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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Buttigieg Leads In Iowa By Slimmest Of Margins; President Trump Goes On Post-Impeachment Rampage; Cruise Ship Coronavirus Outbreak Spreads. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired February 07, 2020 - 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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GAYLE KING, ANCHOR, "CBS THIS MORNING": Didn't see the whole interview is very upsetting to me. And that's something I'm going to have to deal with, with them.
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LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: CBS says it's currently addressing its internal process and changes have already been made.
EARLY START continues right now.
The 2020 Democrats swarming New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday's primary. Results finally in from Iowa. What they mean for the upcoming states.
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REBECCA FRAYSURE, CRUISE SHIP PASSENGER DIAGNOSED WITH CORONAVIRUS: I'm trying not to freak out with all of this.
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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: First on CNN, an American trapped on a quarantined cruise ship now diagnosed with coronavirus. What's next for her and thousands of others on that ship.
JARRETT: And a deadly weather system surges through the southeast. Hundreds of thousands in the dark. What today holds in store.
Good morning, welcome back. This is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.
ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. It is 30 minutes past the hour on this Friday -- Friday morning.
And just four days to the New Hampshire primary, candidates are finally looking forward. They can do that because four days after Iowa we finally have results.
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Pete Buttigieg holds a razor- thin lead of one-tenth of one percentage point over Bernie Sanders. That's in the state delegate count, the yardstick used to determine a winner. Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar rounding out the top five.
JARRETT: Sanders still has reason to celebrate, narrowly topping Buttigieg in the popular vote. Bottom line, Buttigieg and Sanders are heading to New Hampshire effectively tied.
This was the reaction from Buttigieg, live at a CNN town hall, hearing that he'd held on to that slim lead.
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CHRIS CUOMO, HOST, CNN TOWN HALL: What is your reaction?
PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, it's fantastic news to hear that we won. That win for us in Iowa is fantastic, but I also know that we're in New Hampshire now and we've got to look ahead. New Hampshire is a state that has never been told what to do.
CUOMO: Right.
BUTTIGIEG: And we've got to earn every vote and earn a win on Tuesday night right here.
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JARRETT: Sanders also had a CNN town hall. He's faced repeated questions about whether he did enough to help the 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton. Last night, he tried to put similar worries about 2020 to bed.
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SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And no matter who wins the nomination -- needless to say, I hope it's me -- but no matter who wins the nomination, we're all going to work together to defeat Donald Trump. That, I think, you could take to the bank.
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ROMANS: Amy Klobuchar with a surprisingly strong showing in Iowa. She's sharing the moderate lane with Buttigieg and Biden. But in her CNN town hall, she told a voter she's not going anywhere.
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AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Every single time, I have exceeded expectations. We came very close, in terms of the number of people that turned out, to Vice President Biden. Look at the numbers, yourself. So, we actually left Iowa with a lot of enthusiasm.
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ROMANS: There will be seven candidates on stage tonight for the final Democratic debate before the first primary in New Hampshire. An especially big night for Joe Biden, who's trying to overcome that
weaker showing in Iowa. He was actually back home in Delaware Thursday, with advisers, plotting a reset.
JARRETT: The campaign is trying to look past the Iowa debacle but that's proving hard to do. A CNN analysis shows a variety of errors in the count reported by the State Democratic Party. Now, the National Democratic Party wants to step in to straighten out the voting counting errors, but state party officials are pushing back.
CNN's Jeff Zeleny has more on this from Des Moines.
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JEFF ZELENY, SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Laura, four days after the Iowa caucuses, still counting the votes here in Des Moines.
Interesting developments here going on inside the Democratic Party. Iowa Democratic leaders, I'm told, were blindsided by Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, calling for a recanvass. As it turns out, he does not have the authority to do that. A recanvass has to be requested by a candidate or a campaign.
So, what, you ask, is a recanvass? Essentially, it's going through the numbers. It is, essentially, reconciling the numbers on those spreadsheets that we saw with the numbers that were called into the state party.
Would that change things, unclear. But the reason for it is this, so many inconsistencies in the numbers. That's not necessarily uncommon in close elections. Elections are run by people -- always human error.
But the difference about this, of course, is the satellite caucuses, which Bernie Sanders pushed for four years ago. That allows people to come in and vote early on Monday night.
So, as we head into today, the last day of the week, a couple of questions. A) Will the Buttigieg campaign or the Sanders come forward before the noon deadline and request a recanvass? The Iowa Democratic Party said look, we are not going to do it unless they do.
One thing that's clear from this, Democratic voters in Iowa sent a very mixed signal, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders. That means as this primary goes on down the road, two very different candidates as the party reconciles who the strongest one is to take on President Trump -- Laura and Christine.
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ROMANS: Jeff Zeleny, who just can't quit Iowa yet here.
All right, emboldened and not afraid to show it, President Trump took a venomous victory lap to celebrate his acquittal in the impeachment trial. This all started at the yearly National Prayer Breakfast with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looking on.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say I pray for you when they know that that's not so.
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ROMANS: The prayer breakfast for personal vendettas and complaints. You might recall Speaker Pelosi has repeatedly told reporters she prays for the president. And, Sen. Mitt Romney said it was his faith that drove him to vote to convict the president.
JARRETT: Later at the White House, the president heaped praise on everyone in the room and made this curious remark about his legal team.
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TRUMP: Right at the beginning, they said sir, you have nothing to worry about. All of the facts are on your side. I said you don't understand, that doesn't matter -- that doesn't matter. And that was really true.
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JARRETT: It didn't take long before the president turned up the heat up a notch going scorched-earth on his opponents in the White House East Room.
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TRUMP: We, first, went through Russia, Russia, Russia. It was all bull (bleep). It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars.
Say hello to the people of Utah and tell them I'm sorry about Mitt Romney -- I'm sorry, OK?
And if I didn't fire James Comey, we would have never found this stuff because when I fired that sleazebag all hell broke out.
Adam Schiff is a vicious, horrible person. Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person. She doesn't pray -- she may pray, but she prays for the opposite -- but I doubt she prays at all.
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ROMANS: There's no question that Mitt Romney and Speaker Pelosi are very deeply religious people in their respective faiths.
The president is scheduled to get back to governing today. He will be in Charlotte for the Opportunity Now summit. That's to facilitate investments in low-income areas. JARRETT: All right, more on all of this. Plus, a big change for how Uber does business.
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JARRETT: Twenty twenty Democrats looking ahead to New Hampshire. Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders splitting Iowa's delegates pretty much down the middle. Meantime, Joe Biden just splitting, leaving the campaign trail to huddle with his advisers back home in Delaware ahead of tonight's debate and Tuesday's primary.
ROMANS: Joining us this morning, "Washington Post" congressional reporter Karoun Demirjian, a CNN political analyst. Good morning.
You know, I'm born and raised in Iowa. I love Iowa. And for the last four days, Iowa was getting, like, a Florida moniker there for a while. And, you know, Iowa is irrelevant, Iowa messed it up.
But in the end, it -- when it was all said and done, didn't Iowa do what it was supposed to do -- identify a rising candidate, Pete Buttigieg -- a surprise there? And show there's still support for Bernie Sanders -- a lot of support for Bernie Sanders? Show that Joe Biden, who was seen as the perceived frontrunner, has some work to do.
Didn't we get something out of Iowa in the end?
KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, CONGRESSIONAL REPORT, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, yes, it's just that there's a large asterisk up next to it all still because of the way that it played out and the time that it took.
And I think that that almost has kind of muted the effect that you would have had if you had just had a late Monday night or early -- very early Tuesday morning announcement that Pete Buttigieg won by the -- by the count of the delegates, and Bernie Sanders won the popular vote. Warren in third, Biden in fourth, and Klobuchar, fifth. I mean, that would have been much more of an impact -- a boom on all of those campaigns, especially Buttigieg's, Sanders', and Biden's.
But because it took so long to kind of trickle out because there's been so many questions around the legitimacy of how this happened and why the counting was screwed up that there now is kind of a muted effect of each of those victories or disappointments --
ROMANS: Sure.
DEMIRJIAN: -- as we head into New Hampshire.
JARRETT: Karoun, getting all those votes tabulated, there's no question it's been a -- just a complete mess the entire week. No indication that there was any hacking or intrusion here. That's something Iowa officials, I feel like, have gone out of their way to emphasize. But doesn't it show just the vulnerability of the system and how -- I mean, that was where everybody's mind went -- the first thing when we heard the news of all the problems.
And one line from your story in "The Washington Post" about the Senate intelligence report on the Russia investigation really stuck out to me here. You write this. "Still, the report states plainly that the U.S. government was not well-postured to counter Russian election interference activity with a full range of readily-available policy options."
Are we any better positioned in 2020 to counter interference? I mean, we learned that prank callers are jamming up the hotlines in Iowa.
DEMIRJIAN: Well, I mean, this is the thing, right? I mean, how do you do consequences when you're talking about two completely different stories (ph) of influence?
I mean, the criticism for how the Obama administration responded to the Russian threat in 2016 is they didn't tell the public enough about what was going on --
JARRETT: Right.
DEMIRJIAN: -- when they perceived the disinformation campaign. They were not firm enough with the Russians about what the consequences would be and there was no kind of set plan for what do you do when you notice this sort of thing happening. And speaking out about it, despite the fact that there may be a politically charged environment there and then people misinterpret things that you're saying as being favoring one candidate or the other.
[05:45:01]
When you're talking about a situation like this, you're talking about just basic ability to kind of manipulate the confidence in the system. And that is what it ultimately, though, does come down to on both sides.
How many votes does this actually change? Are the results of elections actually suspect? Most of the time, no.
The Russians did not actually change vote tallies at the end of the day. The prank callers are gumming up the phone lines but not necessarily changing the actual results --
JARRETT: Right.
ROMANS: Right.
DEMIRJIAN: -- of the Iowa caucuses. But there's no public confidence or there is diminished public confidence is more accurate to say --
ROMANS: Right.
DEMIRJIAN: -- in the results. And that, when you have the election system kind of at the bedrock and the foundation --
ROMANS: Right.
DEMIRJIAN: -- of the whole democratic system, that's a problem.
ROMANS: I know.
JARRETT: Yes, so little confidence. But now, the DNC is actually calling for a recanvassing --
DEMIRJIAN: Right.
JARRETT: -- of districts that had problems.
ROMANS: And election integrity is just -- it's the oxygen of democracy and it's exactly what America's enemies want is us to question the integrity of the election.
DEMIRJIAN: Right.
ROMANS: Meanwhile, voters -- there's a -- there's a Monmouth poll -- a New Hampshire poll that is really interesting. It's been pretty consistent here. Beating Trump is a very big, important issue. Fifty- five percent say it's more important than other policy issues. Twenty- nine percent say about as important.
You've got the President of the United States setting himself up as his strong economy versus the socialist corrupt Democrats.
Who in the party is best, I guess, positioned -- I guess that's what we're trying to decide now? You've got Bernie Sanders coming out well. He fits into that socialist Democrat mold that the president's trying to -- trying to assail.
JARRETT: Counter him (ph).
ROMANS: Buttigieg, though, is a -- is a -- is a moderate guy.
DEMIRJIAN: And I think this is the choice that the Democratic Party is trying to make. Do they respond to -- do they want a moderate or do they want somebody who is from a more liberal wing of the party? Are they concerned about what the president is saying in terms of socialist Democrats? Is that actually going to be the decision-making factor or are they going to choose somebody who potentially brings people from different parts of the electorate?
I mean, this has been the fundamental issue --
ROMANS: Right.
DEMIRJIAN: -- for the party since we started this general season.
They always knew that the president was going to come out punching. He now, feeling unleashed by the acquittal and the impeachment trial, is certainly punching. And his numbers are fairly good right now, especially compared to the rest of his presidency. So, he is a force to be reckoned with.
I think the question for Democrats is how they choose to reckon with that force. Do they choose a moderate who does not necessarily fit the bill of what the president's saying or do they choose somebody who --
ROMANS: Yes.
DEMIRJIAN: -- maybe is. But you know what, forget it because maybe we think they can win anyway.
And that's still -- we had Iowa happen but -- and Iowa is significant for the kick-off -- the power that it has. But like I said before, that was kind of muted this time because of how that went around. And it's actually kind of a tiny little percentage of the electoral votes in the end and the delegates at the state convention. So, there's a lot more of a campaign trail to go, especially considering that we're only one into the five early states at this point and there's a few weeks.
ROMANS: Can I just say -- can I just say --
JARRETT: Is it just -- is it really just one?
ROMANS: Can I just say something quickly about the economy? You know, the president -- I've been fascinated to watch this. He has a real advantage here.
He exaggerates about how strong the economy is. Yes, the recovery began under Obama but it doesn't matter. He has managed to cheerlead his way into owning it --
DEMIRJIAN: Yes.
ROMANS: -- alone.
JARRETT: Yes.
ROMANS: And that is something the Democrats have not been able to --
JARRETT: No.
ROMANS: -- really chip away at. I mean, the --
JARRETT: The narrative, yes.
ROMANS: The economy, even though he has completely wrapped it up in hyperbole, he -- it's still his advantage.
JARRETT: Yes.
DEMIRJIAN: This is the president's thing. He was a marketer before he came to the --
ROMANS: Yes.
DEMIRJIAN: -- Oval Office and he remains good at that. And he remains good a doing it in pithy ways --
ROMANS: Yes.
DEMIRJIAN: -- even if it's sometimes very brusk.
And the Democrats have not completely figured out yet how to counter that with equal one-liners that seem to -- that kind of neutralize what the president is able to do.
JARRETT: Right.
ROMANS: Karoun Demirjian --
JARRETT: All right. Karoun, thanks so much. Have a great weekend.
DEMIRJIAN: You, too.
JARRETT: Always good to see you.
DEMIRJIAN: Thank you.
JARRETT: All right.
Breaking overnight, an alarming example of just how quickly the coronavirus can spread in close quarters. A quarantined cruise ship docked off the coast of Japan reporting 41 additional cases on Friday. That brings the total to 61 and it's only going to get worse the longer people are trapped on that ship.
CNN was the first T.V. network to speak with one of the 11 Americans on the ship diagnosed with the virus.
Matt Rivers live for us in Yokohama, Japan. Matt, what is the latest there with all those folks trapped?
MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the latest is that what's going on on that ship behind me there, it's just a tough situation for the people that are on board.
We know that everyone on board is going to be quarantined here in Japan, about 45 minutes to an hour outside of Tokyo, for the next 14 days. The only people that are going to be allowed off that ship are the people who have been diagnosed with coronavirus. So that way, they're going to be allowed to be taken to local hospitals.
Around 3,700 people on board that ship, 428 of whom are Americans. Eleven of those Americans have been diagnosed with this coronavirus.
And earlier today, as you mentioned, we were able to speak to one of the women that has been diagnosed. Her husband was filming, actually, as nurses came to the door of the cabin that they're staying in onboard and gave them that tough news.
[05:50:02]
Here's what she had to say when she spoke to us shortly thereafter. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FRAYSURE: Kind of disbelief and shock, a little bit -- a little bit scared. It's hard to know what the future holds since I don't really feel sick right now. Like, is it going to get worse? I'm trying not to freak out with all of this, so take it in stride and yes, see what goes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RIVERS: You know, we're talking about how more people could get diagnosed. Well, consider this. That woman's husband has yet to be diagnosed and yet, he's shared a cabin with her now for well over a week, so there's a very good chance that he could get diagnosed. And if that happens in that cabin, well, it's certainly could happen in others -- Laura.
JARRETT: That just shows you the numbers are going to go way up -- that's clear.
Matt Rivers, thanks so much.
ROMANS: Two flights carrying Americans out of Wuhan, China en route to the U.S. this morning. One, stopping over in Vancouver before heading to the Marine Corps air station in Miramar near San Diego. The other will land, first, at Travis Air Force Base in California, then head to San Antonia and on to Omaha.
Now, China's top anti-corruption agency sending a team of investigators to Wuhan after the death of a doctor. This doctor had warned of the coronavirus outbreak months ago but was silenced by the government.
We'll be right back.
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JARRETT: More than 130,000 customers in the dark as deadly weather hits the southeast. The storms now killing three people, two of them in North Carolina and Texas, when cars hydroplaned off the road.
In Georgia, look on the right side of your screen there. That's a tree toppling onto a car speeding down a busy highway. Amazingly, police say no one was seriously hurt.
More than 100 million Americans are still under winter weather alerts, flood watches, and wind advisories this morning.
ROMANS: All right, a Friday look at markets around the world. You can see small losses in Europe and a mixed performance in Asia.
On Wall Street, ahead of the jobs report, which is in just 3 1/2 hours -- 2 1/2 hours, really, a decline here in the morning. But it was a good day yesterday -- stocks closed slightly higher. The gains just enough for all three major averages to hit record highs. The Dow closed up 89 points. Uber has spent billions looking for growth around the world. Now, the CEO says it might need to change its approach and stop bleeding money. "We recognize that the era of growth at all costs is over."
Uber lost more than $1 billion in Q4, partly based on stock-based compensation. In total, Uber lost a staggering $8.5 billion last year. Despite that, Uber executives told analysts they expect Uber to achieve profitability, excluding certain costs, by the end of this year.
Uber has struggled to win over investors who are concerned about its history of those big losses and its ability to actually make money. The stock is up seven percent premarket on that profitability goal.
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SCENE FROM LUCASFILM "STAR WARS."
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ROMANS: R2 is hitting the streets of Houston, but not that R2. The Department of Transportation says Nuro, a Silicon-based startup -- Valley-based startup -- will launch 5,000 of its R2 autonomous cars over the next two years. The R2 has no steering wheel, no beeping, no pedals, no side mirrors. It has large compartments on its side to hold deliveries.
Unlike most self-driving companies, Nuro is focused on carrying goods rather than people. It has partnerships now with Domino's and Walmart.
JARRETT: Well, after Mitt Romney voted to convict President Trump, Donald Trump Jr. posted this on social media, attacking the Utah senator. You can see it for yourself.
And while you were sleeping, Jimmy Kimmel turned the tables.
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JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, ABC "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE": Take a look at Donald Jr.'s resume. After college, DJTJ was a bartender in Aspen for a year. From that, he graduated to supervisory several Trump building projects in Manhattan. How'd he land that gig? He must have been one hell of a bartender.
He helped launch Trump Mortgage, which folded in 18 months. And next, got a job sitting and nodding next to his father on "THE APPRENTICE." Then, became a spokesman for Cambridge Who's Who, a company that has, to date, received hundreds of complaints from the Better Business Bureau.
He was then put in charge of meetings, like the one with the Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton that got his father in trouble. And finally, he wrote a book called "Triggered" which made it to number one on "The New York Times" bestseller list because the Republican National Committee bought more than $100,000 worth of copies for week one. And don't forget his special skills, PowerPoint, Excel, and shooting elephants.
So, this is a self-made man who does it all and more.
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JARRETT: Oh, the skills section is always the best.
ROMANS: So much material for these guys -- the late-night, right?
Thanks for joining us. I'm Christine Romans. Have a great weekend, guys.
JARRETT: And I'm Laura Jarrett. "NEW DAY" starts right now.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is the caucus count that just won't end.
TOM PEREZ, CHAIRMAN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: What we did is asking to make sure that if people need a recanvass, that it's done.
CUOMO: The CNN analysis shows errors in the counts that were reported by the Iowa Democratic Party.
SANDERS: We've got enough of Iowa. I think we should move on.
TRUMP: I never a word would sound so good. It's called total acquittal.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): He's impeached forever, no matter what he says.
TRUMP: It was evil, it was corrupt. It was leakers and liars.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): There is a vindictive, angry president, as his hour and a half speech showed.
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ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY.
END
