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Trade Negotiations between China and U.S. Set to Resume; President Trump Increases Tariffs on Chinese Imports; Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris Talks About Family Life in Profile; Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) is Interviewed About Democrats' Dilemma Over Impeaching Trump. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired May 10, 2019 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:00] ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ed, Lavandera, CNN, Houston, Texas.

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ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: My gosh, that is a beautiful, beautiful story.

OK, NEW DAY continues right now.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The U.S. tariffs have kicked in. China will now have no choice but to retaliate.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm representing the USA, and we're not going to be taken advantage of anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody is going to get off lightly. At the end of the day the consumer in the U.S. is going to feel most of the brunt of it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You think the evidence is there to prosecute?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure looks like it's there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the president's supporters it doesn't make any difference. Comey has been tarnished and discredited.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to take his word and his way here seriously. He's not out of line.

TRUMP: My son was totally exonerated by Mueller.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If Donald Trump Jr. defies this subpoena, he ought to be jailed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If I were his lawyer, I would be reluctant to put him back in this circus.

(END VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

CAMEROTA: Serious.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I am ready for this hour. I am so ready.

CAMEROTA: I can see. This is hot off the presses.

BERMAN: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Friday, May 10th. It's 8:00 here in the east. Crucial negotiations between the United States and China set to resume in just one hour after a new stage in the trade war began overnight. The president more than doubled tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. That's a big deal. Chinese officials are vowing to retaliate. The president insists there's no rush to make a deal, but it is, I should say, American consumers who will be left picking up the tab here.

CAMEROTA: Meanwhile, the president's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is planning a trip to Ukraine to persuade the incoming government there to pursue an investigation into Joe Biden. You heard me right. Giuliani insists that this is not meddling in an election, it's just an investigation. Does any of this sound familiar?

Joining us now to talk about this and so much more, Kaitlan Collins, CNN White House correspondent, S.E. Cupp, host of CNN's "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered," and Bianna Golodryga, CNN contributor. Great to have all of us.

Kaitlan, let's start with you. So they wanted Russia's help in the last election, and now Rudy Giuliani admits wanting Ukraine's help for this election to investigate one of the president's top political opponents in Joe Biden. And is there anyone who thinks that this is a little strange?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's a pretty stunning statement coming from the president's personal attorney, saying that he willingly is going to do this and even saying it on the record. And it's causing a lot of confusion inside the White House, which typically is the result of what Rudy Giuliani says in public. People in the White House will readily admit when he makes public statements like this it makes their life harder. They think they've been handling the outcome of the Mueller investigation just fine, and they do not like when Rudy Giuliani comes out in the "New York Times" especially, and makes a pretty startling statement like he did here.

BERMAN: I think there's a zero percent chance that Rudy Giuliani is freelancing from what the president wants here. In fact, he is quoted in the article, which is on the record, people only need to go read it in the "New York Times" where Rudy says he's acting on behalf of the president. Let me read one of the quotes here that's so interesting, "We're not meddling in an election," Giuliani claims, "we're meddling in an investigation which we have a right to do. There's nothing illegal about it. Somebody could say it's improper. And this isn't foreign policy -- I'm asking them to do an investigation that they're already doing and that other people are telling them to stop. And I'm going to give them reasons why they shouldn't stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government."

S.E., this has to do with a "New York Times" story with a couple weeks ago which gets to questions about Mr. Joe Biden when vice president intervened in a Ukrainian investigation into Hunter Biden. "The Times" didn't find any evidence that Joe Biden intervened, subsequent investigations haven't found any evidence that he intervened, but there are questions out there. But to have Giuliani admitting, bragging, about going to Ukraine to get a foreign government directly involved against a political opponent shamelessly, not just shamelessly, he is bragging about it, it's a moment.

S.E. CUPP, CNN HOST, S.E. CUPP UNFILTERED: Openly. Yes. Two things. One, I think we can effectively call the death of the Logan Act. You can't bring it up anymore, because thanks to the Mueller investigation really, which found people like Mike Flynn and some others, maybe even the president, already did this sort of stuff, you can't really even bring the Logan Act into question anymore.

Two, I think it's very clear who the president considers his biggest election threat. I don't think that if Joe Biden were not running for president, I don't think that this would be being investigated. And publicly, Rudy Giuliani sort of publicly taunting Joe Biden in this manner.

[08:05:00] I think the president firmly believes that Joe Biden is a big threat to his second term and is pulling out all of the stops and sort of calling Hail Marys wherever he can.

OK. Bianna, let's move on to other international news, and that of course are these talks that are going on this morning with China. It sounds as though the White House believes that China reneged on a trade policy, something that they thought was settled, the U.S. thought was settled, China sort of backtracked on. So obviously that frustrated the president and the White House, and so last night at midnight President Trump imposed much stiffer tariffs, up to 25 percent on these Chinese goods coming in. And so now -- but there is sort of a grace period before it kicks in and would affect consumers. So talks are ongoing, and I just find it very hard to know how concerned to be, because the president often makes grand proclamations like this, and then within a few hours backtracks or changes his mind, and so we just don't really know what the way forward looks like.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Right. It is very confusing except keep this in mind -- the president loves tariffs. He thinks tariffs are a good thing despite what all of his top economic advisers, at least most of them, have been telling him repeatedly. He thinks tariffs benefit the United States. He thinks that past deals have hurt the United States, and he thinks the United States has the upper hand.

We've been watching these negotiations play out for over a year and a half now, so the markets may have already anticipated that we'll see ebbs and flows and that's why you don't see the huge selloffs that you would anticipate in a typical trade negotiation. The big word out of China is confusion. They don't know where this president stands. The United States has the upper hand in the sense of how much we can penalize China. However, these are the two largest economies in the world. China would be hurt in a greater effect from this, but there's no doubt that the U.S. would be impacted as well.

The president is not calling this what it is, and it's a tax on the importers, and it's a tax on American consumers. When they will start to feel it -- they are already feeling it -- when that will start to impact his numbers in the polls has yet to be seen, but the president is riding on the fact that he sees a good economy and he sees the U.S. having the upper hand here. How long that lasts, no one knows.

BERMAN: Make no mistake, this does hurt China, it does hurt the Chinese economy. But Republican Congressman Will Hurd who was with us last hour called this a sales tax on the American consumer. Kaitlan, from your post in the White House you have got some brand-new reporting on where this all stands this morning, these negotiations.

COLLINS: Yes, so they are in day two of these talks, but they do not think that even though they weren't tense yesterday, that they are going to reach an agreement today based on what our sources are telling us. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that U.S. officials are pinning the blame for the breakdown in talks on the Chinese President Xi Jinping. They're saying essentially that he is the reason that things have changed, that the Chinese wanted to go back on things they thought they had already agreed to.

And China's chief trade negotiator is here in Washington meeting with the Treasury Secretary and Robert Lighthizer. But he is essentially telling them I can only go as far as Beijing is going to let me here. So President Trump and President Xi are going to have to work this out themselves. Here's the catch there, though, there is no call scheduled right now between the two leaders, even though the president did announce yesterday that he recently got a letter from the Chinese president.

BERMAN: A beautiful letter.

COLLINS: Right now, it does not look like an agreement is going to be reached.

GOLODRYGA: And here is where they think the negotiations stopped, that the U.S. had expected China to change written law in China. This puts President Xi in a very uncomfortable position. He by far is wielding more power than any recent Chinese premiere. And for him to have to justify to his people that he changed law for a U.S. president is something that would be very difficult for him to swallow.

At the same time, he's also seeing an economy, though still growing, continuing to slow, and that could impact a lot of businesses in China as well.

CAMEROTA: OK, let's move over to the Democratic side of 2020 and what the candidates are doing. And so, S.E., the person that -- the candidate that most voters say they want to know more about, they are most intrigued, with according to polls and according to our ratings at CNN town halls, is Kamala Harris. And Kamala Harris, I think that a lot of people would be hard pressed to know any sort of personal details. They know she was a prosecutor, they know she is from California, but they don't know a lot about her life.

So now she is lifting the veil a little bit. There is a new "Elle" magazine profile of Kamala Harris which for the first time as far as I know she talks about her family, her nuclear family of her husband and of his children. She is a stepmom. And of his ex-wife and how they are this sort of modern blended family, and what weekends and holidays and everything are like. And I think that that's interesting that women, female candidates, need to, I think, still talk about things like this for voters to feel as though they know them.

[08:10:04] CUPP: Well, look, let's be clear, you can't buy that kind of interest and curiosity. That is great news for Kamala Harris that voters want to know more about her, because you've got a lot of candidates running, many of whom we might know because we've interviewed them or we've talked about them, but that are still introducing themselves to America. That people want to know more about Kamala Harris is great news for her, and that she is willing to dish, so to speak, is also good, because I think you would find a lot of candidates who want to put a wall up maybe between their personal and their political life. You can't do that when you're running for president. So that she's sharing these details can only I think help her.

You have to round out the edges of a political candidate and humanize the face of their campaign. And for better or worse women generally have to do that a bit more. And that she's doing that I think is a good thing. I think someone like Elizabeth Warren, for example, wishes she had that kind of interest and curiosity about her personal life. Kamala is having a moment right now.

BERMAN: I do agree, I think there is a double standard, and I think women candidates feel like they have to do it more than the men candidates.

CAMEROTA: I just don't know the answer, because Pete Buttigieg has talked about his marriage now, and he has been on, I don't remember if it was "CBS Sunday Morning" or "60 Minutes," but he has been opening the veil, so to speak, talking about his husband. So I just don't know if we are in a time where people crave a lot of personal information about all the candidates or if it really is just women. And Elizabeth Warren is on the cover of "Time," am I right, this week?

BERMAN: She is.

CAMEROTA: So she's getting some --

BERMAN: But it's about her policies.

CUPP: Yes, but it's about her policies. John is right, it's strictly about her policies. Kamala, Pete, if you want to get to know a candidate, you can't buy that kind of interest. It's great for a candidate.

BERMAN: All right, S.E. Cupp, Kaitlan Collins, Bianna Golodryga, thank you very much for being with us this morning.

We do have breaking news. Four hostages, including one American, two French citizens, and a South Korean citizen have been rescued by French forces in the West African country of Burkina Faso. Two French soldiers were killed during this rescue operation which took place overnight. The hostages were kidnapped last week from neighboring Benin. We will update you as soon as we learn more about this incident.

CAMEROTA: Democratic leadership says we are in a Constitutional crisis, but they have resisted pursuing impeachment against President Trump. Why? Has something changed this week? We're going to speak with a Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, next.

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[08:16:51] CAMEROTA: President Trump has asserted executive privilege over the entire Mueller report and stonewalled every effort by Congress to conduct oversight since then. So far, Democratic leadership have resisted pursuing impeachment, but that may be exactly what the Trump administration is now daring them to do.

Joining us to give us a status report on all of this and so much more, we have Congressman Ted Deutch. He serves on the House Judiciary Committee.

Good morning, Congressman.

REP. TED DEUTCH (D-FL): Good morning, Alisyn. How are you?

CAMEROTA: Do you agree with your Chairman Jerry Nadler that we are currently in a constitutional crisis?

DEUTCH: I do. We're clearly in a constitutional crisis, one that the Trump administration and President Trump and his attorney general in particular have created. Just look at where we are, Alisyn. The president yesterday I think reminded us when he said that in his mind there was essentially no obstruction of justice, that we have an obligation to figure out what that means. We have to conduct our investigations.

And it's one thing for him to block -- to obstruct justice, but then to obstruct Congress and prevent us from doing our job and to invoke executive privilege over everything and to take action to prevent any of his officials from testifying, that fails to recognize the separation of powers. That's the constitutional crisis and Donald Trump is possible.

CAMEROTA: Well, Rudy Giuliani says that you all are basically in -- already in an impeachment mode. Here is what he said in an interview.

If it's an impeachment proceeding, then somebody should call it that. If you don't call their bluff now they will just keep slithering around for four, five, six months. It's a valid strategy to test. What are you doing?

Do you owe them an explanation for what you're doing with all of these investigations?

DEUTCH: It's very clear what we're doing with these investigations, Alisyn. We know that the Russians interfered in the last election, that the Mueller report investigated it and that the attorney general mischaracterized what was in it. We know that there were at least ten instances of possible obstruction of justice that we need to investigate that the administration will simply not allow us to move forward on.

We know that the attorney general won't share the full report with Congress, he won't allow the American people to see it, he won't come before our committee is the challenge.

CAMEROTA: So, why not call it impeachment -- an impeachment investigation (ph)?

DEUTCH: Well, because this isn't impeachment. The reason that they keep talking about this is because they want to distract from the fact that they're trying to separate the White House from Congress, from the American people. They're trying to hold themselves up above the American people and Congress' ability to act to get the facts.

That's why they want to keep doing this. Look, Rudy Giuliani understands better than anyone that if they keep violating the Constitution by failing to cooperate with Congress, by blocking our ability to do our job, by taking actions that are absolutely unconstitutional and that are shocking, then I suppose that leaves us no other option.

But the goal here is for Congress to simply do our job and the White House is working as hard as they possibly can to prevent that from happening.

[08:20:05] CAMEROTA: Congressman, what's the status of Robert Mueller's appearance before Congress or your committee specifically?

DEUTCH: Well, we hope that -- we hope that Robert Mueller will come to testify. There have been discussions. And again, I hope that that will come.

It also raises the question here, too, Alisyn, what's the administration going to do there? Are they going to attempt to block his appearance before our committee just like they have attempted to block everyone else, Don McGahn and the attorney general from coming? These are the kinds of issues that people look at and they are so disgusted by the attitude of this administration that says that they just don't have to do things the way that the Constitution requires.

CAMEROTA: Well, it sounded like your chairman, Jerry Nadler, was losing confident that Robert Mueller would be able to come and testify. So where are you today? Are you confident that we will see him at some point this month?

DEUTCH: Well, I remain hopeful that we will see him this month, but, again, I don't -- I don't know -- the evidence thus far from this White House and the great lengths that they are going to to prevent anyone that can help us understand what happened, why the president couldn't recall anything in his responses to questions why he refused to testify, why he took all these actions that led the special counsel to conclude that there were at least ten instances of obstruction of justice, the fact they are working so hard to prevent that I think should give us all concern that they are going to prevent Mueller -- try to prevent Mueller from coming in as well.

We are going to do everything we can, we are going to keep going back to the court to get the court to recognize we have this right and ultimately if they defy Congress, one co-equal branch, and they defy the courts --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

DEUTCH: -- a second co-equal branch, then there's clearly a crisis that we have to respond to.

CAMEROTA: Congressman, I want to talk to you about school shootings --

DEUTCH: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- and the state of gun violence. You and I were together in Parkland, in the day after that tragedy there. And since Parkland, since the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas, there have been 18 other school shootings. And at this point, it feels in some ways as if the country has given up on solving or stopping this, and now, we are just relying on heroic students to charge the gunman and lose their own life in the process.

I know that you are trying, you've been trying since before and after Parkland and, in fact, you have this bipartisan bill and I'm wondering if you hold any hope that this will actually become a law.

DEUTCH: I do have hope and I saw your interview, Alisyn, with Riley Howell's girlfriend and her brother and it's so moving. And what was so powerful about it is we shouldn't have to rely on heroes like Riley Howell and Kendrick Castillo to save lives in our schools.

Congress has a job to play to help save lives in our schools. This run, hide, fight generation that's been created requires Congress -- expects Congress to take action.

Look, we have bipartisan legislation that would provide greater opportunities, red flag laws, to take guns away from dangerous people. We have bipartisan legislation that will give faculty and teachers and law enforcement the ability to work more closely together to stop these. We have worked with the Parkland parents to increase the amount of funding for school hardening. All of those things need to happen and we are working on it.

But at the same time that we're doing the bipartisan things, Mitch McConnell sits in the Senate and refuses to even bring up the background check bill that can help save lives. There is a responsibility on the part of leader McConnell and on the part of the Senate to respond to the needs of the people of this country who are sick and tired of being afraid to send their kids to school.

CAMEROTA: Congressman Ted Deutch, thank you very much for being on NEW DAY, thank you for always focusing us on the struggle with gun violence in this country. We'll talk again soon.

DEUTCH: Thanks for focusing on it. Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: John?

BERMAN: All right. Fired FBI Director James Comey has been the target of President Trump's ire for years. Now he is hitting back. Hear what Comey said overnight about the Mueller report and Attorney General William Barr. That's next.

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[08:28:19] BERMAN: So, overnight, fired FBI Director James Comey, he wasn't mincing words about the Mueller report, telling CNN's Anderson Cooper that President Trump would be facing obstruction charges if he was not the president. Comey also took aim at the attorney general.

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JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: I think he acted in a way that's less than honorable in the way he described it in writing and described it during a press conference and continues to talk as if he is the president's lawyer. That is not the attorney general's job.

It doesn't make me happy to say this, but I think he has lost most of his reputation with the way he has conducted himself.

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BERMAN: Joining us now, Phil Mudd, former FBI senior intelligence advisor, and Shan Wu, former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst.

Phil, just in general, James Comey, what's his role now? Explain what you define as his position to criticize Barr and the president and Rod Rosenstein.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: I think he is in a tenuous position. Look, as a private citizen he's got a right to speak, but you got to remember, it's not that long ago when we went through the Hillary Clinton investigation, he's criticizing Barr and Rosenstein, everybody, myself included or many people would say he radically mishandled the Clinton investigation. It's not me saying this alone, it's the inspector general over there, you may remember this, who issued a searing report on Comey's handling of that.

So, I think he's got a right to speak, I think he's got a point to make, but for him to gain traction as a spokesman for the opposition, the inside opposition to a president, this James Comey, a Republican, without people around him, whether Tillerson comes out to speak, Mattis comes out to speak, without people around him, I think he's going to be hearing echoes of others saying when you speak, Mr. Comey, what happened when you were in the hot seat? It didn't go very well. I respect his right to speak, but he's going to have a hard time

getting traction.

CAMEROTA: So, he is a polarizing figure as Phil points out and so everybody, you know, sees him through whatever lens they want to see.

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