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New Day

Powerful Nor'easter to Pummel East Coast; Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) Starts PAC to Resist GOP's Embrace of Trump; Fallen U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick will Lie in Honor. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired February 01, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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


[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day live from snow bunkers this morning, because, breaking news, a huge winter storm hitting much of the east coast, heavy snow, powerful winds, blizzard- like conditions. This is going to get worse and it's going to go on for a long, long time.

The forecast for New York City calls for as much as two feet of snow. More than 70 million Americans are under winter storm advisories this morning. We have live pictures from Pittsburgh. You can see, obviously, the roads there covered. Again, this is only going to get worse. We have the latest on the storm in a moment.

Also developing, President Joe Biden meets this morning at the White House with a group of ten Republican senators. They have a counter proposal to his $1.9 trillion relief plan. We have new reporting on where these negotiations stand in a moment.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: And as for former President Trump, his Senate trial for inciting the deadly Capitol insurrection is about a week away, but his five lawyers quit after he reportedly told them to continue his bogus claims about election fraud. He's just hired two new lawyers. We'll tell you who they are. We have more on all of that ahead.

But, first, the latest on the huge nor'easter that is hitting the east coast right now. CNN's Polo Sandoval is live near New York's Central Park. What's the situation there, Polo?

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, just us and a few brave early morning dog walkers and runners. That's the good thing, because officials here have been recommending people simply stay home. You have states of emergency in place here in New York and neighboring New Jersey. Authorities saw this coming, so they've been preparing even before the first snowflakes fell yesterday evening by pre-salting some of those streets, because they want to keep those clear.

The main point they're stressing right now is that all non-essential travel is banned at this point. Basically, if you're not an essential worker trying to get to work this morning, simply stay home so those streets and sidewalks can be cleared out so that those folks trying to get to work can actually do so.

Remember, this is a multiphase prolonged event. So this is basically just the warm-up act. A lot of officials here and, of course, meteorologists expecting that the winds are going to be -- are going to begin to kick up. And then, of course, those roads will become fairly hard to navigate. So that's the big concern right now.

I can tell you, there will be some disappointment this morning for some of those folks who may have secured vaccination appointments at about five locations in and around New York City. Mother Nature saying, that's not going to happen. So what basically happened is they've closed those, at least scheduled those for a later date, mainly later this week. Those folks will be getting texts or emails notifying them, because, at this point, what authorities want to see is people simply stay home. Guys?

CAMEROTA: If this is the warm-up act, I would hate to see the finale. Polo, thank you very much. We'll check back with you through the program.

As Polo said, the worst of this powerful winter storm is still to come. CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers is tracking it all for us. Where is it now?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, part one is over New York City and also into Connecticut and the like. But the big storm, the nor'easter hasn't yet developed. We talk about this in hurricane season all the time, how the warm water is going to fuel the hurricane. Well, it's not hot, but it's warmer than the land, and that's the Gulf Stream. That's the Gulf Stream water off the east coast of the United States. That is going to fuel this fire. That is going to take the moisture from the ocean, like lake-effect, but ocean effect, and throw it back on land. There will be spots 24 inches.

Now, it's going to widely vary, all the way from the Long Island area, maybe three to three inches with a lot of sleet, then back out toward Morristown, New City, especially in the hills, that could easily be two feet or more. Extreme weather consequences here. Already more than a thousand flights canceled. Almost 90 percent of the flights canceled in and out of New York City.

Now, that's going to have a ripple effect. Even if you're sitting in MiamI waiting for a plane that was supposed to come out of New York, it may not be leaving at all. Here is 8:00. It's snowing. Here is the problem. Here is 3:00. Here is 6:00. Here is 8:00. Here is 9:00. Here is tomorrow. It is still snowing. This is going to be a long, long storm, where the storm keeps going, hours and hours of snowfall.

I think we're happy that at least it's snowing now. And people will say, oh, it's really coming, and we'll stay home, because it wasn't snowing yet, and we get all of this overnight tonight and into this afternoon, that's when people could actually get stuck. Stay where you are, plan on being there for a while.

John, I don't know where you'll be this afternoon, but you have to be stuck in your CNN bunker, maybe the vending machines are still working.

BERMAN: Snow bunker, nonperishable foods, that's the key, Chad Myers. What we're going through now, the amuse-bouche, the main course for the storm still to come. Thank you so much, keep us posted.

So, developing this morning, what could be the biggest test yet of President Joe Biden's push for bipartisanship.

[07:05:04]

Ten Republicans senators heading to the White House today, they are offering a $600 billion counterproposal to the president's $1.9 trillion relief plan.

Joining us now is CNN Political Analyst Seung Min Kim. She's a White House Reporter for The Washington Post.

Seung Min, what are the big differences between these two plans and I think even more importantly, where we are this morning, what chance does this have to be a jumping off point to negotiations?

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: So, on the differences, there are many. You just pointed out, the Republican counterproposal is about $6 billion. Remember the Biden plan is $1.9 trillion. That is less than a third of what the president and Democrats have called for. So that is a big gulf there that may be impossible to bridge.

You're also looking at significant differences in how the two sides approach unemployment insurance. So President Biden's plan goes $400 a week through September for those who are jobless right now. The Republican plan goes about $300 a week for -- through June. And those stimulus checks, the Biden plan is $14,000. The Republican plan -- or $1,400. The Republican plan is $1,000. So there is a lot of differences there.

And the second question, what are the chances of the two sides being able to reach a deal this afternoon or in the coming days? Look at Press Secretary Jen Psaki's statement from yesterday. While she announced the meeting this afternoon with the Republican senators and Joe Biden, she also said the president still believes we need to go big.

So there doesn't seem to be a lot of compromise ground here. And we'll see just in a few short hours just how likely a deal is.

CAMEROTA: But, Seung Min, let's talk about that. I mean, President Biden has said that he wants to compromise with Republicans. They have now presented, as you point out, this offer that's a third of what he wants. What is he willing to give on? Do we know?

KIM: So there is one part that he's willing to give on in terms of targeting those stimulus checks to the ones -- to people and household who is most need them. Republicans and some Democrats have argued this has been a bipartisan concern that people who are doing well off in the pandemic, those who have retained their jobs, don't necessarily need the extra checks from the government. And the Republicans have laid out a plan that have targets it a lot more. It caps it at $100,000 per household. If your household isn't making that, that is the cutoff for the checks. The White House the president himself has indicated that is something where they're willing to negotiate.

But on almost everything else, whether it's the top line, whether it's the duration of unemployment benefits, whether it is a state and local aid, which Republicans don't want, there hasn't been a lot of compromise, wiggle room between the two sides.

BERMAN: It is worth noting that those ten Republican senator who signed on, they would need to get every single one of those ten in order to vote with the Democrats to pass this in a bipartisan way. And it's not at all clear that all ten of those senators would go a single dollar higher than the $600 billion. This may be an end point for some of those Republican senators, not a starting point.

Just one thing I want to bring up, Seung Min, the president is having these ten Republican senators over to the White House, which is significant and symbolic act before he's had a group of Democratic senators or even Democratic leadership, yes?

KIM: It's actually really interesting, because we're so used to that image of the president with perhaps the four congressional leaders, particularly at the start of a big negotiation, sitting down in the Oval Office. So it is a big symbolic move and a gesture that President Biden is making here to those ten Republican senators.

And we saw over the last several days that the administration has some shoring up support to do among its own members. You saw Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, such a critical vote in any anything that Joe Biden is going to want to do, get a little bit angry and a little bit testy over Vice President Kamala Harris' doing an interview in West Virginia over the weekend to try to pressure him on the administration's priorities.

So the fact that the president is making Republican senators his number one priority, his number one kind of date among members of Congress is a big deal. But, again, what is the substance at the end of the day? Is there a deal? That's the big question right now.

BERMAN: Seung Min Kim, thank you very much for being with us this morning. I appreciate it.

Breaking overnight, chaos in the former president's defense team in these impeachment trial for inciting the Capitol insurrection. We're told his five-lawyer defense team split after the president pushed that his defense be about the ridiculous lie on the outcome of the election. Two new lawyers have signed on.

Joining me now is CNN Legal Analyst Ben Ginsberg. He is a renowned Republican election lawyer. Counselor, thank you very much for being with us.

First, on the argument being made here, the fact that the president still wants his defense to be about the lie on the outcome of the election, how do you think that presentation would land with Republican senators?

[07:10:07]

BEN GINSBERG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: With a big thud, John. Republican senators have gone on record in their belief that the proceeding itself is unconstitutional because he is a former president. That is a sort of bloodless process argument. For the president to now and try and argue that the election was fraudulent, something for which he went about 0 for 60 in the courts trying to prove, for which there is no evidence, is not going to be well-received by the senators.

If President Trump tried -- if former President Trump tries to say that the whole system is rigged and fraudulent, he's appealing to a jury who won their own elections under that system.

BERMAN: It seems to me that he couldn't come up with a worse defense for senators who are looking for a way out. But that isn't the way out, I think, that many of these Republican senators are looking for, Ben.

GINSBERG: Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And what I would think his new lawyers will tell him, to put it into Trumpian language, is that you've been given a gimme putt here. If you decide to actually hit the ball instead of take the gimme putt, you're likely to miss and add three strokes to your game. So take the deal.

BERMAN: Would any real lawyer -- and I would use that term loosely -- would any real lawyer make the case that the president is making before the U.S. Senate?

GINSBERG: Well, I hesitate to speak on behalf of the entire profession, John, but we are in sort of an interesting situation where the president is having trouble finding lawyers. In fact, he is being rejected by lawyers who have a questionable reputation for morals and ethics, yet he is being embraced by the highest leadership of the Republican Party. So that's an interesting dichotomy that falls into this.

BERMAN: The two new attorneys are David Schoen, who is someone who represented Roger Stone in his appeal case, and also, apparently, was contracted to work for Jeffrey Epstein before his deaths. And Bruce Castor is a former Montgomery County district attorney, someone who was an acting attorney general in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and who happened to be the prosecutor who declined prosecuting Bill Cosby back in 2005.

You say both of these attorneys, though they have vast legal experience, are strangers in a strange land now. What do you mean?

GINSBERG: They're strangers in a strange land, because this is a trial that will be unlike any other they have been in. It's called a trial. But a Senate impeachment proceeding has different rules of evidence that what they're used to, of course, the jury, who they have to convince is not 6 or 12 individuals who they helped to pick through the jury selection process, it's 100 senators, each of whom is known to be an independent spirit, and so the whole dynamic is different.

Plus, this is, if they stick to their best case, a constitutional law argument, which is not the sort of litigation that they're used to doing.

BERMAN: They have a day at this point to respond to the articles of impeachment. I mean, they're being put into a tough time crunch too.

GINSBERG: Yes, they really are. they're going to have to perform very quickly. The answer is -- does not have to be a complicated legal argument. The brief that's due a week from today is a more complicated, nuanced, constitutionally-based argument.

It's worth noting that even in the president's first impeachment trial, he had a much larger, more experienced team of not only lawyers but also communications professionals, which is important in the impeachment process.

BERMAN: So, Patrick Leahy, the president pro tempore of the Senate, a senior senator from Vermont, will preside over the Senate trial. What leeway does he have in allowing certain arguments to be made, if the defense of the president is that the election was all a fraud? I mean, how much leeway does he have in even allowing that?

GINSBERG: Well, the rules are that he makes the decisions on relevancy and materiality arguments, in other words, what evidence can come in and not. But the big difference in the Senate impeachment trial is that any senator can ask for a vote of the full Senate on whether Senator Leahy was correct in his ruling. And Senator Leahy has the power to not make a ruling and to throw the decision to all 100 senators.

BERMAN: Finally, the House impeachment managers, what do you think they have in terms of a case? How will they present it?

GINSBERG: I think that -- you know, I suspect that they've learned from the first impeachment trial that really ended up just emboldening Donald Trump.

[07:15:05]

And my guess is this is going to be a trial that's going to speak to the raw emotions of the moment. After all, they will be showing scenes of the Capitol of the United States, where they are sitting, being ransacked by a mob and the president's words before that, that they charged, instigated that rally.

And so I think it is a visual, emotional argument with witnesses who probably suffered at the hands of the mob, which would make it all the more tone deaf for the president to start talking about voter fraud.

BERMAN: Ben Ginsberg, Counselor, thank you very much for helping us understand what we're seeing. We really appreciate it.

So a new effort from one prominent Republican congressman to reclaim the party and resist the former president, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): But in recent years, we've forgotten our principles. The party that always spoke of a brighter tomorrow, it no longer does.

[07:20:00]

It talks about a dark future instead. Hope has given way to fear, outrage, has replaced opportunity, and worst of all, our deep convictions are ignored. They've been replaced by poisonous conspiracies and lies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger launching a new political action committee, he says, to rebuild the Republican Party and resist its embrace of Donald Trump.

Joining us now to talk about this is CNN Political Analyst David Gregory. David, great to see you.

Is it fair to say that there is this battle royal underway right now in the Republican Party for the soul of the party between the Adam Kinzinger side, group, and the Marjorie Taylor Greene?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, somewhere in the middle. I mean, I think Marjorie Taylor Greene represents a fringe, dangerous element that exceeds anything that we've seen. And the fact that she's being tolerated, that she's got a place on a committee, on the Education Committee, is, frankly, disgusting. And Kevin McCarthy has a got a job in the house this week when he meets with her to figure out what he is going to do if he wants to be taken at all seriously.

But I do think those are the poles. I mean, I think there's a traditional Republican Party, conservative, strong on defense, fiscal restraint, limiting scope and size of government, and this more populous wing that is represented by Trump, populous, conspiratorial and then more sequential areas too around trade, protecting American jobs, America's place in the world, all of those things that he stood for that were obscured by corruption, incompetence, and other parts of him.

But, yes, that's the battle right now. And that's why congressional leaders are so important, because somebody like McCarthy, of California, doesn't really want to stand up to Trump yet, even with him fading away or out of the picture.

BERMAN: But I think the real question is how fringe is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Because this weekend, she's bragging about conversations that she's having with a person who really is still the leader of the Republican Party, and that's the former president of the United States. This is what Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote. She goes , I had a great call -- all caps -- great call with my all-time favorite president. I'm so grateful for his support and more importantly the people of this country who are 100 percent loyal to him because he is 100 percent loyal to the people in America first.

I mean, look, if president -- I mean, I'm not sure that President Trump, the former president is the fringe of the Republican Party. Everything we've seen is that he's the heart and soul right now of the larger Republican Party, which is why Kevin McCarthy is afraid to stand up to him.

GREGORY: Yes. I guess I have a slightly different view, John. I don't think we know, right? I mean, he lost re-election. He couldn't get a second term. His party kind of not necessarily espousing all of his views, but taking on the left, taking on the Democratic Party, made gains in the House and the Senate. So I don't know out of power how much authority he actually has. That's what we're taking such a close look at each day.

So, yes, I agree with you that Kevin McCarthy thinks that Trump still holds a lot of cards in the party, but we just don't know yet how much authority is there. I don't think that Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks to what the future of the Republican Party is. I don't think that's the case. But I don't think we know this division who truly has the upper hand.

Right now, Trump still has enough of a platform, he's still getting enough attention and there's still enough Republicans who were polled to say, yes, he should run for re-election. But the idea that people want to run on Trumpism itself seems to me to be fading away. If you look at where Republicans are, who are in office, besides a Marjorie Taylor Greene, how they're taking on Biden and so forth, I don't think it has all the hallmarks of Trump at the moment.

CAMEROTA: I want to say something else about Marjorie Taylor Greene. Over the weekend, she said that she will never back down, I'm quoting her, she will never apologize, okay? So this is exactly who she is. For some reason, she scrubbed her social media posts after the KFile of CNN found the disgusting things that she said. So I don't know if she's so loud and proud, why she feels the need to scrub her social media posts.

But the point is she is unapologetic for liking the idea of executing Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. She's unapologetic for harassing a teenage Parkland School shooting survivor, for claiming that Sandy Hook didn't happen. I don't understand why it's so hard for Kevin McCarthy. Why is this a tough one?

GREGORY: Yes, I'm with you. I don't have any more insight than you just provided. There is no excuse for not seeking to limit her role, if not, removing her. I don't see how this is someone who is an elected representative of the people in an institution like the House of Representatives, if it wants to be taken seriously.

[07:25:03] So we're going to have to watch and see what happens over the next few days. I think her actions, her words speak for themselves and do real damage to the party, because it does raise the question of how much sway these kinds of views have in the party.

And whether they have an ability, if there's anyone who is a true leader of a party, who has an ability to stand up to them. And perhaps we'll find out over the course of this week.

CAMEROTA: David Gregory, thank you very much for the insights, as always.

The U.S. Capitol police officer killed in the insurrection will lie in honor in the Capitol rotunda. But details are still slim about his death and the investigation into finding his murderers. So we have the very latest for you, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The body of the U.S. Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick, who died after the January 6th insurrection, will lie in honor at the Capitol rotunda tomorrow, the same rotunda that the murderous mob stormed through.

[07:30:01]

CNN's Josh Campbell is live in Washington with more. What have you learned, Josh?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Alisyn. This honor that's typically reserved for American leaders.