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New Day

Historic Second Impeachment Trial against Trump Begins Tomorrow; Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) Says, GOP Should Not Be Embracing Trump; Biden Team Says It Sees First Signs of Improvement in Pandemic Fight. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired February 08, 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]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

And some guy named Tom Brady has apparently done something again. He's won his seventh Super Bowl title, John, I'm told. It's his first with Tampa Bay. I know you didn't know that. He looks happy, and so do you this morning.

I'm supposed to read, he's the greatest quarterback of all time. Did you write this?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY (voice over): I know. My point, he was already the greatest quarterback of all time, like three Super Bowls ago. It's redundant. It's just a waste of alerts to have to say he's the greatest quarterback.

CAMEROTA: It's redonculous. He won the MVP --

BERMAN: Regronkulous for Patriots fans.

CAMEROTA: All right. John will be in a good mood all show. Enjoy that.

But, first, the impeachment trial of former President Trump, it begins tomorrow, and some details are starting to leak out. We have new reporting this morning on how long this trial could last and whether witnesses will be called.

Democrats are preparing to use video, and they have a lot of it, to illustrate how the former president's words, his actions, his tweets, his friends' words, incited the Capitol riot on January 6th.

Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney taking it a step further suggesting that the president might actually have criminal liability, separate from the impeachment trial. She's pointing to a tweet about former Vice President Mike Pence that may serve as evidence of a premeditated effort to provoke violence.

BERMAN: A critical week for President Biden's $1.9 trillion relief package. Democrats expected to unveil legislation today to increase child tax credits.

Now, this is a very big proposal that could have an enormous impact on families and child poverty. One, study says it could cut child poverty in half but it's not cheap.

Developing this morning, South Africa has now halted its AstraZeneca vaccine rollout after researchers found it offered minimal, if any, protection for moderate or light cases against that variant.

CAMEROTA: Joining us now to talk about the impeachment trial, we have CNN Political Analyst David Gregory and CNN Legal and National Security Analyst Asha Rangappa, she's former FBI special agent. Great to see you both of you.

Some of the information this morning suggests that the trial will be roughly a week long, so between a week and two weeks. The last impeachment trial for President Trump was three weeks. But both sides now, Asha, have reason to want to wrap this up quickly. The Democrats want to get on to the business, certainly, of a relief package. The Republicans want this to go away, as we know.

Now, in terms of the mountain of evidence, videotape evidence, Asha, that the House impeachment managers will have at their fingertips, they also have all of these statements from the mob who, time and again, say the president sent them there. They were following his instructions. I mean, even before they got there, I'm just going to read two statements from two of the insurrectionists.

One says, I'm there -- this is on December 23rd, okay? So he plans to go. I'm there for the greatest celebration of all time, after Pence leads the Senate flip or I'm there if Trump tells us to storm the effing Capitol, I'm going to do that. Okay, that's one.

Here's another one, this from Jessica Marie Watkins. D.C., Trump wants all able-bodied patriots to come. If Trump activates the Insurrection Act, I would hate to miss it. She's sending out an email to all of her friends and associates that they need to immediately get to Washington, D.C.

So do you think that this -- they will be able to accomplish whatever they need to accomplish without witnesses and in the space of a week?

ASHA RAGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, Alisyn. I don't think either side really needs witnesses to accomplish their goals here. Unlike the first impeachment, as you just noted, there is ample video evidence that the House managers need to tell the story. And their star witness is Donald Trump.

And they have a number of words and speeches and tweets that they can lay out to make their case on how they participated in inciting this insurrection. And as you just noted, there are people that are responding and there is video of that, as well. And the fact that he has chosen not to testify in person only allows them to make this case without any rebuttal on his part.

[07:05:02] As far as the defense, remember that they are just keeping this completely abstract. While the House managers are going to try to lay out what happened, who did what, the defense is basically going to mount a so what defense. They are going to make this about a question of law, that the Senate doesn't have jurisdiction and that President Trump was protected by free speech.

So I don't think either of them really want or need witnesses to make the case that they need to make for their respective sides.

BERMAN: The defense and that argument you just made that it's somehow not constitutional, it took a blow over the weekend from a conservative lawyer, Chuck Cooper, who has worked with a number of these Republican senators. He represented John Bolton when Bolton was trying not to testify, and didn't, ultimately, in the last impeachment trial.

And this conservative lawyer wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. He basically says, it's ridiculous the idea that you can't hold a trial for a former impeached president. He says, a vote by the Senate to disqualify can be taken only after the officer has been removed and is by definition a former officer. Given that the Constitution permits the Senate to impose the penalty of permanent disqualification only for former office holders, it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former office holders.

Now, David, I genuinely, even though this is probably a sound legal argument, I don't suspect it will sway some Republican senator who is want to hide behind the veil of constitutionality, but it does have an impact maybe after the trial. It maybe does sort to color the arguments about the risks some of these senators might take.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No, I think that's true. And it is a blow to that argument. But I'm not sure the academic argument has much resonance around the country. Again, we know the conclusion here. The president, the former president's highly unlikely to be convicted. There just aren't the votes among Republicans. Everything that's being set up is kind of under the guise of a criminal proceeding, which this is not.

So, yes, there'll be some on the defense side who will make this constitutional argument, which is being debated and largely knocked down. Others will just try to muddy the water a little bit. You Know, Alisyn's right, there's all of this videotape, including videotape of President Trump saying, we're going to march down to the Capitol peacefully and patriotically, which is undercut by other things he's said. But that's what the defense will do, is try to put all of that into context and try to argue that violence was actually not in the president's mind.

In the end, we know the outcome of this. It's not conviction. A lot of people who, even, don't agree with what Trump did say, look, he's not part of the picture anymore. But that's the key question. I think what's really a trial here is the role that President Trump, former President Trump plays in the Republican Party. That's what Liz Cheney was speaking to in her appearance on Sunday so Searingly, and that is what opponents of the president have brought up, this specter of what role he's going to play in a Republican Party that's still in large sections of it look to him for direction.

BERMAN: There is one number that was interesting that Harry Enten brought up over the weekend. I just want to read this for one second, because it gets to the idea of what the public thinks about this. And more of the public may be against the former president than you think here. ABC News/Ipsos asked, should the former president be convicted and barred from holding future office? 56 percent support, 43 percent oppose.

Now, that might not seem like a giant number, but it's way more than Joe Biden won the election by. And harry points out that this means, definitionally, there are millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump that want to see him convicted and barred from ever holding office again, so millions and millions of voters, if you extrapolate this. So I just find that interesting.

CAMEROTA: I do too. I just want to play now the Liz Cheney sound bite that David was just referring to, because it gets to what other criminal accountability there could be. So listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): There will be a massive criminal investigation of everything that happened on January 6th and in the days before. People will want to know exactly what the president was doing. They will want to know, for example, whether the tweets that he sent out calling Vice President Pence a coward, while the attack was underway, whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence. There are a lot of questions that have been to answered.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: There are already 185 federal criminal cases against the insurrectionists. Do you think regardless of what happens in the Senate trial, that Donald Trump could be facing something like that?

RANGAPPA: I think there is a possibility depending on what kind of documentary evidence that they're able to piece together. What Liz Cheney is talking about is part of the larger effort that began several weeks before, of creating an expectation.

[07:10:07]

This is from the White House, from Trump and his allies, creating an expectation that Vice President Pence had the power. This was a false expectation that he had the power to not accept the certification of the Electoral College vote and overturn the election.

And so it was by raising that expectation, by creating this crescendo, that him not doing that then tipped the balance. And so this tweet has to be seen in that context. I think at the very least, though, Alisyn, this tweet, which Trump sent out, as the violence was unfolding, gets to his intent in terms of how is he responding, how is he responding when he realized that this violence had taken place. So I do expect that tweet, you know, his half-hearted attempt to tell these people to go home in the hours within it, will all be a part of it.

But I think whether there was a conspiracy will depend on what they can find in terms of the communications that were happening before all of this.

CAMEROTA: Asha, David, thank you both very much.

So, Liz Cheney is now the tenth Republican to be punished by her own state party for crossing Donald Trump. How critical will Trump's grip on state parties be as the GOP charts its path forward?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: Somebody who has provoked an attack on the United States Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral votes, which resulted in five people dying, who refused to stand up immediately when he was asked and stop the violence, that is a person who does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward.

That's going to require us to focus on substance and policy and issues going forward, but we should not be embracing the former president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, arguing that the Republican Party needs to move past the influence of the former president and his lies about the election. Cheney is now the tenth Republican to be censured by state Republican parties for either voting to impeach or failing to support the former president the way that these state parties would like.

Joining us now is former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman, who himself split with the former president and has been quite critical of the former president and his actions since the election. Thanks so much for being with us.

Look, you have been very vocal also about the supply side and the demand side the issue here. The supply side being the number of senior elected Republicans willing to stand up for the former president, the demand side being people inside the Republican Party, the rank and file, what they really want. And you have more and more of these state parties, Arizona and now Wyoming coming out and saying, we want the former president, it's the kind of things that he was saying that we like.

So where do you see the trend right now in terms of this, in terms of the demand side, what the Republican base wants?

FMR. REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN (R-VA): First of all, thanks for having me this morning. I always enjoy being on. And you guys were mentioning that poll this morning, where it's at 56 percent. We're leaning towards getting the president out of office through impeachment. There's another number in that poll that I wanted to bring up this morning, and that's 15. And that's the percentage that wanted to see Trump impeached or even tried at all on the Republican side.

And so a lot of people have been making hay out of that number of 56 to 43. But it's the 15 percent number that I really locked in on. Because in these districts, you're talking about, these are the people that are going to be picking that person or primary or nominating process, whether it's a convention or a primary. So that's the thing that bothers me, honestly.

And when you talk about what Liz Cheney is saying, she's just looking at the data. And I don't know if you guys saw the timeline on this, but at 2:24 is when President Trump sent that tweet. It was around 2:15 thereabouts, if I'm a minute off, I apologize, please fact check that, but I think between 2:10 and 2:15, when people had already breached the Senate chamber.

So that's why Liz Cheney is so concerned about this because when you're tweeting against Vice President Pence, when it's already been breached, saying that he needs courage or he needs to do the right thing while there's a siege on the Capitol, that's pretty damning. And that's what Liz Cheney is referring to and I think the people at the grassroots aren't looking at that. We still have 85 percent who think that the president shouldn't be tried in any type of impeachment proceeding.

So taking both of those together, you can see why Liz is angry, but you can see why I'm not that optimistic going into 2022.

CAMEROTA: And never mind the hours they couldn't find President Trump and he didn't call it off and that he let his Republicans and Democrats hide and cower for their lives. I mean, that story has yet to be told in its entirety, exactly what he was doing while they were calling him on his cell phone, begging for their lives and begging for him to send in backup.

But I wanted to ask you something else, Denver, about what Liz Cheney said about the Wyoming Republican Party. She said -- basically, she said, they're mistaken. They believe that Black Lives matter and Antifa were behind what happened at the Capitol. I mean, how wildly ill-informed is that? And why are they not critical thinkers? What's happened to the Republican Party in Wyoming if they believe that?

RIGGLEMAN: That's as -- and I don't even have anything more absurd as an analogy to say that this was not a false flag, right, Alisyn? I don't have anywhere else to go with my words, based on the data. And when I'm the chief strategist of the Network Contagion Research Institute, and we've noticed a minimum of seven white nationalist or white supremacist groups that were involved in the siege, when you look at specific members of QAnon who were involved, when you're looking at the Proud Boys, when you're looking at Oath Keepers, you can go down the line.wWhen you look at these individuals that were involved.

And I think you mentioned 185, right, cases that were in work right now of individuals that have no relation to Antifa or Black Lives Matter, what happens is, they are willingly obtuse or ignorant.

[07:20:03]

And it's almost like an airborne spread of stupid that's going on with some of these committees. And if you look at state to state to state, it's just getting worse and worse on the censure language, right?

And when you have -- or when you have some kind of resolution that says it's a false flag, like Oregon or what happened to Liz in Wyoming or what happened to Tom Rice or what's happening to Scott Upton, and you start going down the line with all of these legislatures, you have to sort of shake your head and wonder what people are doing and what they're thinking.

But here is what it is. It is actually about people who say they are liberty-minded, they're actually career-minded. And that's what you're seeing, is that politics trumps even people that could be in danger, and that's why I really am -- you know, it is anger and it's just massive frustration, I think, across people that are normal thinking and looking at the timelines and the data.

BERMAN: You're scribbling notes.

CAMEROTA: I was scribbling notes because I think when Denver Riggleman can't come up with a colorful analogy, you know we're in trouble.

BERMAN: This guy wrote a book on Bigfoot.

CAMEROTA: That's his super power.

BERMAN: Yes, his super power.

RIGGLEMAN: It is my super power. And the thing is that when I talk to you guys in the morning, I try to prepare. I read for about an hour. I look at the data we came up with the for the Network Contagion Research Institute. I look at the stuff that we're doing with the American Jewish Congress on anti-Semitism, and I have to scratch my head and wonder, have people lost their minds.

And that is why I'm so worried even about -- I think you're going to see a 25 to 30 percent baseline in 2022 that believes Stop the Steal regardless of the facts that we put out there. We're putting out a tsunami of the facts. But the tsunami of disinformation are crashing in the middle. And some people are just not willing to read the timelines, the data and the facts about the people involved.

And if you see white nationalists, white supremacists, QAnon, right, and people that are saying, hang Mike Pence, while tweeting in the middle of it that Mike Pence needs courage or that something else needs to be done, this is irrefutable. And that's why I get a little bit upset, especially any background in intelligence, when you just look at the facts.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I also find that a $2.7 billion lawsuit against disinformation has a way of clearing the mind, I think.

RIGGLEMAN: It does, doesn't it? That's getting hit in the face, right, with a sledge hammer.

CAMEROTA: And he's back. He's back, folks, with his colorful analogy. Denver Riggleman, great to see you, as always. Thank you very much.

RIGGLEMAN: Great to see you this morning.

BERMAN: All right. The United States the making up serious ground in the race to vaccinate Americans, but is it happening fast enough to keep the new variants from spreading? We have new reporting on how the Biden administration feels about things this morning, next.

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[07:25:00]

CAMEROTA: The Biden administration says it's seeing the first signs of improvement in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly 70 percent of available vaccine doses in the U.S. have now been administered. But officials say they are far from celebrating.

CNN's Sara Murray is live in Washington with more. What's the latest, Sara?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you're absolutely right, Alisyn. When I was talking to Biden administration officials, they say they finally are starting to see some of these metrics move in the right direction. Specifically, they're looking at the number of shots going into Americans' arms each day.

They're looking at those numbers you just showed, this gap that's finally starting to close between the doses that are delivered and the doses administered of the vaccine. But it's still very much, very much a somber mood in the White House.

One administration official told me, I don't think you see a lot of people dancing in the hallways. It's not that kind of moment.

And I think that really captures the fact that they know they're in this sort of precarious position. They know they have a number of daunting challenges ahead. And a big part of that is the fact that they can't control certain things that are going to coming their way.

And the variants are number one that list of concerns. They're watching these variants that have emerged and been identified in other countries and realizing they still need to figure out if we have adequate testing to capture these variants, if we adequate vaccines to fight back against these variants. That's one of the things out of their control. They also feel like they've been very aggressive in trying to ramp up the availability of vaccines and the production of vaccines. But they acknowledge and vaccine experts acknowledge that there are only sort of minimal things that they can do to really speed up the availability of vaccines to all Americans. And that's really what this race is, Alisyn. It's a race between the virus and these variants spreading across the U.S. and getting vaccines into Americans' arms.

So a little bit of optimism coming from the Biden White House, but definitely an acknowledgement that it's going to be a tough slog ahead.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Sara, thank you very much for all of that reporting.

So, despite the encouraging vaccine numbers, so many Americans are still facing big challenges to get themselves vaccinated. Our next guest's own family had a tough time, so she took it upon herself to build a better, simpler website for Massachusetts, all while on maternity leave.

Joining us now is Olivia Adams. Her new website is m- acovidvaccines.com. Olivia, great to see you.

Let me just get this story straight. You're home on maternity leave. You're a software expert, obviously, with Athena Health. You have a two-year-old and a newborn. You understand that senior citizens are having a hard time figuring out how and where to sign up for the vaccine, so you just thought, I guess I'll have to fix this myself. Is that how it worked?

OLIVIA ADAMS, DEVELOPED VACCINE APPOINTMENT WEBSITE: Pretty much, yes. So my mother-in-law is a dental hygienist and she qualified to be vaccinated at the end of Massachusetts' first phase and she had a little trouble figuring out where to go and how to get signed up. She was able to do it, but it took a little while. And she had the same problem when she was able to sign her father up, when he became eligible at the beginning of our phase two.

And so after hearing her complain multiple times, I thought I would take a look and I was surprised at how decentralized everything was and how there were a thousand different websites to go and I thought, how can I put my software skills to use to make this better in my free time?

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh. Can I pull up what you did, what I designed, because I clicked on it yesterday, it is so easy.

[07:30:06]

It is the simplest process in the world.