Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Senate Resolution Faults Saudi Crown Prince; Canada Arrests Chinese Tech Giant CFO; Trade Turmoil Makes Markets Tumble; Democratic Invisible Primary; Stunning Midterm Turnout; Murray Set to Claim Heisman. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired December 06, 2018 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00] JOHN AVLON, CNN ANCHOR: And the crown prince is implicated. The president is covering for a killer. That's the senators' takeaway. And that's a serious unprecedented situation.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: John --

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And just quickly, guys, before we go.

BERMAN: Yes.

GREGORY: Why is it that they felt they could get -- why did the Saudis think they could get away with this with the United States? Why did Russia think it could get away with interfering in the election? These are -- that's a principle the U.S. has to stand up for here as well. We'll see if the senate actually does something.

BERMAN: And has anything the president said out loud or the secretary of state or the secretary of defense dissuaded them from the notion they could get away with it again?

GREGORY: Right.

BERMAN: Key question.

All right, David, John, Scott, I appreciate it.

A Chinese tech giant executive was arrested in Canada overnight and is facing extradition to the United States. Why does that matter? It's having a huge impact this morning on global markets. They were down 800 points on Tuesday. They're down big again this morning. There are jitters on Wall Street. We'll explain much more about why, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:35:03] BERMAN: All right, breaking news.

A new rift potentially between the United States and China after an executive for a Chinese tech giant, Huawei, was arrested in Canada. We just learned this happened overnight. And she's now facing extradition to the United States.

CNN's Matt Rivers live in Beijing with the breaking details.

Matt.

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, this would be like if China wanted to arrest and charge an Apple executive. That's how big Huawei is here. And that's why this is such a huge deal.

So what happened is the company's CFO, Meng Wanzhu (ph), she was changing planes in Canada when she was picked up by Canadian authorities. Wanzhu (ph) says at the request of the U.S. The U.S. wants to extradite her to face charges -- unspecified charges in the eastern district of New York. So that's a very big deal. The U.S. making an aggressive there to do that.

Now, moving forward, there's no specific word on what those charges are exactly at this moment. What we do know is that "The Wall Street Journal" has reported that Huawei is under investigation by the Department of Justice for allegedly violating sanctions on Iran that the U.S. had put in place. Basically Huawei doing illegal business with Iran. Meng's arrest could be a part of that.

Now, China is denying it. They're saying that she should be released immediately and they're asking for clarification as to why she was detained.

But, of course, this is not happening in a bubble. There's that trade war you remember between the U.S. and China. It was just a couple days ago I was in Argentina when President Xi of China and President Trump agreed on this 90-day framework to come up with some sort of deal on this trade war. This arrest has the potential to scuttle those talks.

Now, so far, we haven't seen that. China hasn't said it would scuttle those talks. But this arrest certainly makes those negotiations a lot more tenuous.

Erica.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: A lot at play. Thank you, as always.

Meantime, U.S. stock futures are down sharply. The trade turmoil rattling investors around the world.

CNN's Christine Romans joins us now with more on this.

These are big numbers and there are a lot of red arrows.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: And, look, you know, Matt's so right to point out that meeting on Saturday. That meeting on Saturday when President Xi and President Trump were sitting across the table. That's precisely when this woman was being arrested, this Huawei executive was being arrested. So it shows you the U.S. doesn't just have tariffs in its toolbox for fighting what it sees as unfair trade from China, but also it has this more aggressive stance toward going after some of these companies.

And, again, we don't know what those -- what those charges are yet. But futures are down sharply here. If this -- if this holds here, you're going to have a 500 point more or less decline on the Dow Jones industrial average when the opening bell rings.

And this all started overseas. You know, yesterday the markets were closed here, but you had losses around the world. And then, last night, losses again. I mean look at the Asian markets, all down sharply. Hong Kong down almost 3 percent. And then when Europe woke up, 2 percent losses across the board there.

So there is unease in the markets right now about the trade strategy between the U.S. and China, quite frankly, where we're going from here. The commerce ministry has said that they are going to abide by that 90-day negotiating framework. But there's a lot of skepticism about just how much work has to be done and where we're going from here on the trade situation.

We've got, you guys, you know, 20 years of complaints the United States has about China and the way it does business. And there's really no suggestion from the Chinese that they're going to do anything differently. And this arrest certainly complicates the whole story.

Guys.

BERMAN: And just, Romans, to put a point on it, it was 800 points on Tuesday. We could be opening another 500 points or so down today. And it's not just one thing that's bugging the investors.

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: It's one thing after the other, between the Huawei and the negotiations, fuel prices, there are earnings issues. There's a lot.

ROMANS: And interest rates. And you see this aversion in the yield (ph). There's a lot going on in global markets that's causing people to be -- to be nervous right here.

BERMAN: All right, Christine Romans, thank you very much. We are going to watch this all morning long because it matters to a lot of people.

We have more breaking news this morning now. A frantic search and rescue mission underway for five U.S. Marines off Japan's southern coast after two U.S. military planes collided midair. Two Marines have been rescued so far. Officials say the crash happened during a regular refueling mission shortly after the planes took off from their base near Hiroshima. The crash is under investigation.

HILL: Well, believe it or not, an unofficial Democratic 2020 primary is already underway.

BERMAN: Oh, I believe it.

HILL: That's right. So just who is considering throwing their hat in the ring? Well, perhaps some movement is there. Harry Enten joins us with the forecast.

BERMAN: The real question is, who is not. It's like everyone minus one.

HILL: John Berman is not running.

BERMAN: Yes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:43:21] BERMAN: So the calendar says December 6, 2018, which means we are full into the 2020 presidential election. A lot of activity in the Democratic primary. You may not actually be seeing it, that's why we call it the invisible primary.

What are we talking about? There's something about Harry. Harry Enten here with us now with "The Forecast."

Explain what's going on here. There actually has been a lot going on just under the surface with Democrats thinking about running.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes, so, let's take a look. We have these wonderful little slides. So all of these candidates, hello, have been meeting with former President Barack Obama, all the way from Beto O'Rourke to Joe Biden. And the invisible primary matters to us for a number of reasons, not the least of which, as we know in the lead-up to the Iowa Caucus, for example, that the person who's leading in endorsements tends to win the party's nomination, especially when there's no incumbent running in that primary.

In fact, dating back since 1980, those people have won, let's see if I can spell correct, 71 percent of the time. So, basically, if you have a lot of endorsements, you tend to win. And that's why we're paying so much close attention to this right now.

BERMAN: And they're having meetings right now making -- so they're not going to get President Obama's endorsement.

ENTEN: Probably not.

BERMAN: That's not going to happen. But kissing the ring, so to speak.

ENTEN: Exactly.

BERMAN: Trying to collect people like that.

ENTEN: Correct. And so, you know, one of the things I think is so important is figuring out, you know, what is the difference between these candidates right now. And you notice we sort of had this divide between the younger candidates that are running and the older candidates that are running. The people who are generally leading in the polling, and we'll get into that a little bit later, tend to be on the older side. This sort of new reign of Democratic candidates who are running tend to be on the younger side.

And that, I think, is going to be a key divide as we're looking forward to this primary season so far. And indeed right now if we were to look at -- "The Wall Street Journal" did this great survey of Iowa county chairmen. And what they found of the 76 who responded, 43 of the 76 said that they preferred a young candidate.

[06:45:15] And the reason that's so surprising, right, is because if we were to look at the support that generally we've been seeing of the candidates who are at the very top of the list, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who have tended to be leading that field, and tend to, of course, be in that older category. And it seems, in fact, that the Iowa caucus chairman actually prefer people who are younger.

BERMAN: There's actually some news about the two folks at the end of this slide right here, right?

ENTEN: Yes. So, you know, this is one of my favorite things that we're kind of looking at is the people who are going to be dropping out. And I almost feel like I want to sing some "Amazing Grace," but I'm going to spare our viewers from that. It's not really a Jewish thing to sing "Amazing Grace." I'll leave that to some other folks. Michael Avenatti and Deval Patrick have both decided to drop out. And this is going to be something that we're going to really be keeping our eye out on. That's one of the reasons we're watching this invisible primary is seeing the people who are sort of going out. Remember, Michael Avenatti went to Iowa and apparently did not find the support that he was looking for. And if we were just to look back at this, you know, poll side, we also know, look, they were both at only 1 percent of the vote. It just seemed like they were looking at the field that was out there and decided, hey, maybe that support isn't out there for us.

HILL: In terms of looking at signs, you've also been looking at some signs related to Elizabeth Warren. And these are some warning signs.

ENTEN: Yes, so, you know, if we were to look at Elizabeth Warren, she is somebody who obviously has been doing fairly well, or at least a lot of people like myself have been thinking, hey, she's going to do -- she fits a lot of the profile, right? She's a woman. After the year of the woman. She is someone who appeals to the left part of the party after Bernie Sanders did so well last time around. But, in fact, the last few weeks have not exactly been good for her. So she won re- election by 24 percentage points, which you think would be pretty good, but indeed this was a state that Hillary Clinton won by 27 points. So Warren actually underperformed that by three. There was a recent poll in the state. She was in third place compared to Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. And you would think in your home state you'd actually be running ahead.

BERMAN: All right, we have a little information weird (ph) ways looking right now about the midterms. The turnout just enormous.

ENTEN: Yes, absolutely. So, look at this, 50.1 percent of people turned out. And that is the first time in the last 100 years that turnout in a midterm election was above 50 percent. That's amazing. In fact, if you go all the way back since 1974, the first year in which 18 to 20 year olds got to vote, you would never see anybody with -- you would never see a year in which turnout was this high. It was 8 points higher than the highest turnout dating back since '74.

And I would just note, it was a message to Donald Trump. Sixty percent of voters said that they voted as a message, either positive or negative. So, in 2020, I think the turnout will be quite high.

BERMAN: We've got two years to figure out how to fix that.

All right, Harry Enten, great to have you with us. Thanks so much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: So, the race for this year's Heisman's Trophy. We'll get Harry talking about that next.

ENTEN: (INAUDIBLE).

BERMAN: It's one of closest ever. Elizabeth Warren not in this hunt. The "Bleacher Report" is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:52:28] BERMAN: It is award season in college football. The favorite to win the Heisman on Saturday is Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray.

Andy Scholes caught up with Murray last night. Is he done playing football after the playoffs, Andy?

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you know, John, that's the big question right now. You know, Kyler Murray, we all know he's electric on the football field, but he's also an outstanding baseball player. He was drafted in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft by the Oakland A's and he's going to go to spring training in March. And last night, you know, I talked with Kyler, I asked him, is he going to quit football after the playoffs and what would it mean to him to win the Heisman Trophy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KYLER MURRAY, OKLAHOMA QUARTERBACK: It would be an incredible honor, obviously. You know, something -- something I'd be truly proud of. I know, you know, the university would be surely proud of, my fans, my teammates, my coaches, and my family would be extremely proud.

SCHOLES: First round pick by the Oakland A's in the Major League Baseball draft. You signed with them. You're going to spring training. Does that mean you've maybe only got one or two football games left?

MURRAY: As of right now, yes.

SCHOLES: But you haven't 100 percent ruled out the NFL?

MURRAY: No. I -- right now I'm going to play baseball.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Yes, so it's fascinating that Kyler wouldn't say he won't play in the NFL. Could he be the next Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders and try to play both? Not ruling it out just yet. All right, finally, Atlanta United's Joseph Martinez was presented with the Major League Soccer's MVP awarded yesterday. His team's going to play Portland for the MLS Cup on Saturday.

And I just so happen to have the MLS Cup in studio here in Atlanta this morning. This is what the guys are going to be playing with -- playing for on Saturday.

And, Erica, in case you're wondering, 35 pounds sterling silver made by Tiffany's.

HILL: Wow.

SCHOLES: So you can ask Santa for that for Christmas.

HILL: John Berman could lift that with his pinkie, just for the record.

BERMAN: Exactly. Just by looking at it.

HILL: Yes. Jedi mind trick all around.

Andy, thanks.

Comics, like most of us, took some notice of the awkwardness among the presidents at former President George H.W. Bush's state funeral. So, here are your late night laughs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": It was quite a moving sight to see the presidents and the first ladies in the front row waiting to honor President Bush, chatting comfortably with one another. Until Trump showed up, then it became silent staring time. Donald Trump is the only person in the world who can bring down a funeral.

JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE": He shakes hands with Barack and Michelle. Watch the look from Michelle Obama, because it is so frosty she may have reversed global warming right there. You know, Hillary is just staring straight ahead, like -- like she's on an elevator with a weirdo. And it really was something. It was like, all of America's divorced parents together in the same room for the first time.

[06:55:11] COLBERT: Well, let's take a look. The defendant has provided substantial assistance in a criminal investigation and the rest is blacked out. When Donald Trump complained this investigation was costing us millions, I didn't know he meant in toner. By the way, that's what every Trump staffer's resume is going to look like after this.

OK, Mr. Mnuchin, where did you work from 2016 to 2019? That's confidential.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: Which is why it's good to have x-ray vision and we need you hear for this morning.

HILL: I'm going to keep you all waiting, though, until the 8:00 hour. You'll just have to stay with us.

BERMAN: All right, what are we talking about? Well, Robert Mueller will release new details on Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen? What will these court filings tell us about where the Russia investigation is headed? We have much more, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's about a size 16 shoe going to drop here. And that shoe is not going to be related to lying.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mueller's not involved in an investigation. Mueller has a Trump destruction project.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I trust Bob Mueller. He's a skilled prosecutor the whole way.

[07:00:02] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senators from both parties are planning to confront Saudi Arabia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to have a relationship with