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Democrats Campaign in Early Voting States; Warren Wants Answers; Williamson's Injury Sparks Debate. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired February 22, 2019 - 06:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:32:18] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The White House announcing that a small number of U.S. troops will remain in Syria. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says a small peacekeeping group of about 200 will remain in the country. Now, in December, the president had ordered his staff to execute the full and rapid withdrawal of U.S. military from Syria. That drew criticism from lawmakers and it surprised U.S. generals and allies overseas.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The family of an ISIS bride is suing the Trump administration for blocking her return to the United States. Hoda Muthana left Alabama at age 19 and joined the terror group. Now, five years later, she says she regrets what she did and she wants to return home. President Trump, this week, directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to deny her re-entry. The secretary claims Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and has no legal basis to be brought back.

CAMEROTA: A federal judge ordering the Coast Guard officer, who's accused of a domestic terror plot, to remain in custody for two weeks while prosecutors prepare charges against him. If he is not charged by that time, the officer's legal team can return to court to fight that detention. The government alleges this officer is a self-prescribed white supremacist who maintained a hit list that included prominent Democrats and journalists. They say the drug and gun charges he now faces are the preverbal tip of the iceberg.

BERMAN: Day two of an unprecedented event at the Vatican. Nearly 200 church leaders from around the world are at a summit to confront the child sex abuse crisis. Pope Francis opened the summit saying the church needs to take concrete actions to stop priests from molesting children. Today high-ranking bishops are talking about accountability. Outside the Vatican, sex abuse survivors are expected to tell their stories and vent their frustrations.

CAMEROTA: OK, if you've long wondered why zebras have stripes --

BERMAN: Every day.

CAMEROTA: And my son has, believe me, we've had this conversation in my house. There's a new study out that reveals why they have those stripes. It turns out the stripes make terrible landing strips, John, for parasites, like blood-suck horse flies.

BERMAN: For instance.

CAMEROTA: Yes. So the conclusion reached by scientists from the University of Bristol and the University of California, they say that they dressed horses in black and white striped coats and then a single --

BERMAN: It's a fetching coat, by the way.

CAMEROTA: Coat. That horse feels humiliated right there, I can tell you that much. And then a single colored coat. And they found that fewer flies landed on the horses wearing the striped coats since the design confuses parasites.

BERMAN: That's actually genuinely interesting.

CAMEROTA: It is. But then why don't horses have stripes, hmm?

BERMAN: Hmm, that's a great question there.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

BERMAN: And if we wear stripes, can we keep the parasites in our lives away?

CAMEROTA: Well, you're sort of doing that.

BERMAN: I'm wearing a striped tie and a striped suit.

CAMEROTA: And they're jumping on me.

BERMAN: Yet, you're still sitting next to me.

CAMEROTA: All right.

BERMAN: All right, more Democrats joining the race for president, but do any of them really know how to beat President Trump? That's next.

[06:35:05] CAMEROTA: I resemble (ph) that remark.

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BERMAN: The weekend is here and for many Democratic presidential hopefuls, both declared and undeclared, that means sweeping trips through Iowa and New Hampshire. But can any of these candidates defeat President Trump? This is the subject of a new piece in "Time" magazine that has a phenomenal cover.

Joining us now is one of the writers behind the new piece, Molly Ball, national political correspondent for "Time" magazine.

Molly, this is a terrific series with granular details in there that people really should read.

And one of the most interesting to me is something that would make our friend Harry Enten very happy, which is you get into this notion that there's a leftward lurch among the Democratic voter primary base. And the conclusion -- and you look at the data -- is, it may be more moderate than you think.

MOLLY BALL, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. The Democratic Party is more liberal than it's been historically. But historically it hasn't been that liberal a party. I think this is a misconception a lot of people have.

The Republicans are an overwhelmingly conservative party in terms of the way their voters describe themselves when you ask, you know, are you -- do you think you're a conservative, a moderate or a liberal. The Democratic Party, though, is not a mirror image of that. And even now, with self-defined liberals at a historic high in the Democratic Party, they're only about half of Democratic partisans and Democratic primary voters. The other half of that Democratic electorate is people who consider themselves moderate or even conservative.

[06:40:26] And when you go out in the early primary states and you talk to voters, these are, you know -- you'd have to think they're hard core activists. They're going to presidential candidate events a year before voting even starts. They're very enthusiastic committed Democrats. And yet a lot of them will tell you, you know, certainly many of them will say, oh, yes, I'm very liberal, I want a candidate who supports a very liberal agenda, or a lot of them will tell you, no, I want someone who can speak to the middle, who can bring the two parties together. And so there is an opening in that field for someone who isn't on the far left.

CAMEROTA: But therein lies the conundrum for Democrats. I mean we've been talking about it for weeks here on this show, pragmatic versus progressive. If a pragmatic candidate is seen as being represented by say Amy Klobuchar and progressive is being seen as represented by, say, Elizabeth Warren, which one do voters want?

BALL: And that is a question that is going to define part of this primary.

You know, this piece touches on a lot of the different factors that will define the race. We have no idea which candidate will come out on top, but we're trying to set the playing field for what are the factors that are going to sort of define the atmospherics of this race, which is going to be a really different race than anything most people will have seen in their lifetimes.

You talk to historians, political scientists, there really hasn't been a primary like this since at least 1988 in terms of how big the field is going to be, how unsettled the field is, how many candidates there are likely to be and then just the unusual factor of the incumbent that they are racing to take on. So it's anybody's guess who's going to win this thing.

But, like you say, there's-- there's a few different lanes in this primary. And I would also say the division aren't only ideological, right? You have a lot of demographic divisions within the party. The resurgent movements of women and people of color who are -- who all want to be represented and to have a voice. And there's a big generational divide, I think, too where younger Democrats who have really flooded into activism, particularly in the Trump era, they see the world pretty differently than the older generation that has previously had a hold on the party establishment.

BERMAN: Though you know that older voters still make up a significant part of the Democratic voter base.

When you talk about the new, different playing field, that playing field literally means a new different calendar as well with big states moving up, like California, earlier in the process. What's the impact here and which candidates are best positioned to deal with this shift?

BALL: Well, part of the issue here is that we don't even know what the calendar is. We don't even know what the rules are going to be for next year's primary. And part of that is normal because every state gets to decide when they hold their primary or caucus. And sometimes they drag their feet a little bit or they look at each other to figure out when they want to go.

But some of it also, you hear activists and campaigns complaining about the Democratic National Committee, that that's a lot of disorganization that's prevented some of this stuff from gelling, and that's a big obstacle for the campaigns who are trying to game this out, trying to figure out what their strategy is. They can't do that if they don't really know the rules of the road.

So we do expect that the early calendar will be what it has generally been in the past, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina. And you do see the candidates, interestingly, emphasizing those traditional early states. Even though there are questions about, you know, will those states be as relevant as they've been in the past in political and media environment that's changed a lot in the past four years especially?

But then, after that, as you say, you know, the first votes -- early votes are going to be cast in California at the same time as voting is happening in Iowa under the calendar that we think we have now. You see candidates going to places like Texas, which also has moved up to Super Tuesday. So I think we're going to see people all over the map and trying to game this out. There's an idea that there may be an advantage for candidates who are strong in California, particularly Kamala Harris.

CAMEROTA: Very quickly, the Republican governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, is considering a primary challenge to President --

BERMAN: He hasn't ruled it out I think is --

CAMEROTA: He hasn't -- OK, he hasn't ruled it out. He's planning a trip to New Hampshire, I think, soon.

BERMAN: Which tells you everything.

CAMEROTA: Which tells you all you need to know because who gees to New Hampshire in the winter?

BERMAN: Ever.

CAMEROTA: Come on. Here's what he has to say about fellow Republicans. Typically they try

to be fair arbiters of a process and I've never seen anything like it. In my opinion, it's not the way we should be going about our politics. It's very undemocratic. And to say we're in some cases not going to allow a debate, we may not have a primary, and the question is, what are they afraid of?

[06:45:03] I mean he thinks that Republicans are closing ranks around Donald Trump.

BALL: Yes, and they are afraid of a strong primary challenge to President Trump. When you talk to people in the RNC's orbit, it's more about the prospect that Trump could be weakened in the general election than he might actually lose the primary at this point given his strong ratings among Republicans. But you do see the RNC trying to shift the playing field in Trump's favor.

Now, they would say this is actually normal for an incumbent president. It's normal for the president's party to sort of be his political apparatus. But there is some concern that a candidate -- and as Hogan says in that interview, he's gotten an outpouring of support from members of the Republican and donor establishment who would like to see the presidential challenged.

BERMAN: Molly Ball, terrific work. Thank you so much for being with us. Really appreciate it.

BALL: Thank you.

BERMAN: We have a programming note. CNN we'll hold a presidential town hall with Senator Bernie Sanders, moderated by Wolf Blitzer, Monday night, 8:00 Eastern, only on CNN.

CAMEROTA: A CNN exclusive, leading to action on Capitol Hill. The answers that one senator wants after our report on U.S. weapons found in enemy hands. We'll bring you that.

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[06:50:10] CAMEROTA: Senator Elizabeth Warren demanding answers from the Pentagon on how U.S. weapons ended up in enemy hands in Yemen. Senator Warren learned of this through an exclusive CNN investigation.

And our Nima Elbagir broke this story and she joins us from London with more.

Nima, tell us about this.

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Morning, Alisyn.

Well, Senator Warren becomes the third member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to address Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Department of Defense with regards to our findings and raised concerns about what this means when key U.S. allies are disregarding their arms sales agreements with the United States and making arguably American lives less safe. I want to read you a little bit from her letter. She says, if this

report is true, it raises serious concerns that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other governments have violated their end user agreements with the United States by diverting American weapons to terrorists and other violent extremists without prior authorization from the United States government.

She goes on to say that Congress needs to look into putting in place greater reporting restrictions.

Of course, the backdrop of all of this is this growing impasse between lawmakers and the Trump administration regarding relations with Saudi Arabia. Even Trump ally Lindsey Graham is putting forth his own Saudi Arabia and Yemen accountability act. We've seen the war powers resolution that seeks to limit U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. That's now passed the House and it's due to go through the Senate.

Most of the activists that we've spoken to, most of the Yemenis that we've been talk speaking to for years, Alisyn and John, find it extraordinary that finally Congress seems to be moving on this.

John.

BERMAN: Nima Elbagir for us. Nima, thank you so much. Thank you for your reporting, which always leads to new questions and action. Appreciate it.

From Chicago to Hollywood and the White House, the nation talking about the case against Jussie Smollett. Van Jones discusses how this alleged hoax could have long lasting effects in the United States for years to come.

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[06:56:31] BERMAN: All right, the strange injury to Duke star Zion Williamson is sparking an important debate. Should he play when his knee heals or should he just skip the rest of the college season and rest up for the NBA draft?

Andy Scholes has more on this morning's "Bleacher Report."

Hey, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, John.

You know, Duke updating Zion's status yesterday saying that he is day to day after suffering a grade one sprain to his right knee. He, of course, suffered that injury when he just exploded through his shoe Wednesday night. Nike said they're investigating how this could have happened. Now, no question, Zion is going to be the top pick in June's NBA draft. Even if he got injured, the 6'7" 285-pounder would still likely go number one. But many, like Warriors star DeMarcus Cousins, who played at Kentucky, say Zion shouldn't risk further injury playing college basketball.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEMARCUS COUSINS, WARRIORS CENTER: College is (EXPLETIVE DELETED). College basketball, the incident is bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED). You've proven you're -- you're the number one pick coming out, and proven your talent. You know, you're ready for the next level. It's happening. That's my opinion. Knowing that I know now.

CHARLES BARKLEY, TNT BASKETBALL ANALYST: I don't ever want to see anybody get hurt. This kid looks like he's going to be a fantastic player. But I get so mad when people like -- act like money's the only thing that matters in the world. Like, oh, dude, you're going to go in the NBA, don't play.

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SCHOLES: Yes, no word yet if Zion will play tomorrow against Syracuse. Now, if Zion was a few years younger, the 18-year-old may have never even stepped foot in college basketball. According to "USA Today," the NBA has submitted a former proposal to the players association to lower the draft eligible age to 18 from 19. The plan is to put this in place for the 2022 draft. So this, of course, would put an end to that one and done rule that's been in place since 2005, guys. So we would once again be seeing players like LeBron James go straight from high school to the NBA.

BERMAN: Yes, there's no easy answer, although one easier answer is maybe these players that are making a fortune for these colleges should see a little bit of that money.

SCHOLES: Yes.

BERMAN: All right, Andy, thanks very much.

SCHOLES: All right.

CAMEROTA: All right, let's have some "Late Night Laughs," shall we?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": Along with everyone else in America, the president is mad at Jussie, tweeting, @jussiesmollett, what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments? After all, racist and dangerous comments kinda my thing, all right?

TREVOR NOAH, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW WITH TREVOR NOAH": This is one of the scariest stories of 2019. And it's a reminder that this current political climate is going to drive people to do crazy things. Crazy people, but still they're going to do crazy things. It's also a reminder that your search history will screw you over every time. Yes, that's why when I search something embarrassing, I make sure to throw them off the trail, you know? I'll be like, where can my friend buy male Spanx?

COLBERT: The officer in question, Christopher P. Hansen (ph), once wrote a letter, I am a long time white nationalist having been a skin head 30 plus years. Thirty years, that is a long time. He is close to skin head retirement. Soon he can cash in his 401 KKK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That's clever.

BERMAN: I didn't see that coming.

CAMEROTA: I didn't either.

BERMAN: That was very good.

CAMEROTA: I didn't either.

BERMAN: All right, thank you to our international viewers for watching. For you, CNN "TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, we have new details as Jussie Smollett mounts a new defense. NEW DAY continues right now.

[07:00:02] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was dissatisfied with his salary. So he concocted a story about being attacked.

END