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Democrats and Republicans in Congress Strike Deal on Government Funding and Border Security; Author of Tell-All Book on Trump White House Sues President for Attempting to Infringe his First Amendment Rights. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 12, 2019 - 8:00   ET

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


[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yet some 800,000 federal workers who could go without pay again, they don't know. They want to know. These are the details of this tentative deal, $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new barrier in the Rio Grande valley. That's not a wall. It specifically says it can't be a wall, but it can be fencing. There's also funding for more than 41,000 detention beds and nearly a $2 billion increase in spending for the Department of Homeland Security. The money for a barrier is a fraction of the $5.7 billion the president demanded for his border wall.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So we do know how Sean Hannity feels about it. And as you know he often has the president's ear. He doesn't like this deal. He's called it a garbage compromise. And members of the Freedom Caucus are also slamming the deal. They of course are the group that helped pushed the president toward the shutdown in December. So what will he do now when he hears them? This morning on NEW DAY we speak about the conservative opposition with one of the lead bipartisan negotiators, Democratic Congresswoman Nita Lowey.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NITA LOWEY, (D) CHAIRWOMAN, COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS: When we sat around this table and negotiated this deal, we didn't call Sean Hannity, we didn't call Coulter, we didn't call all the other people you mentioned. This was a deal that was negotiated between Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate. And we think we came to a good compromise, again, that would secure our border, because that's the goal. We have to uphold our values, secure our border, get a deal that we can support, and I think we did a good job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right, joining us now is Abby Phillips, CNN White House Correspondent, Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator who once ran for president, and Joe Lockhart, he was White House press secretary for President Clinton. Great to have all of you. Rick Santorum, I want to start can you. As you know, the president is sometimes swayed by his rightwing base, or certainly his friends like Sean Hannity. Do you think he's going to get on board with this deal that was hatched last night?

RICK SANTORUM, (R) FORMER SENATOR FOR PENNSYLVANIA: I don't know whether he's going to get on board with the deal. It's a de minimis deal for the things that the president really focused on, so there is a chance that he might not get on with the deal. I'm disappointed in, frankly, the Democrats not willing to put up a more respectable figure for barriers, and for Republicans not driving toward a better number. So I don't know. If I were advising the president, I would probably say sign this thing and then declare an emergency and get more money so he can plus up the money for the wall.

BERMAN: The two "d's" with the president watching cable, no doubt, this morning might sink in, "de minimis," and "disappointing" from Rick Santorum, who has been a supporter of the president. It will be interesting to see if that sinks in.

Abby, the senator just brought up a point which is that the president could sign this and then still declare an emergency. Is there thinking that might happen?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. There is thinking in the White House that this is perhaps the best option available to President Trump considering that they have known from the beginning that they were unlikely to get the $5.7 billion that he'd asked for at the beginning of this process, and even now this number that they are giving him is actually less than what he would have gotten under the original appropriations bill that the House and the Senate passed before the shutdown. So in some ways the White House is facing coming out of this with less than they -- much less than they'd hoped for.

And declaring a national emergency, we should be clear there are a lot of different pieces of this, and the White House is trying to figure out which ones are going to be the least problematic politically and also legally. So there are some options that are available to them to take chunks of money from certain parts of the federal government to use it toward the wall. They had originally identified more than $5.7 billion of money he could use. I think what they might end up doing is going to be less than that.

But it's a way out. And I think a lot of Republicans are opposed to a national emergency for the precedent part of it. But you also hear a lot of Republicans saying, look, we have to just get the wall built and we don't want another shutdown. This is a way to do it that allows us on both sides really to save face. So the president is pretty interested in that option because he really understands that this is not a great outcome for him, especially after he endured one shutdown. He's coming out of this one looking a little bit like a loser on this deal as well.

CAMEROTA: He gets $1.4 billion on a wall that Democrats never wanted, Joe. And Nancy Pelosi said she would never give a dollar. So we are already up to $1 billion from last night, from their offer. He could have had a better deal earlier had he taken it, but here we are. And when we had Congresswoman Nita Lowey on, she said she thought there would be bipartisan pushback if he tried to raid a disaster relief fund to pay for it, but who knows if that is what he'll resort to. But either way, it is a compromise. Democrats compromised. Certainly this wasn't on their priority list of building a wall and spending $1.4 billion on it.

[08:05:08]

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Sure. Let's remember, Democrats and Republicans unanimously in the Senate said before the shutdown, we'll give you $1.6. And then we had a 35-day shutdown. To what end? For the president to get less money.

I was really struck last night by watching on the many split screens how isolated the president is. You had Democrats and Republicans getting the work done on the conferees. Down in El Paso you had the city council passing a resolution saying stop lying about El Paso. You had the fire chief saying stop lying about the size of the crowd. And you had the president living in a year of almost three years ago giving the same speech about a manufactured crisis with manufactured facts, and the rest of the world is moving on.

And he's going to have to decide whether he's going to participate in this or if he is just going to keep in a petulant way shutting the government down. I understand his problems. Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity don't like this. The other big thing going forward is the Freedom Caucus in the House has been the single most powerful bloc of voters in the last 10 years, the minority within the majority. They are now the minority within the minority. They have no power. They don't matter. They're irrelevant.

BERMAN: Does it matter, you keep calling it a wall. I believe the language of this is going to specifically say it can't be a concrete barrier.

LOCKHART: Yes.

BERMAN: Does that matter, senator, that it has to be a fence or some kind of other bound?

SANTORUM: Look, I think the president has been pretty clear that he's very flexible on what kind of physical barriers, that the physical barriers have to be appropriate for the area that's being fenced. So as long as we work with the people on the ground, I think the president will be fine with it. But I do believe that he should look to other options to build additional fencing. And I think that's really the imperative.

I disagree with Joe. I don't think it's Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. There are a lot of people in America who are very concerned about security at the border. It is not a manufactured crisis. This is a serious problem going on at the border right now, and we need to address it. And so the fact that the previous presidents haven't -- and I'm talking Republicans and Democrats -- doesn't mean that it's not a problem.

CAMEROTA: Yes, but senator, the reason we say Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity is because you remember what happened last time. The president was amenable about a deal until Ann Coulter tweeted and Matt Drudge went off, and then he changed his mind.

SANTORUM: Look, I understand the loud voices got his attention. But those loud voices represent a lot of people in America who are very concerned about those things. I don't think that they are necessarily as strident as Ann Coulter is. But they are concerned about this, and the president has made this a priority for a good reason.

BERMAN: Abby, very quickly, any sense of when the White House will weigh in here? I don't think there is a briefing scheduled today. Are we going to see the president? Is he going to have to answer a question soon about whether or not he supports this?

PHILLIP: Yes, we will see the president this morning. He has a meeting on his schedule that is going to be open to reporters for a brief period of time. That's usually when he weighs in on these kinds of things. So that gives him plenty of time, several hours from now, to really digest what is in this proposal, what his supporters are saying about it, and where he wants to position himself.

I think it's notable that last night, even though he decided that he didn't really want to delve into the details before his rally, he didn't torpedo this thing at the rally. I think for negotiators on Capitol Hill, that was a small victory for them, that the president could have really turned up the tables on this deal before it even had a chance to get off the ground. He didn't do it. So I think the fact that we haven't heard from him this morning is a sign that this is still something that's being deliberated over at the White House. And I think we'll find out around midday today whether or not the president is going to weigh in or if he's going to hold his cards.

There is still a little bit more time here, but not that much time. They really have to figure this out within the next day or so, so that they can get the bill passed so we are not looking at another shutdown by Friday.

BERMAN: Guys, stand by, if you will. We're going to come back to this. In the meantime, we have a little bit of a curve ball here. Cliff Sims, a former White House aide who wrote a tell-all book, is now suing President Trump. The suit alleges the president is trying to silence him as he promotes his book. Sims is also seeking an injunction against nondisclosure agreements that Mr. Trump had him agree to when he worked at the White House.

Cliff Sims joins us now. He is the author of "Team of Vipers, My Extraordinary 500 Days in the Trump White House." He is joined by his lawyer, Bradley Moss. Cliff, let me understand the nature of this lawsuit. What exactly are you suing for?

CLIFF SIMS, FORMER DIRECTOR OF WHITE HOUSE MESSAGE STRATEGY: That may be a better question for Bradley. He can get into some of the legal details. But ultimately I'm suing, saying that my First Amendment rights as a government employee cannot be infringed upon by an NDA of non-classified information.

[08:10:07] And so as a government employee, certainly I served Donald Trump. I

served him faithfully, but I worked for the American people. And so that's essentially what the suit is saying. I certainly didn't want to do this. I'm probably the least litigious person you can imagine. I have never sued anybody in my life. But I was backed into a corner by some legal action that the Trump folks took. And so I felt like I needed to be able to stand up for myself.

BERMAN: Just to be clear, because you were on with Alisyn the day the book came out. And you told her you couldn't remember if you had signed an NDA. Are you now acknowledging that, in fact, you did both for the campaign and for the administration?

SIMS: So in the lawsuit, it still says that I do not remember doing that. But we are acting in good faith under the assumption that I did sign the same thing that so many others did. So that's what the lawsuit said. And like I said, Bradley can get into more of the details on that.

BERMAN: Let me go to Bradley very quickly on this. Specifically, Brad, you're saying that the campaign or the political arm is serving as a cut-out for the White House. They are doing the work that the White House won't do legally?

BRADLEY MOSS, ATTORNEY SPECIALIZING IN SECURITY CLEARANCE LAW: Yes. Actually, it's the work that the U.S. government and the White House can't do legally. So under longstanding, established judicial and institutional precedent dating back to the 1970s, former federal employees cannot be censored by the U.S. government from disclosing what they learned while in federal service so long as it is unclassified information. There is certainly no allegation at this point that anything in "Team of Vipers" was classified or that Cliff was subject to prepublication review.

We don't dispute, there's never been a dispute that he signed an NDA during the campaign. That's not in dispute. What we are operating in good faith on, and this is what Cliff referenced, is that we believe at least in good faith that he signed an additional one while in the White House. Those NDAs, the additional NDAs that President Trump brought in were controversial, they're unprecedented. They have never been done before because it's been understood that once you become a federal employee, the only people who can censor are you the U.S. government and they can only do it if it is classified information.

BERMAN: So Cliff, you have noted, others have noted as well that the president and his supporters are taking action against you but chose not to against Sean Spicer who wrote a book after he was in the White House, David Bossie, who wrote a book after he was part of the campaign, Corey Lewandowski as well. And there is a discrepancy there between going after you and not them.

SIMS: Yes, I think there's no question, you can see from all the things you just laid out that there is a selective approach to this stuff. And ultimately one of the things that I really focus on in my book is about the president's relationship with Congress and how so often he was able to steamroll them and bully over them because they wouldn't stand up for themselves.

And I know that having watched this guy work for almost two years, that he does not respond well to weakness, that he only responds to strength. And so I wanted to stand up and say that I'm not going to be pushed into a corner, I'm not going to be bullied on this, and stand up for myself. That's what we teach our kids to do when bullies are coming after them. And like I said, this is certainly not something I wanted to do, something I planned to do, but being backed in a corner, I'm not going to cower.

BERMAN: So Cliff, it is interesting, because I have talked to you since the book came out, and you were supportive of the president in many ways, particularly around the State of the Union, the message he sent and what he was trying to do politically. Does this represent a split? Are you now saying you are disappointed in President Trump?

SIMS: Well, I think what it is, is I continue to support the Trump agenda. I'm certainly a conservative, and so any conservative policies that are rolling out of that place I will continue to be supportive. But yes, when somebody is coming after you in that way, which I think is frankly a little bit bizarre, because anybody who's read the book or, to your point, seen me on TV, is I'm not the guy going out there setting him on fire. I'm trying to have a nuanced conversation. Certainly, there are areas where things could be better, or this, that, and the other. But on a lot of things I've defended him. And so I think what you're seeing here is another theme of the book is that he gets terrible advice from people around him who are very self-serving, and I think a lot of those folks who are upset with the way that they are portrayed accurately in the book are the ones pushing him to take this approach.

BERMAN: He's a 72-year-old, 73-year-old guy. He's responsible for his own actions here.

SIMS: No question.

BERMAN: This has been his decision. You are suing him and his office for this. So is this a statement by you that the president has let you down personally?

SIMS: I just don't take it personally. I don't really think it's a personal thing or how I feel directly toward him. What I do know and what this lawsuit represents is that my First Amendment rights stand as a government employee. And so that's really the message here. I'm not trying to be anything -- personal message to Donald Trump. It's just that I have a First Amendment right to tell the truth. And that's what I did in this book, and I'm not going to back down and have that infringed upon.

BERMAN: And you are, as you say, standing up to him.

SIMS: Sure. Yes.

BERMAN: All right, Cliff Sims, Bradley, thank you very much for being with us. Appreciate it.

SIMS: Thanks.

MOSS: Absolutely. Have a good morning.

CAMEROTA: All right, there you have it.

BERMAN: There you have it.

[08:15:00]

CAMEROTA: ... curve ball as you described it. Now we must get back to the breaking news of what was happening last night because Beto O'Rourke went head to head with President Trump in Texas. So was this a preview of his plans for 2020? We dissect it next.

(COMMERCIAL)

CAMEROTA: So President Trump and Beto O'Rourke, a potential 2020 challenger faced off in these dueling rallies in El Paso last night.

(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: All right. Let's bring back Abby Phillip CNN White House Correspondent, Rick Santorum, a former Republican Senator who once ran for President, and Joe Lockhart, he was White House Press Secretary, it basically just said White House and then the prompter cut off.

BERMAN: Joe Lockhart was White House.

CAMEROTA: That's why I said he was White House. OK you personified the White House and because you personified the White House and you know President's, did you see a future President Beto O'Rourke last night?

JOE LOCKHART, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I saw a future candidate for President. I think Beto O'Rourke ran a great campaign that he lost in Texas and then sort of wandered in to the wilderness and it was a little weird and I think there were a lot of people among the Democratic inteligencia (ph) who was wondering what he was up to.

CAMEROTA: He was soul searching and doesn't it take some soul searching?

[08:20:00]

LOCKHART: You generally don't do soul searching if you're a candidate on Instagram, but the rules change. But I think last night offered a unique opportunity for him to stand side by side with the President, offer a different vision, speak in front of a big crowd and he was talking last night like someone who's about to get in the race.

I think it would've been a little weird if he - a mile from the President announced. I think he should do it on his own terms, but I think he was given an opportunity to sort of get back in this. He took it. He succeeded and I think he'll be in the race by the end of the month.

BERMAN: Yes, and Abby Phillip you've covered a bunch of these races. He looked like a guy who wanted to run and Jeff Zeleny, our colleague, asked him directly that question and he said, "we'll see" while nodding his head.

CAMEROTA: Like this.

BERMAN: We'll see, but it certainly felt like it's the type of thing you do only if you're going to jump in the race, Abby.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and it's the type of thing you kind of have to do. This was an opportunity that has put on his plate. Trump was going to basically his hometown and giving a campaign rally that is anathemait (ph) of what Democrats want to run on in 2020.

So in other words, Beto O'Rourke had no choice. If he wants to run for President this was the time that he had to demonstrate that he could be a counter balance to Trump and it is in what he said, but it's also in the optics of what happened last night. There was a march to the place that was almost across the street from where Trump was and the crowds are important too.

We know President Trump is paying attention to who has the energy behind them, who has the crowds behind them. That matters to the President, but it also matters in an objective sense. I think Democrats want to see that whoever is going up against Trump has the ability to inspire people and to motive them.

So in other words, I think Beto O'Rourke really had to do something last night. I think he did what he set out to do. The question is does he take that next step, does he decide to run?

And Joe alluded to this, but he did lose his last race. I think that there are going to be a lot of people asking the question. What are the real life qualifications for someone who lost their last major race and who was before this a Congressman who was not very well known. He's going to really have to raise his stature very, very quickly in order to be successful going up against Donald Trump.

CAMEROTA: Rick, your chuckling.

RICK SANTORUM, (R) FORMER SENATOR: Well as someone who lost his last race and then ran for President, I can answer that question. And you know look I ran and I was not, obviously, the favorite when I did run.

I was very much the sort of the on the bottom shelf if you will of candidates starting in the 2012 race but ended up finishing - winning 11 states and coming second to Mitt Romney. So it can happen and it can happen if you've got a good message and

you put a good team together and certainly and you can raise the money.

O'Rourke has proven he can raise money on a Senate race against probably the most vilified Republican in the United States Senate from the Democratic standpoint, Ted Cruz. It's not the same when you're running for President.

And I just caution Beto O'Rourke that all those folks who gave you money when you're running against Ted Cruz are not going to suddenly transfer.

I had that happen when I ran for Senate (ph) lots of people all over the country gave me money and then when you're running President you've got to prove yourself and it's not going to be - it's not going to be the same ride.

And I don't know why the President went to El Paso. I'm scratching my head on this one, unless he really wants to see Beto O'Rourke elevated on the national stage because he certainly gave him a tremendous gift by going to El Paso last night and really helped launch Beto's - hopefully I suspect, hopeful campaign for him for President.

BERMAN: That's interesting. You'd think it was a mistake to go. Is Beto O'Rourke...

SANTORUM: Absolutely.

BERMAN: ... is Beto O'Rourke someone that you think could pose a challenge to the President?

SANTORUM: I do. I mean I think he comes from a state that is an increasingly competitive state for Republicans. I mean it's not - it's not purple but it's not deep red anymore and so having someone who obviously has appeal in Texas on the ballet down there I don't think is a good move for the President.

So I don't know who advised him to go to El Paso in Beto's backyard and to expect that he wouldn't do what he did and help launch Beto's resurgent campaign for President. I think you're right. He's sort of been dark and sort of off the radar screen and now you put him front and center.

BERMAN: Is that an endorsement? Did the Senator just endorse Beto O'Rourke? Was that an endorsement?

CAMEROTA: That's going to get a lot of attention.

SANTORUM: Let me be unqualified about that. No.

CAMEROTA: So, I mean the fields getting crowed Joe, let's assume for the moment that Beto O'Rourke is going to get in and there's lots of different candidates and certainly in terms of the identity politics spectrum it's really interesting. It's a really diverse group. Who are you keeping your eye on? LOCKHART: Well I do think on identity politics there will be races

within the race. There will be a race for can come up as the traditional moderate candidate. There will be a race among the woman. There are five women in. There will be a race amongst the people of color, which will play out in different states at different times.

[08:25:00]

I think the field is - the one surprise so far is the white males are dropping out at a much quicker pace than sort of people of color or deciding not to run.

CAMEROTA: You mean dropping back...

LOCKHART: Yes, deciding not to run. But I don't think the fields will really take shape until Vice President Biden decides what he's going to do.

CAMEROTA: When's that going to be, just out of curiosity?

LOCKHART: I don't know. I would expect it within a month. It should be within a month because I think it is frozen a little bit because all of a sudden you then have an establishment candidate that everyone has to play off of who has name I.D., who has deep roots in all of these places where we're going to have the races, and I think once he makes that decision, in or out, we'll have a much better sense of how the race - sort of the architecture of the race.

SANTORUM: Well, no...

BERMAN: Go ahead, very quickly Rick.

SANTORUM: Yes, I'd like to make a comment because it's really interesting to me that Joe broke the race out the way he did. Men, woman, people of color, and that those are the lanes and those are the sort of....

CAMEROTA: Well I asked a question about identity politics.

SANTORUM: Joe's right. No, no - no, no, no but that is I mean Joe's right. There's - as there has been in every crowded primary Republican and Democrat, there are lanes for candidates to run in, but traditionally Democrat and Republican they've been - the lane that Joe first described which is sort of a moderate someone who's maybe an - I think in the Democrats I think it's a moderate, it's a sort of aggressive socialist, and a passive socialist.

And those I see as the three but I think maybe increasingly it's - the Democratic Party is an identity politics type of party. Maybe it's not a politic policies maybe it's all about skin color and race and gender.

PHILLIP: It could also be...

CAMEROTA: Well I mean you can't deny that at this moment in time and this particular race there's a lot of diversity. I mean we just have to admit that...

SANTORUM: No, I agree. I'm saying it may be a different primary than we've seen in the past.

BERMAN: Abby, (inaudible)?

PHILLIP: Or it could also be that the Democratic Party is running candidates who look like the country. I mean it is - it should not be unusual that woman and people of color are running for President when they comprise a large portion of the population in the United States.

The anomaly is a party in which only white men are running for President, so I think that's the way we should...

SANTORUM: That wasn't my point, Abby, Abby, hold on that's not my point.

PHILLIP: My point is that the framing the diversity in the Democratic Party is not solely about identity politics. It's just simply about the fact that in 2019 there are people who look like the voters that they want to attract to vote for them running for President. I mean these people...

SANTORUM: That's fine, Abby, but that's not what I said.

PHILLIP: ... they're not necessarily running just to represent black people or woman or whatever. They are running to represent people who they want to vote for them so the suggestion that it's identity politics that they are appealing to people because of their race is...

SANTORUM: I didn't say that.

PHILLIP: ... I think it's an overly simplistic way of looking at this race.

SANTORUM: I said that - don't criticize me, criticize Joe because he's the one that said that. I said that would be different than what we've seen in the past.

CAMEROTA: Joe has something to say, go.

LOCKHART: Yes, since I apparently started this the person - let me finish it - which is the persons who's going to win is the person that can go beyond the identity politics and draw strength from all of the different pools how people self identify themselves. And I think that's, in some ways, what they're all trying to do.

They're trying to appeal to you know if you're a woman you'll appeal to woman but also to moderate men to white men to African American men. That's how you're going to find the winner. The person who is able to break out of these lanes and appeal across the board and I agree with Abby. This is a reflection of strength rather than some sort of weakness.

BERMAN: All right, Joe, Abby, Senator thank you very much. An American town is disappearing because of climate change and it's happening faster than anyone feared. Bill Weir takes us there next.

(COMMERCIAL)

[08:30:00]

END