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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Sources: White House Will Get First Look at Mueller Report; Historic Floods in Nebraska; Boeing's CEO Speaks Out; Dutch Police Examine "Terrorist Motive"; Brexit Appears to be in Serious Trouble. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired March 19, 2019 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:31:13] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The first look at the Mueller report goes to the White House. Why the president's lawyers will review it before it goes to Congress and the public.
DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: The death toll rising from flooding in Nebraska. Historic flood blanketing dozens of counties. The vice president will be there today.
ROMANS: And Boeing's CEO has a message for air travelers in the wake of those two plane crashes. What he says the company is doing to prevent more disasters.
Welcome back to EARLY START.
BRIGGS: Good morning. Good morning to all of you. I'm Dave Briggs, 4:31 Eastern Time on a Tuesday.
We start in the nation's capital. The world waits for the Mueller report, but the White House gets the first look and maybe a first edit. Whatever part of the report Attorney General Bill Barr decides to submit to Congress and maybe make public, sources tell us that White House lawyers expect to review it first.
ROMANS: And they will be considering if and when to claim executive privilege. The president does have a legal right to withhold information if revealing it would disrupt the decision making progress, but should he claim that right.
CNN's Pamela Brown has more from Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Christine and Dave.
We have learned that White House lawyers expect to review whatever version of Mueller's report Attorney General Barr submits to Congress before it reaches lawmakers and the public. And this is a potential flash point, a political battle over the hotly anticipated document. The attorneys want the White House to have an opportunity to claim executive privilege over information in documents and interviews with White House officials over the last couple years, these sources said, but the White House's review of executive privilege claims are within its legal purview, but this could set up this political battle over the perception at the very least that President Trump trying to shield certain information from the public about an investigation that has swirled around him since the first day of his presidency.
As one source close to the White House put it, there has always been tension between what looks best politically and what represents the interests of the institution. But preserving executive privilege, Trump's political optics and the White House views. We should know, executive privilege allows the president's conversations with other officials be kept confidential if he chooses to assert it.
Now, Justice Department lawyers could advise him against certain assertions if they don't feel that it's legally defensible, but if President Trump does exert executive privilege, the decision could be litigated in court if it's challenged, which Democrats would almost certainly do.
Back to you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: All right. Pamela in Washington, thank you for that.
There is growing fallout this morning after President Trump's wild weekend on Twitter when he went after pretty much everyone and everything from GM and the autoworkers union to a rerun of "Saturday Night Live" to Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller, even Fox News. He also attacked the late Senator John McCain twice.
On Monday, McCain's daughter Meghan returned fire.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MEGHAN MCCAIN, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": He spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he knows it and I know and all of you know it, he will never be a great men. Your life is spent on your weekends not with your family, not with your friends but obsessing, obsessing over great men you could never live up to. That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Attorney George Conway, husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, questioned the president's mental fitness on Twitter saying, quote, his condition is getting worse. Americans should be thinking seriously now about Trump's mental condition. Conway also tweeted clinical definitions of narcissistic and anti-social personality disorders. Not surprisingly Conway's wife Kellyanne does not share those concerns.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KELLYANNE CONWAY, WHITE HOUSE COUNSELOR: No, I don't share those concerns and I was getting -- I have four kids and I was getting them out of house this morning before I got here, so I haven't talked to the president about substance. So I may not be up to speed on all of them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[04:35:00] ROMANS: The Trump re-election campaign manager Brad Parscale claims George Conway is jealous of his wife's success and is undermining her career.
BRIGGS: Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren making a pitch to southern voters at a CNN town hall last night in Jackson, Mississippi. A notorious policy wonk, she rattled on off a long list of proposals and got a big ovation when she announced for the first she supports replacing the Electoral College.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Come a general election, presidential candidates don't come to places like Mississippi because we're not the battle ground states. Well, my view is that every vote matters. That means get rid of the Electoral College and everybody --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: The idea of abandoning the electoral college is gaining traction among Democrats. In the popular vote Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump and Al Gore beat George Bush but both lost the election. Twelve states and Washington, D.C. have said they plan to assign electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote regardless of who wins their states.
BRIGGS: Currently 181, need 270. The switch could only happen once they have that magical 270 electoral votes. That's enough to win the Electoral College.
Warren is on board with Medicare-for-All. She says she is open to multiple path universal coverage, including less aggressive transitions that might keep the private insurance industry relevant.
We're learning a second top aide to Senator Gillibrand resigned after complaints were leveled against him. A report in Washington Examiner says in 2017, the aide made at least one sexist remark in front of a junior staffer. This follows revelations last week, another woman who worked in Senator Gillibrand's office accused a different senior staffer of sexual harassment in 2018.
ROMANS: And Gillibrand who made her 2020 run official on Sunday with the slogan of "Be Brave", she defended her handling of the accusations during an MSNBC town hall. She also defended leading the push for former Senator Al Franken to resign when he was accused of harassment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Senator Franken was entitled to whatever type of review or process he wanted. He could have stuck it out, stayed in the Senate, gone through his ethics committee investigation for as long as he wants for how many months. He could have sued all of the eight women who came out against him. Those were his choices. But I had to make my choice.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Gillibrand has positioned herself as a leading voice in the #MeToo movement.
BRIGGS: Selecting the right running mate and securing endorsements are at the top of Joe Biden's agenda right now, as the former vice president prepares for the anticipated 2020 announcement in April.
Last week, Biden created some buzz meeting privately with Stacey Abrams, a rising Democratic star who lost a tight race for governor of Georgia last fall. Person familiar with their meeting says policy and politics were discussed, but not the possibility of joining the ticket. Biden's team is now considering scenarios for a campaign launch, possibly involving locations in Wilmington, Delaware, and Biden's birth place of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
ROMANS: All right. Boeing's CEO is trying to reassure the flying public after two deadly crashes, all 737 MAX jets were grounded worldwide after accidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed nearly 350 people. In the video message, the Boeing chief Dennis Muilenburg says the company is doing whatever is necessary to ensure the safety of the MAX planes going forward.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DENNIS MUILENBURG, BOEING CEO: We're united with our airline customers, international regulators and government authorities in our efforts to support the most recent investigation, understand the facts of what happened, and help prevent future tragedies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: He says Boeing will release soon a software update and related pilot training for the 737 MAX that will address these concerns discovered following the Lion Air crash back in October. Many wonder why there wasn't pilot training and the software fix before, like why was this plane rolled out in such big numbers, investigations into how that all went down.
BRIGGS: Yes, and the FAA -- are they not doing enough, are they letting Boeing do a lot of the work.
ROMANS: Right.
BRIGGS: All right. Ahead, Vice President Mike Pence, he's in Nebraska today to tour flood damage. Seventy-four cities, 65 counties, four tribal areas have declared emergencies in the wake of heavy flooding.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. PETE RICKETTS (R), NEBRASKA: Yes, this really is the most devastating flooding we've probably ever had in our state's history.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Farm animals stuck in floodwaters also being rescued. Crews rounding up ponies, donkeys, sheep, even alpacas on air boats.
ROMANS: Hamburg, Iowa, also dealing with intense flooding there, a barrier the town had built and reinforced broke, filling basements with feet of water. These floods blamed on at least four deaths in two states and it could go from bad to worse as more rain comes to the Midwest.
Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri joins us with the forecast.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[04:40:03] PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Dave and Christine.
The flooding continues here and this is really going to be a multiday, potentially multi-week event here before conditions improve in large areas of the Midwest and down toward portions of the Mississippi River Valley. This is going to be the concern at least the next couple days because the temperatures not only out of the 30s and 40s, but into the 50s and 60s the next couple days.
By Friday, we're talking about 61 degrees in places like St. Louis and you go farther toward the north, even the 40s and 50s, plenty warm here to allow the snowfall to begin to melt on the ground, historic amount of snowfall that we've seen, of course rain on top of this and then a frozen surface beneath all of this inhibits anything being absorbed. So, we're seeing additional runoff across some of these regions.
So, showers expected the next 24 or so hours, but altogether upwards of 250, to almost 300 gauges still reporting some flooding across this region of the country as the next round of wet weather pushes right through. And back out toward the Northwest, mild weather in place. We're talking summer-like warmth across areas of the Northeast, just about a week and a half after snowfall, Seattle climbed up to the warmest winter day on record, highs there on Monday were at 76 -- guys.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRIGGS: All right. Trump, thank you.
A fire at a petrochemical plant now burning for a third day. What the community is doing and how long will it take to put it out.
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[04:45:33] ROMANS: President Trump's weekend Twitter tirade against GM continued Monday. The president again going after GM, saying close the plant in China or Mexico where you invested so heavily pre-Trump but not in the USA. Bring jobs home. The president casting around for blame for GM closing plants in the U.S., even calling out the local union president, David Green.
Well, CNN Business spoke to Green in Lordstown yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID GREEN, PRESIDENT, UAW LOCAL 1112: A lot of people hear about reform. He came here and told folks don't sell your house, those jobs are coming back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: True, the president said don't sell your house, jobs will come back under Trump.
Now, Green said that many of GM employees right now who worked at that Lordstown plant are frustrated. They say it's not clear what the company means by unallocated plants.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GREEN: There are some opportunities to transfer, but not everybody can do that. Some people, you know, are taking care of an elderly parent or have children with special needs. And so, they can't just pack up and leave. Well, they are not sure if they should.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Beto O'Rourke made an unannounced stop at a Union Hall near the closed plant. He said workers feel forgotten.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BETO O'ROURKE, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You see a homemade sign that says bring the GM plant back. To me, that speaks of a level of frustration and desperation. A community that has hosted the success of one of the world's biggest corporations that has been left behind by that corporation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: So this Lordstown plant is kind of a political symbol for the president, right? He vowed to autoworkers that his policies would keep their jobs in America. Trumbull County where that plant is flipped by 29 points from Dem to Trump in 2016, that I think why Beto O'Rourke is there.
BRIGGS: Just an interesting time when Republicans are telling private businesses how to operate. Just strange turf for the party.
The Trump administration wants to put a limit on student loan borrowing. Right now, the amount of undergraduates students can borrow from the federal government is capped at $57,500. But graduate students and parents of undergraduates face no limits. The administration is now saying what its proposed limit might be, 43 million borrowers owe more than $1.4 trillion in federal student loans.
ROMANS: All right. USC is blocking students who may be connected to the college admissions scandal from registering for classes while the school investigates. The university is not saying how many students are affected. But says that they have been notified their status is under review. Ultimately, USC could revoke their admission. USC could even expel them.
The university previously announced that applicants tied to the alleged cheating scheme will be denied admission.
BRIGGS: Black smoke still rising from a spectacular fire at a petrochemical plant in suburban Houston. It has burned since Sunday. Fire officials say it could take until Wednesday to extinguish the flames and tanks filled with gas, oil and chemicals. They hope once the fire is contained they can close the tank valves and the fire will put itself out. Air quality in Deer Park and surrounding communities remains normal. Schools and businesses set to reopen today, cause of the huge fire is still under investigation.
ROMANS: Four top Democrats are demanding a new FBI investigation into President Trump's apparent ties to Cindy Yang. Yang is the former owner of a chain of Florida massage parlors. Democrats want to find out if she illegally leveraged her relationship with the president by selling access to Chinese investors.
Last month, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was charged with soliciting prostitution at a massage parlor that was founded by Yang. Important to note, she sold her interest in that company years ago.
BRIGGS: Could cameras on airplane seats be recording you?
Two senators want that answer. Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon, John Kennedy of Louisiana have written to several airlines, demanding they clarify how these cameras are used. Tech experts suggest the cameras could be hacked. Senators say the notion that in-flight cameras may monitor passengers while they sleep, eat or have private conversations is troubling.
All the airlines contacted by CNN Travel say the cameras are not in use.
ESPN is apologizing after it accidently aired brackets for the NCAA women's basketball tournament hours before their scheduled release. You can see them on the right side of the screen midday Monday.
[04:50:03] ESPN says in the midst of our preparation, the bracket was mistakenly posted on ESPNU. We deeply regret the error and extend our apology to the NCAA and the women's basketball community. The NCAA also addressed the leak: We regret the network's mistake and are working with our partners at ESPN to prevent similar errors in future years.
The NCAA women's tournament begins Monday, top seeds Baylor, Mississippi State, Notre Dame and Louisville. And for the first time since 2006, UConn is not a number one seed.
ROMANS: Which starts Friday, right? Monday?
BRIGGS: We're talking about the women's. You're worried about the men's tournament because your bracket has to be filled out by Thursday morning.
ROMANS: OK, Thursday morning.
BRIGGS: OK.
ROMANS: Got it.
All right. March Madness in full effect. DraftKings looking to make a profit from legal tournament betting. CNN Business has the details, next.
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[04:55:13] ROMANS: In Netherlands, authorities are still piecing together the motive of a man who opened fire on a tram in a city of Utrecht, killing three and injuring five.
CNN's Atika Shubert is standing live for us there with the very latest.
What do we know, Atika?
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the city as you can imagine is still processing what happened.
Here's the headlines this morning: Utrecht in shock. You can see there the body of one of the victims in that photograph and a city in fear.
Now, what we know for sure is that three people have died in this attack, five have been injured. The main suspected shooter is in custody. Another two suspects have also been are arrested but we're not clear what the relationship is between them.
And the police have not given any details of the victims out of respect for their families. However, we do more about the shooter, 37-year-old Gokmen Tanis. He was born in Turkey, but living here in Utrecht.
He was somebody known to police. He had been in trouble quite a few times over the years. But what is not clear is what was his motivation in carrying out this brutal attack, was it personal or political.
There have been some reports that there splay been a family dispute, that he had recently been in trouble with the law, but police say they are still investigating that all of that is still speculation. For now, they are not ruling out any possible motives. And they hope to bring out a statement later today -- Christine.
ROMANS: All right, Atika. Thank you so much for that.
BRIGGS: Ten days and counting and Brexit is in serious trouble. The speaker of Britain's House of Commons says he will not allow the government to present Prime Minister Theresa May's E.U. withdrawal agreement again unless that deal is substantially revised from the first two times it was voted down.
CNN's Anna Stewart is live in the U.K. with what in the world happens today.
Anna, good morning.
ANNA STEWART, CNN JOURNALIST: Good morning, Dave.
And you know, Einstein once said that the difference nation of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And so given that, perhaps the speaker of the House of Commons has a point.
You know, this deal, the prime minister's deal, has been defeated now overwhelmingly twice. Now, if she cannot get vote on her deal through are parliament this week or next week, the deadline for Brexit is next Friday, what does she do next?
There are some options there. First of all, she is already heading to Brussels this Thursday for a big E.U. Summit there. She wants to ask for an E.U. extension. She needs a short one regardless of what happens to get legislation through the Brexit.
But the E.U. could turn around and say, listen, if you need substantial changes to the Brexit deal, you are going to need a lot longer. They could only offer maybe a lengthy 21 months today. That is not going to get some Brexiteers in her party very, very worried indeed.
The other option maybe they don't agree to a delay at all. What could happen then? Regardless currently in law the U.K. will leave E.U. next Friday in ten days time with or without a deal. We are right down to the wire and the Brexit curve balls just keep coming -- Dave.
BRIGGS: A disastrous economic implications.
Anna Stewart, live for us in London, thank you.
ROMANS: All right. Let's get a check on CNN Business this morning.
Global stocks are mixed right now. You can see Tokyo, and Shanghai down. Hong Kong up a little bit and London mixed. U.S. futures are slightly higher here.
Building on yesterday's gain. The Dow gained 65 points Monday, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq also closed solidly higher. And the S&P 500 closing at a five month high.
Lyft has set a price range for its initial public offering which could value the company at about $20 billion. Lyft expects to raise as much as $2.1 billion through the sale of stock. Its business could change radically in future years when self-driving cars become a reality and become accepted by the public.
Something is different about this year's NCAA men's college basketball tournament. It is perfectly okay to bet on the games. This is the first tournament to take place since the Supreme Court ruled last year that states can legalize sports gambling.
That could mean big bucks for DraftKings, the company that runs the popular app for a fantasy sports. DraftKings now has a separate sports book app. DraftKings CEO said people can bet on individual games and as well as submit brackets for 20 bucks that makes them eligible for a chance to win $100,000. And there is also a free bracket people can play that offers smaller prizes.
People bet on these games?
BRIGGS: Massive. Massive money. And it is beginning to eclipse the betting in Vegas.
ROMANS: Oh, really?
BRIGGS: The legal betting, and games start tonight on TruTV.
EARLY START continues right now with the flooding out of Nebraska.
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ROMANS: The first look at the Mueller report goes to the White House. Why the president's lawyers will review it before it goes to Congress and the American public.
BRIGGS: The death toll is rising from floods in Nebraska. Historic flooding blanketing dozens of counties. The vice president will be there today.
ROMANS: And Boeing's CEO has a message for air travelers in the wake of those two plane crashes. What he says the company is doing to prevent more disasters.
END
