Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

China Trade Negotiations; Biden and Buttigieg Battle For Iowa; Trump's Grievances. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 24, 2019 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:01]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: Top of the hour, and you are watching a special holiday edition of CNN NEWSROOM.

Hi, everyone. I'm Jessica Dean, in for Brooke Baldwin this afternoon.

The day before Christmas, President Trump goes from season's greetings to spewing grievances. After a holiday videoconference call thanking U.S. troops overseas, the commander in chief lashed out over his impeachment.

He contended House Democrats led an unfair process and are now demanding fairness from the Senate. He also slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is withholding the articles of impeachment, amid concerns the Senate will not be impartial in the impeachment trial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're in a very good position. Ultimately, that decision is going to be made by Mitch McConnell. And he will make it. He has the right to do whatever he wants. He's the head of the Senate.

People remember they treated us very unfairly. They didn't give us due process. They didn't give us a lawyer. They didn't give us anything. Now they come to the Senate and they want everything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: A lot of those comments need fact-checking.

We're going to do that. We're going to go deeper into those comments.

First, though, let's go to CNN White House correspondent Boris Sanchez, who is in Florida. That's where the president is spending the winter holiday.

And, Boris, the president, you heard him there really going after Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and the impeachment proceedings. What else did he have to say?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jessica, as impeachment has essentially reached a standstill, and the president has spent several days now at Mar-a-Lago surrounded by supporters, really getting into some of his uglier instincts, the president is lashing out.

And he's focusing specifically on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Today, he said that the speaker hated Republicans and that she hates people who voted for him. He's also suggested that she's effectively stalling, not handing over the articles of impeachment to the Senate majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, because Democrats don't have enough evidence and they're struggling to build a case.

Of course, that's quite the read on the situation, the president saying that giving credits witnesses in a Senate trial would be unfair. He did, as you played there, voiced confidence in the majority leader, McConnell, effectively saying that McConnell can do what he would like with a Senate trial, very different than what we have been hearing behind the scenes for several weeks, with President Trump telling close aides that he wants a Senate trial.

He wants a show to effectively vindicate him, to call all sorts of witnesses that we have heard Senate Republicans say that they do not want to take the stand, people like the whistle-blower whose complaint launched this entire impeachment process -- Jessica.

DEAN: All right. Let's break this down. We have some fact-checking to do. We have some analysis.

Boris, you're going to stay with us.

Also joining us, CNN reporter Daniel Dale, and Samantha Vinograd, a CNN national security analyst who held several senior roles on President Obama's National Security Council.

Thanks, all of you, for being with us today.

Daniel, I want to talk about these facts. President Trump ranted about that entire impeachment process, calling the House proceedings unfair, saying he wasn't afforded a lawyer or witnesses.

You are the fact-checking king here. What do you know about those claims?

DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: So, on the lawyer part in particular, there's some truth and some falsehoods.

It is true that the White House, Trump himself, the White House counsel, was not permitted to participate in the House Intelligence Committee hearings that kicked off the impeachment process.

However, Republicans on the committee were allowed to have their own counsel. Steve Castor questioned witnesses and fully participated. And then, when the proceedings moved to the House Judiciary Committee, White House counsel was invited to participate. They actually declined that opportunity.

On witnesses, it is true that the White House didn't have the power to call witnesses, because Democrats control the majority, but the Democrats ended up calling three of the witnesses that Republicans formally requested they call in an official letter. On the question of fairness, more broadly, I think Trump's comments

generally suffer from the same misunderstanding every time he speaks. He seems to suggest that the impeachment process is subject to the same rights as, say, a criminal trial, like he's a criminal defendant.

And that's not the case. That's just not true at all. And so the premise of Trump's complaints is simply not accurate.

DEAN: Right, and launching from there gets misstatements like that one.

All right, Daniel, thank you.

Boris, the president once again also repeating this false claim today about FBI spies. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And also tremendous amounts of information are being written about even by the fake news concerning FISA, concerning dirty cops. If you just go by what you see in the papers, it's incredible, what's going on. We had dirty cops. We had people spying on my campaign.

They did terrible things, the likes of which have never been done in the history of our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: OK, again, not true. The inspector general of the Justice Department just discredited that claim.

Boris, unfold the facts here for us.

[15:05:00]

SANCHEZ: Yes.

In the Horowitz report, it's very clear that there was no indication of a political bias motivating the investigation. There were a few instances of conversations in which political bias were expressed.

But some in the investigation were in favor of Trump. Others were in favor of Hillary Clinton, obviously. We should point out we heard similar language from the minority leader in the House yesterday, Kevin McCarthy, suggesting that there was a Watergate-like break-in.

That's not the case. The inspector general found that there was not only no break-in, but also there was actually no indication that at any point anyone suggested that they should bring an informant into the investigation, into the campaign.

Further, there were questions about the basis of those FISA warrants. Ultimately, what Horowitz found was that the continuation of those warrants, there were flaws in the justification of the continuation of them, but the ultimate basis of them was justified, Jessica.

DEAN: All right, so there are the facts on that.

Another conspiracy theory to touch on -- Sam, I want to go to you on this one -- was that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. And "The Washington Post" reported Trump said he believed it because Russian President Vladimir Putin told him so. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: What did President Putin say to you that convinced you that the Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?

TRUMP: What did he say to me?

QUESTION: Yes.

TRUMP: About what?

QUESTION: What did President Putin say to you that...

TRUMP: You're putting words in somebody's mouth. Who are you referring to? Me? I never said anything about it. I never said a thing about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: So the U.K. Ukraine conspiracy, in a nutshell, protects Putin and Russia, who did meddle in the 2016 election. We know this to be true.

The rest of this is just dangerous lies.

SAMANTHA VINOGRAD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: That's exactly right.

POTUS parroting Putin's propaganda...

DEAN: That's a lot of P's.

VINOGRAD: That's a lot of P's.

DEAN: Yes.

VINOGRAD: I'm big on alliteration today -- actually has an immediate impact on the American people.

Let's remember that Putin is engaged in a massive disinformation campaign. He used to have to pay bots and trolls to spread lies to divide the United States, spread confusion and spread divisions. Now all he has to do is have his guys retweet the president, retweet Kevin McCarthy, and really just continue feeding Russian propaganda to members of the Republican Party through various means.

So, every time the president and his cronies and his allies in Congress spread this propaganda, they are helping Russia's disinformation campaign. And when the president and members of the Republican Party spread this Russian propaganda, they're also directly undercutting our own intelligence community, who, by the way, is trying to protect our elections right now from actors like Russia, because our own intelligence community has reportedly gone up to Congress and briefed people like Kevin McCarthy on the fact that this is a Russian propaganda conspiracy theory that they're spreading.

Clearly, President Trump should have been briefed on the same information. So ,rather than relying on our intelligence community, the president and members of the Republican Party are relying on Putin. That is undercutting confidence in our intelligence community and, again, fueling Russia's attack on the American people.

DEAN: Yes. And it's interesting.

I think it was Fiona Hill who testified and essentially issued that dire warning when she was in front of that congressional panel.

VINOGRAD: Right.

And she was the president's -- before this, his senior director on Russian affairs.

DEAN: Right. Right. And she said, it is Russia, not Ukraine, and they will do it again.

Very interesting.

Well, Boris, Senate leaders from each party, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, are trying to now hash out what the Senate impeachment trial would look like. And you're hearing McConnell's weighing an option that involves needing no support from Schumer, but rather just forging forward, right?

SANCHEZ: Yes, this is according to our colleague Manu Raju up on Capitol Hill.

He's learned, effectively, that McConnell would prefer to have some sort of bipartisan rule-making procedure in place with Chuck Schumer, but that, ultimately, McConnell has the support among Republicans to create rules without Schumer's assistance.

All he needs is 51 votes. And, effectively, they're just waiting until the session kicks back in, in January and Nancy Pelosi to hand over the articles of impeachment to go ahead and start that process.

That's part of the reason you hear the confidence from President Trump that McConnell is going to get this done for him. Ultimately, though, there are disagreements about exactly how that Senate trial should play out -- Jessica.

DEAN: Yes, a lot of back and forth over that.

And, Daniel, last question to you. It's kind of been the whole strategy of President Trump and the White House to discredit this entire impeachment process. We saw a lot of that today. We're going to hear more of it, I'm sure.

How effective do you think that message has been? And I know this goes back to what you talked about at the beginning of the segment in laying out all of these facts. How true do you think that is, that this has not been a fair process?

DALE: I think I should reserve judgment on the last part, because I'm a reporter. And I think some of it is subjective.

On the other effectiveness of his claims, I think it's been just about as effective as his dishonesty usually is, in that it's successfully persuades a significant part of the country, not a majority of the country, but enough that he retains support among Republican legislators, who depend on that portion of the electorate for their own support.

[15:10:19]

And so I think he has succeeded, as usual, with his dishonesty in shoring up his base. But I think we see, from the level of support for impeachment, even for his removal, that we can overstate how effective he's been.

He has not persuaded a strong majority of the country that he is correct.

DEAN: All right, Boris Sanchez, Daniel Dale, and Samantha Vinograd, thanks to all of you. Have a good Christmas Eve.

VINOGRAD: Happy holidays.

DEAN: Thanks.

Coming up: Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg are both trying to court moderate Democratic voters in Iowa. So which candidate has the edge there? You're going to hear what voters have to say.

Plus, new video of a deadly confrontation between California deputies and a suspected carjacker. As it turns out, that man was driving his own car.

And, right now, billions of people around the world are preparing to celebrate Christmas, at the Vatican, Pope Francis preparing to celebrate midnight mass.

We will have a live report from Rome. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:15:20]

DEAN: A quiet Christmas Eve on the 2020 campaign trail, the 15 Democratic hopefuls taking a break from the road for the holiday.

The short respite comes just a little more than a month out from the all-important Iowa caucuses. That's where former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg are trying to court moderate Democratic voters.

And CNN's Jeff Zeleny spent time with both men to see how their messages are playing out in the Hawkeye State.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Pete Buttigieg came to town, Cheri Schieb was sitting right there in the front row, listening intently, and capturing the moment.

As he left, she gave him a high five.

CHERI SCHIEB, IOWA VOTER: I want to high-five you again. Cheri Schieb.

PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you. All right, sounds good. Thanks so much for the support.

SCHIEB: Thank you, Pete.

ZELENY: And smiled with satisfaction.

(on camera): So do you walk away from here committed, or do you want to go see some of the others first?

SCHIEB: Well, Joe Biden is also in town tonight.

ZELENY: Yes.

SCHIEB: And I'm going to go see what he has to say.

ZELENY (voice-over): Two hours later, Schieb and her sister Nancy were there.

SCHIEB: Thank you for coming to Perry.

ZELENY: For an up-close look at Joe Biden. She admires and values Biden's experience.

SCHIEB: He's been there, so I feel good about that. I'm really happy about that. I like him.

ZELENY (on camera): But you love Mayor Pete?

SCHIEB: I love Mayor Pete. What does a guy do? I don't know. I'm really kind of torn a little bit. I got to think about it and sleep on it. I don't know yet.

ZELENY (voice over): Just before Christmas, Democrats are still shopping for presidential hopefuls in Iowa. Biden and Buttigieg are going after the same voters, literally, which brought both of them Sunday to the town of Perry, about 45 minutes outside Des Moines.

For Democrats searching for a more moderate candidate, the choice is stark, a 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, delivering an optimistic message. BUTTIGIEG: Even in this dark and strange time, I have never been more

filled with hope.

ZELENY: Or a former vice president twice his age, who offers a dark warning about the consequences of President Trump winning a second term.

JOSEPH BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But if we give him another four years, I believe he will permanently alter the character of the country, at least for several generations.

ZELENY: Pat McPherson is torn, applauding Buttigieg's intellect...

PAT MCPHERSON, IOWA VOTER: Well, I think he might be the one.

ZELENY: ... but later impressed by Biden's grasp on the world.

(on camera): So, just a couple of hours ago, you told me that you were going to sign on the dotted line for Buttigieg.

MCPHERSON: Yes.

ZELENY: Now you're -- you want to think about it a little longer.

MCPHERSON: I'm probably going to go with Mayor Pete, but -- but I just -- there's just so much to be said for being able to hit the ground running on day one, and it's going to be a huge task.

ZELENY (voice-over): While he's trailing Buttigieg in recent polls, Biden is showing that skills from a lifetime in politics also come in handy to people of all ages.

BIDEN: Say, hi. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Hi.

BIDEN: That's it. You got it. OK.

That may be the most intelligent thing you hear all night.

ZELENY: Pat Mundy liked the charisma of Buttigieg and worried that Biden may be too old. But after seeing him up close, in this moment, she said she changed her mind.

PAT MUNDY, IOWA VOTER: And I made that comment he might be a little old before, but I'm a little old too, and I'm in pretty good shape, and he looks like he's in dynamic shape.

ZELENY (on camera): So you have quite a decision facing you now?

MUNDY: I have a terrific decision facing me, and it won't be made lightly.

ZELENY: For many voters looking for a moderate candidate, they're legitimately torn between Buttigieg's excitement and Biden's experience -- the central question, electability. They have six weeks to weigh that.

Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Perry, Iowa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DEAN: All right, great stuff from Iowa. Jeff, thanks so much.

Still ahead: President Trump says the U.S. and China will hold a signing ceremony for phase one of a new U.S.-China trade deal once the details get worked out after the new year.

And while a potential trade deal with China is grabbing the headlines, we're going to talk with a columnist who says the Chinese threat to U.S. research institutions is very real. He will explain why when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:23:51]

DEAN: With a tentative agreement on phase one of a U.S.-China trade deal, today, President Trump said he and the Chinese president will hold a signing ceremony after the new year, when the details of that agreement are worked out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Are you going to hold a signing ceremony with Xi?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guys, we're heading out. Let's go, guys.

TRUMP: I will be probably doing it at the right time. We will be doing a smaller ceremony. Ultimately, we will be having -- on the China deal, we will be having a signing ceremony, yes.

QUESTION: Will you sign it, you and Xi Jinping?

TRUMP: We will, ultimately. Yes, we will.

QUESTION: Do you know where that will be?

TRUMP: When we get together, we will do -- but we will have a quicker signing, because we want to get it done. The deal is done. It's just being translated right now.

OK? Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: CNN political analyst Josh Rogin is also a columnist for "The Washington Post."

Hi, Josh. Great to be with you.

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Thanks for having me. DEAN: The president said today -- you heard him just there -- they will hold a signing ceremony on this preliminary trade deal with China.

Does it appear China's on board? Do we know yet if this is a good deal for the U.S., kind of what the particulars are?

ROGIN: Right, two separate questions.

The Chinese government is very much on board. They love the deal. They have been bragging about it in their state press. And they clearly think they got a good deal out of it.

[15:25:03]

It's really hard to know whether we got a good deal out of it, because, as you alluded to, we don't know the details. Eventually, they're going to have to release the details. Then we can make a good judgment.

But, basically, what we can say is this is a small deal. It's an interim step. It doesn't solve all the problems. It's a detente in the trade war. And then, when we get the deal -- the details, we can see if it really solves any of the issues that Trump has been talking about all this time.

DEAN: It'll be interesting to see.

And we have got the talks with this U.S.-China trade deal over here. You also have a column in "The Washington Post" that talks about another China threat to the U.S. economy and trade. You have to read it. It really kind of took my breath away.

It's called "The Chinese threat to us research institutions is real."

And this just was very interesting to me. Tell us a little bit about what this threat is and what the U.S. is doing about it.

ROGIN: Sure. It's a kind of a crazy story, actually.

DEAN: Yes.

ROGIN: So, for about the last year or so, the FBI and the National Institutes of Health, which funds research all over the country, started going to all these research institutions and warning them that the Chinese government is trying to infiltrate their institutions by basically paying off their researchers, inviting them to China, and then stealing all of their stuff.

And the Moffitt, which is the biggest cancer center in Florida, took a look into it, and they found out that their CEO, the vice president, and four of their top researchers were all getting secretly paid by the Chinese Communist Party under something called the Thousand Talents program.

And they fired all of them. And this comes on the heels of a similar incident at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. And you might think to yourself, well, it's just cancer research. Don't we all want to solve cancer? What's the big deal?

But what the FBI and the NIH are telling these institutions is that, no, it's not just about collaboration, which can be good. It's about an organized Chinese government strategy to pay off all of these American researchers and then get them over to China and steal all of their nonpublic researchers to feed their economic and scientific innovation, which, again, is aimed at us.

DEAN: Right. And you really broke down, I mean, this is a concerted effort to be doing exactly that, which is just fascinating.

ROGIN: Right.

DEAN: Also, while I have you here, I do want to get your thoughts on North Korea promising this Christmas surprise for the U.S., some options that may be on the table, launching a rocket or satellite into space, conducting an underground nuclear test, test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile, or, as President Trump said today, maybe a beautiful vase.

What do you anticipate that we're going to see out of North Korea? And do you think this will actually -- anything will actually happen? Because, sometimes, they do make threats they don't always follow through with.

ROGIN: Well, that's right.

Senior administration officials tell me today that they think it's very likely -- quote -- "very likely" that there will be a provocation today or tomorrow. They see preparations for it in the intelligence. We don't know until they actually do it.

But the best guess is that they may fire an ICBM, an intercontinental ballistic missile, into the air, which would be new, which would be -- represent a new capability for North Korea, which would basically mean that now they have the ability to hit us.

Now, the big question is, how will President Trump respond? And even his own officials don't know, right? It seems that he's downplaying it in advance, which is an indication that he might downplay it after it happens.

Now, that seems bad, because if the North Koreans have the capability to hit us, it seems like we should do something about that. It also seems like that would be an end of the North Korea diplomacy that President Trump and his team have been pursuing.

But the president gets to make the decision. And if he decides to pretend that it's not a big deal, then his officials are going to go along with that. And what we will end up seeing, which is a continuation of North Korea provocations and a continuation of American policy of not really responding.

DEAN: Just to see what -- if they can get a reaction. It'll be very interesting, a new line in the sand.

All right, Josh Rogin, happy holidays to you. Thanks so much for being with us.

ROGIN: Thank you. Any time.

DEAN: Up next: a deadly case of mistaken identity -- the incident caught on camera. A driver dies after being violently removed from his car by California sheriff's deputies, and now his family wants some answers.

Plus, police say an Iowa woman accused of intentionally driving over a young girl because she was Mexican also deliberately struck a young African-American boy with her car.

We have got details on that straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:30:00]