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Sen. Bernie Sanders Takes on Trump in CNN Town Hall; President Trump's Former Attorney Michael Cohen to Testify on Capitol Hill; Rod Rosenstein Comments on Pending Release of Mueller Report. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired February 26, 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] CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- we actually ended our trip a little bit earlier because there are drones all over the skies over Afghanistan. And the U.S. military did not know we were there and that we were embedded with the Taliban. So for a number of reasons that was a very nerve-racking moment.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I've got to say, Clarissa Ward, our chief international correspondent, this was an astounding look inside Afghanistan. Every 20 seconds there was something my jaw just dropped. I couldn't believe I was seeing what I was seeing.

WARD: Thank you.

BERMAN: Thank you very, very much.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you so much, Clarissa, for bringing it to us.

BERMAN: Up next, Michael Cohen arrives on Capitol Hill. This morning we have an idea of what his team says he will tell lawmakers. We'll give you the new information right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Michael Cohen has got some serious baggage. His incentive now is to tell the truth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have a president trying to deal with a major world issue to try to distract by bringing in a known liar. It's pretty pathetic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This guy was with the president for more than a decade. We want him to tell us what's exactly been taking place.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We'll have a very tremendous summit. We want denuclearization.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Success is not defined by photo-ops. It's unlikely he's going to have the big success that he wants.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hopefully this will be a more serious conversation. (END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota on John Berman.

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone.

BERMAN: And Bruce Dunkins (ph) walking out of camera right there.

CAMEROTA: That was one of his cameos. Masterfully done.

Good morning, everybody. It's Tuesday, February 26th, 8:00 now in the east. This morning, President Trump's former lawyer and now convicted felon Michael Cohen kicks off three days of testimony on Capitol Hill. Today he meets behind closed doors with Senate Intel. Tomorrow he'll give that highly anticipated public testimony to the House Oversight Committee.

We are now getting some new information about what Michael Cohen is expected to say. A source familiar with Cohen's preparations tells CNN he is expected to publicly detail for the first time Mr. Trump's role in some of the crimes that Cohen himself has pleaded guilty to last year. Cohen is also expected to give behind-the-scenes details raising questions of Mr. Trump's conduct in business and when he was a presidential candidate.

BERMAN: Of course this will all happen as the president lands in Vietnam. This happens about an hour from now. This will be for a second critical summit with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un.

Also happening today, the House will vote on a measure to block President Trump's emergency declaration at the U.S.-Mexico border. It will pass the House by all accounts. The question, though, is will it get enough Republican votes in both chambers to override an eventual presidential veto?

We want to bring in CNN Senior Political Analyst John Avlon, CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash, and CNN Chief Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin. Dana, I want to start with what we are hearing Michael Cohen is prepared to say. He will testify as to the president's role in the crimes that Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, which if he actually follows through on that, which we should say our Gloria Borger is talking to a source familiar with what Michael Cohen intends to do, it's important to emphasize the word "intend" because you never actually know, it is and will be a huge deal for him to go and say publicly under oath that he's going to jail. And by the way, the president of the United States was involved in some of the crimes I have been convicted of sending me to jail. If he does detail what he says he's going to detail, that is going to be incredibly explosive even in the Trump world, because we have kind of become inured to the whole notion of shock because everything is shocking. This is incredibly shocking if he follows through.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: And remember, too, one of the odd things about the whole Trump-Russia scandal is that there's been little public testimony by principle figures. You haven't had John Dean in Watergate. You haven't had Oliver North in Iran-Contra, people testified about what was going on. You had James Comey testify about his firing more than a year ago. This is going to be one of the indelible visual images of this story. Will that change the outcome? I don't know. But certainly, as we remember the scandal, Cohen's public testimony will be a landmark in it.

CAMEROTA: But the question is, to what end? To what end? Because let's say it's true, it's a blockbuster of some kind. He says something we have never heard before. Let's say he brings evidence with him, documents or handwritten notes of some kind. And let's say that he implicates the president in criminal conduct somehow publicly. Then what? What does Congress do with the information?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It can fodder for an impeachment proceeding. It can influence any of the number of investigations going on right now. It's not simply the optics here. Michael Cohen giving public testimony is in some ways even more potentially explosive than John Dean for this reason -- he's closer to the man who is now the president than John Dean was.

[08:05:04] This is somebody who was the president's alter ego, his fixer, his consiglieri, his enforcer, someone who threatened one of my reporters with real retribution simply for asking questions that made them uncomfortable. So this is someone who knows where the bodies are buried. And so that's why it really doesn't pass the laugh test to see some of team Trump's current dismissiveness, saying, oh, he's a convicted felon and admitted liar. This is someone who was so embedded into the fabric of this campaign, this organization, this man's life. His behind-the-scenes insights are going to be worth enormous amounts.

BASH: Especially if he testifies about the crime that he committed, which is lying. One of the main things that he's going to prison about is lying to Congress. Is he going to talk about the president's role in that particular crime? Because if that's the case, he wasn't just Donald Trump the candidate. At that point he was Donald Trump, president of the United States.

TOOBIN: And also, he pleaded guilty to participating in unlawful campaign contributions in the sense of the money that went to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Who benefitted from those expenditures? It wasn't Michael Cohen. It was Donald Trump. Donald Trump got these people out of the public eye at least temporarily by paying this money. So the idea that this was done at the instigation of Trump rather than Cohen himself certainly has a certain plausibility.

BERMAN: And there's also the possibility that there were discussions ongoing after the time that Donald Trump assumed office about the payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. What was the process there? What was the process inside the Trump organization for not covering up but for handling, for massaging these numbers and the finances, Allen Weisselberg. You know, Jeffrey, you brought up the fact that documentation is one thing you will be looking for here. And there are reports that he's going to have some kind of presentation.

TOOBIN: Right. Whenever you have problematic witnesses, the issue always is corroboration. What can they bring to the table that shows they are telling the truth? And often that is some sort of documentation. Is it e-mails, is it texts, is it tape recordings, is it contemporaneous notes? That obviously is something that's very important. We'll see whether he has that. We do know just that Donald Trump famously does not text. So it won't be that.

BASH: It has to be contemporaneous notes, probably.

TOOBIN: Something like that.

CAMEROTA: Yes, but don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't think it will be riveting. It will be riveting, and everybody will be hanging on whatever Michael Cohen produces or what he says. My point is generally, in the American psyche we expect when there is evidence of criminal conduct, there are repercussions. There are legal repercussions for that. And so if Michael Cohen presents some sort of blockbuster presentation, which is what I think is being suggested, then it might be unsatisfying if the next day nothing happens.

BASH: When you're talking about the president of the United States, legal ramifications are inherently political. And not --

CAMEROTA: I get it, right. It's not legal. I get it.

BASH: -- go through the court if the Justice Department follows guidelines that a president can't be indicted. But remember, you can't see it enough. This president, impeachment or not, is going to face the ultimate court -- voters -- in November of 2020.

AVLON: And even before that, impeachment as a possibility is a political process. That's why this matters. Also keep in mind the number of 17 investigations going on against the president, some, for example, are the New York and New Jersey state attorneys general. So those are still going forward. So this kind of testimony can do more than influence the court of public opinion. It may add ballast to some of the ongoing investigations.

BERMAN: I will note the last hour we talked to Jim Himes, Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, who has not been one of the first to raise his hand and say impeach, impeach, impeach, but he did bring up on his own that the only recourse that anyone has to look into a president is impeachment. And it's not impossible. And again, Democrats face a political decision here, no question about it. But if they want to press this issue and find out more and make more of it and do anything they may have to actually launch formal impeachment proceedings. It doesn't mean they're going to convict him and throw him out of office, but they may need the proceeding.

TOOBIN: Although Nancy Pelosi and Jerry Nadler, who is now the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, have said over and over again they are not going to pursue impeachment unless they feel like there is a realistic possibility that there will be 67 votes in the Senate. They are haunted by the mistake the Republicans made in 1998 by pushing impeachment when there was no prospect of removing the president. So I wouldn't hold your breath on any sort of impeachment.

CAMEROTA: And Jeffrey, if Michael Cohen testifies that President Trump somehow engaged in criminal conduct while in office, while in the presidency, does that change anything?

TOOBIN: No, I don't think so. As we have been discussing, impeachment is a political process.

[08:10:03] I have been burned many times over the past three years by predicting that public opinion is going to shift because of what the president said at Charlottesville or kids in cages at the border. And the president's approval rating, it's not very good, but it doesn't change. And I can't believe that anything Cohen says this week is going to change that.

BERMAN: That's pretty remarkable, Jeffrey, that you are sitting here and saying, I'm not disagreeing that someone could testify in the next two days publicly before the American people saying the president committed a crime here. This is the evidence of my testimony he committed a crime, and that nothing then happens.

BASH: Let me tell you that the Trump political team argues in their internal data the more Russia, Russia, or maybe even Michael Cohen, the more this is on the forefront of the news, that it actually has helped him up to this point from some of the independents that he's lost because they think it's just too much. It's just too much. Whether Michael Cohen will change the dynamic, we'll see. But I find that absolutely fascinating.

AVLON: He does have information that's very close to the president. It's hard to say it's in the witch hunt narrative. But with that hardening of the positions, is it the wages of polarization? People become impervious to reason. And that's why it's so dangerous for the country, ultimately, because people are just retreating to their own camps despite what's up out in front of them. It's dangerous for democracy.

CAMEROTA: I agree with you, but I put Michael Cohen in a different category. This isn't just more drip, drip, drip. It's a different thread. We think this is what Robert Mueller is thinking. This is somebody testifying who knew him who was his foot soldier, his devoted foot soldier. That just is a whole different way of hearing something.

TOOBIN: Must see TV tomorrow.

BERMAN: Along these lines it was interesting to hear from Rod Rosenstein talk about the idea of transparency. We know the Mueller report in coming, maybe not to us, but to William Barr at the DOJ. But Rosenstein basically saying, you know what, too much transparency is not a good thing.

TOOBIN: If you are someone who is excited about the Mueller report and thinks everything is going to come out there, Rod Rosenstein threw a lot of cold water on that idea yesterday. He had we have a bedrock principle in this country that if you are not charged, we don't trash you. Obviously, there are major exceptions including in recent American history, but that could be of great benefit to Donald Trump if Mueller writes the report that way and Barr reviews the report that way and decides on public disclosure that limits any new disclosures about people who haven't been charged, chief among them Donald Trump.

AVLON: It doesn't matter unless you are the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee or various others individuals. But he was telegraphing it may give some insight in how Trump has kept him in office after all these extraordinary revelations. The truth will out ultimately. I don't think they're going to be able --

TOOBIN: Where do you get that? Who says the truth will out ultimately?

CAMEROTA: He's an optimist.

TOOBIN: Where does that come from?

AVLON: History would suggest that. It may be late for this particular game, but the truth will out ultimately.

CAMEROTA: I like it.

BERMAN: Dana, John Avlon, Jeffrey Toobin, laughing at truth, appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: He's not as jaundiced as you. That's the difference. Thank you very much.

All right, the rustbelt or the sunbelt?

BERMAN: Or the blackbelt, the world championship belt, WWE.

CAMEROTA: No, that's not what this is about, John. This is about the Democratic debate that could decide the results of 2020 election. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:17:11] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Bernie Sanders making his case to the American people in a CNN town hall last night and explaining how he would take on President Trump in the 2020 election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN MODERATOR: If you're the Democratic presidential nominee and you're on the debate stage with President Trump, how will you engage with him?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, we'll bring a lie detector along.

(APPLAUSE)

And every time he lies, it goes beep. That would be the first thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It goes beep? Hi. It goes beep.

CAMEROTA: It's too ripe for impersonations. He doesn't mind.

Let's bring in Joshua Green, national correspondent for "Bloomberg Businessweek", and Jonathan Martin, "New York Times" national political correspondent. Both are CNN political analysts.

Great to see both of you.

Bernie is back, Josh. I mean, when you look at what his first week, $10 million fundraising in his first week. Ryan Nobles, our correspondent, told us earlier that 12,000 of the donors are registered Republicans.

Bernie has had a good week. What does that tell you about the future for him?

JOSHUA GREEN, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK: Well, it tells you he's seeing the benefits of running and coming close to beating Hillary Clinton in 2016. He has a loyal following. May not be as big as it was with new candidates, new progressives in the race. But, you know, he still got for now, that 20, 25 percent of Democratic primary voters who are loyal to him. And it's evidenced by the fact he's able to raise so much money so quickly, are willing to back his primary candidacy with their wallets.

BERMAN: I've got to say, what surprised me is how many new donors the Sanders' campaign is claiming, the speed with which they have raised it. We are seeing to some extent a bounce for him in the polls.

Also, Jonathan, I do think this rollout just objectively if you are looking at the metrics has been pretty successful.

JONATHAN MARTIN, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: There's no question about it. He's a formidable candidate and, look, he's got 100 percent name ID.

The question is, you know, obviously he has a deep level of support and commitment. How wide is it? That's what we don't know.

This is somebody who got half the vote in Iowa in 2016 head to head against Hillary Clinton. He's well below that now and the initial polling. The field is so split now. It's not a one-on-one race like it was in 2016, which in some ways offers an opportunity and a challenge for him both. A challenge because you don't have that kind of match-up against Hillary Clinton.

But it's an opportunity because you don't necessarily have to get the 50 plus one in a state like Iowa at the outset to win. In a multi candidate field if Bernie's rock solid 20 percent base comes for him, that could be enough to win it in a plurality.

[08:20:05] CAMEROTA: All right. Let's move on to Beto. Beto's team has sent an e-mail to supporters. As you know, everybody is wondering if he'll jump into the race. Didn't he give himself a deadline of this week?

BERMAN: Supposed to be the end of February.

CAMEROTA: OK. Here's what he says today. Beto wants to make sure that he's listening to everyone, not just those he knows in El Paso and Texas, everyone, especially people from places that are forgotten or overlooked, towns that haven't been visited enough or are only thought about when it comes to election time.

And, Josh, I mean, if I can engage in a little armchair analysis, as I want --

GREEN: Of course you can.

CAMEROTA: -- as I want to do, despite the lack of a degree or really any knowledge, when I'm excited about something, I don't have to be on the fence. I'm not on the fence for a long time. When I deliberate for a long time it's because I have ambivalence.

And so, the fact that he seems so ambivalent, is that the right place to start a campaign if he jumps in?

GREEN: Well, I don't think it is. But I think this e-mail is being misconstrued. I got the email, I read the email. This is what's known in politics is a list-building e-mail.

The point is not to tell Beto O'Rourke what he should believe in. It's to, you know, contribute your voice, your name, your e-mail address so if they have it on a list and can hit you up for money if Beto decides to run or if he doesn't decide to run.

BERMAN: And they even asked for information about what you would volunteer to do. What will you do, e-mail recipient, to help Beto and America when I call on you to do so? I read this e-mail when I saw Jonathan as he may be days away from announcing.

MARTIN: Yes. And I think -- he's somebody who ran a Senate campaign that was very much invested in grassroots and in creating a sort of robust field organization. To your point, John, that's what he's trying to do with this is put together the first makings of the volunteer organization for the campaign for president.

And sounding one of his message themes if he does run, which is going to be, I'm going where other Democrats haven't gone, i.e., more rural areas like he did in Texas, but this time across the country. Namely, those places that Trump won last time around that perhaps Obama did four years earlier.

CAMEROTA: So, you see his road trip as ultimately leading to the destination of yes?

BERMAN: I think he's driving to yes. I do, circuitously taking the long way. But Jonathan has an article, Josh. I will let you comment on J-Mart's article here, where he lays out the Sun Belt versus Rust Belt choice, the Democrats now. Some people think the Democrats have to make. Others say they should check both, all of the above here. In terms of choosing whether to campaign in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, or Arizona, Georgia, Texas in those states, how much --

MARTIN: North Carolina.

BERMAN: -- North Carolina. How much of a challenge is it for Democrats and which Democrat do you think are best positioned?

GREEN: Well, I think this is the central challenge Democrats face strategically going into 2020. You know, in the near term the answer is both. You don't want to write it off early.

But it is important. There is going to be certain critical decisions such as who does the nominee pick as a vice president that I think will force the party to move in one direction or another. If it isn't somebody like Sherrod Brown, maybe you want to put him on the ticket in order to appeal to the upper Midwest which I think a lot of Democrats believe is the easiest path back to 270 electoral votes.

On the other hand, maybe you want to animate the Obama coalition, the new millennial minority-focused Democratic Party. Perhaps you put someone like Stacey Abrams on the ticket who performed so well in Georgia in 2018, even though she didn't quite prevail.

CAMEROTA: So, just tell us about your reporting that they are trying to decide in this divide.

MARTIN: Yes. I mean, the kind of big picture here, guys, is it's not just a pure tactical question. The tactical question about do we move in the Sun Belt or the Rust Belt grows out of the larger dilemma which is namely who are we and what is our emphasis and who are we as a party?

And that is to say do we need to maximize our approach on reclaiming some of the white working class voters in the Great Lakes that drifted away from us by really honing in on economic populism. Taking a more cautious or distant approach on some of the more controversial matters of race and identity?

Or do you highlight matters of race and identity to drive out infrequent voters in states like Texas, Arizona, Georgia to give them a reason to show up because you think that's the future of the country and that's the future of our party looking down the road five and ten years? That's what's at the heart of the debate beyond the pure geography of it.

BERMAN: And as Beto O'Rourke, as Jonathan brought this up that Beto O'Rourke is suggesting that he's going to go places where other Democrats haven't gone or haven't gone recently, Josh.

[08:25:06] Is that something that sort of tries to bridge the divide? GREEN: Yes, I think it does. I think that's almost code for saying I

will go to places like Youngstown, Ohio, where Hillary Clinton wouldn't campaign because she didn't feel she had a chance to win there.

I would point out there are other candidates already doing this. When Elizabeth Warren made her inaugural trip to Iowa as a candidate, she started in rural western Iowa, specifically to target these same voters. So, simply going to places where Democrats haven't gone recently isn't necessarily going to distinguish O'Rourke from other Democrats already in the race.

MARTIN: And just real fast, Sherrod Brown, Amy Klobuchar did the same thing. No subtly whatsoever. Sherrod Brown went straight to a county in Iowa that had gone for Obama by 21 and had one to Trump by 20 points. Howard County, Iowa.

And Amy Klobuchar, even less subtle, went to Wisconsin on her first trip. Not an early state but a state as we all know Hillary Clinton never once set foot in during the 2016 general election.

BERMAN: Jonathan Martin, Josh Green, thank you very much. Great to have you guys on this morning. Really appreciate it.

MARTIN: Thanks.

BERMAN: Vice President Mike Pence says that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro must go. So, what happens after that?

The top Democrat on the foreign relations committee joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END