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Trump Rules Out Third Party as He Tightens Grip Over GOP; Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) Apologizes amid New Allegations of Sexual Harassment; The Big Lie Still Lives at CPAC. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired March 01, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: Who supported his impeachment and spreading more lies about his election loss.

[07:00:04]

Trump also pledging not to launch a third party and setting himself up for a possible White House run in 2024.

One prominent GOP senator is warning fellow Republicans against, quote, idolizing one person.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Major developments swirling around New York Governor Andrew Cuomo this morning, accused of inappropriate behavior. 25-year-old Charlotte Bennett, who worked for the governor, speaking out saying, quote, I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared.

So after several initial responses, Cuomo is now apologizing, to an extent saying, quote, I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as unwanted flirtation. He is now supporting an independent investigation and we're going to have more on that shortly.

We also have some new video just into CNN. This is of the newly authorized Johnson & Johnson vaccine being rolled out this morning in Kentucky. The first doses could be administered as soon as tomorrow.

CAMEROTA: We begin with former President Trump's grip on the GOP. Joining us now is Congressman Francis Rooney. Good morning, Congressman.

FMR. REP. FRANCIS ROONEY (R-FL): Thanks for having me on.

CAMEROTA: Thanks for being here. So, Donald Trump yesterday was unequivocal. He's not interested in a third party. I'll read to you what he said. Quote, we have the Republican Party. We are going to unite and be stronger than ever before. I am not started a new party. Was that a surprise?

ROONEY: No, it wasn't a surprise. It's sad, but it's not a surprise. It's very disturbing to hear so many speakers at CPAC or TPAC or whatever you want to call it expose the deep fissure in the Republican Party between the so-called establishment Republicans or as the president called them RINOs, and this populism dogma that has taken over.

I mean, this party has stood for a lot of very important principles for many, many years and brought a lot of good to our country. And now it's become a source of negativity, isolation and populism.

CAMEROTA: Here's what President Trump did tease as his future plans. He was quite coy, but here's the part where he talked about his vision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: We will take back the House, we will win the Senate and then a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House. And I wonder who that will be. I wonder who that will be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Congressman, since he lost the White House and the Senate in November, why does the crowd feel so much more hopeful about 2024? What would be different?

ROONEY: I don't think anything would be different. I think -- I don't know what they're -- what kind of coffee they're drinking, but they can't get there. They didn't get there this time and I don't think they can get there again without the so-called moderate establishment Republicans who didn't want Hillary Clinton and voted for him coming over to their side again. And that obviously didn't happen with this election.

CAMEROTA: Well, to that point, Senator Bill Cassidy agrees with you, Republican from Louisiana. I mean, he basically yesterday on the Sunday shows spelled out how he sees the math. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): If you're going to win in 2022 and 2024, you've got to speak to voters who didn't vote for us last time.

We had economic policies that were working. So if that's the case, and we can speak to those policies of those families, then we'll win. But if we idolize one person, we will lose. And that's kind of clear from the last election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Why is it only Senator Cassidy and you see it that way?

ROONEY: Well, I think Senator Romney is in that camp. He's been pretty clear in his views of the future of our country. I think it's highly unfortunate. I think it's highly unfortunate that 146 plus or minus Republicans would not vote to, you know, support the obvious election. I mean, what is going on here?

I mean, these are how authoritarian regimes start, when you have blind idolatry to one leader. And it's not right. If it were me, I would treat the ex-president like George Cannon and John Foster Dulles treated the Russians. I would isolate him, contain him and stop pandering to him.

CAMEROTA: How about Mitch McConnell last week, Senator Mitch McConnell, who after giving that very forceful post-impeachment speech about his dereliction of duty and how he was responsible for stoking the crowd when asked, but if he's the nominee, would you support him? He said, oh, absolutely?

ROONEY: Yes. Well, I can understand the minority leader saying, I'm going to support the Republican nominee. What I don't really understand is why he didn't vote to impeach him. They could have ended this whole thing and set the party on a new course and they didn't do it.

[07:05:00]

So what's that say about all of these other people that are scurrying around trying to run for president? As long as the specter of Donald Trump is there, they're out in the wastelands.

CAMEROTA: Answer that question for me. That part is really intriguing to me. The Marco Rubios, the Ted Cruz, the Tom Cotton, is this endless game of will he or won't he from Donald Trump and his grip on the party, why are they tolerating it?

ROONEY: Well, I would like to say, if you apply a business model to it, they would have taken out a competitor, but they didn't do it. And so why would anyone support one of these guys? And they're good people, okay? I have supported Marco Rubio after Jeb got out. And I think that Tom Cotton is a good guy too. But why would anybody get invested as long as you got the specter of Trump coming in like a 900- pound gorilla and taking the nomination and moving on?

CAMEROTA: But what should they do? I mean, what should the Tom Cottons and Marco Rubios do in this instance?

ROONEY: Now that they didn't take the step in the Senate, I think that they should distance themselves from Trump and carve some new path, like Senator Cassidy and Senator Romney have said. We stand for a lot of other things besides populism and nativism and all that, and we want to go back to that. And so if you want to run for president, I think they've got to decide. What are they going to do? Are they going to be subservient to Trump, in which case they'll probably run and they won't, or are you going to try a new path?

It was disturbing again to see so many speakers at CPAC talk about the failed Republican establishment of the past or taking the party backwards. We're not taking the party backwards. What got us here was the Republican values of free enterprise, private industry solutions, globalization and trade.

You know, look right now in China and Asia. Because Trump wouldn't do TPP, we have TPP in Asia, it's just China has taken our place.

CAMEROTA: I noticed you didn't mention Senator Ted Cruz in the good guy category.

ROONEY: I didn't really -- I just happen to know Tom and a couple of the other guys and Marco better.

CAMEROTA: Got it. Congressman, former Congressman Francis Rooney, thank you very much. Great to talk to you.

ROONEY: Thanks for having me on.

BERMAN: All right. Joining us now, CNN Political Analyst Maggie Haberman, she's a Washington Correspondent for The New York Times. Maggie, great to see you this morning.

So, overnight, the former president lied about the election results. He named names, threatened a list of Republicans whose main infraction is to not back up his lie about the election results and he asked for money. What did you see as the major takeaways, the most important things in this speech overnight?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I don't want to minimize the, and asked for money, John, because, actually, he made clear that he wants his supporters to give to two committees associated with him. He did not mention the Republican National Committee, for which he has been a huge draw and for which he supported the chairwoman who was there now.

But, yes, you're right, he spent a lot of time airing grievances, as we saw him do throughout 2020. This is basically a speech that could have been given on October of 2020.

The most striking part was seeing a former president who left office less than two months ago naming the 17 Republicans, members of his own party, who he wants to see ousted. We've obviously never seen something like that.

And, John, it's not clear to me that the president will be able to recruit candidates who will be successful for every single one of those seats that he is taking aim at. That we're going to find out over the next two years. And that would be a real test of how strong the former president is. But for the moment, he's still clearly on the Republican Party and that was exemplified by last night's speech.

CAMEROTA: Let's play a portion of the hit list.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The Democrats don't have grandstanders like Mitt Romney, Little Ben Sasse, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: He's really playing the hits there, Maggie. But in terms of you were saying it's not clear that he would be successful in helping to put up candidates, is he going to take an active role? HABERMAN: His team is definitely going to take an active role in trying to, if not recruit, at least endorse people for a number of these seats that he's talking about. And we should note, the sound wasn't there, but he lingered very long on attacking Liz Cheney, who has been a singular force, the congresswoman from Wyoming. She's been a singular force for him in terms of his frustration, because she was very pointedly, you know, in favor of his impeachment, gave an impassioned speech about it and she's associated with the Bush family, which always gets to him.

But I don't think, Alisyn, again, we have to see what organization he is able to put together in terms of having a significant influence beyond his voice, right, and beyond the memory of his term going forward into the next two years. There is no question he remains very strong within the party. There were signs over the weekend at CPAC that he is not necessarily the party's favored candidate for 2024 and how that plays out remains to be seen.

[07:10:00]

BERMAN: Yes. What did he get? What percentage did he get?

CAMEROTA: 68 percent.

BERMAN: 68 percent of a handpicked friends and family audience. That's what he got in the straw poll, that it's not scientific.

Maggie I don't want to (INAUDIBLE), the enemies list thing is fascinating. You see six weeks roughly after an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol where five people died, the president is putting out a list of enemies, political enemies, and still, still, and, again, I don't want to minimize this at all, still lying about the election results to wild applause.

HABERMAN: Yes. Lying about the election results, doing things that, again, his advisers have signaled repeatedly he's not going to do this and then he does it almost every single time. In yesterday's case, it was, again, falsely claiming that he had won the election, pretending as if Joe Biden is there, by some conspiracy by the Democrats to, quote/unquote, rig the election. And he used the word, rigged, again yesterday.

The only thing that he didn't do that I thought he might do was lean in harder to the idea that he was actually running himself again in 2024, which would have triggered FEC filings for him as a candidate. He has continued to try to undermine Joe Biden. But, again, while he did so on policies at various points, he went off-script to, again, claim falsely that this election was stolen from him in some way.

CAMEROTA: But, Maggie, that's the barrier, FEC filings. In other words, that trigger, that's why he's playing this cat and mouse game because he can't sort of formally announce it?

HABERMAN: Alisyn, to be clear, I think there are a lot of people around him -- I know there are a lot of people around him who are skeptical that he is actually going to run. I think that the fear of triggering a filing is part of what kept him from leaning in harder. But as you and I know very well, Donald Trump is capable of saying something that he has absolutely no intention of following through with later. I think the fear that he would end up having to be an actual candidate in the FEC's eyes has kept him in part from being more forceful about it.

BERMAN: And doing it the way he did it does everything he needs and wants at this point, which is to assert, I think, his dominance over everyone in that room and everyone in the party around the country, correct?

HABERMAN: That's right. Correct. And, remember, we left out one thing that is important as to why he is doing this. He believes and people around him believe that as long as he is seen as a candidate, he will be able to paint, and I'm not saying that this is the case, but I'm saying this is their argument, he will be able to paint the investigations into him, and there are many at this point, as political somehow.

We have heard him over four years describing investigations into him as phony witch hunts, quote/unquote. I expect you will hear the same if, say, the Manhattan district attorney moves ahead in making a case against him as related to his business.

BERMAN: Maggie Haberman, don't go far. We have much more to discuss with you in a moment, because a 25-year-old former aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

accusing him of being wildly sexually inappropriate with her. A flurry of statements, a really shifting response from Governor Cuomo over a 24-hour period, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

BERMAN: Developing now, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo apologizing for inappropriate comments he made that he says, quote, have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation to a young female aide during private meetings last spring. Now, this is the second former aide to the governor accusing him of sexual impropriety in the last week.

Maggie Haberman back with us. Also joining us, New York Magazine Contributor David Freedlander.

And I want to read what Charlotte Bennett, age 25, says, because she has come forward on the record, and when someone does that, I think we want to give them their words in their name. So this is what she says, I understand that the governor wanted to sleep with me and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared and was wondering how I was going to get out of it and assumed it was the end of my job.

The Times also reports that Bennett, who had just turned 25 at the time, said, Mr. Cuomo had also asked about her feelings about age differences in relationships, saying, quote, age doesn't matter, according to a text she sent to her friend. He asked me if I believe if age made a difference in relationships and he also asked me the same conversation if I had ever been with an older man.

That's what Charlotte Bennett says happened, Maggie. I don't think that Governor Cuomo has disputed any of those statements that she has made. So what do you make now of his evolution in response and, ultimately, the apology for something?

HABERMAN: Look, hearing Andrew Cuomo apologize for anything is breathtaking. I have covered him on and off for 20 years. And I can't remember another time when he has done that. I think it speaks to the degree in which he knows he is in real trouble. I think he was trying to avoid having Tish James, the New York attorney general, end up with an independent probe into what has happened. I think he resisted that repeatedly.

I think, ultimately, he had to throw up his hands and give in to it yesterday. We saw multiple statements from his office come out about such a probe. And, eventually, he appeared to just give in.

Look, I think that there have been many moments where Andrew Cuomo was in trouble politically over last 20 years. I think this one is different. I do think it's worth noting about his statement, John, that he is saying that, you know, essentially, it's her fault. She misinterpreted. I was doing something, it had no intent at all and it's on her. I think that a lot of women have heard that over the years. And I think that on any level in 2021, having an older man make comments like that to a subordinate, particularly a governor, is jarring.

CAMEROTA: Let me read a portion of his statement. He says, at work, sometimes I think I am being playful and make jokes that I think are funny. I do on occasion tease people in what I think is a good-natured way. I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of miss comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended. I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation.

And so, David, tell us the significance of him feeling as though he has to make a statement like that. And did he think by making a statement like that, that would make the independent investigation go away?

DAVID FREEDLANDER, CONTRIBUTOR, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Well, you know, it was an extraordinary day yesterday.

[07:20:00]

As Maggie said, I mean, we just saw sort of statement after statement coming out of the governor's office, which was a clear sign they were scrambling and they didn't know what was going on. And, really, for the first time in a decade, as n governor, it seemed like they sort of weren't in control of events.

I'm not -- I think they wanted really to avoid this getting out of their hands. Andrew Cuomo is a notorious control freak. He doesn't want to get into situations where he can't sort of manipulate the outcome. If this gets into Attorney General Tish James' hands, it's something he can no longer control.

I wonder if they're bracing for what the rest of this week looks like, if more people may come forward.

BERMAN: Yes. I mean, to me, that's a big question, right? Because you have this investigation, which I know Maggie will also go into The New York State government response, but, to me, it's an investigation into what? There's an agreed set upon facts here that Cuomo doesn't dispute, right, at this point. So what he admits to is something that I think that people can look at, Maggie, and say, my God, if you're a 60-plus-year-old man in a position of power, even the most benign interpretation of his conversation with Charlotte Bennett crosses lines.

HABERMAN: Particularly in the sort of, it's not post-Me Too era, but we are over a moment where Me Too was very front and center. And this is a governor that is very familiar with that movement and has talked about championing women's rights. So it is jarring.

I do think, just to your question, John, about what does an investigation do, I think the question, as David said, is do other women come forward? I think that is something that the governor's office and the governor himself are very concerned about, because if, as Andrew Cuomo says in his statement, I make jokes like this sometimes and you have to assume there is a strong likelihood that he made these jokes with somebody else or multiple somebody else's. And what do they say, now in an investigation where the attorney general is going to have subpoena power? So it just goes in directions potentially that Andrew Cuomo can't control, as David, and doesn't want.

CAMEROTA: David, as we've pointed out, Democrats handled this so differently than Republicans when accusations like this are made. You know, obviously, Al Franken springs to mind. He's gone. And 15 women came forward with similar accusations against Donald Trump or worse, and he survived and just said that they were lying.

And so the Democrats who have come forward to say this is unacceptable from Governor Cuomo, what's their plan?

FREEDLANDER: Well, it's interesting. Because one thing that has sort of struck me over the last couple of days, as all of this has come out, is, in some ways, the sort of Cuomo coalition hasn't really abandoned him quite yet. I mean, there are calls for him to resign, but they are mostly coming from the people who were calling for him to resign three weeks ago when we were in the midst of the nursing home scandal, which is another bomb shell to land on his lap. It's Donald Trump aligned Republicans and it's progressive lawmakers who have never really liked him.

I mean, you're still seeing sort of legislative leaders, you know, mainstream Democrats, there's still -- I haven't seen a lot of Cuomo needs to resign from them. You're seeing a lot, this needs to be investigated, everything needs to be heard. But for now, it seems as if it's still kind of holding together. I don't know how much longer that will be able to last, but it's there now. BERMAN: Maggie, why do you think that is? Is that just because the pace of it is so fast, you don't actually need to go out and get ahead of it?

HABERMAN: No, I think it's because these are a bunch of Democrats, and David has an excellent piece on this in New York Magazine, the degree to which there are years of Democrats who sort of would like revenge against Andrew Cuomo for various slights while he was in office and various behaviors by him. But they have also -- they know that he's very powerful overall as a governor. He's been seen as very successful overall. He generally does well with the public. His approval rating, obviously, what the polling is in a couple of days.

But he has held up even with this nursing home issue a couple of weeks ago, and there have been other issues in the past, John, where it has seemed as if he is in real political peril and nothing has happened. So I don't think Democrats want to get ahead of their skis and be the people that called for him to resign, given the likelihood that that is not something that's going to happen. And based on the existing fact set, I don't think they feel like they can do that. They're calling for an investigation. If you see a bunch of other additional women come forward, then I think you can see this changing very quickly, but for now, I expect it to stay the way it is, if the existing fact set stays as it is.

CAMEROTA: David, how long will this investigation take?

FREEDLANDER: Well, I think, we're just starting. I think they're still sort of figuring out the parameters. But the Democrats I talked to in Albany and around New York today are sort of preparing for, if this goes forward, a kind of long slog. I mean, this could be weeks, months for Attorney General James, or whoever she appoints to sort of gather all the facts. I mean, there's a chance that Cuomo hangs on because this is such a slow-moving story, as they get witnesses and interview people and we pick it back up in six months or something.

CAMEROTA: Maggie, David, thank you both very much for all of your reporting.

[07:25:01]

FREEDLANDER: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Okay, another coronavirus vaccine is on the way. New details on how soon the Johnson & Johnson doses will be available to you. That's next.

Also coming up, my interview with former QAnon followers, the disturbing things that they continue to hear that could be coming this week. Stick around for that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right. The big lie on full display at CPAC, John Avlon here with a Reality Check. JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, guys. So the big lie is unfortunately alive and well in the fever swamps of the far-right. The CPAC was once described as the Star Wars bar of the conservative movement, but now the bar seems to dominate the whole party, a party that used to pride itself on personality responsibility is now all in on a cult of personality.

And you don't just need the bizarre golden statue of Donald Trump for evidence of idolatry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think a great majority of people in the United States voted for President Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:30:02]

AVLON: You can think whatever you want, but the facts are that Joe Biden won the election with over 7 million votes.