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New Day
Trump Slams Coulter over Wall; Venezuela Paralyzed by Power Outage; Biden and O'Rourke Could Launch Campaigns This Week; Teams Make March Madness. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired March 11, 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 POLITICAL ANALYST: Don't listen to the conservagencia (ph), listen to me. Don't believe what you're seeing, what you're reading, pay attention to me.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Is Ann Coulter the worst enemy for Donald Trump to have? I could see some political utility in it for him.
JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Sure. I don't know about that. I mean he hasn't done anything during his two years in office to try to expand his base. I think this is just personal. It -- for -- but, personally, it -- I never thought I'd ever, at the same time, simultaneously agree with Ann Coulter and the president. The president is right when he calls her a whacky nut job and she's right when she calls him a nut job. So I -- I have to agree.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Everybody wins, I think, (INAUDIBLE) --
AVLON: It's a nut job party. That's right.
CAMEROTA: All right, Joe, Carrie, John, thank you very much.
All right, now to this, Venezuela crippled by power outages. CNN is going to take you inside a hospital where the blackout has turned into a life or death situation. We have the very latest in a life report for you, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:35:03] CAMEROTA: A massive power outage in Venezuela is paralyzing the country and it's turning deadly. Seventeen people have died in the last week. The country's self-proclaimed interim president, Juan Guaido, says they were murdered by the Maduro regime.
CNN's Paula Newton is live from a hospital in Caracas where the situation is growing more dire.
What have you seen, Paula?
PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, first to the good news. There are lights on behind me. This country is just starting to recover. But the fact is, the electricity grid here, and the entire country, really remains very, very fragile. People in search of food, water, and medicine. But, Alisyn, nowhere is the need more acute than in hospitals. I want
you to imagine hospitals that are turning away even emergency patients with no medicine to treat them, no electricity, no way to even actually keep them alive. We went inside one hospital here in Caracas. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NEWTON (voice over): The hospital is dark and unusually quiet except for the hum of the generator. That is now the life-saving soundtrack to Venezuela's most profound blackout in decades.
NEWTON (on camera): So we're walking through the hospital corridors. This is the university hospital. It's supposed to be one of the best. No light.
NEWTON (voice over): We're escorted in by a doctor who does not want to be identified but says she wants everyone to see this. Patients like Julio Sesa (ph). The generator is below him, but it's servicing the emergency room. He has no power, no water, and meager food. There's nothing, he tells us.
It must be tough, I ask. He has no words left. Thin and clearly in pain, Julio has gangrene. He's been here a month already. His hopes were already fading, and now this.
Doctors in emergency do the best they can to triage supplies already low. Patients in grave condition are watched closely as ventilators are on battery power. When batteries fail, the nurses tells tell they take turns doing it manually.
Without power, this hospital is become the scene of desertion. The child of an employee wonders the halls. Patients left unattended for hours. The pain of so many here is so acute and yet even as they struggle, here in Venezuela they've learned things could still get so much worse.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAMEROTA: Paula, those are really devastating stories that you found there.
So what is the opposition leader Juan Guaido saying about this blackout?
NEWTON: Well, he's basically saying that the Maduro government is incapable of actually bringing this country to a point where people have the necessities, including those hospitals. He says that what's happening in the hospitals now amounts to murder.
But I have to tell you, Alisyn, there are few people that I speak to at this moment that want to turn this into some kind of a political football, I mean the desperation that I have seen on people's faces.
And I have to tell you, I wish I could say that things would get better in that hospital with power. They're just not going to. I was at that hospital last year. The situation was still quite grave. And, imagine, you're on dialysis, you have cancer. We saw a mother bring in a two-year-old who had just fallen down and hit her head and wouldn't stop crying. Imagine the terror that people feel. And for that reason, right now, they want to know how -- how they are going to get the basics of life really in such adverse conditions that they were already going through.
Alisyn. John.
CAMEROTA: Paula Newton, thank you very much for bringing us the story from the ground in Caracas.
John.
BERMAN: All right, there are two big-name Democrats who have not declared for the 2020 race yet. There could be big news coming from one this week and his name rhymes with --
CAMEROTA: Shmetto (ph)?
BERMAN: Exactly. We discuss, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:42:58] BERMAN: So if you ask the magic eight ball about Joe Biden jumping into the 2020 race, it says ask again later.
CAMEROTA: Is this what you've resorted to?
BERMAN: But as for Beto O'Rourke, the eight ball says signs point to yes.
CAMEROTA: That's as good as we need.
BERMAN: And as soon as this week.
Our Jeff Zeleny is in Austin, Texas, where the South by Southwest Festival has been going on. We've been seeing a number of candidates, including Beto O'Rourke, including the unveiling of this somewhat unusual introductory documentary.
Jeff, how was it received?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It was, John. It was an unusual documentary. Sorry, I thought you were going to show it there.
It was unusual in the fact that he was in the arena, in the theater watching that documentary with his wife, with one of his daughters, as it was playing out in real time. And it really showed, a, he wasn't always a nice Senate candidate. He was sort of lashing out at some of his aides there and he apologized in real time as this was playing. But it really showed a raw look into what it is like to run for a candidate for the Senate. But, I mean, he, obviously, would face a much different road if he was actually running for president. And that, of course, is the question here in Austin, in all of Texas,
really in all of Democratic circles, is he going to jump in? A couple Democrats I talked to who talked to him here say they believe he will as early as this week. We'll see.
CAMEROTA: All right, Jeff, you had a good idea that we should actually run --
BERMAN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: Run some of the documentary. Let's --
ZELENY: Sorry.
CAMEROTA: No, that's actually a very good idea.
BERMAN: No, that's on me.
CAMEROTA: We should have perhaps done that.
ZELENY: Right.
CAMEROTA: Here you go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BETO O'ROURKE: What are we going to do and out of that conversation came this idea of, what if we ran for Senate?
Nobody asked us to do this, so I've just got to keep that in mind. That's how we started and that's how we've got to continue it. So --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which part of (INAUDIBLE)?
O'ROURKE: Just that we're running with, you know, got to run like there's nothing to lose.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Ah, I see the metaphor of running, being used very effectively here, Jeff, because you -- I don't know if you can see that, but he was running, literally.
[06:45:07] So, I guess the point is, is that he's a candidate with warts and all, right? So that's what this documentary is showing?
ZELENY: Exactly. A friendly documentary. I mean it was produced by people who obviously believe in him. But it was also showing some moments again that, you know, not necessarily always the nicest guy in the world. He was yelling at some of his staffers throughout.
But, look, I think that the -- what it's showing most of all is that it's one of the reasons that he was popular, despite losing to Ted Cruz. There aren't many documentaries that are made of losing candidates. So he does have this viral sensation here. The question is, can he take it to the next level? Is he able to convince Democrats, convince independent voters and others. And there are certainly already people taking aim at him even before he jumps in. Some conservative groups are starting with their own negative advertising campaigns against him in Iowa and other places, pointing out some other parts of his background. So he needs to define himself before others start doing it. That's one of the reasons why he'll probably get in sooner rather than later or certainly reveal his decision.
BERMAN: All right, well, hold off on the Joe Biden discussion because, of course, Joe Biden is holding off on the Joe Biden discussion, at least for a few days.
CAMEROTA: Fair.
BERMAN: I want to bring up Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, who was part of the CNN town halls, those multiple town halls last night. And Buttigieg, as he has done in the past, really went after Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States, who was governor of Indiana and they served at the same time. Listen to what Buttigieg says about I think the religious values of the vice president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), SOUTH BEND, INDIANA: How could he allow himself to become the cheerleader of the porn star presidency? Is it that he -- is it that he stopped believing in scripture when he started believing in Donald Trump? I don't know. I don't know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: It's a pretty forceful -- forecful barrage there, Jeff.
ZELENY: It certainly was. And it came in response to a question of if he believes that Mike Pence would be a better or worse president than Donald Trump. So he paused for a long time and then launched into this. But it certainly was a forceful attack.
He was, you know, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, so he knows Mike Pence well. I'm not sure this has much of an effect on Vice President Pence's standing among conservatives. He's pretty solid in that regard. But it does show that he's willing to, you know, be strong and tough and he is 37 is the youngest candidate in the race, but, boy, he leans into that. He does not shy away from it at all. He touts it as a virtue.
John and Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: All right, Jeff Zeleny, live for us from Austin, thank you very much.
Up next, the start of the madness. Who is heading to college basketball's big dance? I hope they are.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:51:47] BERMAN: March Madness less than a week away. Three teams punched their tickets to the NCAA tournament yesterday. Coy Wire has more in the "Bleacher Report."
Coy.
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.
Selection Sunday is days away and so is one of the best times of year in sports. The buzzer beaters, the Cinderella stories. And by becoming conference champs yesterday, teams put their names on March Madness brackets like Gardner-Webb with an undergrad enrollment of just 2,200 students. They're making the tournament for the first time in their school's history after beating Radford. Bradley University scored just 15 points in the first half but rallied to beat Northern Iowa 57-54. These are the moments that hoop dreams are made of.
And in their very first season competing in the Atlantic Sun Conference, Liberty -- shocking top seeded Libs (ph) come to advance in the tournament for the first time in six years.
All right, you have to come take a look at this scene in Germany, Bundesliga action, where a snowy soccer pitch turned out to be Bayer Leverkusen's best defender. Hannover's Genki Haraguchi with the sweet feet, has the goalie beat and he rockets the ball towards the net, but it just stops dead in its tracks. Making matters worse, Hannover ended up losing this match at home 3-2.
CAMEROTA: I mean shouldn't that one have counted? You know, it was close.
BERMAN: Close. Yes, totally. Almost.
CAMEROTA: That's not how it works in sports?
Coy, thank you very much.
WIRE: You're welcome.
CAMEROTA: All right, a major development in the investigation into this deadly plane crash in Ethiopia. We'll tell you what investigators have just found at the crash site.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:58:34] CAMEROTA: All right, "Saturday Night Live" was all over the explosive R. Kelly interview in their opening sketch. Here are some more late night laughs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My first question for you, Robert, is, why exactly are you doing this interview?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because people think that I'm some kind of a monster. I'm here to remove all the doubt, OK. My lawyer was telling me, no, but my ego -- my ego was telling me yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Robert --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please call me victim.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Think for a minute. Use your brains. Why would I do these things? For 30 years I gave y'all trapped in the closet, feeling on your booty, age ain't nothing but a number and so many other clues.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was reported that President Trump watched the Super Bowl in Mar-a-Lago with Lee Yang (ph), the woman who founded the chain of Asian day spas where Patriots owner Robert Kraft allegedly solicited a prostitute. First of all, what a time to be alive, huh? Second, you know that Trump spent all their time together trying to convince her to give up North Korea's nuclear weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: I got to say, when the reality is more peculiar than the parody --
CAMEROTA: They write themselves.
BERMAN: It's 2019.
CAMEROTA: Why haven't we said what a time to be alive more often?
BERMAN: Because we -- it could be the banner on the screen every morning.
[07:00:02] Thank you to our international viewers for watching. For you CNN "TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, we are on the scene of a major air disaster.
END
