Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Trump Talks about Congress; Paul Opposes Declaration; Hickenlooper Enters 2020 Race; Sanders Kicks off Campaign; New Political Polling; Guaido To Return to Venezuela; Tornadoes Hit Alabama. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired March 04, 2019 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00] JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: And if we buy into that normalization, we end up aiding and abetting, I think, the dummied down of our democracy.

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean I think there's a reason that he gave that sort of unhinged speech. One of the headlines out of the weekend from Nadler and Schiff is, there are no red lines. They're going to go after everything, including his family. And I think that has him unnerved.

So I agree with everything that John says, that this -- there's something very wrong here and we have to figure out a way to tackle it, to give some context for how unhinged this is. But I also think, on the other side of it, it's a reflection of just how nervous is he because the one thing we've found, and we hear, you know, we hear from Washington reporters, you know -- you know, Maggie Haberman will come on and talk about, who seems to have a thermometer on his mood, that it very much -- very much has -- reflects the trouble he thinks he's in.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It's an ear thermometer for everyone out there.

AVLON: Let's -- let's (INAUDIBLE).

BERMAN: Seung Min, I want to ask you, because John used another phrase here that I think is particularly valid this morning, a conflict between the executive and Congress. There is a new conflict between the executive and Congress because the Senate will vote on the president's emergency declaration to get funding for the border wall and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky says he will vote against the emergency declaration, siding with the Democrats. It does seem that there are the votes to block this from happening, at least before the president vetoes it. The significance of Rand Paul coming out as he did?

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "WASHINGTON POST": Exactly I mean Rand Paul is that fourth Republican vote that Democrats would have needed to get a majority supporting that disapproval resolution of the president's national emergency in the Senate. I expect that number to go higher. I mean most likely upper single digits. Maybe even ten Republican senators. That's how deep this opposition to the president is. I mean you're talking about a fiery speech from Senator Lamar Alexander, who was very -- very upset about what the president had done. Senator Cruz and Senator Mike Lee have shared similar concerns as Senator Paul, who said in a Fox News op-ed last night that, I would literally lose my political soul if I opposed President Obama for using his executive powers and I didn't speak out for this one.

Now, ultimately, at the end of the day it appears there won't be a veto proof majority in Congress. But there also could be some political issues for Republicans who do go along and support this disapproval resolution. I mean I've had very smart Republicans tell me that for the base, for the Republican base, this vote to, you know, to disapprove of this national emergency is going to be, do you support the president on this wall or not? And that's why you've heard a lot of Republican senators, who are uneasy about the president going on his own before he actually did it, now kind of reverse themselves and say, look, we support the president on this, we support the wall and we're going to stick by him. So it will be a very interesting vote to watch in the next coming days when that happens to see who ultimately sides with the president and who doesn't.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Quickly.

AVLON: Just, obviously, that's not the issue. The issue is not whether Republicans support the president and the wall. The issue is whether they support the separation of powers. And that's what Rand Paul was going into and that's why all the other senators, Alexander, Lee, Romney, who are saying they're deeply troubled by this and are currently undecided, let's watch how they vote, particularly if the president vetoes.

LOCKHART: And I think Rand Paul framed it the right way, which is, he'd lose his political soul. I'd say that most of the Republicans in the Senate and the House have already lost their soul.

CAMEROTA: I mean it's also comforting to know that his long term memory is intact, where he says that he said these very words against President Obama and he's not going to now forget that he said that in 2014.

LOCKHART: Shocking.

AVLON: Refreshing.

CAMEROTA: Refreshing.

BERMAN: All right, Joe, John, Seung Min, thank you very much.

We do have some breaking news. Political news. Moments ago a new Democrat, one who folks have been watching for months, joined the race for president. We'll tell you who it is, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:35:52] BERMAN: All right, breaking news in the 2020 presidential race. A new candidate joins the Democratic field and it is former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. He is now part of that large group of Democrats who wants to beat President Trump. He made the announcement in a video released just moments ago.

Our Scott McLean is live in Denver with the breaking details.

Scott.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John, good morning.

John Hickenlooper will become the 14th Democrat actually to join the race for president. And he is undoubtedly an underdog. He does not have a lot of national name recognition. He is not the party establishment choice. Nor is he a liberal. But he's a different kind of candidate in this race. He is a moderate and a pretty unapologetic one at that.

We have seen many Democrats in this race tacking to the left. But I spoke with Hickenlooper's former speech writer and adviser who assured me that his former boss is likely not going to do that. He is not going appeal to the far left progressive wing of this party. But that adviser says that, look, that should appeal to the party overall because Hickenlooper could actually beat Donald Trump in the general election.

Now, he is not a grandstander. In fact, he's much more of a pragmatist who actually prides himself on being able to work with Republicans. A point he made quite clear in the video that he released to mark his run. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN HICKENLOOPER (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: With a divided legislature, we got health care coverage for nearly 95 percent of all Coloradoans. We lifted our rural economy as Colorado went from 40th in job growth to the number one economy in America. We brought environmentalists and oil and gas companies to the table to create the toughest methane emissions laws in the country. Then, we beat the NRA by enacting universal background checks and banning high capacity magazines.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLEAN: Now, two things not mentioned in that video at least by name, Donald Trump and legal marijuana. Outside of Colorado, Hickenlooper is likely best known as the governor who campaigned against legal weed and then became the reluctant champion for the legal regulated system that he helped create.

Hickenlooper's first rally, Alisyn, will be here in Denver on Thursday.

CAMEROTA: Everybody in the pool, the water is fine, Scott McLean. Thank you very much for that breaking news.

[06:40:02] Senator Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, kicking off his second bid for the White House with rallies in two cities where he has roots.

And Ryan Nobles is live in Chicago with more. Tell us about this, Ryan.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Alisyn. Good morning.

Bernie Sanders is no longer just a protest candidate. He is in this race to win the White House. And that means he needed to make a few changes from how he ran things back in 2016. Those adjustments were on full display in this first big campaign weekend for Sanders, but he still has some work do with an important part of the Democratic base.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NOBLES (voice over): Bernie Sanders 2.0 was on full display this weekend.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you all very much.

NOBLES: In Chicago, where he spoke about the birth of his career as an activist, with a specific emphasis on the civil rights movement.

SANDERS: Real change never takes place from the top on down. It always takes place from the bottom on up.

NOBLES: And in Brooklyn, where he opened up about his childhood.

SANDERS: I know where I came from.

NOBLES: Sanders is adding to his repertoire, but what remains is the fervent (ph) devotion to the progressive issues he cares about. A devotion he's now connecting to his middle class upbringing.

SANDERS: My mother's dream was that some day our family would move out of that rent-controlled apartment to a home of our own. That dream was never fulfilled.

NOBLES: Still, he must confront the past. And that, too, was right in front of him this weekend. Sanders and his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, briefly crossed paths in Selma, Alabama, at a civil rights breakfast where she was being honored.

SANDERS: Now, let me congratulate Secretary Clinton on the award she is about to receive.

NOBLES: Clinton, sharing a hug with Senator Cory Booker, another 2020 candidate, as Sanders spoke. They're short interaction stood in contrast to her warming greeting others. A reminder that try as he might to move on, Sanders still needs to reconcile where he stands with Clinton and her powerful base of support.

SANDERS: She didn't reach out to working class people in the way I think she should have. There were states where she did not campaign as vigorously as she should have.

NOBLES: Some Clinton supporters still blame Bernie for bruising Clinton prior to the general election. Sanders supporters argue at his rally on Saturday, had Bernie crossed the Democratic finish line first, he'd be sitting in the White House.

SHAUN KING, BERNIE SANDERS SUPPORTER: To this day I still believe that he would have beaten Donald Trump.

NOBLES: And his fired up supporters believe any lingering issues between the Sanders camp and the Clinton camp are immaterial to the grand 2020 goal.

JACKLYN CHUNG, BERNIE SANDERS SUPPORTER: You can blame Bernie Sanders all you want, but we're still here.

NOBLES: But while Clinton did not win the election, she still received more votes than any candidate in history. Her base of support will be difficult to ignore. Several 2020 candidates have called on her for advice and in search of support. Sanders is not one of them.

SANDERS: Look, we have differences. You know, she -- Hillary has played a very important role in modern American politics.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. But you're not interested in any advice from here?

SANDERS: I think not.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOBLES: And Sanders' advisers tell me that there are still no plans for him to reach out to Hillary Clinton. They would like to move on from 2016. But, John and Alisyn, there's no doubt that the Hillary Clinton support base remains an important part of the Democratic Party. And if Sanders hopes to unify that group and win the Democratic nomination, he's going to have to deal with that group of supporters.

BERMAN: Yes, prickly to say the least.

All right, Ryan, thank you very, very much.

There's some new polling out overnight that shows what chance these Democrats have of unseating President Trump, just where the president stands, and some very specific hurdles he faces. Harry Enten joins us with the latest "Forecast," next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:47:27] CAMEROTA: OK, we have more on the breaks news now.

Colorado's former governor, John Hickenlooper, jumping into the 2020 race moments ago. He joins just as new polling shows some interesting opportunities for the Democratic field. And there's something about harry, so let's get "The Forecast" with CNN's senior politics writer and analyst, Harry Enten.

John Hickenlooper. HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: John Hickenlooper

is in. The water is nice and fine, right? Well, maybe not so much starting off for former Governor Hickenlooper. So this is the road of which he starts out with. It will be a long road for him to the White House if, in fact, he manages to get there. In Democratic polling, he's just at 1 percent in the Iowa caucus, zero percent in New Hampshire. So, I mean, the good news is, all he can do is go up.

BERMAN: Nowhere to go but up when I look at those numbers (INAUDIBLE).

ENTEN: Nowhere to go but up. But, you know, this is the problem when you have, you know, 14, 15 people potentially running in this thing, 16, 17. So there are going to be some people at the bottom.

But, you know what, it's a wide open field. We'll see what happens. But he certainly starts off a little bit low.

BERMAN: All right, there was polling this weekend that got a lot of people's attention having to do with the president. What do you got there?

ENTEN: Yes, so let's take a look at this. So the NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll basically showed that the president was losing to a generic Democratic candidate by 7 percentage points. And that makes a lot of sense because, look at where his net approval rating is, minus 6 percentage points in that same poll. So these two numbers match up very, very well, which is an indication right now that voters are seeing the 2020 election as a referendum on the president of the United States. How you feel about him is how they say they're going to vote for (INAUDIBLE).

CAMEROTA: But wait a minute, I thought his latest polling in one poll that we saw recently was like 41 percent. What do you mean negative, minus points from when (ph).

ENTEN: So this is approval -- it's approval minus disapproval.

CAMEROTA: Oh, I see.

ENTEN: And the NBC poll was one of the better polls for the president. So in some other polls if they ran this, you might, in fact, see that he was trailing by more than seven. But even in this poll where he has a higher approval rating than average, he's still losing to a generic Democrat by seven percentage points.

BERMAN: All right, that difference, historically speaking, tell us why it matters and how.

ENTEN: Yes. So, you know, if we look back at 2018, 2020 polling looks a lot like 2018, right, where we saw in the exit polls that the president's then approval rating was minus nine percentage points, Democrats won the national House vote by nine percentage points. So, again, we see this thing where the president -- how you feel about the president is lockstep in how you vote in those midterm elections.

BERMAN: Yes, there's a correlation there and there often is a correlation there with incumbents, but there wasn't that correlation with Donald Trump in 2016.

ENTEN: That's exactly right. So this is, I think, the big question, will 2020 end up looking more like 2016 or 2018? If you look back at the 2016 exit polls, what you saw was the president's net favorability rating was minus 22 percentage points. He only lost the popular vote by two and he actually won the Electoral College.

What occurred in that situation was this, which to me was very, very interesting, and that was, let's see this, 18 percent of the electorate in 2016 viewed both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump unfavorably. That was a huge number. He ended up winning those voters by 17 percentage points. It became a choice between two candidates and the president was able to take advantage of that, versus 2018 where 10 percent -- only 10 percent of the electorate had an unfavorable view of both parties.

[06:50:24] So I think this is the big question, is it going to be that voters like one candidate and then dislike the other one, or is there going to be this swath of voters who end up disliking both candidates? The president wants it to be a choice. He wants it to be that you dislike both. That's probably the only way he can win unless his approve rating rises right now.

CAMEROTA: OK. Do you have new stuff on Elizabeth Warren?

ENTEN: Yes. So this is, to me, an unfortunate poll for the senator from Massachusetts. She's all the way down at seven percentage points in the first primary state of New Hampshire. And why is that a big deal? Well, if you know where New Hampshire is, it's right next door to Massachusetts.

CAMEROTA: Is it?

ENTEN: I went -- I went to college in New Hampshire, so I'm somewhat familiar with the state.

CAMEROTA: So you know that. Yes.

ENTEN: And Massachusetts is right next door. Everybody in that state knows who Elizabeth Warren is. And despite that, she's all the way down at seven. She's well behind Bernie Sanders, who leads at the top from next door Vermont. Joe Biden at 22 percent. Even Kamala Harris, who's all the way at the other side of the state, she is somehow still at fourth. That's not good news for her because she needs to win there if she's going to win the Democratic --

BERMAN: Is she slipping? Was she higher?

ENTEN: She was higher. She was in the double digits back during 2018. She's -- her support has, in fact, dropped by about half over the last year.

CAMEROTA: All right. Do you have time to show us February and then (INAUDIBLE).

ENTEN: Right. So this is -- if we look at the national polling, we see that the numbers out of New Hampshire kind of look the same. Biden and Sanders are flipped. We see Kamala Harris, 11 percent, 6 percent for Warren. But I think this -- if we were looking, why these numbers may, in fact, change. Remember, we're still very, very early. The NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll asked, what attributes would you be enthusiastic to support a candidate or feel comfortable about supporting a candidate? And we see as a high percentage say they'd be comfortable and enthusiastic about supporting an African-American or a woman at 91 percent, but a 75 plus-year-old person who, if you look at these February polls, matches one and two, look at this, only 33 percent say they'd feel enthusiastic or comfortable on the Democratic side. So that is why these polls are still very, very early because Democrats are saying they don't want to nominate someone who's old, yet --

CAMEROTA: That's atheist.

ENTEN: I don't believe that's ageist.

CAMEROTA: I do.

ENTEN: Well, I -- here's what I'll say is, people want someone who's young in the electorate, or a young -- young president.

Look, my father was very, very close to me. He was 60 -- he was 60 years old when I was born. But the fact of the matter is, is I learned with my father, sometimes you get up in age and you may be very strong at, you know, 75, 76, 77, you can't guarantee what will happen four years later. And I think that's what a lot of voters are potentially saying (ph).

CAMEROTA: I hear you, but these guys are vital. I mean they're running around.

ENTEN: They -- they are very -- they --

CAMEROTA: They have a lot of stamina right now.

ENTEN: They are very, very vital, but some people just not feeling it right now.

CAMEROTA: Understood. Thank you very much, Harry.

ENTEN: Thank you.

All right, a critical day. Venezuela's acting president, Juan Guaido, calling for mass street protests as he prepares to return home. We have a live report for you from Caracas, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:57:03] BERMAN: New this morning, tensions are rising in Venezuela as the self-declared interim president, Juan Guaido, tries to return home. The opposition leader has called for supporters to protest today.

CNN's Patrick Oppmann is live in Caracas with the very latest. Patrick.

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, John.

And, yes, Juan Guaido says he's returning to Venezuela to save this country. And that within a few hours he should be here close to where I am in Caracas leading an opposition protest. If he's even in the country at this point, we don't know. Last night he addressed the Venezuela people via social media but he wouldn't say if he'd actually crossed in Venezuela. Had he been, over the last week, on a foreign tour drumming up support. But he has to come back to keep the opposition united.

Venezuela's other president, the other man who says he's president, socialist Nicolas Maduro, has threatened to arrest Guaido. Said that Guaido is part of an imperialist plot against his government. On one side you have Guaido, who's backed by the United States, Canada, and a number of Latin American countries, and then you have Maduro, who is backed by Russia and China. And, increasingly, these two men, John, on a collision course.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Patrick Oppmann, thank you very much for that update from there. And thanks to our international viewers for watching. For you CNN "TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, there are these deadly tornadoes that have gone through Alabama. We have an update for you when NEW DAY continues right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: All right, good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY.

We do begin with breaking news.

Devastating and deadly tornadoes. The full extent of the damage just coming into focus as the sun rises. At least 23 people were killed in a series of tornadoes in central and eastern Alabama. Officials there are warning the death toll is expected to rise.

We're getting our first images of the destruction in Lee County. You can see here, entire neighborhoods just leveled, reduced to rubble this morning. The twisted metal and debris.

Take a look at this. We were told by an emergency management director that this was a real problem in reaching people for several, several hours. This is a cell phone tower that was pushed over blocking eastbound lanes on U.S. 280.

Georgia is also feeling the storm's impact. At least a dozen tornadoes hit that state causing still more damage.

CAMEROTA: The same storm is dumping a lot of snow on the Northeast. Many public schools are closed in New York, Connecticut, and Boston. The morning commute is shaping up to be quite messy. Eighty million people are under winter weather alerts this morning. But right now we want to begin with the deadly tornadoes. And joining

us on the phone is the sheriff of Lee County, that county that's been so hard hit, Jay Jones.

Sheriff Jones, thank you very much. We know it's a busy and very sad morning there for you. Has the death toll changed since you reported that 23 people were killed?

[07:00:00] SHERIFF JAY JONES, LEE COUNTY, ALABAMA (via telephone): No ma'am. We currently are confirming 23 fatalities in regard to the storms and, of course, we hope that number does not go up.

END