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Trump Taxes Show Losses; Wray Refutes Barr on use of Spying; Midweek Grades with Chris Cillizza; Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired May 08, 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 BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: After this. In the 2000s, once he started doing "The Apprentice," once he started doing the licensing, his business changed after the taxes that we're seeing this morning.

MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It really did. And the irony of this is that he became more successful and more stable financially once he abandoned the idea that he was a great builder and actually embraced being a promoter. Now, there is a grand tradition of salesmanship and he is a magnificent salesman on television and in a big hall he can move a crowd with his stories that turn out to not be true. But they're often a good story about how he vanquished some enemy and prevailed.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. Well --

D'ANTONIO: So this is, you know, the evolution of this man that we see.

CAMEROTA: It's fascinating.

And one of the interesting things is to see what he was telling himself and what he was thinking while he was losing a billion dollars in all of these businesses. Here is the window into that. This is from his memoir, "The Art of the Deal," in 1987, in the middle of all of these huge losses.

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a littler hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration and a very effective form of promotion.

Just a fascinating window into the psychology, David, that I think we all continue to see.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Well, Donald is -- understands very clearly, if you're going to tell a story, don't -- don't tell some little point. Come up with a really huge whopper because people will be fascinated by it, even if it's false. You know, claim you're so rich you paid cash for the Mar-a-Lago property down in Florida that he likes to call the southern White House, even though, in fact, every dollar and more was borrowed from the bank and you persuaded the bank not to record the mortgage.

BERMAN: David, can I ask very quickly, do these taxes tell us anything about what we might see if Congress does get its hands on the last six years of his tax returns?

JOHNSTON: Well, they raise very serious questions about whether there's fraud in here. There's a $53 million interest income one year when he didn't own any bonds or stocks that would justify that kind of money. And I wonder if it's a cover-up for some other source, whether it's benign or sinister.

BERMAN: All right, David Cay Johnston, Michael D'Antonio, thank you all very much this morning.

The FBI director with a dramatic split from the attorney general over whether agents spied on the Trump campaign. So, could it cost him his job? Overnight, one of the president's closest allies and chief strategists suggests that Christopher Wray could be in trouble. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:37:10] BERMAN: New this morning, should FBI Director Christopher Wray be concerned about job security. Director Wray contradicted the attorney general's use of the word spying to describe the investigation of the Trump 2016 campaign.

Here is what they told the same committee just weeks apart.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal.

I think there -- spying did occur, yes. I think spying did occur

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: Well, that's not the term I would use.

Lots of people have different colloquial phrases. I believe that the FBI is engaged in investigative activity, and part of investigative activity includes surveillance activity.

BERMAN: Joining me now is former FBI senior intelligence adviser and CNN counterterror analyst Phil Mudd.

Phil, are you on team Barr or team Wray?

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Team Wray. And, furthermore, there are no teams here, John. Wray had no option. He had to say that.

When I transitioned across the Potomac River from the CIA to the FBI, I didn't realize how the FBI viewed the CIA. FBI agents would look across the river and say, those guys, the CIA guys, don't have many rules. They don't always have to apply laws overseas. In fact, they ask people to be traitors, to violate their laws so that -- the laws of their own countries to give the U.S. government information. You cross the river to the FBI and people there will say spying is sort of a lawless land. We have regulations, a phone book-sized group of regulations about how we handle informants and how we do wiretaps. We have to go to judges and lawyers and the Department of Justice to conduct investigations.

You can say Wray might be in trouble with Barr and the administration, but I'm telling you, if you're in Wray's shoes, he didn't -- there's no -- he didn't have an option. He had to say that.

BERMAN: I've heard you say the FBI considers it investigating, not spying.

MUDD: Yes.

BERMAN: You say he had no option. He had to say it. Why? I mean why do you think he had to say it? Doesn't it -- doesn't it necessarily give you pause to say something that directly contradicts your boss? And Barr is his boss.

MUDD: No. That's like going to the Department of Defense and say, you guys murder a bunch of people. Actually, we conduct acts of war under the laws of war and under the laws that we -- and regulations we apply in this country and that we apply at the Department of Defense.

Some of this is something that's hard for me to explain to you, John, that's the philosophy, the psychology of how the FBI thinks. Somebody enters the FBI, they have a blue suit, a blue tie, black shoes, black socks and they walk in and say, we're here to respect the Constitution, to protect the American people. And when someone walks through the door with credible information that says an individual is violating the law, we've got to follow rules and procedures to insure we abide by the law to investigate. And then you walk in and say, no, you spy.

Let me close with this. If you walked in the office with your bagel this morning, John, and somebody said, there's some investigations going on in New York City, I presume you'd say, yawn, give me another bagel. If you walk in and somebody said, the FBI in New York is spying on a hundred U.S. citizens in New York, I think you'd sit up and say, maybe we got news. Barr is dead wrong. And, by the way, he knows it.

[06:40:08] BERMAN: And is it important, do you think, to the rank and file in the FBI to have their director say what he said publically yesterday? How do you think they view it today?

MUDD: It's not important. It's critical. If you have the FBI director say -- using the same language -- and, remember, Barr served at both the FBI --

BERMAN: Sure.

MUDD: At both the Department of Justice and the CIA. He knows. If you have the FBI director using the same language that the CIA uses to suggest the FBI doesn't follow the rule of law, I can tell you, the FBI Agents Association, I'm guessing, and they're pretty powerful, is going to say, you can't do that, director. BERMAN: Right.

MUDD: Please don't put us in the same basket.

BERMAN: So -- so he -- he, no doubt, pleased them with that statement last night.

MUDD: Yes.

BERMAN: So, senior presidential adviser Lou Dobbs, who, again, has the ear of the president, sees it vastly differently. Let me play you what adviser Dobbs said overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOU DOBBS, TELEVISION HOST: The FBI director is a twit. He is precious. He seems to be filled with an immense sense of self and highly flattering sense of self. And to actually contradict his boss, the attorney general, and the president of the United States, is arrogance that I don't think should be tolerated for even a minute.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Anything you want to say to Mr. Dobbs this morning, Phil?

MUDD: Mr. Dobbs, have you ever served at the FBI? And how about you walk into middle America and tell middle America that the FBI is spying on the American citizens. When the American people think about spying, they think about James Bond stealing stuff. The FBI doesn't steal, they don't break the law and they don't ask people to be traitors, all right? They go in, they look at what the U.S. Constitution says, they process investigations through the Department of Justice and they do what the CIA doesn't. I'm -- I would defend the CIA. I was a spy. It's not the same thing. Dobbs didn't serve there. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

BERMAN: What about the use of the word twit?

MUDD: A twit? The FBI director? If you talk to the FBI officers behind the scenes, you have somebody who served in the U.S. government for years loyally who's been quiet in the face of attacks by the president of the United States and who continues to serve both behind the scenes despite the fact that he gets picked on by people in the media and the White House. And he does his job. I think he's been great.

BERMAN: Phil Mudd, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

MUDD: Thank you.

BERMAN: Appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: All right, John, Senator Cory Booker gave a big presentation this week. Did it make the grade? Our campaign professor Chris Cillizza's gives his "Midweek Grades," next.

BERMAN: Oh, time for "Midweek Grades"? CAMEROTA: It is.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:46:11] CAMEROTA: OK, it's Wednesday, time to check the 2020 candidate's grades. So let's get "The Midweek Grades" with Chris Cillizza, our resident professor and CNN politics reporter and editor- at-large.

Professor.

CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS REPORTER AND EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Hello.

CAMEROTA: Hello. Great to see you.

You were up burning the midnight oil last night, which we'll get to in a second. You were grading some of these papers at, like, 3:00 in the morning, OK.

CILLIZZA: Don't -- yes, it was not good.

CAMEROTA: All right, let's get to -- let's start at the beginning.

The person who you give an A this week is --

CILLIZZA: Joe Biden. And the reason for it is, the vice president -- former vice president really can't have asked for this first couple weeks of his candidacy go better. Polling suggests he's got a nice, big lead now over the rest of the field. It now looks as though his -- the run-up to his campaign, which took a long time in which I and other people were critical of, is actually going to work out OK. He is where he wants to be, in a tier by himself with the 19 other, 20 other candidates chasing him.

So kudos to Biden. He's where he wants to be right now. And, interestingly, two weeks on the campaign trail without a major gaffe. Don't underestimate that because he is someone known for doing it.

BERMAN: So I now know what Alisyn was talking about. You were up all night because I think you gave the first ever downgrade in the midweek grades.

CILLIZZA: Yes.

BERMAN: When I went to sleep last night --

CILLIZZA: Oh, yes.

BERMAN: Donald Trump, the president of the United States, was getting an A. But now I find it's all different. Explain.

CILLIZZA: Well, OK. So I woke up. This is not a joke. We can check with your producers. I woke up at about 2:45 in a cold sweat because I realized that Monday -- Sunday, Monday Donald Trump was quite good, at 46 percent in Gallup polling, the highest job approval rating he's had in his entire presidency, economy numbers looking really good, 21 Democrats beating each other up to run against him.

But then, the good old "New York Times" publishes a really deep dive into Donald Trump's taxes, which says, hey, FYI, folks, the emperor has no clothes. This great businessman wasn't a great businessman at all. So that, to me, plus a 500-point drop in the stock market, I realize -- and you can't do that. So, look, sometimes -- John, sometimes you have to reconsider. I -- I work hard on these things. I'm not messing around, man

CAMEROTA: Oh, we can tell. This is what keeps Chris Cillizza up at night. This is an interesting insight.

CILLIZZA: Yes, it did. It literally woke me up. It woke me up in the middle of the night.

CAMEROTA: Wow. Wow.

BERMAN: And the sweat that our producers somehow know about, which we'll get to in a different --

CAMEROTA: Right.

All right, what are you giving Cory Booker this week?

CILLIZZA: OK, so Cory Booker, also a B minus -- and, honestly, that's not a terrible grade. I got plenty of B minuses in high school and college -- because he's done something. So I think for folks who are not familiar with it, go and read the details of his gun control plan. He's put together a very comprehensive plan on how to address gun violence in this country, how to get more guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.

CAMEROTA: Yes, so why not a B, a B plus?

CILLIZZA: Because, Alisyn, he raised -- just barely crested 65,000 donors late last week. That's later than Tulsi Gabbard, later than Andrew Yang, later than people who candidly have a much less credible chance of being the nominee. I worry. I think that there are -- there's some worrying signs in his fundraising that he just is not able to match the Kamala Harris or even the Pete Buttigiegs in terms of the broadness of his fundraising base.

BERMAN: Very quickly --

CILLIZZA: Just -- that's something to keep an eye on.

BERMAN: Who's at the bottom of the class this week?

CILLIZZA: OK. This will be close to your guy's hearts up there in New York. Bill de Blasio. I gave him a D because he hasn't announced he's running for president yet, although he says he's likely to make a decision by the end of the month.

And I have one very simple question for Mayor de Blasio, why? Why would you think that your polling numbers and your record in New York City would make you a viable presidential candidate? [06:50:04] Look, he does this. He did this last time around. He wants

to be a major player and a major voice on the liberal side in the Democratic Party. I just don't see it happening.

Now, he's not running yet. He's going to make a decision. But it just seems to me there's not a lot of there there of people actually wanting him to run.

CAMEROTA: Well, we'll have the mayor on to refute what you're saying at some point soon, I'm sure, when he makes an announcement, if he does.

BERMAN: Thank you, professor. Appreciate it

CILLIZZA: You're very welcome.

BERMAN: Is America's first reality TV president now considered among the biggest losers? Get it? More on what "The New York Times" uncovered in Donald Trump's tax documents. That's next.

CAMEROTA: Is that a new reality show?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: "The New York Times" reports the president lost a ton of money and the late night comics, they had a lot of fun with it. Here are your "Late Night Laughs."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES CORDEN, HOST, "THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH JAMES CORDEN": The report is astonishing. Year after year, Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other taxpayer in America. So I guess we finally found something that Trump really is the best at.

[06:55:05] REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Trump is goading us to impeach him. That's what he's doing. Every single day he's just like taunting, taunting, taunting.

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": Hey, fancy Nancy, what, is grossy Pelosi too scared to make a speechy about impeachy? Nanny, nanny boo-boo, you won't defend the consti-too-too.

TREVOR NOAH, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW WITH TREVOR NOAH": Democrats on the verge of holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress, which means technically he could get arrested. And I know that's extremely unlikely, but, man, wouldn't that be exciting. Like, wouldn't it be exciting if this whole thing just ends in a stand-off at the White House. The Capitol Police storming the Oval Office. Trump and his people taking a final stand like scar face, you know? And then Trump just pulls out Jeff Sessions from a hidden drawer. He's like, say hello to my little friend.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That took a dark turn. BERMAN: It's selling off the shelves, the (INAUDIBLE) is selling off

the shelves.

CAMEROTA: Wow.

All right, the world is waiting to see the new royal baby. Will we learn his name today? Will we see him? Yes, we will. Much more on NEW DAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END