots of beautiful words, and imagery, the moon walk, World War II, these moments where America came together. And then right back to --

GREGORY: Hey, nobody moonwalked.

FINNEY: Thank heaven, no. But somebody had to, right? But when he said, "Walking on the moon," gosh, here we go. But, you know, but then right back to the most divisive things that he's trying to push and not putting anything on the table to say, "You know what? Meet me halfway."

All of this beautiful rhetoric about "Let's come together. Let's seize this moment, and here's what I'm going to do." Instead, like you said, don't investigate me. I want my wall --

HARLOW: Can we take a moment and listen -- listen to that?

FINNEY: Sure.

HARLOW: Because he didn't mention the shutdown which delayed this, right?

BERMAN: Right.

HARLOW: But he did mention the investigation and the Mueller probe. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: An economic miracle is taking place in the United States, and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations.

[06:10:20] If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesn't work that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: A couple things of note there. That's awfully reminiscent of Richard Nixon saying one year of Watergate is enough. I can't imagine that they did that deliberately.

HARLOW: Unintentional.

BERMAN: But it has to be unintentional, but you know, if you know your history you know that Richard Nixon say that, and I don't think they would like to see that parallel.

No. 2 it's interesting when he calls it a partisan investigation at a time when the biggest headlines about investigations are coming from the Southern District of New York.

HARLOW: That's a great point, in two separate probes.

BERMAN: Two separate cases. And the Southern District of New York, led by a U.S. attorney appointed by him. It's hard to make the point that the Southern District's investigation is partisan.

PHILLIP: Well, that's exactly the case the White House has been starting to make. Just yesterday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders called -- when she was asked about the Southern District investigation, she talked about how this was a result of people not accepting the result of the election, that the investigation into the inauguration and how that money was spent was basically bitterness on the part of partisans.

So in the minds of perhaps the president and people around him, it's all being folded together. The idea that this ended up in the State of the Union speech is really extraordinary to me, but it reflects the fact that for this president, it is such a central part of his presidency the last two years and even more so now in the next two years.

We're not even talking about Mueller or SDNY. We're talking about Nancy Pelosi, the woman sitting behind her. And all her chairmen and chairwomen who are going to be leading investigations into the administration. Not just the president: cabinet secretaries and everyone going down the line.

HARLOW: It was interesting, David, to watch Nancy Pelosi sort of trying to tamp down the Democrats from booing here and trying to -- to be civil in this.

The polling is interesting. Two numbers that stand out to us. So reaction overall in this CNN poll, and I should note, twice as many Republicans respondents to this as Democrats, which is notable. Fifty-nine percent very positive there; only 23 percent negative.

And then if you look at historically how he's done over the years, the highest, 59 percent positive reaction this year versus 48 percent last year, 57 percent of the Trump address in 2017. What do you make of it?

GREGORY: Well, what I make of it is what Mark was saying. I think there are a lot of really good notes here. Like Karen was saying, there was a lot of good -- you know, the histrionics were good, the stagecraft was good, the highlighting of stories.

This casts President Trump in a different light. I mean, most of the news coverage is about his tweet storms and things he says off-the- cuff that are so often incendiary. And here he got more substantive. He went through policy. He seemed like a -- like a more typical president in terms of making nods to the other side at different points.

So I think those played better, because most people are watching this maybe haven't seen him at great depth on these issues. And so they can take away a different president.

And I will say this about the investigation. I mean, I made my point before. But let us not discount the possibility that he is actually strengthened by the result of the Mueller investigation by the -- by the results of it, because there's plenty of people out there who are saying, "What do you got? You're investigating everything under the sun? What have you got?" And he could be totally killed by this thing this year, or he could be strengthened. And I think that's what he's appealing to.

Don't you think, Marc?

SHORT: I think you're 100 percent right, David. I mean, Congress has a constitutional right for oversight, and that's an important function.

I think he's making the case, we'll get less done on a bipartisan basis if Congress is focused on investigations that are partisan. I agree 100 percent with what David's saying. And I think that there is a growing frustration. He could say this has been going on for two years, what is out there.

FINNEY: I was in an administration and we had a little investigation and was it seven years?

SHORT: That's what I'm referring to. FINNEY: And at the end of all of that seven years, it actually ended

not where it started. And in this investigation over the last two years we actually, you know, have had people indicted.

GREGORY: Yes.

FINNEY: And part of the problem for this administration, two things. No. 1, on every layer, it reveals new things, new indictments, new -- I mean, that's -- it would be one thing if they're -- they had been investigating and one dead end stopped, and then they were trying to find other avenues.

Unfortunately for them, every layer you peel back you find, you know, a whole bunch more kind of pops out. And secondly, the fact that what I was struck by when he mentioned the investigation and how it's going to, you know, we can't get things done, you know, in the Clinton administration, one of the things that I think we did do very effectively is to really silo the investigation so that there was a separate operation that was really dealing with from the legal front and communications front so that we could keep the president out of it.

This president cannot stop talking about it. If he stopped talking about it, frankly, and spent more of his time talking about his agenda or the things he wants to get done, that would be more of what you would see him talking about, frankly, on television and even on Twitter.

[06:15:14] I mean, so their inability and all the stories we keep hearing about chaos in the White House, and I can tell you, having been a young staffer, it is hard to keep doing your job every day when you don't know every day what's coming down next. And clearly, this administration has not figured out how do that.

SHORT: But Karen, I think there's actually a lot of parallels. I think that back in the 1990s, what started as a Whitewater investigation became far more focused on the president's sexual relations with the 21-year-old intern. And that's where, I think, the American people are thinking where is this going? This was supposed to be about the Russia's involvement in the election and as you said, it's now become far more about what did Paul Manafort-- what did Paul Manafort --

FINNEY: But the goal was a lot deeper than they suspected at the beginning.

SHORT: Look, it's become now what is did Paul Manafort register to lobby as a foreign agent or not? And because he didn't, he's now in jail. And so you've got --

HARLOW: Look at the Roger Stone arrest and the indictment.

SHORT: Sure. But how much of is truly about Russian collusion versus what has been --

FINNEY: One of the most important things we learned about Paul Manafort is that he actually was giving away internal polling information at about the same time --

SHORT: I think Republicans overplayed their hands in the Nineties.

FINNEY: The amount of time that we know the Russians were hacking the DNC for --

SHORT: Republicans overplayed their hands to make Clinton a victim --

FINNEY: -- for polling and (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and that's a powerful weapon.

SHORT: And I think Democrats risk the same thing.

GREGORY: Isn't it interesting? You know, this is going to play out throughout this year. It's going to be a big backdrop of 2020. But how about the study in contrasts last night --

HARLOW: Yes.

GREGORY: A debate about socialism in the country. A debate about abortion in the country. We're going to return some to some of these fights and, of course, the contrasts between what Trump is, what he represents to many people, Stacey Abrams in the response. That is the contrast that's going on here.

BERMAN: That's sets us up perfectly for what I want to talk about next. We're going to take a quick break here.

But I think some of the most interesting things are one, let's talk about the Stacey Abrams response. No. 2, let's talk about this speech as setting the table for 2020 and how he, I think, methodically did that in this address.

So stand by for that and also, coming up in our next hour, we're going to be joined by the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, whom the president yesterday called a nasty son of a bitch. How's that for a tease?

HARLOW: It's only 6:17 a.m.

GREGORY: Wow, to our viewers around the world.

BERMAN: It actually happened. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:20:58] BERMAN: All right. We are back in Washington for the aftermath the State of the Union address and the aftermath of the aftermath of the State of the Union address, which is the Democratic response, which was delivered by former Georgia secretary of state, Stacey Abrams. Let's listen to what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABRAMS: Just a few weeks ago, I joined volunteers to distribute meals to furloughed federal workers. They waited in line for a box of food and a sliver of hope since they hadn't received paychecks in weeks.

Making livelihoods of our federal workers a pawn for political games is a disgrace. The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the president of the United States, one that defied every tenant of fairness and abandoned not just our people, but our values.

So even as I am very disappointed by the president's approach to our problems, I still don't want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth. And to respect his duties and respect the extraordinary diversity that defines America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I should note I gave her a job, which she has never -- she wasn't secretary of state. She was a state legislator. What her next job may be, that is in question and maybe connected to what we saw last night.

HARLOW: That's a very interesting question. How does she feel about a potential run for the Senate, versus another try at the gubernatorial race.

Back with us, our team of all-stars. So Karen, for our viewers who don't know, you advised her on this speech. A few interesting notes. She didn't watch the president last night.

FINNEY: Correct.

HARLOW: What struck me most in her message was her personal story about her father, et cetera. Walk us through her mindset and her goal.

FINNEY: Sure. You know, her goal was do, frankly, what she did throughout the campaign, which was to use her personal story, which I think is -- a lot of people can relate when she talked about her father. You know, you can't defer cancer payments, but sometimes you have to defer other payments.

There are a lot of Americans making those kinds of choices. And, you know, she is someone who grew up in poor and, obviously, knows very well the American dream.

So weaving together her personal narrative with policy in terms of this is why we need these policies, but also at the core this idea of community she talked about that, you know, "I'm coming for you," this idea that, you know,, people, we have our defenders of our nation. We have our first responders and sort of really trying to bring people in and sort of tout the -- you know, the goodness of America.

But yes, she decided she was not going to watch. And the other thing that she did well, I should say, she wrote the speech with little advising, because she is such a beautiful writer and had such a clear vision of what she wanted to say and the values that she wanted to talk about.

BERMAN: It's funny, or interesting to me. It was literally not a Democratic response to the State of the Union, because she didn't watch it.

HARLOW: Right.

BERMAN: What it was, was a response to the Trump presidency. And I think that's how the Democrats wanted to frame it, Abby, which is "This is who we are." And they chose Stacey Abrams, I think, for a lot of different reasons.

One is that she's the one Democrat not running for president, and they had to be careful about that. But, you know, look, the president attacked what he called socialism. Stacey Abrams, if you look at how she ran in Georgia, it wasn't to the extreme left or far left --

HARLOW: No.

BERMAN: -- as someone think in the party, it was as someone who wants to get things done and reach across the aisle and get things done.

PHILLIP: Yes. So there's a lot of focus on Stacey Abrams, like winning by losing or these folks like Beto O'Rourke winning by losing.

But I think what she represents is not just the obvious symbolism. She's an African-American woman. That is such an important part of the Democratic Party's constituency right at this moment, but she also represents the future of the party, what they aspire to do electorally but demographically.

In the south, in a state like Georgia, it's a young state, a state where young, middle-class millennials and slightly older millennials are coming back and creating a sense of community and perhaps changing the political demographics of that state. That's what she represents as much as she represents herself as a black woman.

[06:25:03] And I think for Democrats, choosing someone like that to deliver the State of the Union isn't just about the political moment right now. It's also about the political moment they might want to create into in two years or in four years.

And for the party that's still -- they're not quite there yet. I mean, she did lose that seat. Beto O'Rourke did -- still did lose that seat. But -- but they want to push it there and not -- not sort of wallow in, I think, you know, Steve Bashir, we don't even remember the State of the Union a couple years ago, but that moment for Democrats was focusing on what they thought they lost in 2016, focusing on middle America white men, working-class men. There are a lot of Democrats who still want to focus on that, but many Democrats also want to look even further ahead than that.

FINNEY: Other thing -- the other thing was, we wanted to show a contrast. We knew the president was going to talk about unity. Stacey Abrams is someone throughout her career who actually embodies unity. Her campaign brought in almost a million more new voters from all across the state. She had a reputation in Georgia of working in a bipartisan manner.

I mean, she also -- they got criminal justice reform done in Georgia in a bipartisan manner. So it was also to sort of show the contrast of someone who actually embodies and lives by those values and can get, actually, things done.

GREGORY: I mean, she's not running for president. And she may be doing at some point but she's not doing it at the moment, but she still represents the big-picture contrast.

I mean, look at recent history. Why was Barack Obama such a striking change from the Bush years? Yes, African-American, the promise of making history, that was huge.

The other piece was he actually called Iraq a dumb war. And so in that fever to get over Iraq, he represented that kind of startling contrast. And I think that's what a Stacey Abrams represents. There's others who are not just people of color and women who represent the contrast, but they are more uncompromisingly progressive. And I think that's what Democrats want. They also face a challenge moving forward about whether they can get elected. But I think that's the striking --

BERMAN: If we can circle back to the president for just one moment here, Marc, and his message, which was we talked about the economy a lot.

GREGORY: Yes.

BERMAN: Which he does occasionally, but not all at once, in an as organized a fashion.

GREGORY: Right.

BERMAN: And he laid that case out, and you could hear or feel Republicans in that room and around the country who want to get reelected in 2020 saying, "More, please, more of this. Talk like this more."

And he also contrasted that with what he called socialism on the Democratic side. But it seemed to me that that is a curtain raiser on 2020, on the re-election campaign.

SHORT: I don't know that it is, John. I think it -- it does set a strong platform. I think it was start of him to start there, as well, in the State of the Union. That was what he was saying. And most importantly, "I'm going to start this speech by saying what we've accomplished."

And I do think he has a tremendous record on the economy, not just the last couple quarters in GDP growth, but the record number of jobs that have been created. In many cases when people said you couldn't restore manufacturing jobs in our country.

So for him to walk through that, I think was very important. I do think it's foundational for what the re-election campaign is going to be about in 2020.

GREGORY: and by the way, strong economy. The country's at peace and secure and, you know, deregulation. These are major areas that a president would run on for re-election. It's hard to beat somebody in that position, by the way, as Democrats will tell you. That's a very important thing.

BERMAN: It's hard to have a 40 percent approval rating, given how good those other numbers are.

GREGORY: That's true.

PHILLIP: But the president's numbers are -- they are affected by what is happening in Washington.

I think what the shutdown showed was that people were willing to assign him blame for that episode. And if he's not able to get through this period with Nancy Pelosi, this is the first big test -- there's already been a first skirmish that he's lost. If he can't get through this period, it's going to be very difficult to govern for the next two years. And I think voters are not going to necessarily reward him for that.

Whether or not his approval ratings will be low enough that he will lose re-election, no one knows. I have no idea. But they're clearly affected by it. He took a big hit in January, and I think he could take more hits in this isn't resolved in a way that is satisfactory and where people are not staring down yet another month-long shutdown.

BERMAN: It was fascinating he doesn't mention the shutdown at all. I thought that was interesting and glaring. Good choice probably. I mean, you know, just divert. Pay no attention to what just happened.

GREGORY: Move on. Just move on.

FINNEY: As if it never happened but it really did. Stick with us, everyone.

Days before her presidential launch, new discovery about Senator Elizabeth Warren and heritage. Why she's apologizing again this morning, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)