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New Day
Clintons Discuss Affair in Docu-Series; February Jobs Report; Harry and Meghan Return to U.K.; Trump Fuels Coronavirus Confusion. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired March 06, 2020 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:30:00]
NANETTE BURSTEIN, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER: Context in a way that has been done to her, as you can see watching the series, throughout her entire life. So I think she was ready. I think she was ready to open up.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Did you have to prod? I mean sometimes going into these things there are rules, you know, about things that they don't want to talk about and that they won't touch.
Did you -- how did you broach the subject that it was so personal to them?
BURSTEIN: You know, I -- I didn't have to share any questions with her beforehand. She didn't say to me, OK, you can't talk about this or that. I did kind of lay out my whole vision for it before we ever did any interviews.
CAMEROTA: And what was that pitch?
BURSTEIN: Well, it was a pitch that -- I was being very frank, that I really wanted to unpack the intimacy of her life in the context of why she's such a polarizing figure. And when you look at the arc of her life, you also see the arc of the women's movement, you see the arc of our partisan politics and why we've become such a divided country. And I think her seeing that it was through the lens of these themes that she cared deeply about made her -- made it a lot more appealing.
CAMEROTA: I mean I've also never heard, I don't know if anyone has, Bill Clinton talking so candidly about what was happening behind the scenes and how painful it was to have to go tell Chelsea.
BURSTEIN: Yes, I mean they've never spoken about it, particularly him. And he's never done an interview about it, you know.
CAMEROTA: And what was that like? What was that interview like?
BURSTEIN: He was incredibly candid and emotional. And it was, you know, intimidating for me to sit across from a former president and ask him about the biggest mistake he ever made in his life and how he handled that on an intimate, personal level with his marriage and his child. And, you know, at one point I asked him, you know, why did you take
this risk? Why would you risk your presidency, your marriage, your relationship with your child? And he gave actually the most poignant, fascinating answer.
CAMEROTA: OK, let's hear that. I think we have that clip. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL CLINTON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Nobody sits down and thinks, I think I'll take a really irresponsible risk. It's bad for my family, bad for my country, bad for the people who work with me. That's not what happened. Everybody's life has pressures and disappointments and terrors, fears of whatever. Things I did to manage my anxieties for years. This is not a defense, it's an explanation. It's a -- it was awful. I feel terrible about the --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: There's so much there.
BURSTEIN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: I mean he's talking about terrors, fears, anxieties and that that's an explanation for what he did. Did you come around to understand what he meant by all of that?
BURSTEIN: Well, I think, you know, I -- he starts by saying, it's not like you wake up one morning and say I want to risk my whole life. I mean when we make bad decisions, it's because we have pain and we want to distract ourselves from the stress and the pain of our life. I mean that could be applicable to drinking alcohol or, you know, any kind of problem that we have.
CAMEROTA: He also talked in a different way than we've ever heard about the impact on Monica Lewinsky. So let's take a listen to that moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL CLINTON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I feel terrible about the fact that Monica Lewinsky's life was defined by it. Unfairly, I think. You know, over the years I've watched her trying to get a normal life back again. But you've got to decide how to define normal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: That's insightful.
BURSTEIN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: I mean I think that she has said that she felt that he hasn't, you know, taken ownership or apologized, but that was, I don't know, just a little more sensitive than we've heard him speak before. BURSTEIN: Yes, I mean, I think, to me, he is apologizing. He's saying,
I feel terrible about what happened to her life. But I -- I do find it even more insightful that he recognizes, you know, when something like this happens to someone. It's so hard to ever come back from that. I mean she has been defined by this. And so in this one sound bite he sums up her biggest struggle that she's had as a result of his behavior.
CAMEROTA: Obviously, a lot of stuff -- other stuff that Hillary Clinton says in this also has gotten a lot of attention. She was quite candid about Bernie Sanders.
BURSTEIN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: And she basically said nobody likes him. And have you been surprised or was she surprised by all of the buzz that that generated?
BURSTEIN: You know, I was surprised. I mean I -- it's not that I didn't recognize it was an incendiary statement, especially the way she says it. But of all the four hours, I didn't think it would get nearly the attention that it did.
But I also, at the time that she said it, and we were making it, he wasn't the leading presidential candidate. We weren't even in the midst of the primary yet.
CAMEROTA: That helps explain a little bit more about why she would say something that is that sort of incendiary.
BURSTEIN: Yes, I mean, I'm not sure she has -- she hasn't walked away from her statements, though.
CAMEROTA: No. No, she hasn't.
BURSTEIN: No.
CAMEROTA: How long did she give you for these interviews? How much access and time did you have?
BURSTEIN: She gave me a lot of time for these interviews. We did the interviews over seven days total, which is an extraordinary amount of time.
CAMEROTA: A full day of --
BURSTEIN: You know, we would start around 11:00 a.m. and finish around 4:00 with some breaks for lunch and --
[08:35:03]
CAMEROTA: So you had about 35 hours of interviewing her?
BURSTEIN: Yes, I did. Yes.
CAMEROTA: What surprised you? What did you take away from this access that you got with her? BURSTEIN: Well, I was surprised at not only the amount of time that
she gave me, but how candid she was, the range of emotions that she went through in retelling her life story, how patient she was with me with my giant book of questions where I was just relentlessly asking her.
But, you know, I had no idea what she would be like as an interview subject. You know, I've seen her on shows like this all the time and that's a very different situation because she's running as a candidate or, you know, you have an agenda to get out about the news of the day. And this is -- this was different. She's never done it. She's never sat down to do a documentary interview about herself.
CAMEROTA: One of the things that you asked her, I mean this is sort of a kicker, but about "Saturday Night Live" and the depiction of her. And then she played along with it at some point.
So, let's listen to that moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATE MCKINNON (ph): I have to say, this is a little surreal.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes, for me, too.
MCKINNON: But I'm going to -- I'm going to push through it.
CLINTON: I mean, you know, you do me better than I do me.
MCKINNON: Oh, Val (ph), I'm just so darn tired (ph). All anyone wants to talk about is Donald Trump.
CLINTON: Donald Trump? Is he the one that's like, ugh, you're all losers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: They seem to be enjoying themselves there. What did she tell --
BURSTEIN: The two Hillarys.
CAMEROTA: Yes. What did she tell you about agreeing to that or the experience?
BURSTEIN: Well, I think she's open to doing a lot of different comedy shows when she's running for president. I mean, I saw -- actually saw her do behind the scenes of quite a few of them. And, you know, she's a regular on late night. So I think it's funny. And, you know, and she's been watching people do impersonations of her of various different actresses. Before that it was Amy Poehler. I forget who it was before that. So there's been a history of impersonators.
CAMEROTA: So, about the docu-series, everybody can watch it now on Hulu? It's all -- everybody can --
BURSTEIN: It is out there, yes. It is on Hulu starting today.
CAMEROTA: Congratulations, Nanette Burstein. Great job.
BURSTEIN: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: It's really fascinating to see this insight into them.
BURSTEIN: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: Thanks so much for being on.
BURSTEIN: Thanks for having me.
CAMEROTA: John.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I have to say, every clip you just played was riveting.
All right, so we just got a brand-new snapshot of the U.S. economy released just moments ago. Get ready to be surprised. Christine Romans has the details, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:41:24]
BERMAN: All right, breaking news, the Labor Department just released the February jobs report.
Our chief business correspondent Christine Romans joins us now with the numbers.
Remember, Romans --
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
BERMAN: This, though, predates the coronavirus fears in the United States.
ROMANS: This is the rear-view mirror before coronavirus concerns and corporate America are really grappling with what to do about it. In the rear-view mirror, a really strong labor market. I mean the strongest jobs gains we've seen in more than a year and a half, 273,000 net new jobs in February. January, revised higher. December, revised higher. And the unemployment rate back down at 3.5 percent. That is a 50-year low.
Where are we seeing the hiring? Heavy, heavy hiring across the spectrum. Health care. Every month we tell you all the jobs that are being hired there. Food services, guys, bars and restaurants really picking up a lot of jobs in those last three months, the end of last year, beginning of this year. And construction. You know, February was unseasonably warm. So when you look at construction, any kind of outdoor job, those people were working in February, making money in February, at a time of year that usually you see a little bit of a lull. I want to go back to this because this shows you, honestly, that this
was a very strong labor market. You know, 11 years almost into an economic expansion. But this is before the coronavirus. And one of the concerns about some of these jobs that we see added, especially in bars and restaurants and hotels, travel and leisure, a lot of those jobs are jobs that don't have guaranteed paid sick leave. So if you get in a situation moving forward where you have to ask people to stay home if they feel sick or there's a virus crisis in this country, they're the least likely to actually stay home, which would -- can prolong the crisis. That's something for policymakers, I think, to be considering as we move forward from a great jobs picture into uncertainty in March and obviously April.
BERMAN: Really is stunning, the economy was so strong in February, yet last week a half-point cut in the interest rate.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
BERMAN: It just shows you how fast things change, Romans.
ROMANS: It really is remarkable. And I'll also tell you, wages at 3 percent. I would have thought, after all of these months and months of very strong jobs gains, maybe you'd have fatter paychecks. Haven't seen that exactly yet.
And, again, it's the uncertainty going forward here. We just don't know what's going to happen. We know the travel industry has really been rocked by this. So we'll be watching the jobs there very closely going forward.
CAMEROTA: Christine Romans, thank you very much for that breaking economy news.
Meanwhile, Meghan Markle making her first visit to the U.K. since announcing that she and Prince Harry would be leaving royal life. They were met with cheers and at least one loud boo. There it was. They were there to, you know, brave the rain and attend an awards ceremony for injured service personnel.
CNN's Max Foster is live in London with more.
So how did this visit go, Max?
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Well, what would normally be a very usual engagement, had a huge amount of attention, as you can see, from fans mainly, but also some detractors as well. The reason there's so much attention on this is because it's the first time we've seen the duchess since she announced that she was leaving royal duties back in January.
But this is also their final hoorah, if you like, as working royals. A few engagements really in the next few days, which will mark the end of their royal lives.
There was something extraordinary that came out of last night, though, and that was this image of the couple arriving in the rain, taken by a photographer. A brilliant image. It's gone viral in this country. And a lot of the fans of the Sussexs very much attaching themselves to this because it really shows how the couple are in defiance.
[08:45:05]
They're happy. They're pleased that they made the right decision. A lot of people as well saying, you know, they've got their Christmas card sort of for this year as well with that image.
What we're looking to next is Monday where the couple go to Westminster Abbey for Commonwealth Day Service. The entire royal family will be out and the photographers will certainly be out looking for images, close-up images, trying to see if there's any body language there that we all need to be picking up on.
CAMEROTA: Max, as you know, there's this new episode of the CNN original series "The Windsors" that will air this Sunday. And this week we're introduced to Princess Diana. So are there as many similarities as people think between how Meghan and how Diana adjusted to royal life or didn't?
FOSTER: Well, certainly there's lots of the same language coming from Meghan that came from Diana, how she wasn't supported, who she wasn't praised. And you'll see that in the episode tonight. It's a really fascinating insight into how Diana felt. The interesting question for viewers of the show tonight is whether or not the royal family learned anything from that Diana experience because Meghan feels the same way. So it's an interesting parallel and things haven't moved on that much some people argue.
CAMEROTA: Yes, but, you know, Meghan has decided to move on. So, I mean, even if the royal family didn't -- hasn't progressed, Meghan and Harry certainly have.
Thank you, Max, very much. We appreciate that.
Be sure to watch an all-new episode of the CNN original series "The Windsors: Inside the Royal Dynasty." That airs Sunday at 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific only on CNN.
BERMAN: I'm on team Meghan.
CAMEROTA: OK.
BERMAN: Just saying.
CAMEROTA: I know. No, you -- you've --
BERMAN: Team Meghan.
CAMEROTA: You've come alive since they've broken with the royal family.
BERMAN: The breaking news, the president just canceled a planned trip to the CDC. We're going to have a "Reality Check" on the White House response, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:50:56]
CAMEROTA: President Trump continues to give mixed messages about coronavirus. He has admitted he's relying on hunches. How can that be the basis for a public health crisis?
John Avlon has the answers in our "Reality Check."
Hi, John.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, guys.
So, look, there's a lot of fear and confusion about the coronavirus epidemic. And while scientists work around the clock to stop the spread, the president hasn't been helping. He's been calling it a Democratic hoax as the worldwide death toll passes 3,000, 97,000 confirmed infected. He's been keeping busy blaming the media while tapping his Veep Mike Pence to help clean up the mess.
And as "The Washington Post" put it, the Trump administration's greatest obstacle to sending a clear message on coronavirus may be Trump himself. From his earliest comments on the outbreak, Trump seemed to be in denial.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Very well under control in our country.
I think that whole situation will start working out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: Now, echoing his boss, Larry Kudlow tried to calm the markets.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LARRY KUDLOW: We have contained this. I won't say air tight but pretty close to air tight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: Sadly, no, not even a little bit.
And as the outbreak escalated, Trump started floating fact-free hunches about the virus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. Hope that's true.
(END VIDEO CLIP) AVLON: Wishing and hoping don't make it so.
And over the past few days, we've seen the president try to badger drug makers into promising a vaccine in a few months. Well, they kept telling him it would take at least a year. We've even heard the president dismiss official WHO estimates about the mortality rate and then say this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work. Some of them go to work. But they get better.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: No, don't go to work if you're sick. All right, it's tough to work in these conditions. But to his credit, Mike Pence tapped the State Department's global AIDS director, Dr. Debbie Birx, to run day- to-day efforts to contain the virus, while the veep seems focused on pumping up the president's ego.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thanks to the president's strong leadership.
Thanks to the president's leadership.
That's not going to lessen the focus of President Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: Meanwhile, the disease has continued to spread with Pence admitting we don't have enough testing kits to meet the anticipated demand. And when faced with bad news, Trump resorted to his familiar go-to, blame Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we're doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: You might not be shocked to learn that claim was false.
But speaking of lies --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus.
They tried the impeachment hoax, and this is their new hoax.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: But when Trump said that, there were already 67 cases confirmed in the U.S. There are now more than triple that number now. Some hoax.
But there are some topics he's tweeted about more than coronavirus since the outbreak began according to Factbase. Democrats, Republicans, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Fox News, Mike Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders and Iowa. Heck, the president's even tweeted about hoaxes more than the coronavirus, which might help explain why some of his supporters seem to be in denial.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You don't believe coronavirus exists?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So the two people who have been reported to have died from it in Washington state you don't trust that that's true?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't trust anything the Democrats do or say.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: It's a reminder that the president's words have consequences. But potential pandemics don't care about politics. And it's an effort to deny, deflect and project his way out of the coronavirus crisis, the president has added to the confusion and made the experts job much harder.
And that's the "Reality Check."
CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh.
BERMAN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: That sound that you just captured was incredible.
AVLON: Yes.
BERMAN: We do want people to know that we just learned the president will sign the funding measure to battle coronavirus before he leaves for Nashville at the White House in a little bit.
CAMEROTA: Maybe now that woman will believe that it exists.
BERMAN: All right, today we introduce you to the first CNN hero of 2020. Growing up in Maine, Lynda Doughty so loved the coast and its wildlife she became a marine biologist. When state and government funding vanished, and local wildlife organizations closed their doors, she dove in to fill in the gap and care.
[08:55:02]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LYNDA DOUGHTY, CNN HERO: Releasing a seal, it's really bittersweet. And as much as I'm excited to see that animal be released, it's also hard in the sense of seeing the animal now gone.
You guys know that you're going back to the ocean.
So any sea that we rescue, the ultimate goal is for that animal to be released back into the ocean.
Awe.
I feel this intense responsibility to help these animals and really this is what I was put on this earth to do.
Yea! Whoo!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: You can nominate someone you think should be a CNN Hero at cnnheroes.com.
CAMEROTA: Those seals are so cute.
BERMAN: I dance like that.
CAMEROTA: The worm.
Meanwhile, CNN's coverage continues, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:00:00]
