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Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is Interviewed about Biden's Inauguration; Trump's Approval Hits New Low; Trump Consumed by Disastrous End. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired January 18, 2021 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:30:37]

ALISYN CAMEROTA CNN ANCHOR: President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in on Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol that, of course, was stormed just two weeks ago. His inauguration comes amid the threat of more deadly violence, a second impeachment trial against President Trump and so many challenges facing our nation.

Joining us now is Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar. She serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee and on the Joint Congressional Committee for the inauguration. So you're the perfect person to talk to this morning, Senator. Thank you very much for being here.

And, you know, I mean, look, Joe Biden is taking office with a global pandemic that by then will have killed, you know, 400,000 Americans. This time of tremendous unrest and extremism that has, you know, bubbled up to the surface. An economic crisis that is worse than the great recession. This is not the celebratory moment he probably dreamed of.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): But what it is, Alisyn, is a moment where our democracy can basically dust itself off and start afresh. And I think if no one appreciated our democracy before and kind of took things for granted, they can't do that anymore after what they saw at the Capitol.

My second reaction to your question is, there's no one better to do this than Joe Biden. He has the track record of working across the aisle and bringing people together. He's put a tremendous team in place that already has a plan that's been commend about how to get the vaccine out, about how to open up our economy again, about how to open our schools again. And you only do that by ramping up in a major, obsessive way the distribution of that vaccine and the production of the vaccines. And you prove it with additional vaccines. So it's that combination of the compassion for the people of this country, not waking up in the morning not saying what mean tweet can I write, what, you know, insurrection can I start? Instead, waking up and thinking, OK, what are the coronavirus numbers right now? What's happening in L.A.? What's happening in Green Bay, Wisconsin? That's what we need in a president. So that's how I look at it. He's the perfect man for the right job,

right now. And not only that, we need to have a reset in our democracy and that's what January 20th is all about.

CAMEROTA: Senator, given everything that happened less than two weeks ago at the Capitol, I mean we've been playing all this newly-released video that shows just once again the blood thirst of -- of the mob that entered the Capitol. Are you losing any sleep whatsoever about whether or not President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be safe on Wednesday?

KLOBUCHAR: We are listening to the security experts. And whatever shift they make, that happens. But, at this point, they have, as you know, a heavy military presence, which, by the way, we've had in other inaugurations. I remember my own Minnesota National Guard coming out for Barack Obama's inauguration to help because that had a big crowd.

This inauguration is different. There are multitude less people for one reason. We wanted to keep people safe from the coronavirus as did the president-elect. And so it is a different kind of inauguration. It -- you won't have as many crowd issues. But, yes, there are security issues. That's why they're here.

But I don't think in a minute we should let these thugs and these insurrectionists, who, by the way, are getting charged with major felony crimes as we speak. Over 100 of them have now been charged with crimes, with many, many more to come. And people have information based on the videos you just showed or other videos, they should call 1-800-CALL-FBI. The tips are coming in all the time. So all of that is happening at the same time.

And I don't want us to forget that what happened on January 6th was horrific. It led to this increased security. It also led to something else. And that is a major moment for Americans to cherish our democracy, to tune into this inauguration, to give Joe Biden that opportunity to lay out his vision for America and to see the first woman vice president, first African-American vice president, first Asian-American vice president be sworn in. So there will still be a majesty to this ceremony that you cannot take away from America.

[08:35:00]

CAMEROTA: I want to ask you something else that might be happening in Joe Biden's first 100 days, and that is the Senate trial of President Trump. Some legal experts say that you can't have a trial, a Senate trial, once he's out of office. The whole purpose of an impeachment is removal of a president. Once he's removed, it sort of negates the purpose of the Senate trial.

Here's what Michael Luttig, former U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, judge says, the very concept of constitutional impeachment pre-supposes the impeachment, conviction and removal of a president who is, at the time of his impeachment, an incumbent in the office from which he is removed.

What are your thoughts on that? KLOBUCHAR: Well, I look at precedent. And you go back in time and

there was a very -- a case on point of a secretary of war back during the 1800s who was, in fact, impeached after he had left office. After he was no longer the secretary of war. Because, at the time, Congress actually made a ruling with looking at the law and said you could do that.

And I point to something else, the remedies you have a separate vote, you can, after an impeachment vote. And that vote says you can never serve in office again. So there's a strong argument that that remedy would apply, of course, no matter if you are in office or out of office. And that's the second argument I make to you.

And I think there's a strong case that this could happen.

And one last thing. He has been impeached while he's in office by the House of Representatives. It's simply the trial that would be happening after the fact.

CAMEROTA: And very quickly, we only have ten seconds, your strongest case for -- for his conviction? What is the case as you see it?

KLOBUCHAR: The case is what you just showed on that video. He incited a riot. He sent an angry mob down The Mall to attack a branch of government. He did nothing in the hours while that attack was raging until pushed by his aides to make a very weak statement. He did nothing to try to stop it. In fact, reports are that he relished in it.

So, given all that, yes, that's insurrection. I think Liz Cheney said it best, a number three Republican in the House of Representatives, when she said that she's never seen anything like this in terms of a president betraying his oath. So you've seen bipartisan opposition to what he did. And you're going to see it over in the Senate.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

KLOBUCHAR: But I do want to say one thing to your viewers, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Quickly.

KLOBUCHAR: We can do three things at once in the Senate. Moms are juggling their toddlers on their knees and their laptops on their desks right now. There's no reason that we shouldn't be able to do an impeachment hearing for the afternoons every day and do the -- confirmations and pass pandemic legislation at night.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

KLOBUCHAR: That's what America has been doing all year.

CAMEROTA: Well, that's what moms have been doing, as your -- as you say. You want something done, give it to a busy woman.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, thank you very much for all of that.

KLOBUCHAR: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: President Trump will leave officer with the lowest approval rating of his presidency Did his incitement on the attack on the Capitol sway Republicans? Harry Enten here with the answer, next.

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[08:42:17]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump has made history as the only president impeached twice. And now he's setting a record as the lowest rated modern day president ever to leave office. Quite an accomplishment.

CNN's senior political writer and analyst Harry Enten joins us now.

Harry, it turns out an insurrection hurts your approval ratings.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN'S SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes, who would have guessed, right? Look at these. We got new polls from a bunch of different pollsters out over the last week and, look at this, what you see here is that Donald Trump's approval rating amongst them basically anywhere between 30 and 40 percent, but I'd look at Pew Research, Quinnipiac and our own CNN/SRS poll, and what you see is the lowest ever job performance rating for Donald Trump from those three pollsters. So, clearly, this aid (ph) in Trump support, the events of January 6th.

BERMAN: And historical perspective is this modern day record, Harry.

ENTEN: That's exactly right. So after the first term take a look at this, all the presidents, the last ten presidents, what do you see there, you see Donald Trump at the very bottom of that table there with a 39 percent approval rating on average. That's even below Jimmy Carter's 44 percent, who got a bump after the Iranian hostage crisis revolves itself. And so Donald Trump, at this point, the lowest ever after first term, the last 10 president, also, in fact, back since FDR back in 1937 as well.

BERMAN: Now, Joe Biden gets measured in a different way. We don't have a presidential approval rating on him yet. But views of the transition, what do they say?

ENTEN: The exact opposite of the current president of the United States. Take a look here. What you see is that Joe Biden, the job approval rating for his transition, 54 percent approve, 37 percent disapprove. So the exact opposite ratings, in fact, the inverse basically of what Trump is seeing. Most folks like what Joe Biden is doing, at least at this particular point.

BERMAN: One of the things that you noted, and people who don't read Harry should, because TV is only a small taste of the magnificence of Harry Enten.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Your pieces have been terrific.

You noted that one of the things that Biden did during the campaign was basically give Trump enough rope to hang himself. He gave Trump space to dig his own hole. And he's done that through a certain extent of the transition as well.

ENTEN: That's exactly right. You know, one of the ways we can look at this is through the media mentions, right? How much media -- what share of the media are each of the president-elect and the departing president, how much are they getting? And what you essentially see here is something that's really amazing. And that is that the president-elect, Joe Biden at this point, is only getting about 30 percent of the media mentions between him and Trump. Trump's getting 70 percent. That is very unusual in the Internet era going back since the Clinton to Bush transition back in 2001. Every single time the president-elect gets a larger share of the media mentions in the final month of the transition, this is the exact opposite. And that is something that goes all the way back to the general election campaign where Trump was crushing Biden among in media mentions. So Biden was more than willing to get the spotlight, let Trump hang himself and essentially allow Biden to do the job of actually being president or leading into the transition and do the job and people seem to like that.

[08:45:07]

BERMAN: Where is Trump at this point with Republicans?

ENTEN: Yes, so, this basically is very interesting. And what you essentially see here is that, you know, Donald Trump's approval rating has dropped among Republicans. It's down to 79 percent. It was 95 percent on Election Day. So it's very clear that over the last say few weeks there really has been some degradation of that approval rating for Trump among Republicans.

But here is the thing, if we go to slide six, that I think is really important. Even though that approval rating has been dropping, Republicans are still much more favorably inclined to view Trump favorably than the overall population. And you can see this among these three different metrics here. Should be the 2024 nominee? Fifty- seven percent of Republicans still say yes, versus just 26 percent overall. The GOP should treat him as leader, basically split among Republicans, 47 percent say yes. And should be removed from office, only 15 percent of Republicans say yes.

So, right now, Republicans in a catch-22. Their voters like Trump, but the overall population simply does not.

BERMAN: If the 2024 primary were today, a twice-impeached president might very well win (ph).

ENTEN: It's amazing.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, thank you very much. Congratulations on the Buffalo Bills.

ENTEN: Thank you very much.

BERMAN: So Richard Nixon resigned. Trump did not. But they both left office in shame anonymity. One man knows the similarities as well as anybody. Carl Bernstein joins us next.

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[08:50:34]

BERMAN: In a little over 51 hours now, Donald Trump will exit the presidency as the only U.S. president impeached twice.

CNN has learned that Trump is lashing out at comparisons to Richard Nixon in his final days, but in some ways he parallel is hard to escape.

Let's get "The Bottom Line" with one man who knows this better than anybody, legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein.

Carl, they're both leaving in shame and anonymity (ph), but how close are the comparisons?

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Not very. Richard Nixon was not a madman. And that is what we're seeing now.

These pictures that you have shown this morning, we have been looking at the landscape of Trumpism, a map of his mind and what the logical result of his mindset and sensibilities are. Who is Donald Trump? We now know he is a seditious secessionist, uncontrolled, out of control madman. That's what we are seeing. We've never seen anything in the history of the United States presidency such as we've witnessed in these final days.

The final days of Donald Trump are something that is so out of total comparison to anything in the history of this democracy. He is an autocrat. He has no command of his own faculties at this point, according to those closest to him who are surrounding him. They're trying to put him in a constitutional straight jacket in these last days because of his total inability to govern as the president of the United States with sanity, with sensibility and also he's a criminal president. Nixon was a criminal president. He is a constitutional criminal. And we are seeing every evidence of it as he leaves office. And let's hope for the next two days, as he leaves, that nothing terrible, more terrible than what we've seen occurs.

CAMEROTA: Yes, let's pray for that, but we do have 51 more hours. And we've heard, Carl, to prepare for a flurry of pardons. And also, this weekend, this, at the NSA, a Trump loyalist was just installed as the general council at the NSA. Why? Why now? Why is this happening?

BERNSTEIN: This so-called general council is an acolyte of Congressman Devin Nunes of California, a certifiable almost whacko congressman, a slavish toady (ph) to Donald Trump, who is -- further Trump's delusional thinking. And he's going to be a spy for the Trump family, for Trump in the highest echelons of the National Security Agency. That's what the people of NSA believe. I'm sure the Biden people are going to try to move him out of there. There's no earthly reason. He has no qualifications to be at NSA, to be in such a position. He's not an intelligence expert. He's a plant.

It, once again, shows Trump's total disregard for the national interests and the national security interests of the United States. It's no accident that all of Trump's national security advisers, his former Defense secretary, Mattis, State secretary, Tillerson, others, all left office concluding that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, was, himself, the gravest threat to national security to the United States that we faced. You cannot say that about Richard Nixon. You cannot say that Richard Nixon was an enemy of the United States. What we are seeing is a president who is an enemy to the interests of the United States.

BERMAN: This lawyer, because he's a civil servant, it will be hard to fire. But according to most reports, the Biden administration might be able to move him to say, you know, someone who monitors environmental regulations in Guam for the Pentagon. That's how they may be dealing with that.

Carl, CNN reporting, the president may issue up to 100 pardons or commutations in the next few days. The CNN reporting is, as of this second, not inclined to try to pardon himself or his kids. How badly do you think he wants to do that, though? How badly do you think he wants to issue himself a pardon and, you know, Donald Trump, Jr., a pardon today?

BERNSTEIN: Look, I can't be in Donald Trump's head. It's the most dangerous place in the world.

[08:55:00]

It's rabid and it's totally irrational. So I don't know his calculations on this.

CAMEROTA: All right. I mean isn't that the --

BERMAN: You satisfied?

CAMEROTA: Isn't that's the perfect note to end-- to end on.

BERNSTEIN: No, really. I mean I think we -- look, I'm a native of Washington, D.C. I started reporting in Washington when I was 16- years-old, some 60 years ago. What we are witnessing -- those videos that you have shown this morning, those are the result of Trumpism. Trumpism that has been coddled by one of our two major political parties and still is being coddled. Those videos are what we are left with after the horror of this presidency, after a seditious presidency, after a secessionist presidency, similar in some ways to that of Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America. Trump has taken the government of America, the presidency itself, out of America and put it into another state, his state.

And the legacy of this has got to be removed. We have got to cleanse ourselves of what he has done to our country, including his negligent homicide, really, in terms of the hundreds of thousands of American who's have died because of COVID, partly because of his standing by and not being on the job.

BERMAN: Carl Bernstein, we appreciate you being with us today. Thank you very much.

BERNSTEIN: Thank you.

BERMAN: We're going to leave with you with pictures of the Martin Luther King Junior Memorial in Atlanta.

Our breaking news coverage continues right after this.

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