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New Day

Soon, Former President Trump's Historic Second Impeachment Trial Begins; Biden Keeps Focus on Pandemic Relief Package during Impeachment Trial; Fauci Says, No CDC Guidelines Yet on What You Can Do after Fully Vaccinated. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired February 09, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Again this time.

[07:00:01]

And I'll also say Rob Gronkowski, he is a Disney World ride. I mean, Rob Gronkowski is like Space Mountain. It can be a separate nickname for him for a ton of reasons.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: You feel great, Dog?

BERMAN: Yes, he's awesome. Anyway, Andy, thank you very much.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: First time Alisyn said, Dog, on New Day.

BERMAN: New Day continues right now.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

And history before our eyes, a moment of reckoning for one of the darkest moments in the American story, the invasion of the U.S. Capitol. In a few hours, the former president on trial for his role in the events that took place.

Today, the Senate will hear arguments on the former president's widely discredited claim that he cannot be tried at all. The meat of the case begins tomorrow. House managers will argue it was the former president's own words and actions that incited the deadly insurrection, telling his supporters to fight upwards of 20 times at the rally.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Fight, fight, fight. Fighting, fighting the fight, fighting. I would fight that fight. So I would fight, they would fight, I'd fight, they'd fight, fight. Fighting, we fight. We fight like hell. Fight like hell.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: There you go. Sources tell CNN that Donald Trump is convinced he will be acquitted and is more focused on retribution against the Republicans who voted against him. One of those, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, has a new op-ed in The Washington Post calling on his Senate colleagues to convict Trump. Kinzinger writes that convicting Donald Trump is, quote, necessary to save America.

As for President Biden, he has largely steered clear of the impeachment drama, choosing to focus on his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan instead.

BERMAN: All right. Joining us now, CNN Political Analyst and New York Times Washington Correspondent Maggie Haberman and CNN Legal Analyst and Republican Election Lawyer Ben Ginsberg.

And, Maggie, I know you have new reporting on the former president what he plans to do today, how he sees this. But, first, just take a step back because here we are, it was a month ago that the U.S. Capitol was invaded, and today a former president of the United States, never before has the president been impeached and tried twice, a former president of the United States on trial today. What do you think this means for the American story?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think it's too soon to say what it means, John, because I think it's going to depend among other things, on whether he is acquitted, which certainly his people and most Republicans in the Senate expect that he will be. But I do think that it is going to set a marker in terms of how frequently impeachment trials are used. I can see reverse scenario, where people's conduct gets excused because people are afraid of saying, well, we used impeachment too many times.

So I think it's way too soon to say. I think if we asked ourselves a year ago would President Trump be impeached a second time before he left office, the answer probably would have been no. So I think we're waiting to see how this plays out.

In terms of how the president is interpreting it, look, this is going to be very unlike last time. He had the apparatus of the White House. He had the RNC. He had his campaign. I do expect the RNC will do some rapid response. I do expect that you're going to see a team of people led by the president's adviser, Jason Miller, and some other, trying former president -- excuse me, trying to push back on whatever we're seeing at this trial.

I don't expect we're going to hear lots of reports about where the former president was. It's not like he's going to put this up at the big T.V. He's at Mar-a-Lago. He is likely is to watch this either in the office that they set up for him or in his residence there.

CAMEROTA: Ben, I'm curious what you will be watching for on this historic day and this historic coming week. And also in terms of the evidence, we've heard that President Trump's lawyers will argue that those 20 times that he said fight, he was speaking figuratively. When the people around him said, trial by combat, like Rudy Giuliani did and all that stuff, you know, that was just overblown rhetoric. But then, I mean, there's also this moment that I want to play where he simulated what he meant by fight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

Used to be that they argue with me, I would fight. So I fight that fight. I fight that fight. Pump up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: He is punching the air, okay?

[07:05:01]

He's punching -- I fight, they fight, bump, bump. I mean, what do you think of their argument that he didn't mean any of that?

BEN GINSBERG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think they've got some general problems with the argument because you see the tone that the president sets and then you see the results of people breaking into the Capitol. Now, I'm not sure that that's enough to convince enough Republican senators to convict him, but it's going to make compelling case if the House Democratic managers actually manage to do it right.

And just as a legal matter in the trial itself, relying on the First Amendment arguments is a bit misplaced. First Amendment is the defense to a criminal action. This is not a criminal action. This is an impeachment. And a president of the United States can say what he wants, but if the end result is an armed insurrection of a Capitol, that's violating his oath of office. And that's independent from the criminal case that they're trying, criminal defense that they're trying to use.

BERMAN: Yes. The clearest example of what Ben is saying and I think it's important is that a president of the United States could go out and say I'm a Nazi, right? And that would be percepted, First Amendment protected free speech. But, absolutely, I don't think there's anyone in the world who wouldn't think that a president could be impeached for declaring loyalty to the Nazi party and pursuing those avenues.

There's an important thing that the former president's defense lawyers brought up and I want both of your takes on it, because both of you have a unique, important perspective here.

Maggie, the former president's attorneys in this brief wrote that the president was not delighted, was not enjoying what he saw as he was watching, glued to the television, watching the invasion of the U.S. Capitol. What's your reporting on this?

HABERMAN: My reporting is that he was enjoying it, CNN's reporting, John. And I think that they are making this argument and it's one of the more brazen things that they say in this briefing, in this brief that they filed. I think they did it because they don't expect witnesses are going to be called.

This is a notable thing. This is not something that is just existing in the ether and who can say whether it's true or not. If they called witnesses, I think that they could get a much better sense not just how the former president was perceiving those hours in front of the television when his phone was ringing with people and when advisers were around him saying, we have to do something more. I think that you would have people who could talk about what was or wasn't done during that period of time.

So, they're saying something that just goes against all our reporting and, frankly, John, cuts against everything that people know about this former president. He likes when people fight for him. And the certification of the vote was delayed. Those are two things that he was interested in seeing. It is hard to imagine that it is credible when they claim that, no, that's actually not true, everything else you heard.

BERMAN: And, Ben, you think it was a mistake. You think these lawyers walked into it by arguing that?

GINSBERG: Yes. I think they opened the door to basically factual testimony about the president and their choice of words is sort of strange. I mean, just look at the timeline they have now opened the door to examine. The timelines say that the rioters broke into the Capitol shortly after 2:00 P.M. 2:24 was when Donald Trump sent out that tweet about Mike Pence, certainly inflamed the situation. And it wasn't until 4:00 that he did his other, the election was stolen but you all should go home.

So the question is who was with him? Who could testify what he was thinking and what he was saying at 2:24 when he sent the Mike Pence tweet? That's now been opened up by his lawyers. The whole sequence of the next two hours about what he was doing and saying before he sent out that tweet, did any of his advisers try and tell him that he needed to say something like that sooner? Why didn't he?

And there were a lot of people who were around in the White House during that period. They're now all subject to filling in those blanks.

CAMEROTA: But, Maggie, do we have any reporting that they will be called, those people who were around him during those three hours?

HABERMAN: As of now no, Alisyn. There is no expectation there is going to be witnesses. This is something that some have been fairly critical of Democrats about that they are not moving harder to do it. And I think it's because both Democrats and Republicans want to have this trial wrapped up fairly quickly for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that President Biden wants to move forward with a legislative agenda.

But, again, I think this is something -- a critique we saw with the first impeachment, which was you're shaving off the edges and if something is an impeachable offense, then it's probably worth doing it the right way. BERMAN: Ben, I want to read you if I can, if we can put it up on the screen because I don't have it in front of me, what Adam Kinzinger, one of the ten House Republicans to vote for impeachment wrote overnight.

[07:10:01]

He is making the case to the Republican senators who will sit there. He says, this isn't a waste of time. It's a matter of accountability. If the GOP doesn't take a stand, the chaos of the past few months and the past four years could quickly return. The future of our party and our country depends on confronting what happened.

I think this is interesting, Ben, and I'm asking you this more as a Republican than as a lawyer per se is the framing here from Adam Kinzinger. He says, the party is at a junction here. The party is at a junction here. The party is at a pivot point. What you do will determine to an extent the future of our party. It's a moment of reckoning. How do you see it?

GINSBERG: I think he's right about that. Look what Donald Trump's sort of departure gift to the Republican Party was, a bunch of really difficult issues to deal with both in the House and the Senate. I mean, both instances the Republican Party, once a party of great ideas, has reverted to sort of off kilter process.

It is true that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Liz Cheney in what they did in the House. It was a reversion to process. Democrats shouldn't have the ability to tell us who is on committees. It's a process defense, not a great idea.

And in the Senate, the senators who want to protect Donald Trump reverting to this really not well taken argument about you can't impeach a former president, those are process arguments. What Adam Kinzinger is saying, which I think is right, is that you have to stand for something as a political party. You have to have great ideas. And Donald Trump has got the party back sort of cowering in the process cellar.

BERMAN: All right. Ben Ginsberg, thank you very much for your perspective. We're going to lean on you over the next few days. Maggie, don't go far. We have much more on the impeachment trial ahead, including the Georgia secretary of state now investigating the former president's call to find more votes to overturn the election.

Plus, President Joe Biden, what is he doing? What is his current view of the trial? We have new reporting on that, plus, what he sees as more important right now, pushing forward with pandemic relief.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

CAMEROTA: The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump is getting under way this afternoon. The trial will take place at the U.S. Capitol, which, of course, was the scene of the deadly insurrection, the Democrats say former President Trump incited.

Maggie Haberman is back with us. Also joining us now is CNN Political Director David Chalian.

That is pretty profound, I think, David, that the trial is happening at the scene of the crime. You know, in criminal trials, that doesn't happen. Jurors may visit the scene of the crime but you're not there steeped in the only month-old memories of the trauma.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: And think about the contrast to the impeachment a year ago about a phone call that very few people had access to and sort of backroom dealing in Ukraine. No, no, no. This is taking place where the insurrection occurred, where the 100 jurors were witness to it because it was in their place of work. And they were there at the time. And the House managers presenting the case also were there at the time doing their jobs. And now they're going to gather.

And we're going to think about all those images of the insurrectionists sort of overtaking the Senate chambers, sitting up there where Patrick Leahy will be sitting, presiding over the trial and standing around Ted Cruz's desk. All those images while we're going to see a trial over this incident, you know, on the president's impeachment.

BERMAN: And, David, I'm reminded of Adam Kinzinger's words overnight, he says this is not a waste of time. And in some ways, he's speaking to the entire Republican Party, he's speaking specifically to Republican senators, but he's also speaking, I think, to the American people about why this is an important moment. What do you think?

CHALIAN: So I would just -- Adam Kinzinger is right and it's odd to hear a Republican sort of making the arguments that you heard Democrats making initially in this impeachment matter, but I also think back to Liz Cheney's comments over the weekend, which is that you can't ensure that this doesn't happen again if you just sweep it turned rug, if you just ignore it and pretend it didn't happen.

So while we all may understand that the likelihood of a conviction is not going to happen here in all likelihood, I think the exercise of having to go through this is an important one for our democracy to remind our citizenry that presidents should not be able to behave this way.

CAMEROTA: You know, Maggie, we heard Senator Lankford, James Lankford, say that he thinks everybody's mind is already made up, even before they revisit the evidence or see it again. And then you hear some pundits say, well, unless something really dramatic happens, everybody's mind is pretty made up. It's like I thought that January 6th insurrection was the dramatic part and the idea that we're only a month away from that but we still need something more dramatic to happen to change minds.

And that gets back to what you were saying about witnesses. That's one way that there could be a smoking gun, right, one way that something more dramatic could happen as if somebody from the president's team came in and said, yes, I heard him, he was delighted, or I heard him, he seemed to be enjoying it. He had three hours to call off the mob. He didn't do it.

So it is interesting that Democrats aren't -- were thinking they're not going to use that option.

HABERMAN: It is. And, look, Alisyn, I think something that you raised earlier in this segment is important, which is that this is taking place at the scene of the crime. I think that these videos the Democrats are going to show are going to be very jarring.

We know that the former president's team is planning on showing videos of their own or at least they said they're planning on it of Democrats making people uncomfortable or calling for protests or getting in people's faces.

[07:20:04]

It's just not going to be the same thing as seeing people who are either armed or holding things that could be used as weapons roaming through the halls of the Capitol. And I think that that's going to be a powerful thing. I don't know that it's going to be enough to change anyone's minds.

It's worth remembering, we went into the last impeachment trial with most Republicans saying this is already a predetermined outcome. But I do think David is right, that the reason that this is done is to remind people this isn't just another event. This isn't an ordinary occurrence. What we saw was incredibly unusual and awful.

BERMAN: Absolutely awful, horrifying. And we have some of the video up now. It's horrifying every time you see it.

And, David, there are so many things, I think, for all of us to watch for in the next few days. Yes, it's history. It is stunning just to see the history of it all, but very specific political things to watch. Today, they are going to hear arguments about what I think is a widely discredited question about whether or not the Constitution even allows this. I and the preponderance of scholarship think that it does, but there's a vote on this today.

And that will tell us a lot. It will tell us a lot if the numbers of Republicans who said that they didn't want to even hear this a week ago has changed. And I think it's possible the numbers won't be exactly the same today.

CHALIAN: It's possible. It will be fascinating to see which Republicans -- remember, when Rand Paul brought this up, you're referring to a vote he brought up a couple weeks ago, 45 Republicans said this is not even constitutional to hold this trial.

Now, since then, we have seen more and more even conservative scholarship come out and say there is a constitutional rationale for why this trial should actually exist and take place even though President Trump is no longer in office. I don't know, John, if we're going to see different numbers and I certainly don't belief you can equate the final vote on conviction to be the same as voting that it is constitutional. But it will give us a realm of Republican senators to be watching throughout the trial to be listening more keenly on their questioning of the managers, the president's defense team when we get to that point in the trial because it gives us the universe of folks who are open to the notion that Donald Trump should actually be sitting in this moment of accountability.

CAMEROTA: Maggie, President Biden seems to be staying out of the fray, trying to stay, you know, pretty laser focused on his own agenda and the relief package. But he's asked about it all the time. And, philosophically, it's hard to know if he wishes this would just go away.

HABERMAN: It is. Look, I don't think this is what he would prefer to be dealing with but I do think that President Biden and his team recognize what took place at the Capitol was unprecedented and, therefore, calls for unprecedented response. I do think that President Biden, who not only has a legislative agenda he would like to turn to but has cabinet appointees who he wants to have confirmed.

I think that he would rather focus on that. I think he has been trying to preserve whatever is left of his pitch for bipartisanship. I don't think he wants to squander it on impeachment, which I think his folks think it is going to be seen as partisan, even though it should not be that kind of a process.

I do think that he will keep -- he's been projecting this sort of above it all, I'm not paying attention, I'm really not going to watch. I certainly don't think he is going to do what Donald Trump did, which was devour much of the coverage.

But this is not a team that is immune to television coverage or news coverage. I'm sure they'll be keeping track of what is going on. I do think they're going to try to keep themselves out of it as much as possible.

CAMEROTA: David, the Harwood (INAUDIBLE), and I'm talking about John Harwood, is that, ironically, this presents something of an opportunity for the Biden White House. It provides a week or so where they can work. They can get to work on the relief package behind the scenes and show the beginning of results here, but they do have their work cut out for them. Completely separate from impeachment between now and March 14th, getting this bill passed. It won't be easy and it's a very big deal and big politically for them.

CHALIAN: Yes. And one thing they are losing out on is time. Time just with the president out there with the American people making the sale on a daily basis on this package because they know impeachment is going to consume most of the oxygen.

Here is where the policy and political goals of President Biden are aligned right now, which is getting this aid package through as quickly as possible out to the American people, hopefully improving vaccine distribution, getting economic relief where they need it and showing a quick victory out of the gate as president. All of that aligns as to they need to show some progress quickly and they know that.

And so, having a slight delay in that clock, it's not a desired goal. I don't think this is what the Biden presidency is going to be remembered for, is that there was this two-week impeachment trial and it may have slowed their ability to sell this, but I do think it is a bump in the road that they need to sort of meander around.

[07:25:04]

CAMEROTA: Okay. David, Maggie, thank you both very much.

HABERMAN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: So pharmacies will get the first coronavirus vaccines shipped directly to them later this week. How soon will Americans be able to get vaccinated through the pharmacies? We'll speak with one of the top White House coronavirus advisers, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: There are no CDC guidelines yet about what you do when you get a group of people all of which have been doubly vaccinated.

By existing guidelines, you still need to wear a mask, you still have to social distance. But I believe that's going to change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Dr. Anthony Fauci weighing in on what people who are fully vaccinated can do once their friends and family have also been vaccinated.

As of this morning, 71 percent of vaccine doses available in the U.S. have been administered.

[07:30:00]

Nearly 10 percent of Americans have received their first shot but just under 3 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated.

Joining us now is Andy Slavitt.