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Trump to Declare National Emergency; White House Fires Back at Andrew McCabe; U.S.-China Trade Talks End; Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired February 15, 2019 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[04:00:18] SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MAJORITY LEADER: He's prepared to sign the bill. He will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time.
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DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump just hours away from triggering a high stakes showdown over his border wall.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The former acting director of the FBI claims President Trump called a North Korean missile launch a hoax. Wait until you hear who gave him that idea.
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MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK: We got a call this morning saying we're taking our ball and we're going home.
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BRIGGS: New York's progressive mayor rips Amazon for pulling out of a $3 billion deal due to backlash from progressives.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I remember looking down and seeing the claws.
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ROMANS: A man who took out a mountain lion alone with his bare hands tells his story.
Wow. Good morning, and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans. You will probably not do anything that remarkable.
BRIGGS: No.
ROMANS: Today or maybe in your life.
BRIGGS: Nothing will make me feel less a man than that man.
I'm Dave Briggs. It's Friday, February 15th, 4:00 a.m. in the East. Hope you all had a Valentine's Day like Christine Romans. ROMANS: I got roses.
BRIGGS: Complete with red roses.
ROMANS: After I dissed roses yesterday, I got them anyway.
BRIGGS: Boy, my poor wife. Had to deal with the curmudgeon, the old man.
All right. We start this Friday with a national emergency. After failing at every turn to get funding for his wall, President Trump is just hours away from signing a compromised border security bill to avoid a second government shutdown. But he is not surrendering. He will also declare a national emergency and announced he's using executive powers to cobble together $8 billion from a variety of funding sources to finance construction of his wall, a move that has the backing of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
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MCCONNELL: I've just had an opportunity to speak with President Trump and he, I would say to all my colleagues, has indicated he's prepared to sign the bill. He will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time. And I've indicated to him that I'm going to prepare -- I'm going to support the national emergency declaration.
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ROMANS: The presidential plans to use executive orders and an emergency declaration to collect $8 billion for wall funding. $1.375 billion already in the spending bill that he will sign later this morning. $3.5 billion will be taken from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from the Pentagon counter narcotics funds, and $600 million from Treasury forfeiture funds.
BRIGGS: Many Senate Republicans appear to be stunned by the president's decision to use his emergency powers to build a wall. Some call it inappropriate. Others say it's a slippery slope that may come back to haunt the party.
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SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), MAINE: I continue to believe that this is not what the National Emergency Act was intended to be used for. It was contemplated as a means for responding to a catastrophic event like an attack on our country or a major natural disaster.
SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R), SOUTH DAKOTA: What about if somebody else thinks that climate change is the national emergency and then what will they do and how far will they go?
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ROMANS: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Democrats will fight the president possibly with legal action over the declaration of a national emergency to get his money for the border wall. Pelosi calls the move an end run around Congress that sets a dangerous precedent.
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REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), HOUSE SPEAKER: We will review our options. We'll be prepared to respond appropriately to it. I know the Republicans have some unease about it no matter what they say because if the president can declare an emergency on something that he has created as an emergency, an illusion that he wants to convey, just think of what a president with different values can present to the American people.
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ROMANS: She, too, mentioned, for example, gun violence.
BRIGGS: Yes.
ROMANS: Climate change, other things. Pelosi issued a warning to Republicans who are poised to support the president's declaration.
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PELOSI: The Democratic president can declare emergencies as well. So the precedent that the president is setting here is something that should be met with great unease and dismay by the Republicans.
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BRIGGS: With President Trump poised to use executive powers to get funding for his wall it is important to note what he said back in 2014 when President Obama used his executive authority to halt the deportation of undocumented parents.
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TRUMP: Now he has used executive action. And this is a very, very dangerous thing that should be over ridden easily by the Supreme Court. So we're looking now at a situation to absolutely not pass muster in terms of constitutionality. But depends on what these justices do.
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[04:05:02] BRIGGS: This may, too. During that same interview Donald Trump expressed the opinion that President Obama could be impeached for taking executive action on immigration.
Voters are not behind President Trump either when it comes to declaring a national emergency. A CNN poll from earlier this month found 66 percent oppose the idea.
ROMANS: All right. This shocker, shocking news yesterday. Amazon is backing out of building its second headquarters, HQ2, in New York. Back in November Amazon chose Queens and Northern Virginia to split duty as its second headquarters. Each city was expected to have more than 25,000 workers over time. But after backlash from politicians and the community, Amazon scrubbed plans to build in New York.
In a statement Amazon said this, "A number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envision in Long Island City. New City Mayor Bill de Blasio called out Amazon for walking away instead of taking and talking about the community's concerns.
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DE BLASIO: Instead of an actual dialogue to try and resolve those issues, we get a call this morning saying we're taking our ball and we're going home. I've never seen anything like it.
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ROMANS: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez celebrated the decision as a victory for members of the community who protested that deal.
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REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D), NEW YORK: We should not be giving away our infrastructure, our subway system, our schools, our teachers' salaries, our firefighters' budgets to a company that has not shown good faith to New Yorkers.
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ROMANS: Amazon said it has no plans to reopen the HQ2 search at this time. Instead it plans to move forward with its office expansions in Virginia as well as Nashville.
And this is such a debacle, Dave. Because think of all of the publicity and the push and the dozens and dozens of cities who spent a lot of money trying to woo Amazon.
BRIGGS: Yes.
ROMANS: There are those who almost said that this essentially was a public subsidy auction.
BRIGGS: Sure.
ROMANS: And Amazon and the city government -- and state government thought that they could work this out and didn't realize the progressive backlash that they would get over corporate welfare.
BRIGGS: But does AOC realize New York is number one. Number one in terms of people moving out of the state and they have been since 2011. This will only exacerbate that. Big business wants no part of New York.
ROMANS: It will be interesting to see how the president weighs in on this. He could -- you can find a situation where the president is on the side of Jeff Bezos and not the progressives in New York City over there.
BRIGGS: Yes. Huge implications as to that story.
ROMANS: Interesting.
BRIGGS: Meanwhile, the White House firing back against stunning allegations made by former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe. McCabe confirming publicly for the first time that high-level meetings were held at the Justice Department to remove President Trump from office. McCabe was fired from the FBI last March. He says he was also ordered an investigation to determine whether the president obstructed justice by firing James Comey.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders ripping McCabe in a statement saying he has no credibility and is an embarrassment to the men and women of the FBI and our great country.
More now from CNN's Laura Jarrett.
LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Christine and Dave, good morning. As a new attorney general takes the reins at the Justice Department, the former acting director at the FBI now laying bare the ghosts of 2017. That period that rocked the Justice Department and the FBI, and in a new interview with "60 Minutes," Andrew McCabe described why he felt the need to open an obstruction of justice investigation after the president fired former FBI director James Comey.
And he also confirms reports that the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed recruiting cabinet members to possibly invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office and wearing a wire to record his conversations with the president.
In a fresh statement on Rosenstein's behalf, the Justice Department now saying in part, quote, "The deputy attorney general never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references. As the deputy attorney general previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment."
The White House and the Justice Department also point to McCabe's credibility issues given that he was fired for lying to internal Justice Department investigators. But as we've previously reported, he did keep contemporaneous notes on all of his conversations. So more to come on this for sure.
Dave, Christine, back to you.
ROMANS: All right. Laura Jarrett, thank you for that.
Vice President Mike Pence says he does not believe McCabe's claims that discussions took place to remove President Trump from office. He tells MSNBC no one brought the subject up to him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I never heard of it. I never heard any discussion of the 25th Amendment, and frankly I find any suggestion of it to be absurd. This president has been producing for the American people, and I couldn't be more proud to stand with him and the words and the writings of the disgraced FBI agent won't change that fact for the American people.
[04:10:06] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And you've never heard of this before?
PENCE: I have never heard any discussion of the 25th Amendment by members of this government and I would never expect to.
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BRIGGS: McCabe is also making some shocking allegations about President Trump in his new book. According to the "Washington Post," the former FBI director provides new details about what he calls the president's subservience to Vladimir Putin.
McCabe writes, "Trump dismissed a July 2017 North Korea missile launch as a hoax. He thought that North Korea did not have the capability to launch such missiles. He said he knew this because Vladimir Putin told him so."
Kim Jong-un test-launched an ICBM around July 4th, 2017, and dedicated it to "arrogant Americans."
ROMANS: In his book, McCabe also describes former attorney general Jeff Sessions as a man who seemed obsessed with immigration issues. According to the "Wall Street Journal" McCabe writes that Sessions once told him back in the old days, "You all only hired Irishmen. They were drunks but they could be trusted, not like all these new people with nose rings and tattoos."
Sessions has not responded to request for a comment but a person close to the former attorney general tells the "Wall Street Journal" the idea of Sessions ever saying a disparaging thing about anyone in law enforcement is laughable.
BRIGGS: California hit with heavy rain, snow, wind and flooding. Sections of Palm Springs under water. Authorities forced to close entire roads. Seems like that playing out all over the state, including Orange County. Roads turning into muddy rivers. Police forced to close several streets in the area. Meantime, 50 homes were evacuated in Sausalito after this massive mudslide. One woman who heard it describes the terrifying moments.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It sounded like a tornado, kind of. Then I thought it was an earthquake.
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ROMANS: One home in the area actually slid into another home. A woman in one of those homes was taken to the hospital. She is thankfully OK.
In Sacramento damaging winds uprooting this tree. It fell right on top of an SUV crushing it and trapping the driver inside. She was taken to the hospital and suffered broken bones.
BRIGGS: Sure wouldn't want to be headed to California on vacation today.
ROMANS: Are you?
BRIGGS: Oh, boy, that's --
ROMANS: Oh no.
BRIGGS: That's thrilling.
Ahead, high-stakes trade talks between the U.S. and China just ending in Beijing. Was any progress made? We'll take you there live next.
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[04:16:37] ROMANS: Two days of trade talks between the U.S. and China just wrapped up in Beijing. Both sides scrambling to at least produce a memorandum of understanding by the end of negotiations. That could pave the way for meeting next month between Presidents Trump and Xi. Right now a widening trade war between the two countries is scheduled to escalate if no deal is reached in the next couple of weeks.
Let's go live to Beijing and bring in CNN's Matt Rivers.
And, Matt, I mean, a couple of different photo-ops there, so both sides want to show the world that they are talking, smiles in some of those photo ops. What did it result in?
MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, I think, Christine, it's worth saying that they don't have to do these photo- ops, right? They don't have to let cameras come in and take pictures of both sides talking. They don't have to do these photo-ops. We just saw a tweet actually from Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, who tweeted, "Productive meetings with China's Vice Premier Liu He and U.S. Trade representative, Ambassador Lighthizer," and attached to the tweet is a group photo of all the delegates from both sides tweeting or that were in the attendance there of these whole week long's worth of negotiations.
And look, I think you take that as a positive sign. I think you look at that and say, OK, the secretary of the Treasury is saying progress was made. And you have to take him at his word there. The question is, was enough progress made that the president of the United States would be more willing to let that March 1st deadline, that would see tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports go from 10 percent to 25 percent.
Is he willing to let that slide if only to give himself enough time to meet with Xi Jinping, the president of China, and work out some thorny issues that need to be -- that need to be worked out between both sides. Whether there was enough progress made, it's a wait and see game now, guys. We're all just waiting to hear from the U.S. side to see exactly how they think these talks went.
ROMANS: I mean, we've heard -- remember the strategic economic dialogue when the Obama administration, they were in -- in George Bush's administration, they had talks, trade talks with China about what they thought was bad behavior by the Chinese, and they had pictures just like the one that was just tweeted by the Treasury secretary standing there, saying, the meetings were productive, and nothing ever changed.
I think that's the Hall of the People, isn't it? Isn't that the -- it's like with the famous backdrop there. We have seen multiple administrations publish pictures exactly like this. The big question, Matt Rivers, is if this administration actually gets the Chinese to change their behavior? Because in some cases, the Chinese won't even admit that they do the things the Americans say they do.
RIVERS: That's exactly right. I mean, the Chinese say that they don't steal intellectual property when the entire international community basically agrees that they do. And you're right to point out that we have been here before.
Now I think you can argue that no further -- no previous administration had been willing to put tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports. Whether that's a tactic to get the Chinese to play ball, we really don't know. But you're right in saying that there are wide gaps that remain between what the U.S. wants to see, what the Chinese are willing to do. And so yes, they're all smiles in these pictures.
ROMANS: Yes.
RIVERS: But what does it mean in the end? And right now, we don't have an answer to that.
ROMANS: And the world is watching and the clock is ticking.
Thank you so much, Matt Rivers.
BRIGGS: All right. Ahead, a run through the mountains turns into a life and death struggle with a mountain lion for one Colorado man. His remarkable story of survival, next.
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[04:24:14] BRIGGS: 4:24 Eastern Time, and a man who was attacked by a mountain lion while running on a Colorado trail is reliving his life- and-death struggle with the big cat. 31-year-old Travis Kauffman moved to Ft. Collins five years ago to lead a more active, outdoor lifestyle. He got more than he bargained for last week when he heard rustling and some pine needles behind him and a mountain lion emerged. Travis tried screaming at the cat but it attacked.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRAVIS KAUFFMAN, SURVIVED MOUNTAIN LION ATTACK: It was going toward my face, so I threw up my hands to kind of block my face at which point it grabbed on to my hand and wrist. I remember looking down and seeing the claws, like, retracting and then coming out of its paws, and I was just very concerned that mom was going to come out of nowhere and at that point, that fight would be over pretty quickly.
[04:25:06] I will never be able to live up to the reputation, and maybe that's what has led to some of my reticence for actually coming out because I know the story is bigger than my puny form. So yes.
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BRIGGS: Travis was able to maneuver his way on top of the mountain lion and suffocate it with his foot. He says he loves Colorado for its wildlife but admits it's better from a distance.
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BRIGGS: Man, man.
ROMANS: Wow. Dave was shaking in his boots over here.
BRIGGS: Oh man.
ROMANS: All right. A documentary film is reportedly in the works based on the life of the late musician Chris Cornell.
That voice. Cornell was the front man for Sound Garden and Audioslave. He committed suicide in 2017, hours after a concert in Detroit. According to "Variety," Cornell's widow Vicky will produce the documentary, along with Brad Pitt. He was -- just won a Posthumous Grammy Award Sunday night, his third for Best Rock Performance of the song "When Bad Does Good."
BRIGGS: Actor Alfonso Ribeiro denied the copyright to --
The "Carlton Dance" from the '90s sitcom, "The Fresh Prince of Bel- Air." The denial from the U.S. Copyright Office revealed a motion to dismiss Ribeiro's lawsuit against video game maker Take-Two Interactive which Ribeiro says illegally uses the dance. Ribeiro along with several rappers also suing Epic Games over dance moves in Fortnite. The document denying the copyright says Ribeiro's moves represent a simple dance routine, not a work of choreography, which can be copyrighted.
ROMANS: My kids know that from Fortnite, not from him. You know?
BRIGGS: Agreed. As do mine.
ROMANS: It's a Fortnite dance. It's called the Carlton. Like to call it the Carlton.
BRIGGS: Yes. ROMANS: All right. President Trump about to declare a national
emergency and set off a major balance of power battle, to try to get his border wall built. Details next.
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