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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Balance of Power Showdown; McCabe's Stunning Claims; Amazon Backs Out; Man Versus Mountain Lion; Report: NBA Commissioner Asked About NFL Job. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired February 15, 2019 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[05:00:07] SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE 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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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump is hours away from triggering a high-stakes power showdown over his border wall.
DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: The former acting director of the FBI claimed President Trump called a North Korean missile launch a hoax. Wait until you hear why.
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MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY: We got a call this morning saying we're taking our ball and we're going home.
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ROMANS: New York's mayor rips Amazon to pulling out of a $3 billion deal due to backlash from progressives.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are looking down and seeing the claws.
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BRIGGS: A man who took on a mountain lion alone with his bare hands tells his story.
Oh, man, what a man.
ROMANS: That's amazing. Amazing.
BRIGGS: Good morning. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Dave Briggs. Pardon me. The chairs are making noise here.
ROMANS: I'm Christine Romans. It is Friday, February 15th. It is 5:00 a.m. in the East.
After failing for two years to get funding for his border wall, the president is just hours away from signing a compromise border security bill to avoid a second government shutdown. He's not surrendering. He'll also declare a national emergency and announce he is 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 full 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 is prepared to sign a 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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BRIGGS: The president plans to use executive orders to collect $8 billion for wall funding. $1.375 billion already in the spending bill he will sign this morning. $3.5 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from Pentagon counter-narcotics funds, $600 million from treasury forfeiture funds.
Many say Republican appeared 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 emergencies act was of 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 climate change is national emergency? And what will they do and how far will they do?
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ROMANS: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they will fight the president with possible legal action over the declaration to get money for his border wall. Pelosi calls it the move an end run around Congress that sets a dangerous precedent.
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REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We will review our options. We will be prepared to respond appropriately to it. I know 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, it is an illusion he wants to convey, just think what a different president with different values can present to the American people.
You want to talk about national emergency, let's talk about today, the one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America. That's a national emergency. Why don't you declare that emergency, Mr. President? I wish you would. But a Democratic president can do that.
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BRIGGS: The speaker of course talking about the one-year anniversary of the Parkland shooting. With the President Trump poised to use executive powers to get funding for his border wall, it is important to know what he said back in 2014 when President Obama used executive authority to halt the deportation of undocumented parents..
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DONALD TRUMP: Now he has to use executive action. This is a very, very dangerous thing that should be overridden easily by the Supreme Court. We are looking at now a situation where it should absolutely not pass muster in terms of the constitutionality. But it depends on what these justices do.
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BRIGGS: 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 when it comes to declaring a national emergency.
A CNN poll from earlier this month found 66 percent oppose the idea.
ROMANS: All right. A shocker here, folks. Amazon backing out of building that HQ2, second headquarters in New York. Back in November, Amazon chose Queens and northern Virginia to split duty as its second headquarters in its highly publicized search for a new home.
Now, each city was expected to have 25,000 workers over time. But after backlash from the politicians and the community, Amazon decided to scrub plans to build in New York. Essentially, the idea among many of the communities was corporate welfare to one of the richest companies was not going to be tolerated.
This is what Amazon said: A number of state, local politicians made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us for the types of relationships that require to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City.
The New York City Mayor de Blasio, he called out Amazon for walking away instead of talking about the community's concerns.
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DE BLASIO: Instead of an actual dialogue to trying to 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. (END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: The progressive backlash against this project was pretty loud and noisy. And Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez celebrated the decision to pull out from this company a victory for the members of the community who hated this 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, or teacher 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 plan to reopen the search at this time and plans to move forward with office expansions in Virginia as well as Nashville.
BRIGGS: The White House firing back to 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 using the 25th Amendment. McCabe was fired from the FBI last March. He says he 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 from CNN's Laura Jarrett.
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LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Dave, good morning.
As a new attorney general takes the reins of the Justice Department, the former director of the FBI now laying bare the ghost of 2017, that period that rocked the Justice Department and the FBI. In a new interview with "60 Minutes", Andrew McCabe describes why he felt the need to open an obstruction of 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 saying in part, 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 Justice Department also point to McCabe's
credibility issues given that he was fired for lying to internal Justice Department investigators. But as we have 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.
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ROMANS: All right. Laura, thank you so much for that.
Vice President Mike Pence says he does not believe McCabe's claims about discussions that took place to remove President Trump from office. He tells MSNBC no one ever brought up the subject with him.
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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. The words, the writings of a disgraced FBI agent won't change that fact for the American people.
ANDREA MITCHELL, MSNBC HOST: And you have never heard of this before?
PENCE: I have never heard of any discussion of the 25th Amendment by members of this government, and I would never expect to.
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BRIGGS: McCabe making shocking allegations about President Trump in his new book. According to "The Washington Post," the former acting FBI director provides new details about what he calls the president's subservience to Vladimir Putin.
McCabe writes, Trump dismissed a July 2017 North Korean missile launch as a quote hoax. He thought North Korea did not have the capable to launch such missiles. He said he knew this because Vladimir Putin had told him so.
Kim Jong-un test-launched an ICBM around July 4, 2017 and dedicated it to, quote, arrogant Americans.
ROMANS: Right. 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 about the FBI workforce. Quote, back in the old days, he only hired Irishmen. They were drunks, but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos.
[05:10:00] Sessions has not responded to request for 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.
All right. Some high stakes trade talks between the U.S. and China just ended in Beijing. Was any progress made? We'll take you there live, next.
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BRIGGS: Six-fourteen p.m. in Beijing where two days of trade talks between U.S. and China just wrapped up. Both sides scrambling to at least produce a memorandum of understanding by the end of negotiations. That could pave the way for meeting this 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 two weeks.
Let's go live to Beijing and bring in CNN's Matt Rivers.
Matt, is their optimism of some is sort of a deal?
MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I think there is. If only because of these photos that we just actually got from earlier today where you can see President Xi Jinping actually meeting with members of the U.S. trade delegation, including Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and U.S. trade representative, Ambassador Robert Lighthizer.
[05:15:13] Look, Dave, that wouldn't be happening if things happened badly today. We also know that the Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin tweeted out that he had productive talks with his Chinese counterpart. So, taken together there, I think some progress has been made. They didn't leave talks on a sour note.
As to how much progress was made, what kind of substantive progress was made, that we don't know. We are waiting for the U.S. side to put out some kind of statement as well as the Chinese side. The big question, was enough progress made for the president of the United States to allow that March 1st deadline with tariffs on Chinese imports in the U.S. will be raised. Will he let that deadline slide a little bit in order to not escalate this trade war and give himself more time to meet in person with the president of China, Xi Jinping, the president of China, something that we know he wants to do.
So, really, all eyes on the statements set to come out between both sides. Will they talk about the two president' meeting, will they talk about how much progress was made? We're really just hoping to get more detail from both sides sometime in the next two hours -- Dave.
BRIGGS: You will think the mindfulness of the market would kick that can.
Matt Rivers for us in Beijing -- thank you, my friend.
ROMANS: All right. This story, a man attacked by a mountain lion while running on a Colorado trail is reliving his life and death struggle with this cat. Thirty-one-year-old Travis Kauffman moved to Ft. Collins five years ago to lead a more active outdoor life. He got more than what he bargained for last week when he heard rustling in pine needles behind him. And an adolescent mountain lion emerged.
Kauffman tried screaming at the cat, but it attacked.
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TRAVIS KAUFFMAN, SURVIVED MOUNTAIN LION ATTACK: It was going toward my face, so I threw up my hands to block my face. At which point it grabbed onto my hand and wrist. I remember looking down and seeing the claws retracting and coming out of its paws. And I was just very concerned that mom was going to come out of nowhere. At that point, that fight would be over pretty quickly.
I will never be able to live up to the reputation. The story is bigger than my puny form. So, yes.
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ROMANS: I don't know.
BRIGGS: That's awesome.
ROMANS: Travis was able to maneuver his way on top of the mountain lion and he somehow suffocated it with his foot. He says he loves Colorado for the wildlife but admits its better from a distance.
BRIGGS: That's my home state.
That man needs a reality show. Well done, Travis.
Ahead, is the commissioner of the NBA being courted by NFL owners to jump leagues? Coy Wire has this intriguing story in the "Bleacher Report", next.
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[05:22:47] BRIGGS: You heard about two-sport athletes. But how about a two-sport commissioner.
Coy Wire has more in the "Bleacher Report".
Good morning, my friend.
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Dave. Happy Friday.
According to ESPN, several unnamed owners tried to convince NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to take over as commissioner of the NFL before Roger Goodell's contract was extended. Silver has led the NBA to new heights as he took over five years ago. League revenues have doubled to a projected $9.1 billion.
He's also been highly regarded for supporting players on social issues. Silver, though, he won't definitely confirm he was approached telling ESPN, quote: I'll just say I have not given it any thought. I loved every day I have been in this job. And I think there's nothing but enormous opportunity ahead for this league. That's where 100 percent of my focus is.
Silver signed a five-year contract extension last June that runs until 2024. Meantime, Goodell's current contract runs until 2022 and is worth up to 200 million bucks.
New Orleans Pelicans are getting every look at what life will look like without disgruntled star Anthony Davis. After demanding a trade last month, he injured his shoulder attempting to go up for a block in the first half of last night's game. Davis left the arena with his agent Rich Paul for an MRI before his teammates beat the Thunder 131- 122.
All the A.D. drama seems to be s wearing thin on Pelican coach Alvin Gentry. Listen to this.
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ALVIN GENTRY, PELICANS HEAD COACH: To tell you the truth, this whole thing has been a dumpster fire. It's just hard, you know, for guys. We want guys to be professional. We want them to do this.
But it is hard for guys to go through what they've been through. And to be able to come out and be the team of that quality, I'm happy for all the guys.
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WIRE: All right. You've got to take a look at this. Is this a great way to get kids to learn about science or what?
Jonathan Clark teaches middle school fulltime, but he's also a professional dunker. Here he is putting on a show. He set the record for highest dunk 11'8" inches. He graduated from UCLA with a psychology degree.
This guy is incredible, Dave. If only you could do that at your work every day. Shout-out to Jonathan Clark. He is a Harlem Globetrotter. Incredible man. And a fun teacher.
BRIGGS: I'm impressed by the 11 foot hoop. That is 6'5" with a ball my 6-year-old could palm.
Coy, I want to ask you quickly. Colin Kaepernick, according to report, says he plays for the AAF, new football league, for $20 million a year. Does he really want to play football?
WIRE: Well, that's a big number, Dave. You have to think that's what he is thinking he would be worth. Those are reports to the "A.P." Polling said in July they are offering players three-year contracts worth $250,000. So that's a big difference, but a big investment for the league.
They reached out to Tim Tebow. He, too, denied the offer. And he says he is all in on baseball. BRIGGS: On baseball, and the New York Mets.
Coy wire, thank you, my friend.
Romans, over to you.
ROMANS: All right. Thanks, guys.
President Trump about to declare a national emergency to get his border wall. Details, next.
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