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New Day

Trump and Pelosi Trade Insults; FAA Reveals Delay in Software Fix; New Democratic National Poll; Raptors push Bucks to the Brink. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired May 24, 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] RACHAEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And help him in 2020. She -- she was mad. And, you know, she -- she had the first comment about the president engaging in a cover-up right before they went into these bipartisan infrastructure talks. From my understanding, a lot of people thought these talks would break down. The question was, who would take the blame? And the president came out looking like he was the one who caused this whole thing to erupt because he couldn't take Pelosi's criticism, and he said, I can't work with you Democrats on infrastructure if you're going to accuse me of a cover-up.

And, you know, we had yesterday morning, Pelosi specifically going to the mic again wanting to get under Trump's skin. And, you know, I heard that right after the press conference. And then a few hours later, the president was giving his own presser that should have been focused on his aid to farmers, his base, but he was going off on Nancy Pelosi. So she clearly did what she set out to do that morning, which is anger him, and he got off message, which doesn't help him in the long run.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Michael, you always fly at 30,000 feet here and you look at all of this and say, one of the biggest questions is, what does the president actually want here, especially when it comes to impeachment?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So I think he's pulling a dirty harry. I think this is Clint Eastwood in "Sudden Impact," and he is saying to Nancy Pelosi, go ahead, make my day, because he looks at the whole Mueller investigation as having been a net win for him. In the end, he vanquishes his opponents.

And so Rachael's reporting is great, it confirms something that I've suspected, which is, you know, he'd like this to be initiated, because he thinks he wins. He's going to work with a net provided by the Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

She, meanwhile, is mindful of what he's really up to. And so this is not a case of the two of them just not liking each other or being petulant, I think there's a lot more psychology being utilized by both sides. He wants to be impeached. She's not willing to give him that, but she needs to appease her base who would like to have that fight.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Reverse psychology! A-hah!

BERMAN: It's like reverse, reverse psychology.

CAMEROTA: It is.

BERMAN: And then when you call it a school yard fight, it's more like a nursing home fight. You're losing it. No, you're losing it!

CAMEROTA: That's --

BERMAN: There's a lot going on here.

CAMEROTA: There is a lot going on, but that's horrible!

All right, let's talk about the 2020 race on the Democratic side.

So Pete Buttigieg had some interesting comments. You know, he's begun, Rachael, talking more about his service in Afghanistan and what motivates him. And so here he was on the trail yesterday talking about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I have a pretty dim view of his decision to use his privileged status to fake a disability in order to avoid serving in Vietnam.

QUESTION: You believe he faked a disability?

BUTTIGIEG: Do you believe he has a disability? Yes. Yes. At least not that one. He -- he -- he -- well, I don't mean to -- well, I -- this is actually really important, because I don't -- I don't mean to trivialize disability, but I think that's exactly what he did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK, so, obviously, he was talking about the president's claim of bone spurs to get out of service. And he, Pete Buttigieg, went and served.

BADE: That's right. And, I mean, Buttigieg, he was on fire yesterday. He -- you know, a lot of voters he -- have said they disagree, for instance, with the NFL players kneeling. That was another big thing that came up during this conversation with "The Washington Post." And he went out on a limb there. And he said, you know, look, I fought for this country. I'm a patriot. I served in the military. And I think that these players have a right to do what they're doing to express frustration that they feel because of racial injustice.

And, again, he leaned on his military service to sort of take that position. I think a lot of people will see that and think it's courageous given that a lot of voters disagree with him. But again, then he quickly pivoted to Trump to say, look, I'm the real patriot, because Trump has obviously said these NFL players shouldn't be kneeling, that it's unpatriotic, but then he brings up the bone spurs. And, again, you know, this is Buttigieg sort of using his military experience to really hit back on the president and just sort of go out on a limb, which I think helps him distinguish himself in the 2020 field.

BERMAN: Michael.

SMERCONISH: He reminded me of many of my radio callers on the whole Colin Kaepernick issue because time and again I would hear from folks who would call and they would say, boy, I really don't like these players taking a knee at the time of the national anthem. On the other hand, men and women died for their right to express themselves in that kind of fashion. And Pete Buttigieg was saying pretty much exactly that.

CAMEROTA: OK, Michael, Rachael, thank you so much for sharing your wonderful reporting with us.

And be sure to watch "Smerconish" tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Eastern on CNN. His guest will be Admiral William McRaven.

BERMAN: I wonder if Michael's going to quote more from "Dirty Harry"?

CAMEROTA: I --

BERMAN: Do you feel lucky?

CAMEROTA: I believe he will.

[06:34:54] BERMAN: All right, a new delay could keep the Boeing 737 Max fleet grounded. What the acting FAA director told CNN, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: One of the acting FAA administrators has told CNN that there is a delay in Boeing's software fix to get the 737 Max fleet back in the air.

CNN's senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin spoke to the head of the FAA. He's live in Fort Worth, Texas, with us for more.

And, Drew, you've been pushing this ever so forward. What is the very latest?

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we don't know the exact details, but late yesterday afternoon, after a day-long meeting with global aviation partners, acting administrator Daniel Elwell did say, indeed, that the FAA basically is asking Boeing for more questions to be answered about its software fix, Boeing's software fix to the MCAS system on the 737 Max. That's the system that is connected to both the Indonesian and the Ethiopian Air crashes.

Elwell said it is part of the normal process, the going back and forth, but if you remember, John, Boeing said this software fix was ready last week. It apparently wasn't. It does call into question what Boeing has been working on and how this process is going.

[06:40:10] Additionally, it raises questions, I think, John, about the FAA's initial certification of this plane. I asked the acting administrator last night whether or not he is confident that that certification done by the FAA to put this plane in the air in the first place was done properly. Here is his answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN ELWELL, ACTING FAA ADMINISTRATOR: I have not seen anything that suggests that, but that's not to say that these investigations and audits and reviews won't come back to us, as they do, often, with suggestions and recommendations to make it better.

But I don't have enough visibility on that -- on that certification process that, like I said, took from 2012 to 2017.

GRIFFIN: But you certainly have a trust or a faith issue with the public that is now looking for the same agency that certified this plane in the first place, to come out and recertify it and tell the public the plane is safe. How confident should we be in that?

ELWELL: Well, the public gets part of the picture, just like the press gets part of the picture. We have two ongoing accident investigations. They're not complete. And we need to find out the chain of causes of these accidents. We know that there was a common thread between them. We're mitigating that common thread so that the 737 Max is safe to fly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRIFFIN: Alisyn, the problem is, those investigations will not be done before this plane goes back up in the air. That's going to be a big trust going on between the flying public, Boeing, and the FAA. And the answers are not in yet.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I think that's asking a lot of the flying public. I don't know if they want to just cross their fingers when they get on a plane.

So, Drew, thank you very much for the investigations and keep us posted on what's happening.

So there's this new poll of 2020 Democratic -- of the field. Who's up? Who's down? Harry Enten breaks down these new numbers for us, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:46:09] BERMAN: A brand-new poll shows where the Democratic race stands this morning.

Harry Enten here with some of the details.

Sir, what do you see?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: Hello, John. Happy summer to you.

CAMEROTA: Hu-hum.

ENTEN: Let's take a look.

And hello, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

ENTEN: Well, he introduced me, so, you know, it's just the natural --

CAMEROTA: I'm invisible to you. I get it. I get --

ENTEN: You are not invisible to me, Alisyn. I think about you every time when I come on this show. The two of you. You're a pair together. Isn't that nice.

CAMEROTA: Better, Harry.

ENTEN: OK. So let's take a look at this. This is a new Monmouth poll that came out yesterday. Basically, the new poll looks kind of like the old polls, right? Joe Biden, well up in the field, 33 percent. Bernie Sanders in second. Kamala Harris, third. Elizabeth Warren, fourth. The only two in double digits, O'Rourke falling, Buttigieg, 6 percent.

But let's take a look at some of those sort of poll trends and I think this is kind of key in sort of figuring out where the race stands right now from where it was. And what we saw was when -- before Biden entered, he was at 28 percent. He jumped all the way up to 39 percent in the week after he entered. He's kind of coming back to the pack a little bit, right, 34 percent. Sanders has certainly fallen as Biden has gotten in, versus Warren, who jumped up from only 5 percent to 10 percent the week after Biden entered, but it sort of leveling off at this point. And, O'Rourke, obviously, 8, 6, and 3, kind of falling down.

CAMEROTA: That's interesting, right, because it seems like things are solidifying, is that how you'd say it, or are they just bouncing around?

ENTEN: I would say that they're bouncing around sort of right now, but I think that this is the kind of thing, right, we sometimes get into these micro trends without looking at the macro trends. And, look, this is the long-term Democratic primary trend. So I took the last 10 days, the average of the last ten days, and compared it to a CNN poll in October. Look at how stable this race mostly is, right? Biden, 33 percent in October, the 34 percent in the last 10 days. Sanders, 14, 16. Warren, 9, 11. Harris, 10, 8. Mostly movements within the margin of error. Buttigieg is really the only one who's kind of moved up. He wasn't even asked in our October poll and is up to 6 percent.

But for the most part here, what we really see is stability. People got in. The media got interested. Then they fell back. It's mostly been a fairly stable race despite all the news that we've been hearing.

BERMAN: I can tell you, Joe Biden will be thrilled to be in the mid- 30s in a stable way in a 23 candidate field. And Bernie Sanders will have problems if he can't get beyond 15 percent.

ENTEN: Right. All these candidates will have problems. Keep in mind, of course, Democratic primaries, you have proportional allocation of the delegates, but you need to meet a 15 percent threshold. That means basically here, if this is how the polling looked in say Iowa and New Hampshire on the eve of those -- of those caucuses and that primary, Joe Biden would run away with this race. He'd get the vast majority of the delegates.

CAMEROTA: Are you looking at people in head to head matchups?

ENTEN: Well, what we're -- what we're looking here is, take a look, this is sort of how I'm thinking about the primary. Yes, there's age, how this is breaking down, with Biden doing better with older voters and Sanders doing better with younger. But I think, you know, a lot of people say, OK, Sanders and Warren are competing over this very liberal lane versus Biden, who's going left of the moderate conservatives. And that's certainly true to an extent, right? Biden clearly doing better among the moderate conservatives while Sanders and Warrens doing better among liberals than they do among moderate conservatives.

But I think this is another way to think about this, socioeconomic status. And look at this, Biden does better with whites with no college degree versus whites with a college degree. That's the same as Bernie Sanders. While Elizabeth Warren has actually flipped in this scenario, where Elizabeth Warren's best group is whites with a college degree.

BERMAN: So she and Bernie Sanders not necessarily competing for the same votes, but you note she is competing for votes with someone you might not expect.

ENTEN: Right. Take a look at this. I don't think a lot of people necessarily think Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren are competing over the same lane. But look at this, they're both doing better among liberal voters versus moderate conservatives. They're both doing better among whites. This is actually flipped. Whoop. And then we'll do that and we can say, no here. They're both doing better with whites with a college degree versus no college degree. And then take a look at this, both are doing better among whites than non-whites. So they actually are competing for a similar package of the pie.

And this is something I think we have to keep in mind, right, as sort of media perceptions -- I think the media has been evaluating Warren, just like they elevated Buttigieg a month ago. And part of the reason that is, is because I think media perceptions are based on who surrounds them, right? So we know that polls find that D.C. and New York City are far more liberal than the nation as a whole. And we still have newsroom employees who are overwhelmingly more likely to have a college degree than not and overwhelmingly likely to be more white than the average employee in our nation. So I --

[06:50:19] CAMEROTA: I think that's an interesting insight. But isn't it also that they had successful town halls? I mean it's not just --

ENTEN: Well -- I don't -- yes, I think -- I think there -- I think there's some of that.

CAMEROTA: Isn't that sort of what started turning some of the momentum for some of the candidates?

ENTEN: I think that town halls have helped, but -- you know, Beto O'Rourke, we'll see if he gets that sort of same town hall type of thing. But I am very sort of -- I realized that last time the media was really judging Donald Trump based upon who they knew, and I'm very cautious of reading too much into that.

One last thing, look at this, it's the beginning of summer. When does summer begin? Most people believe it begins Memorial Day weekend.

CAMEROTA: But when does it really begin?

ENTEN: I think it really begins meteorologically on --

CAMEROTA: June 21st. The vernal equinox.

BERMAN: And what happens that day? Which is also?

CAMEROTA: It might be the best birthday in the world.

ENTEN: We're all wearing pink, so we're all going to go out there. Happy birthday on June 21st, by the way.

CAMEROTA: Thank you. Thank you.

ENTEN: I read the Wikipedia.

CAMEROTA: You got that. You read between the lines.

BERMAN: I like how you made this about you.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right, the president's friend, Rudy Giuliani, is spreading a lie. He is spreading this made-up fake video of Nancy Pelosi. Is this a movement among the president's political allies and why are they doing this? That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:55:37] BERMAN: The Raptors pushed the Bucks to the brink of elimination in the NBA's Eastern Conference finals.

Coy Wire has more in the "Bleacher Report."

Good morning, Coy.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

Toronto wants to make the finals an international affair. For the very first time, they get a potentially series clenching game six tomorrow in front of their own fans. Milwaukee fans going Bucs wild outside their arena last night feeling good because the home team hadn't lost yet. But the Raptors, masterful from the three-point line. A team playoff record 18. Kawhi Leonard had five. And Fred VanVleet came off the bench to hit seven. That's the most he's ever had in his NBA or college. He's been on fire since welcoming a baby boy into the world last week. Thirty-four points in the last two games. That's more than his previous 11 games combined.

Absolute pandemonium at "Jurassic Park" watch party back in Toronto. Raptors win 105-99. Game six tomorrow night in Toronto at 8:30 Eastern on our sister channel, TNT.

Feel-good Friday highlight heading into Memorial Day weekend, trending on bleacherreport.com, an adorable French bulldog named Paul Dogba who dominates kids in playground soccer. He's named after French soccer star Paul Pogba. Alisyn, the kids, they're the ones playing fetch and they are just getting dogged in this one.

BERMAN: OK, that's awesome.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Adorable. I mean that dog's a tiger. He's a soccer tiger.

BERMAN: No, he's a dog. That's the whole point, he's a dog.

CAMEROTA: That was a dog? That was impressive.

All right, Coy, thank you very much.

An historic run on "Jeopardy!" has been extended. This one was a bit too close to comfort for "Jeopardy!" juggernaut James Holzhauer, but he managed to escape with a 26th straight win on his remarkable run on "Jeopardy!" With one more victory, John, Holzhauer will have more than you earned. He will be more than $2 million in total winnings. That bests even your winnings.

BERMAN: You're only bringing that up because I did, in fact, win "Jeopardy!"

CAMEROTA: I know you did.

BERMAN: Which, you know --

CAMEROTA: I know that. I mean -- and if there's one person left in America who didn't know that, they do now.

BERMAN: The escalating feud between President Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi leading to a lot of "Late-Night Laughs."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Just out of curiosity, you were there. What was my tone yesterday at the meeting?

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Very calm. I've seen both and this was definitely not --

TRUMP: Been very consistent. I'm an extremely stable genius, OK. JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE": He's an extremely stable

genius. Why can't people understand that? He's not a maniac. Ask his ten terrified underlings!

TREVOR NOAH, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW WITH TREVOR NOAH": I feel like Nancy Pelosi has been spending a bunch of time with Maxine Waters, because now every time she patronizes Trump, if you notice, she seems more and more like a black aunty. Have you felt that vibe? Yes, because first she gave Trump the sideways clap. Uh-huh. Yes. And now she's praying for him. That's the blackest thing ever. Just like, Lord, this crazy man needs Jesus.

SETH MEYERS, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": Pelosi today called President Trump's behavior villainous and said that he is, quote, crying out for impeachment. And then she said the Democrats are not on the road to impeachment. Then she said the president's family should hold an intervention for him. Well, which is it, Nancy? This is usually the part where the waiter says, do you need a few more minutes?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Those were good.

BERMAN: Again, it's one of those nights when you don't even need the late-night comics because the comedy --

CAMEROTA: No, it writes itself.

BERMAN: Exactly.

CAMEROTA: It writes itself.

Thanks to our international viewers for watching. For you, CNN "TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, the strategy behind that feud between President Trump and Speaker Pelosi. NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): I pray for the president of the United States.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She's a mess. Let's face it. I've been watching her. She's lost it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's never dealt with a woman of this caliber. I really don't think he knows what to do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president has signed a memorandum ordering all agencies to cooperate with Barr's investigation of the Mueller report.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need a full investigation. The American people want this done.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like a circus. He's trying to change the subject. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the evidence is seeming to point to, the FBI

was out to get the president. That's the investigation that counts.

THERESA MAY, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I am today announcing that I will resign so that a successor can be chosen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She has run out of options.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The expectation is that her successor will be someone who is a hardline Brexiteer (ph).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:00:01] ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

CAMEROTA: It's a beautiful morning over Hudson Yards. Happy Friday, everybody. Good morning. Welcome.

END