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New Day
Interview with Jay Inslee; Guaido Calls for Protests; Arctic Blast Grips Midwest and Northeast; Trump Interference with Merger. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired March 05, 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] GOV. JAY INSLEE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: To do its job, I believe, and get to the bottom of all this (INAUDIBLE). And it's a long sorted tale involving this president. He has multiple depredations and there are dark resources that need to be brought out to the light.
But what I'm concentrated on is to try to give people a mission statement, like Kennedy said when we're going to go to the moon. And I believe we need that type of leadership from the White House.
Look, right now we've got a president who denies the clear science. He denies the job creating opportunity that's so obvious to so many of us. Look, we've got thousands of jobs in my state today that didn't exist ten years ago and we've got to make sure that can happen all across the United States.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We opened this interview by talking about your fundraiser haul, a million dollars in just four or five days, which is impressive. In addition to what you're raising for the campaign, there is a super PAC. You are allowing a super PAC to raise and spend money on your behalf. Not all the Democratic candidates are doing that.
INSLEE: Yes.
BERMAN: In fact, most are not. Why are you? Because some people say this is big money influence on politics.
INSLEE: Well, as I understand it, this is a separate organization from my organization.
BERMAN: It is. It has to be.
INSLEE: Yes. And -- and I'm told that they are -- they are climate advocates. They want to fight climate change. I have been fighting climate change now for 20 years. I believe it is a message that we need all Americans to join in on. I'm not going to speak against them or condemn them by wanting to fight climate change. This is something we'd all be involved in.
Now, what I have done is said I will --
BERMAN: But it is unlimited. Someone could give unlimited money to that. Is that too much big money influence or the possibility in politics?
INSLEE: The money I'm concerned about is, I am refusing to take a dollar from corporate PACs or from the fossil fuel industry. And I hope the other candidates will follow me in breaking this addiction to oil and refuse to any take any fossil fuel money. That's what I'm doing. I hope that they will join me because then we have to break the control of the fossil fuel industry over the U.S. Congress and I'm very interested in doing that job.
BERMAN: Governor Jay Inslee, Democratic candidate for president.
INSLEE: Thank you.
BERMAN: We hope you come back and visit us over the course of this.
INSLEE: You bet.
BERMAN: We know you haven't slept much in the last four days. Good luck, sir.
INSLEE: Thank you.
BERMAN: Alisyn.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you very much, John.
Coming up, another one of NEW DAY's famous voter panels. This time I get the pulse of the Democratic voters about the 2020 race. It turns out there's one person they do not want to see in 2020.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love you, Hillary. I love you. I love you. But stay away.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Wait until you hear who else they want to stay away from that race. It's coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:36:19] CAMEROTA: Venezuela's opposition (INAUDIBLE) triumphant returns (INAUDIBLE) Venezuela. The self-proclaimed interim president risking arrest as he calls -- as the calls grow (INAUDIBLE) Nicolas Maduro.
CNN's Patrick Oppmann is live in Caracas with more.
What's the latest this morning, Patrick?
PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was a rock star welcome yesterday when Juan Guaido arrived, wasn't it? And it was a very bold move because at any point the government of Nicolas Maduro could have arrested him when he returned on a direct flight from Panama, but that didn't happen. Juan Guaido came into the city and gave this speech in a central Caracas plaza. And this morning, he is leading meetings. He is making appointments. In all senses really giving the impression that he is leading a shadow government here. So you have two presidents now and two governments.
The other government, the government of Nicolas Maduro, has called on him, on Juan Guaido, to engage in dialogue, to try to find a way out of the crisis. But Juan Guaido, he said that the only way is Venezuela is to hold elections and for Maduro to leave power.
John.
BERMAN: All right, Patrick Oppmann for us in Caracas. Thank you for being there, Patrick.
A new arctic blast will grip the Midwest and Northeast. How long will it last? CNN meteorologist Chad Myers.
Chad, you warned us this was coming. It feels like it's here.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. It will be gone by Saturday and Sunday will feel like spring again, finally. But look at the temperatures behind me. This one feels like now below zero in most of the Midwest. Chicago feeling like 7 below.
Right now your weather's brought to you by Zantec, eat your way, treat your way.
Here comes more weather. Here comes more cold. We're not going to warm up above freezing for the Northeast for the next 72 hours. Highs today, 31. But lows tonight back down to 18. Detroit, you'll be 11. And all the way through the Midwest for tomorrow, still below freezing.
Now, here's the warm map. Here's the good -- here's the feel good map. As the arctic air is here today, here comes the warm stuff. Look at this, here comes some orange. And it will be eventually better by the weekend.
Now, if you're a ski fan, Mammoth Mountain in California has had 602 inches of snow. You'll be in the 30s, and 40s, and 50s, melting by the weekend. But another three feet of snow. Mammoth Mountain has announced they will be skiing until the Fourth of July. So winter's somewhere. You just have to go a little ways to find it.
Guys, back to you.
CAMEROTA: Wowie.
BERMAN: Did you say 602 inches?
MYERS: Six hundred and two. Yes. So far.
CAMEROTA: John's skeptical.
BERMAN: That's a lot.
CAMEROTA: That's -- that is a lot.
BERMAN: That's more than three feet. I'm not good at math, but that's a lot of snow.
MYERS: Yes. All right.
CAMEROTA: Thanks, Chad.
MYERS: Have a good day.
CAMEROTA: All right, there's the -- you too.
There's a stunning expos (ph) in "The New Yorker" on the vast influence that Fox News has on President Trump and their efforts to protect him. So Jane Mayer, the reporter behind that story, joins us with the back stories, next.
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[06:43:32] CAMEROTA: President Trump made no secret that he did not support the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, CNN's former parent company. Here is then presidential candidate Donald Trump talking about the pending merger just days before Election Day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Well, last week, a federal appeals judge ruled in favor of the merger and against the Justice Department's challenge. Now, in a stunning new expos published in "The New Yorker," it finds that the president was more involved in trying to block the deal than we previously knew. But, wait, there's more.
Joining us now to discuss is the author of this new report, chief Washington correspondent for "The New Yorker," Jane Mayer. And in full disclosure, I worked at Fox News for many years and I was one of the many people quoted in Jane's piece.
Jane, great to see you.
Great job on this epic 28-page article that you've written. I know that people read it with great interest. It crashed the website, as I understand it. And one of the big bombshell headlines in it was that President Trump was more involved in trying to block that merger than we previously knew. Tell us how he went about pressuring the Department of Justice.
JANE MAYER, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORKER": Thanks. Yes, he promised the public -- he said he would not interfere with the Justice Department because that would be improper. But behind the scenes, in the Oval Office, there was a meeting where he basically ordered Gary Cohn, who was his top economic adviser, to get the Justice Department to file suit and stop the merger.
[06:45:15] And not only, in his own words, order Gary Cohn to do this, he said, I've told him to do it 50 times. He was saying this in front of a couple other people who were there at the time.
So -- so we know that he tried. He may not have managed to get his way on this. We do know the Justice Department did, in fact, file suit about two months later. But he certainly tried to abuse his power that way.
CAMEROTA: And, I mean, to be clear, this is about more than just a business story and more than just a merger. This is -- I mean what -- what has gotten so much attention over the past 24 hours is all sorts of noted attorneys have said, this is a First Amendment right. He was trying to retaliate against CNN's journalism.
Here are a couple that I want to read to you. This is Kellyanne Conway's husband, George Conway. He's a noted conservative attorney. He says, if proven, such an attempt to use presidential authority to seek retribution for the exercise of First Amendment rights would unquestionably be grounds for impeachment. Senator Chris van Hollen tweeted this as a result of your reporting, if this report is true, it is deeply troubling. Mergers need to be closely examined and reviewed on their merits not because the president wants to retaliate against a news organization. I'll be writing to the Department of Justice to get to the bottom of this and make sure it never happens again.
Is it your reporting that it was really, at its heart, about punishing CNN?
MAYER: Well, I think we need to know more. But you can say that the impact of it was that it would hurt CNN. This was a merger that was going to help the company that owns CNN, Time Warner, and it was going to also -- it would hurt that company and it would help Fox, which is the rival company, the rival news organization.
So -- and then Fox had its own merger after this. Its own sort of huge deal. And that went flying through this -- the Trump administration and Trump came -- they publicly endorsed it even before the Justice Department had taken its position on it.
CAMEROTA: Interesting.
Another -- speaking of Fox, another big scoop in your piece is that there was a Fox reporter, Diana Falzone, she and I worked there at the same time, though we never worked together. And she had a big scoop. And her scoop was the Stormy Daniels story. And it was a year before "The Wall Street Journal" published it. It was a year before anybody knew about the alleged affair between Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump and the hush money to try to cover it up. She had the story. She had researched it for months. Then what happened?
MAYER: This was right before the election, the 2016 election. And according to the reporter who spoke to a number of colleagues at the time, she's now under a gag order, so she's not allowed to talk about it. But I interviewed people around her and who worked with her. They said that her editor at Fox said, good work, kiddo, but Rupert Murdock wants Donald Trump to win, so set it aside. So it never came out before the election.
I've got to say, on behalf of "The Wall Street Journal," I heard from them, they had a shred of it in print, but nobody paid any attention. They didn't have the whole story. She evidently had the story and had it cold.
CAMEROTA: And so what -- just flesh that out for us. They killed it.
MAYER: They killed it.
CAMEROTA: They killed it. I mean she had the story. She wanted to run with it. She had had it buttoned up. And, according to her boss -- I mean according to her, her boss told her that Rupert Murdoch wants Donald Trump to win, so kill it.
MAYER: So, kill it. And that was it. It was gone. Nobody heard from Fox on it. Even when "The Wall Street Journal" broke the story later, she tried again to get it in print and they again killed it. And so -- so Fox is been -- has been so aligned with Trump really that you can see that it's almost an arm of the West Wing. And that's really the point of the story is that the Trump White House almost has its own propaganda organization and it's Fox.
CAMEROTA: And you found more evidence, one of which is that during the presidential debates leading up to the election, you found some information that Donald Trump had somehow been given some of the questions in advance. Tell us about that.
MAYER: This is according to two insiders at Fox and someone close -- two people close to the Trump campaign, actually, said that they -- that there's an eyewitness who said that Roger Ailes, who ran Fox News at the time, tipped off Trump in advance to two key debate questions in the first really big Republican presidential debate.
[06:50:01] And just to, again, be fair, there are certainly people in the campaign and at Fox who deny this, but there is an eyewitness at Fox who says it happened.
CAMEROTA: And, I mean, one of those -- everybody remembers one of those questions, and that was Megyn Kelly's questions where she asked him about his treatment of women. And that one was a kind of breathtaking moment in one debate because he then attacked her. It then spilled into a feud. And so the idea that he might have known that that was coming -- and you have good reason to believe that he might have known because it sounds like he tried to call Fox beforehand to complain.
MAYER: Megyn Kelly's book says that he called Fox in advance and he said, I hear you're going to ask -- that Megyn Kelly's going to ask a really tough question, and he called and had some kind of conversation, we know that. Megyn Kelly has said she doesn't think that he was tipped off, but there are people there who claim that it happened and they're basing it on someone who says he saw it happen. CAMEROTA: And the other question was, would you support whoever the
eventual Republican nominee is, and Donald Trump had a different answer than everybody else did. And so it stands to reason that maybe he was prepared for that one.
MAYER: Well, and he seemed somewhat prepared for the Megyn Kelly question, actually. If you go back and take a look at the tape, you'll see he had a -- a really snappy kind of rejoinder about how, no, he wasn't against women, he was just against Rosie O'Donnell. And -- and he seems -- I -- you know, maybe he's just really quick, but he was certainly ready with a one-liner there.
CAMEROTA: Jane Mayer, the piece is "The Making of the Fox News White House." Everybody should read it. Thanks so much for sharing the great reporting with us.
MAYER: Thank you so much for having me on.
CAMEROTA: John.
BERMAN: I've got to say, I had my popcorn there. I was waiting for that interview. I was dying to hear your conversation with her. Just think about the implications. Think about the implications of just those three issues you brought up.
CAMEROTA: I mean they're huge. And, you know, again, these are things that were speculated to, but people hadn't been able to completely connect the dots yet. And, by the way, it's 28 pages. There's a lot more in here as well.
BERMAN: A lot of dots.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
BERMAN: All right, a potential major breakthrough in AIDS treatment. A second HIV patient is said to be cured. The details, next.
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[06:56:01] CAMEROTA: A patient in London appears to be the second person to be completely cured of HIV. According to a case study published in the journal "Nature," the so-called London patient has been in sustained remission for 18 months. This case comes more than ten years after a Berlin patient was cured using similar stem cell transplants from donors who carry a rare genetic mutation.
BERMAN: Hillary Clinton says she is not running for president, but she tells a CNN affiliate she is not going anywhere.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm not running, but I'm going to keep working and speaking and standing up for what I believe.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: Now, those of us who adhere to strict guidelines here note, she said, I am not running, not, I will not run. It wasn't Sherman- esque. It wasn't, you know, if nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve.
CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, wow.
BERMAN: She said, I am not running.
CAMEROTA: You are really a stickler for the English language.
BERMAN: Just -- I -- look, there are ways to say, no, not ever and she didn't say it. But I don't -- you know, I don't know whether it was intentional or not.
There is someone who, over the last hour, did say he will not run for president much more definitively. That's Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley. He said he will not be a candidate for president. Instead, he will run for re-election to the Senate. He said he believes there are Democrats already in the presidential race who can tackle the nation's big challenges.
CAMEROTA: OK, John, listen to this. The winner of the $1.5 billion Mega Millions jackpot back in October has finally come forward to claim their prize. But the South Carolina resident wants to remain anonymous. This is the largest single winner Mega Millions jackpot. It needs to change their name. This is a billion they won, OK, not Mega Millions. The winner opted for a one-time payment of nearly $878 million. I feel like they're being ripped off because they won 1.5.
BERMAN: Yes, that's a lot. That's a lot that they're giving up.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
BERMAN: Mr. Anonymous.
By the way, I'm changing my name to anonymous to see if that helps me.
CAMEROTA: If you can cash the -- get the jackpot.
BERMAN: Get a little bit of that.
CAMEROTA: It's a good idea.
BERMAN: All right, President Trump and his fact-challenged CPAC speech have made for some comedy opportunities. Here are your "Late Night Laughs."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": Trump again speaking and speaking and speaking. He talked for two hours and two minutes, making it the longest presidential oration in American history, which is impressive because some of Obama's pauses were almost an hour. JIMMY KIMMELL, HOST, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE": I know there's a lot of
competition, but this, I think, this might be the dumbest thing he does.
(VIDEO CLIP)
KIMMELL: Who does that? It's -- Donald Trump shows more affection to flags than Eric and Don Junior have ever gotten in their whole life.
COLBERT: This is everybody "The New York Times" says are running or thinking about running. That's almost as many contestants as they have on "The Bachelor." And like "The Bachelor," not everyone is here for the right reason. We just had three more Democrats formally announce, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and former New Mexico Governor Steve Pachinko (ph). One of those I made up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: That -- that caught us by surprise.
BERMAN: Yes, immediately -- I'm like, that's not the governor from Mexico.
CAMEROTA: You and I were like, how did we miss this.
BERMAN: That's when you realize that you don't actually have a sense of humor and Stephen Colbert does.
CAMEROTA: Right. Great point.
Thanks to our international viewers for watching. For you CNN "TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, House Democrats launching a sweeping investigation into President Trump's orbit. We'll analyze it. "NEW DAY" continues right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a responsibility to do oversight, just focuses on corruption, obstruction of justice and abuse of power.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not really sure what they're looking for. I've been very clear that I've had nothing to hide.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is not a pre-impeachment hearing. Our goal is to protect the rule of law.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I cooperate all the time. No collusion. It's all a hoax.
[07:00:00] HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm not running, but I'm going to keep standing up for what I believe.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe not only can I beat Donald Trump, but that I can get stuff done.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're ready for progressive candidates.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We really need to try to think outside
END
