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New Day

Lawmakers Reach Tentative Deal; Trump and O'Rourke Face Off in El Paso; Battle Intensifies to Push out ISIS; Democrats Diverse Electorate. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired February 12, 2019 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00] JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Reason. That was very important to the president and his base. But just hours before -- or days before a potential shutdown, if he was interested in the details, perhaps he would have wanted to be back at the White House.

Of course, he landed back there basically in the middle of the night. So he -- he will do something this morning.

But one thing I think is interesting that we should take note of. During the State of the Union, he did not talk about the shutdown. Never mind that he said he would own the shutdown and be proud of a shutdown in December, he saw what actually happened to that. So the Republicans I talked to inside the White House and outside the White House said that they believe that he saw the sting of that shutdown. So most of them would be surprised if he would go that route. But, again, who knows? We thought at the end of December he was also going to avoid a shutdown and he didn't.

But one thing that's different now is that he learned and saw what that was like and it hurt him politically. He always has the option of do the national emergency, as Abby was saying, after all of this. So we don't know exactly where he's going, but that is the one sort of new piece of information that was not there in December. So we'll see what he says.

I wouldn't look for him to make a determination early this morning. He will sort of take in the news coverage of this, see what people are saying and then make a decision. But, boy, if he waits until Friday or even Thursday, that is a lot of time for the opposition to get him.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So, David Gregory, there was this interesting split screen obviously last night in El Paso with the president's rally and Beto O'Rourke's rally. And they both talked about their feelings about a wall. So here's just one little snippet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Walls save lives. Walls save tremendous numbers of lives.

BETO O'ROURKE (D), FORMER TEXAS CONGRESSMAN: We know that walls do not save lives. Walls end lives. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: They both got big crowds. And, you know, it -- as you heard, Beta O'Rourke say to Jeff Zeleny, he's going to be making a decision by the end of the month. So, what did you see here?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I saw a campaign by metaphor. And that's what 2020 is going to be a lot about. And because this issue has not been solved, the issue -- a comprehensive look at how to both tighten border security, deal with asylum seekers, deal with the question of the dreamers, because government has not been able to solve this problem in a comprehensive way since the last best chance to do it was before 9/11 when President Bush had some good ideas about it, this is going to be a campaign issues yet again. And the wall is the most powerful metaphor out there.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, I also saw a presidential candidate running for re-election who did seem concerned with Beto O'Rourke. He went out of his way to point out the crowd size. And you know nothing matters more to the president than crowd size.

GREGORY: Yes.

BERMAN: So that's one aspect, I think, of how the president may run against him. And I also, Abby, was struck by how President Trump went out of his way to look at the green new deal. There were campaign themes there, I think, that were an extension of the State of the Union that we saw. We saw how the president will campaign for re- election.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you did. I think you saw the president testing out some lines last night on a broader array of issues, whether is in opposition to the green new deal, suggesting that something like that could reverse the economic progress that the United States has made, particularly since the recession.

But, interesting, I -- you know, the big theme of last night was the wall. I mean the big signs up there was "finish the wall." It's extraordinary that a president, who is presiding over record low unemployment, who's presiding over a very strong economy, who, according to his own aides, believes he has a very good message to tell, also chooses to narrow his message to just this one issue, to the border wall. It kind of drowns out a lot of the other things that he talks about at a rally like the one that he had last night.

So they're still trying to figure this out. And it's the tension for President Trump is always going to be, the thing that most excites his base is the thing that kind of turns off the rest of the country that's tired of the polarization. And this wall issue, the immigration issue, has become so polarized, especially over the last month and a half since the shutdown. And President Trump is going to have to deal with candidates, like Beta O'Rourke and others, who are going to challenge him on the wall, but are going to challenge him on tone, are going to challenge him on a broader message about economic opportunity. And if he can't figure out how to get that economic message or other kinds of messages to break through, even with his own base, it's going to be a challenge. I think you're going to see Democrats trying to broaden actually the topics that they talk about because they recognize that the president actually ends up narrowing his focus so much when he's out on the campaign trail.

CAMEROTA: And, Jeff, very quickly, we're almost out of town, but you're -- you were with Beta O'Rourke. And so he's done with his kind of soul searching road trip. And is it your impression, from the crowds, from watching him, from his family, from his body language that, yes, at -- in a couple of weeks he's going to announce that he's getting in?

[06:35:05] ZELENY: It certainly seemed like it, Alisyn. But one thing I was watching was his -- his family walking through this sort of group of people. It was, you know, a lot of people were surrounding him. His children looked a little bit afraid by all these people sort of screaming and chanting. So I think what is happening in the O'Rourke household this morning, how they sort of viewed all that last evening, hearing those chants, they are still having a discussion about this.

So, yes, it looked like he was going to run, but he certainly has left open the possibility of doing something else. And I asked one supporter in the crowd who said she loves him but she said she hopes Joe Biden runs and Beto O'Rourke is his vice presidential candidate. So even people here in El Paso aren't completely convinced, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, David, Jeff, Abby, thank you all very much.

All right, so CNN is on the front lines of this intensifying battle to drive ISIS out of Syria. Our crew was very close to the crossfire. We will bring you there, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:40:01] CAMEROTA: Desperate ISIS fighters staging a surprise counterattack in eastern Syria despite being cornered and outnumbered. Watch this.

(VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right, the fighting on the front line was so intense that our CNN crew, which you see there, had to pull back and get to a safer place.

CNN's senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman is live in eastern Syria now with the latest.

Ben, your video just really captures the danger for all of us back here.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it was a dodgy moment there. What had happened was that there was some early morning fog and ISIS took advantage of that to move forward because it -- with the fog it's very difficult for coalition aircraft and drones to spot moving targets on the ground. So what we saw was that they had come over the berm that separates the town of Bahuzinfohani (ph), that last enclave of ISIS from the area controlled by the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic forces. And they were moving forward. We had a mortar round land right next to the building we were in, in addition to these rounds zinging one after the other overhead.

Now it -- after that, there were some more strikes by the U.S.-led coalition. And in the course of the day, they were able to repulse this counter attack and push back. But then this incident really did underscore just what a continuing danger these ISIS fighters pose despite the fact they have been under around the clock bombardment by coalition aircraft, as well as artillery and mortars from British, American and French positions in the area.

And all the while the situation of civilians inside that town is becoming more and more precarious. We found out today that there aren't 1,500 civilians inside, as some officials are telling us, they themselves have discovered there are thousands of people still inside that town, many of them being used as human shields.

John.

BERMAN: The tragedy goes on. The danger goes on.

Ben Wedeman, thank you for being on the ground for us. Please, you and your crew, stay safe.

So we saw Beto O'Rourke perhaps testing the presidential waters overnight. This as we have a fascinating new analysis of who exactly will pick the next Democratic nominee. There are some real surprises. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:46:13] BERMAN: Just days into a presidential campaign, Senator Amy Klobuchar is pushing back against reports that she mistreats her staff.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I know I can be too tough sometimes and I can push too hard. That's obvious. But a lot of it is because I have high expectations for myself. I have high expectations for the people that work with me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Klobuchar is the fifth woman to announce her candidacy. The Democratic Party now has its most diverse group of presidential candidates in history by a long shot. So are Democratic primary voters becoming more diverse as well?

Joining me now is Ron Brownstein, CNN's senior political analyst, senior editor at "The Atlantic." He has a new piece on cnn.com this morning on this very subject. A deep, deep, deep dive into the Democratic Party electorate.

Ron, give me first the new trends, where you think it is headed in terms of who will be voting more in 2020.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, well, what we did, John, is we looked at all of the exit polls that were conducted in 2016. All 27 of them. We compared them to what -- a similar analysis of all the exit polls done in 2008 in the Democratic primary. And it shows you some clear trends.

The Democratic primary electorate, the people who will pick this next nominee, is more diverse, more racially diverse, better educated and solidifying the dominance of female voters. And all of these trends -- I think when I talk to people in many different presidential camps, the widespread expectation is that all of these trends will accelerate in 2020 because if you look at 2018, the voters who recoiled the most from Donald Trump, who moved the most toward the Democrats in the midterm election, it was those same groups. So the expectation is that we're going to see kind of an intensifying trend towards and electorate that is more diverse, better educated and possibly this time even 60 percent or more of the voters will be women.

BERMAN: Yes.

BROWNSTEIN: I don't think people realize how heavily tilted the Democratic Party is at this point, the primary is toward female voters.

BERMAN: Very heavily slanted towards female voters. White college educated women and African-American women in particular, correct?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. Right. So the two largest groups in the Democratic electorate at this point are college educated white women who are about one-fifth of all the voters in 2016. African-American women are about 16 percent of all the voters. And you see here the change from 2008 to 2016. We're down to whites at 62 percent. That could hit 60 percent. And non-white voters could hit 40 percent of the total. College educated voters moving into a majority of the Democratic electorate and women, as we said, approaching 60 percent of all the voters.

And what we saw in both 2008 and 2016 is that there was a significant gender gap, particularly among white voters. Women were more likely to vote for the woman candidate, Hillary Clinton. So that significant tilt is, you know, an important dynamic in this race.

And really where these trends intersect, when you're talking about college white women and African-American women, between them, those two groups alone, which are probably the two groups of the electorate most alienated from Donald Trump, they could be 40 percent of all the Democratic primary voters next year.

BERMAN: On paper, in theory, and you never know for sure until a campaign works itself out, is there any Democratic candidate now running, or getting close to running, that is best positioned to take advantage of this?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, I -- look, I think when you talk to the campaigns, on paper the person who most embodies what the Democratic coalition is becoming is Kamala Harris, right, in the sense that she is a professional woman who may be strong, competitive among college educated white woman and, as I said, are the single largest group, but also has the potential to be very strong among African-American women.

And, by the way, women are two-thirds of all African-American voters in the Democratic primary.

BERMAN: Right. Sure.

BROWNSTEIN: But this is the reason why you play the game --

BERMAN: Yes.

BROWNSTEIN: Because the issue is not only how big a pool -- is the pool, the issue is how many straws are drawing from each pool. And the question of which candidates can consolidate their lanes faster is probably going to be extremely important in deciding this race. I mean there is still a significant block of older voters.

BERMAN: Well, that's OK.

[06:50:14] BROWNSTEIN: There's still a significant block of moderate voters.

BERMAN: So two points I want to make.

BROWNSTEIN: And so -- yes.

BERMAN: We have about a minute left and I just want to hit these last two points.

Number one, counter intuitively, everyone says the Democratic Party is getting much, much younger. That's not really so much the case here, is it, Ron?

BROWNSTEIN: No. Still about 60 percent of the voters are over 45 in 2016. And that's true across every group, white men, white women, black men, black women, it still tilts older. And, yes, millennials are growing as a share and, again, as a group is very alienated from Trump, may even larger in 2020, but, overall, there are a lot of older voters.

BERMAN: And --

BROWNSTEIN: And someone like Joe Biden, who may be targeted toward them, would have that as a potential base.

BERMAN: And when you look beyond the primary, when you look at the electoral map, the Electoral College map, what do these new facts tell you in terms of where Democrats may want to target votes?

BROWNSTEIN: Look, I think, you know, obviously the shortest path back to the White House is winning back enough blue collar white voters to regain those three blue wall states that Trump dislodged, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But the long-term trend in the Democratic Party is clear, I think, toward more diverse, sunbelt states. In this race, the fulcrum of that will be Arizona. I mean Arizona is -- has to be right at the top of the list. But over the long run, they have to find a way to win in places like Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, eventually, and Florida. Places that reflect what their coalition is becoming. The diversity of the field is a reflection of the diversity of the coalition. And we're going to see how that plays out. I think it's going to be more important than ever before in 2020.

BERMAN: Ron Brownstein, I recommend everyone go check out the piece on cnn.com. It's a deep dive with information you have not seen before, analyzed in a way you have not seen before.

Thank you so much, Ron, for being on with us this morning.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: All right, be sure to watch a special CNN town hall tonight. Poppy Harlow talks to former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who is considering an independent run for the White House. That's tonight at 10:00 p.m., only on CNN.

CAMEROTA: We are looking forward to that.

OK, meanwhile, snow and ice will cause a mess all along the East Coast today.

Chad Myers has our forecast, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:56:38] CAMEROTA: All right, snow and ice will disrupt travel in the Midwest and Northeast today.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers has our forecast.

Wow, this is going to be a long snowstorm here.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It is. All the way from Minneapolis, all the way to New York City and Boston today. Here's where the snow is right now, a messy commute in Detroit. You may want to call ahead if you're flying out today. Some of these carriers are allowing you to shift your plans today. All the way down to the south, severe weather. Even a few tornado warnings already this morning.

This weather is brought to you by Jared, dare to be devoted. Valentine's Day, right around the corner, as your weather cupid here.

Otherwise, there's the snow. By 11:00, snow moving into New York City. Maybe some sleet mixing in at times. The snow does move into Boston today. But by later on tonight, you're 36 and it's all going to be melting. So there's the snow. Most of it up into Ontario, into New England. And for tomorrow it completely clears out and warms up.

Most of the snow north of Pennsylvania into upstate New York into New England and that's where it's going to stay for the rest of this week because look at Boston. You get to 54. Chamber of Commerce Weather in Orlando, if you're going to spring break or winter break, 78 degrees on Friday and a beautiful weekend and weekend long for those President's Day winter breakers, John.

BERMAN: For those winter breakers. Those people who look to President's Day for that winter break.

Thank you, Chad, appreciate it.

Here now are your late night laughs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": This weekend Mulvaney said, there's pots of money presidents have access to without a national emergency. And Trump told him to find it, say, comb through the law. And, listen, coming from Donald Trump, combing means something very specific, OK? OK, make first push the law all the way forward, then push the law all the way back, then feather the sides of the law.

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JIMMY FALLON": Congress is offering Trump $2 billion for his border law instead of the $5.7 billion that he asked for, which means a lot of immigrants will just bang their shins on the wall while they hop over.

SETH MEYERS, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": Senator and Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris said today that she smoked marijuana in college, adding, quote, and I did inhale. Not to be outdone, Bernie Sanders claimed that he never exhaled. Because once you exhale, you've got to buy more. That's how they get you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That's a good impersonation.

BERMAN: Not bad.

All right.

CAMEROTA: All right, thanks to our international viewers for watching. For you CNN "TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, there is a possible deal. It was reached last night to avoid another government shutdown. NEW DAY continues right now.

And, good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. We do have breaking news because overnight this bipartisan group of lawmakers came out and said they have a deal. They say that they have come up with a solution for border security that will avoid another government shutdown this Friday.

Here is what we know about their tentative plan. Almost $1.4 billion for new fencing and other physical barriers. They are not calling it a wall, but it will be along a 55 mile stretch of the Rio Grande Valley. Also, funding for more than 41,000 detention beds. That's more than Democrats had wanted. And nearly $2 billion in spending for the Department of Homeland Security. [06:59:58] At this hour, we do not know if President Trump will

support this deal. Sean Hannity, one of the president's closest allies, calls it, quote, a garbage compromise.

BERMAN: And what he says clearly matters here.

END