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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Democrats Seize On President Trump's Health Care Reversal; Why Were Charges Dropped Against Actor Jussie Smollett?; Emergency Landing For Boeing 737 MAX Being Moved Into Storage; NFL Changes Replay Review Rule. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired March 27, 2019 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[05:31:22] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: At this moment when they were going to take a victory lap, suddenly they're reminding us why so many of us are Democrats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Democrats happy to oblige after the president shifts the focus from Russia to health care.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAHM EMANUEL, MAYOR, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: This is a whitewash of justice.
EDDIE JOHNSON, SUPERINTENDENT, CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT: Do I think justice was served? No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Police want prosecutors investigated after they dropped all charges against Jussie Smollett.
BRIGGS: The FAA coming to Capitol Hill today, the day after an emergency landing for a Boeing 737 MAX being moved into storage.
ROMANS: And the NFL makes the move it had to make. Calls, including pass interference, can now be reviewed.
Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
BRIGGS: Now they got it right.
I'm Dave Briggs. Good morning, everyone -- 5:31 Eastern time.
Would you believe it? President Trump gave a birthday gift to Nancy Pelosi. What was that? That was shifting the focus to health care.
After President Trump gave them an opening, leadership was looking to focus on issues that helped Democrats take back the House in the midterms. They got their chance when the Justice Department said it backed the judge's ruling calling Obamacare unconstitutional. Hours later, Democrats -- including 2020 hopefuls -- pounced.
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REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: The GOP will never stop trying to destroy the affordable health care of America's families.
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The idea that people are playing politics, yet again, with the Affordable Care Act is the height of irresponsibility.
JULIAN CASTRO (D), 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This administration and the Republican Party want to go back to the bad old days where people couldn't get health insurance if they had a preexisting condition.
JOHN HICKENLOOPER (D), FORMER GOVERNOR OF COLORADO, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When you start taking health care away from people who have preexisting conditions it upsets whole family structures. And then look at the 20 million people that are suddenly going to be without health care. Is anybody thinking about what that -- what that does to their lives?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), (D) 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nothing Trump and his friends do surprises me. The idea, however, that they would ask the courts to say that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional -- I mean, it's an outrage, but we've seen this movie before.
BUTTIGIEG: As a matter of policy, I'm not surprised because this seems to be the position they hold deep down. Just take this health care coverage away from millions of Americans. As a matter of political strategy, I'm a little bit surprised because most Americans want this.
And so, at this moment when they were going to take a victory lap around what was happening in Washington, suddenly they're reminding us why so many of us are Democrats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: A White House official tells CNN there has been a heated debate inside the Trump administration about whether the DOJ should support a ruling fully invalidating the Affordable Care Act.
President Trump making the final call.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let me just tell you exactly what my message is. The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care -- you watch.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: You watch.
"Politico" reports Attorney General Bill Barr and Health and Human Services Sec. Alex Azar argued against scrapping Obamacare because Republicans simply don't have an alternative plan.
ROMANS: Let's turn to "CNN POLITICS" digital director Zach Wolf, live this morning in Washington.
Zach, your job's --
BRIGGS: Good morning.
ROMANS: You're going to say that this was what -- Nancy Pelosi's birthday yesterday?
BRIGGS: It was, believe it or not, and she got a gift from the president.
ROMANS: All of a sudden, the White House says yes, we want to strike down all of ACA. We agree with striking down all of it.
A reminder to people what's in it and what so many Americans like about it -- 21 million Americans who are covered by it.
[05:35:00] It provides health insurance for people who otherwise couldn't get it. It prevents insurers from turning people away with preexisting conditions. It allows kids to stay on their parent's health plans until 26.
There's senior citizen savings there. For low-income Americans, there are ways that you can help get -- you can help get money back to pay for your -- to pay for your health care.
Is there a Republican plan that replaces this?
ZACHARY WOLF, DIGITAL DIRECTOR, CNN POLITICS: There's not a Republican plan that President Trump is talking about that replaces this. There are some Republican ideas out there. There's not something that they have coalesced behind. This is not like a policy proposal that's been thought out, that they've had hearings, that they're ready to move on tomorrow.
I mean, the court could theoretically throw this out as soon as it works its way through the appeals process. But there doesn't seem to be any actual movement right now on figuring out what would replace the Affordable Care Act, to say nothing of the fact that so much of the nation's health care system has essentially grown around --
ROMANS: Yes.
WOLF: -- the Affordable Care Act.
ROMANS: Nine years, now. WOLF: States have passed laws -- yes, it's been a law for nine years. States have changed their laws to address Medicaid -- to get more of their people covered that way.
BRIGGS: Yes.
WOLF: It's not like you can just rip it out and just go back nine years. It just doesn't work that way.
BRIGGS: Well, even Democrats aren't saying it's perfect. But instead of fixing the wiring in this old house, the president repeatedly seems focused on just burning it down.
You have to wonder what congressional Republicans were thinking when they read this or saw it on their phone or heard it from a staffer.
Here's Susan Collins' reaction.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), MAINE: It's something I vehemently disagree with and I hope that the courts do not go along with what the Justice Department has requested.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Said Lindsey Graham after a lunch, "If there's a message to be learned from 2018 on policy, it's health care." But did he misread the entire lesson of the 2018 midterms regarding health care?
WOLF: Well, he certainly seems to be internalizing it in a different way than pretty much everybody in his party and everybody -- objective bystanders are seeing it. To essentially turn against that law sort of goes against everything that you would have thought that you could have taken away from that election.
But he says that they're going to become the party of health care, he just doesn't seem to have a plan for how they're going to do it. And that's a frightening thing, I think, to anybody who actually has health insurance --
ROMANS: Right.
WOLF: -- because this affects everybody who has health insurance in a lot of ways, not just people who are on the Obamacare exchanges, not just people who have Medicaid. If you have insurance it was affected by the Affordable Care Act.
ROMANS: It also brings things kind of right back into the middle that people can understand. Like the Green New Deal seems sort of aspirational or silly, depending on what side you're on. But this is something that brings, I think, the message back from the very far left of the party and back into something that the Democrats can really push against this White House on.
WOLF: Absolutely, and their focus -- they had been having this sort of internal debate or argument, and they will continue to do that, over whether to go further left --
ROMANS: Right.
WOLF: -- to essentially socialize U.S. medicine. And let's not kid ourselves that is essentially replacing Obamacare with something far different as well. So that is -- that is -- on the left, there's a great desire to change --
ROMANS: Right.
WOLF: -- health care in a kind of a radical way.
But it will be interesting to see if this sort of refocuses the party back on protection --
BRIGGS: Yes.
WOLF: -- as opposed to change.
BRIGGS: Christine mentioned the Green New Deal and that was brought up to a vote in the Senate yesterday. And, some Kinkos in D.C. was the beneficiary because Mike Lee, a senator from Utah, brought with him some --
ROMANS: Props.
BRIGGS: -- insane visual aids -- some props that included Ronald Reagan riding a velociraptor, shooting a machine gun, Aquaman, a tauntaun with Luke Skywalker in "Empire Strikes Back," and some --
ROMANS: Some babies.
BRIGGS: -- beautiful babies.
What point was he trying to make, and did this vote end up a rebuke of AOC's plan?
WOLF: I think he was -- he was trying to make the point that the Green New Deal is totally aspirational -- it's not a realistic thing. Maybe he made that point.
I'm not sure his point about the way to combat climate change is to have babies. That's kind of a ridiculous thing to say since babies are going to create more consumption and that's -- you know, but whatever. It was a ridiculous thing for him to say and presumably, he made his point.
But just like Democrats will be using health care against Republicans, Republicans will try to use this Green New Deal --
ROMANS: Yes.
WOLF: -- against Democrats the same way.
Although everybody -- this is an existential threat, so if you're going to make fun of it the way Mike Lee did, you're basically rejecting the idea that we could all die because of climate change at some point, which is I think the point that Democrats are trying to make.
BRIGGS: All right. Zach Wolf has a piece out on this health care surprise from the president at 7:00 a.m. on cnn.com. Thank you, sir.
ROMANS: Thanks, Zach.
All right, 39 minutes past the hour.
More questions this morning over why Chicago prosecutors dropped the charges against Jussie Smollett. A grand jury indicted the "EMPIRE" actor, accusing him of staging a hoax hate crime against himself and then filing a false police report about it.
[05:40:07] BRIGGS: The city's police union calling for an investigation of the involvement of Cook County's state's attorney Kim Foxx in this case and this may be why. Text messages obtained by CNN through an open records request show Smollett family friend Tina Tchen reached out to Foxx on February first. Foxx later recused herself.
ROMANS: The head of the police union says if Smollett wanted to clear himself he should have had his day in court.
The deputy prosecutor who took over the case straddling the line.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSEPH MAGATS, FIRST ASSISTANT COOK COUNTY STATE'S ATTORNEY: The only reason that it's getting the scrutiny that it is is because of who got the disposition. There are plenty of other cases, like I said -- over 5,700 -- that have gotten some type of alternative or deferred type of prosecution.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think Mr. Smollett did what he was charged with doing?
MAGATS: Yes. We stand behind the CPD's investigation in this case -- the great work -- the tremendous work that they did in investigating this case.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you consider him innocent?
MAGATS: No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: No.
New overnight, the lawyer for the Osundairo brothers says they were fully prepared to testify. Smollett was accused of paying the Osundairos to stage the attack and they were captured on surveillance video buying the materials used.
City officials are fuming this morning.
Ryan Young has the latest.
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RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In a shocking reversal, Chicago prosecutors, on Tuesday, dropped all charges against actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused last month of staging a hate crime against himself and filing a false police report about it. His attorney insisted he was, indeed, attacked and that the misinformation led to a rush to judgment against him.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel blasted the prosecutor's decision. Just watch and listen to how angry he was.
EMANUEL: This is a whitewash of justice. A grand jury could not have been clearer. This is without a doubt a whitewash of justice and sends a clear message that if you're in a position of influence and power you'll get treated one way; other people will be treated another way.
There is no accountability than in the system. It is wrong, full stop.
JOHNSON: Do I think justice was served? No. Where do I think justice is? I think this city is still owed an apology.
It's Mr. Smollett who committed this hoax, period. If he wanted to clear his name, the way to do that was in a court of law so that everyone could see the evidence.
YOUNG: The Cook County State's Attorney's Office didn't immediately explain why the 16 counts of felony disorderly conduct were dropped, except to say the decision came after reviewing the case facts and in the view of Smollett's willingness to forfeit his $10,000 bond.
After a brief appearance in a courtroom, Smollett told reporters he was grateful to those who stood by him.
JUSSIE SMOLLETT, ACTOR: I've been truthful and consistent on every single level since day one. I would not be my mother's son if I was capable of one drop of what I have been accused of.
YOUNG: And, Christine and Dave, we may never know what was in that court file because it was sealed by the judge. Just a lot of questions still remain in this case.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRIGGS: Boy, they sure are.
ROMANS: I'll say, wow.
BRIGGS: That is stunning.
ROMANS: It really is. Ryan, thank you for that.
All right. On spring break and on defense. Find out how a group turned the tables after coming under attack.
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[05:47:38] BRIGGS: Five forty-seven Eastern time.
And a Boeing 737 MAX 8 forced to make an emergency landing in Florida. There were no passengers on the Southwest flight. The plane was being ferried from Orlando to California for short-term storage.
The global fleet of 737 MAX jets was grounded indefinitely two weeks ago following crashes in October and earlier this month killing 346 people.
ROMANS: Transportation officials will be on Capitol Hill today. The acting FAA administrator is expected to tell senators the agency's oversight approach needs to evolve. He also plans to defend the FAA's initial decision not to ground the 737 MAX fleet, even after regulators worldwide did so.
BRIGGS: As he considers a 2020 run for president, former Vice President Joe Biden addressing one of the most politically challenging parts of his legacy, Anita Hill. He says Hill, quote, "paid a terrible price" when she testified in 1991 that she'd been sexually harassed by now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
At the time, chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. Biden now says Anita Hill deserved the committee's respect but never got it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSEPH BIDEN (D), FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When Anita Hill came to testify, she faced a committee that didn't fully understand what the hell it was all about. And to this day, I regret I couldn't come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Biden has twice publicly apologized to Anita Hill. The Biden team is not saying if they've spoken in person.
ROMANS: Rumors in Congress about helping struggling Midwest farmers. Last year, 498 U.S. farms filed for chapter 12. It allows distressed farmers and fishermen to restructure their debt and remain open.
Data from the Congressional Research Service shows bankruptcies in the Upper Midwest are up 19 percent since 2017 and they appear even higher among dairy farms.
Now, the increase in chapter 12 filings reflects a few things. You've got low prices for corn, soybeans, milk, and beef. The situation for many farmers has worsened since June because of those retaliatory tariffs slapped on by China.
Now, some senators are weighing in on reforming chapter 12 to increase the bankruptcy debt limit. Senator Chuck Grassley, last week, promised to push ahead with reforms to chapter 12 for family farmers, and there are others who are concerned about this as well.
[05:50:00] Now, a bad situation for farmers made worse due to recent floods. They have devastated the Midwest.
On that front, news from two beer giants who are stepping in here to help. More than 200,000 cans of drinking water from MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch have been donated to communities in Nebraska and Iowa. Drinking water plants in communities have been contaminated, creating a need for clean water.
We'll be right back.
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BRIGGS: Five fifty-four Eastern time.
And "The Washington Post" editorial board is coming down hard on the president's handling of the crisis in Puerto Rico. Their headline -- "The Trump administration has turned bigotry into policy."
In a closed-door meeting Tuesday with Senate Republicans, President Trump, once again, criticized Puerto Rico's fiscal management and its disaster relief in the wake of devastating storms.
ROMANS: Senators in the room say he even broke out a chart to compare what Puerto Rico received in disaster aid with states like Florida and Texas.
[05:55:00] To date, the federal government has allocated $40 billion for Puerto Rico. In comparison, Texas received $25 billion for Hurricane Harvey, and Florida received $7 billion for Hurricane Irma.
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello calling Mr. Trump's remarks "below the dignity of a sitting President of the United States." He says the comments "continue to lack empathy, are irresponsible, regrettable, and above all, unjustified."
BRIGGS: The drugmaker Purdue Pharma has agreed to pay $270 million to settle an opioid lawsuit brought by the State of Oklahoma. The suit alleged Purdue helped create the nation's opioid crisis and claimed aggressive marketing of OxyContin led to thousands of deaths in the state, and that Purdue's deceptive claims downplayed the dangers of addiction.
Nearly $200 million of that settlement will help establish an addiction treatment center at Oklahoma State University. Oklahoma, one of 36 states to file lawsuits against Purdue and other opioid drugmakers.
ROMANS: A decades-old North Carolina law banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy is ruled unconstitutional. The 1973 statute made some allowances for medical concerns. A 2015 amendment narrowed those exemptions and that prompted abortion rights groups to file suit.
The federal judge siding with those groups, saying courts across the country have struck down weak or event-specific abortion bans and North Carolina's is no different.
The ruling will take effect in 60 days pending further legal action.
BRIGGS: Unvaccinated kids are banned from certain public spaces in New York's Rockland County. A severe measles outbreak triggering a state of emergency.
Officials say the ban will remain in place for 30 days or until unvaccinated kids get the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. But worth noting, outdoor spaces, such as playgrounds, are not part of the ban.
Rockland County, about 40 miles from Manhattan, has seen more than 150 confirmed measles cases. Health officials say more than 82 percent of patients had not received the MMR vaccine. Most of them are kids.
ROMANS: Two would-be robbers got an unpleasant shock early Sunday. Their intended victims, four young men in South Florida for spring break. Their victims fought back.
The men, all relatives from Indiana, were pumping gas when a man walked up pointing a silver handgun. The victims grabbed the robber and tackled him to the ground. Aric Wisbey -- that's the guy in the pink shirt -- he manages to wrestle the gun away from the suspect.
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ARIC WISBEY, WRESTED GUN FROM WOULD-BE ROBBER: And once I raised the gun, they both took off back to their car and then we were just screaming. I mean, the only thing running through your mind is protect your family. He was asking me to calm down and to give him the gun back and just to chill out like we weren't just held at gunpoint or anything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: The men drove off but the victims took down the plate number. The driver is now in custody. The alleged gunman, police say, is still at large.
BRIGGS: Too little, too late for the New Orleans Saints, but NFL owners did approve a rule change stemming from their heartbreaking defeat in the NFC Championship.
Coaches will now be able to challenge pass interference calls, as well as non-calls, outside of the last two minutes of each half. Inside two minutes, the booth automatically reviews those calls.
The Saints, you will recall, lost the title game and chance to play in the Super Bowl in large part because of that critical missed pass interference call.
ROMANS: A real heartbreaker there.
All right. Former first lady Michelle Obama's best-selling memoir is breaking records. "Becoming" has sold nearly 10 million copies and is one of the most popular books of the decade.
The publisher recently told "The Wall Street Journal" we believe this could be the most successful memoir in history.
According to Amazon, "Becoming" had the longest streak at number one for any book since "Fifty Shades of Grey" came out in 2012.
BRIGGS: Trailing in terms of the printed copy of the 10th anniversary version of "Eat Pray Love."
ROMANS: Interesting.
BRIGGS: Hard to compare them to those old books because of audio --
ROMANS: Right.
BRIGGS: -- and digital downloads.
ROMANS: Right.
All right, thanks for joining us. I'm Christine Romans.
BRIGGS: I'm Dave Briggs. Remember, three-quarters of a billion bucks up for grabs in the Powerball jackpot. Don't forget your friends.
Here's "NEW DAY.
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TRUMP: The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: The Trump position ties a 2-year anchor around the neck of every Republican for the next two years.
COLLINS: This is something I vehemently disagree with.
EMANUEL: This is, without a doubt, a whitewash of justice. It is wrong, full stop.
SMOLLETT: I've been truthful and consistent on every single level since day one.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was no political influence in this case. Nobody has found him guilty.
JOHNSON: Do I think justice was served? No. This city is owed an apology.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Wednesday, March 27th. It is 6:00 here in Washington where I am on assignment, and John is in New York. Nice to see you, John.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Imagine not being in the same place.
CAMEROTA: It's very hard for me.
BERMAN: Yes, it's tough.
CAMEROTA: It's very difficult for me but we're going to make it work.
BERMAN: All right.
CAMEROTA: And we have a lot of news because up first, CNN has learned that the Trump administration's push to strike down the Affordable Care Act has sparked a heated debate among the president's team.
END
