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WHO to Convene Emergency Meeting on Coronavirus Outbreak; Countries to Quarantine Citizens Evacuated From China; Senate Still Arguing on Whether to Bring Witnesses; Race for the White House; U.K. Gets Brexit Approval From European Union; U.K. Gets Final Brexit Approval from Tearful E.U.; Bloomberg Stumps for Dog Demographic. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired January 30, 2020 - 00:00   ET

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

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JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from around the world, I'm John Vause. Good to see you.

Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM, China struggles to contain the spread of the Wuhan virus as the case numbers explode and the World Health Organization again weighs, declaring this outbreak and international emergency.

The battle over John Bolton rages on where lawmakers are trying to sway their colleagues in the debate over calling witnesses to testify in Donald Trump's impeachment trial.

Britain prepares to wave goodbye. Is it au revoir?

Maybe not to the European Union.

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VAUSE: There is still much which remains unknown about the Wuhan coronavirus but we do know it is spreading fast, faster than SARS, faster than anyone imagined. Hours from now the Geneva-based World Health Organization will hold another emergency meeting to decide if the world is facing a global emergency.

China now reports more than 7,700 confirmed cases. Far exceeding the total from the 2003 SARS outbreak. China has also recorded at least 170 fatalities from the virus. There are more than 100 infection cases outside of Mainland China, a fact not lost on officials at the WHO.

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DR. MICHAEL RYAN, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: The whole world needs to be on alert now. The whole world needs to take action and be ready for any case that comes.

(END VIDEO CLIP) VAUSE: Now to Beijing, Steven Jiang with us.

Steven on top of the almost 8,000 cases, which are confirmed in Mainland China, it is our report that they're looking at another 9,000 suspected cases, which are yet to be confirmed, which is a staggering number when you put them together.

STEVEN JIANG, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER, BEIJING BUREAU: That's right, John, these numbers do look grimmer by the hour. In addition to the numbers you mentioned now, authorities say there are 14 provinces in Mainland China that now having more than 100 confirmed cases.

That list includes both Beijing and Shanghai. But sometimes it doesn't tell the human sufferance behind these numbers. We are starting to hear more and more of these stories, thanks to social media posts.

My colleagues and I are talking to but also thanks to some very brave Chinese journalists who risk not only their lives, their jobs, to defy censors and tell what's going on.

This one story that was carried by state media earlier today, says that there is a 17-year-old disabled villager outside Wuhan. when his father and younger brother were suspended of having this virus, they were sent to quarantine and the 17-year old disabled boy was left home alone for six days and then he died.

So now the authorities are telling state media, they are looking into this case; they are looking to see what really happened. This is one extreme example but we are starting to hear more and more of these stories out of the epicenter as well as across the country. That is really a human toll this outbreak has caused, not only in Hubei but across China.

VAUSE: There is also the ongoing toll for these people in these lockdown areas, I know that it is a Lunar New Year holiday, so many would not be working anyway. But there does come a point, where they cannot remain under lockdown forever.

They need to be let out go to work, for their own sanity, how much longer can these quarantines be kept in place before they actually face some real unrest?

JIANG: That's right, that is one big concern, especially now, officially, this country and government agencies will reopen, next Monday on the 3rd of February, so people are supposed to be coming back to work, back to their workplace from their hometowns and that, of course, will mean that some sort of migration, maybe not as big of a migration as it normally would be but still a lot of people will be on the move.

So that is a concern not only in the minds of health authorities but also many ordinary people.

How am I going to protect myself from people who might be infected?

So to that end you are seeing authorities saying maybe, if you are from a place with a lot of confirmed cases, you can not go back to working immediately and also telling employers to be more flexible in terms of reopening dates.

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JIANG: So that is, of course, one big worry that they have right now. That is this upcoming migration of a large population segment.

VAUSE: There are a lot of things, which are on the horizon, which are of concern and that certainly is one of, them. Steven Jiang live for us in Beijing, thank you.

About 1,000 Americans live in the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. On Wednesday 200 of them arrived on a chartered flight to a military base in California. They will be monitored for signs of the disease while they are put in isolation. So far they all seem fine but not everyone who wanted to leave China was allowed onto the flight. CNN's David Culver has the story.

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DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): American flag in hand, 8-year-old Hermione Dickey was so close to returning to the United States, ready to leave behind the locked down epicenter of the coronavirus, Wuhan, China. But she and her mom, Priscilla, never boarded.

HERMIONE DICKEY, U.S. CITIZEN: I didn't have my passport so I couldn't get on the plane.

CULVER: 201 other Americans did get on the plane, including U.S. diplomats and their families along with a select number of civilians. Hermione's passport was in another city with her dad and could not be mailed into the locked down zone. Normally they'd go to the consulate in Wuhan for help.

PRISCILLA DICKEY, U.S. CITIZEN: The consulate is gone. The consulate was on the plane.

JOHN MCGORY, U.S. CITIZEN: That's a little disconcerting that they have a plane and most of the people on it are from the consulate.

So, you know, we feel a little bit left behind.

CULVER: An American teacher, John McGory, had recently submitted his passport for visa processing.

MCGORY: Unfortunate for me I didn't have my passport. The school has it. I was getting a two-week extension on my visa.

CULVER: Others countries chartering flights to evacuate their citizens out of the epicenter. This image showing a pilot wrapped in protective gear.

Around 200 Japanese citizens were evacuated Wednesday telling reporters they feel relief to be home. Adding that the situation in Wuhan is deteriorating.

China has dispatched medical teams to the front lines of the outbreak, Hubei province. State media shows the first two of hospitals going up. They will hold a combined 2,600 patients. This as Chinese state media is airing video of coronavirus patients that they say have been successfully treated and discharged. As for those in Wuhan --

MCGORY: People are scared here. Scared people get angry. Scared people want answers and sometimes at the moment, they don't have an answer.

CULVER: Priscilla and her daughter hoping for a way out.

P. DICKEY: We would really appreciate a way to get her an emergency passport.

CULVER: In an automated email response, the U.S. State Department says that they are working on other ways to get Americans out of the lockdown zone and out of the city of Wuhan, in particular, including by car, but they have not yet finalized those details -- David Culver, CNN, Beijing.

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VAUSE: So what is next for the handful of Americans who did make it onto the flight out of Wuhan, who are now in California?

Here's CNN Sara Sidner.

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SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They were originally supposed to land in Ontario, California, but ended up being diverted to a military reserve base here in Riverside.

Basically, what they are trying to do is make sure that these people, if they are infected, do not further spread this very contiguous virus. And we saw pictures of as they landed around 8 o'clock in the morning and they were received by people wearing the full white hazmat suits, trying to make sure that they themselves, if there is anyone who is infectious, they do not contract the virus.

There is a lot of precautions being taken. We understand the pilot also was wearing a hazmat apparatus as the people got on and off the aircraft. The aircraft was chartered by the State Department, by the U.S. government.

Many of the people on this flight were diplomats, although there were some sort of, regular U.S. citizens on this flight trying to get them safe and get them out of the Wuhan province in China.

We also know that there are many governments, including the United States government, who has stopped flights to and from China for fear that this virus which is extremely contiguous could spread even further. We now know that more than 130 people have died because of this virus. And that there are somewhere over 6,000 people who have confirmed to have had this virus in China alone. There are five people here in California who have contracted the virus.

It is now, the virus, exceeding that of the SARS epidemic that happened back in 2003, that I'm sure many people will remember. Governments taking this very seriously.

And we also understand that the people who came here, landed in California on this chartered flight are taking this very seriously as well. They understand they will be under quarantine for about three days, but they could be watched up to two weeks, according to CDC officials.

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SIDNER: That's the Centers for Disease Control.

All of this is in an effort to try and make sure this disease which has become deadly does not spread any farther. Lots of precaution being taken, but we are told from officials that when people landed on their -- in their motherland on U.S. soil they were extremely happy and extremely helpful, understanding that they will be under quarantine for a bit here -- Sara Sidner, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: For days they sat there, listening.

Now senators get their chance to ask the questions in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump but are they any closer to calling witnesses?

More on that in a moment.

Also days to go before the Iowa caucuses. Bernie Sanders is rising in the polls. A closer look at his second run for the presidency, next on CNN NEWSROOM.

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VAUSE: At the impeachment trial of the U.S. president, the discordant voices may have changed but the tone has not. Senators are asking questions. It seems both sides are using this as a chance to poke holes in each other's arguments.

Democrats want to subpoena John Bolton, who reportedly says in an upcoming book, Donald Trump withheld military aid with Ukraine until it announced an investigation into his political rival, Joe Biden.

Republicans say they'll call Biden's son, Hunter, who sat on the board of a very corrupt Ukraine energy company. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASON CROW, U.S. HOUSE DEMOCRATIC IMPEACHMENT MANAGER: Do you have any lingering questions about direct evidence, any thoughts about anything we talked about, anything that I just relayed or that we talked about the last week, there is a way to shed additional light on it?

You can subpoena Ambassador Bolton and ask him that question directly.

PATRICK PHILBIN, TRUMP DEPUTY COUNSEL: Is there going to be witnesses, then the president would have to, in order, they said, fair trial, fair adjudication, then the president would have to have his opportunity to call his witnesses. And there would be depositions and this would drag on for months.

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VAUSE: At the very center of this question of witnesses testifying before the Senate trial is John Bolton. And it seems the president's former national security adviser has joined that long and distinguished list of those who were once the greatest, the smartest, the bestest ever.

Well, now, just part of life's major disappointments.

On Twitter, the president lamented.

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VAUSE: "For a guy who couldn't get approved for the ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn't get approved for anything since, begged me for a non-Senate approved job, which I gave him, despite many saying, don't do it, sir. Takes the job, mistakenly says "Libyan model" on TV and many more mistakes of judgment, gets fired, because, frankly, if I listen to him, we would be in World War VI by now and goes out and immediately writes a nasty and untrue book. All classified national security. Who would do this?

We'll look now into the impeachment trial with Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, joining us from Charlottesville.

One thing I have noticed in this trial, since it began, the president's lawyers have been laying out multiple and at times competing arguments. This seems to be the old defense strategy of arguing in the alternative and in the process giving Republican senators a smorgasbord of options to justify whatever decision they may make.

For example, here is Lindsey Graham on calling witnesses.

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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Here's where I am at on witnesses. I am ready to make my decision based on the record established in the House. The House chose not to pursue witnesses that were available to them. And I don't want to start a precedent of just doing it half- assed in the House and expect Senate to fix it.

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VAUSE: Larry, if you listen to Graham, calling witnesses would be a dangerous precedent because it would mean that the House could do an impeachment with little evidence and then leave the heavy lifting to the Senate. And that would be a dangerous precedent as opposed to a dangerous precedent of not conducting a proper trial, which 75 percent of Americans believe should have witnesses.

Is that close to the mark?

LARRY SABATO, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: I think that is exactly right. We're in several positions on witnesses just in the past few weeks. It has changed a lot. And it's all situational. We know what's going on.

The lawyers on both sides, particularly the Republican lawyers, are throwing every possible rationale out there, not to have witnesses and also in defending the president so Republican senators can pick and choose the explanations they like the best and that will convince their constituents they are right.

VAUSE: So this is just about politics and we've known that from the beginning.

Senator Mitt Romney on the other hand, is a Republican senator leaning towards the barter system for witnesses, here he is.

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SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): I think news reports of the individuals thinking about witnesses that may not have been thinking about it before, but I cannot begin to predict what the ultimate vote will be.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Do you think that's (INAUDIBLE)?

ROMNEY: I think that's a measure that has a fairness associated with it (ph).

RAJU: (INAUDIBLE) Hunter Biden?

ROMNEY: I wouldn't tell (INAUDIBLE) call.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: So the Democrats are the holdouts on this. I guess there is a risk of legitimizing the spew (ph) on the Bidens.

Wouldn't it be a chance for Joe Biden to clear the air, which would be a small price to pay to hear from John Bolton?

SABATO: If he is willing to do it. I think it is a good bargain. At least it would give John Bolton and one or two other Republican witnesses up there to tell what they saw, in the room or on the call or they had particular information that could really help people understand what is really going on.

Will Biden be willing to do that?

I don't know.

Will Democrats push in that direction?

I don't know.

Again, Senator Romney has also had several positions on this. He suggested a couple days ago it was very likely that there were 51 votes to have witnesses. Now he has pulled back on that.

Every day we get a different story about whether there are 51 votes to have witnesses. It makes you wonder what is going on behind the scenes other than a lot of pressure.

VAUSE: To that point, Mitch McConnell, the leader in the Senate, did make it be known publicly just 24 hours ago that he did not have the numbers to block witnesses from being called.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be a rallying cry for the president's allies to start applying pressure to those senators who may be open to witnesses, like Mitt Romney. So that pressure came, for example, from Sean Hannity on Wednesday night -- Tuesday night.

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SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: I liked Mitt Romney. He would've been a great president in 2012. He was the better person to be president. I thought I was friends with Mitt Romney. I don't recognize this guy anymore.

But this sanctimonious Trump hatred is getting old. I haven't heard you talk about quid pro quo Joe. I haven't heard you talk about zero experience Hunter either. I haven't heard you ask for them to be called as witnesses.

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VAUSE: I think Sean is breaking up with Mitt. But on top of that, (INAUDIBLE) which is this conservative economic group, released an attack ad on Romney.

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VAUSE: Here is part of it.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): There is Mitt Romney, threatening to vote with Democrats again. Trot out spotlight seeking blowhards who will trash President Trump on the witness stand.

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VAUSE: It's interesting they even included images of John Bolton in that ad.

Is this solely, this pressure campaign, aimed at the senators like Romney, who may be on the fence or is it a warning as well to all others that this is what happens if you start thinking about going for witnesses?

SABATO: Of course it's a warning. None of the other Republican senators want to go through what Mitt Romney is going through. Obviously Romney just started a Senate term and does not have to worry about this for six years.

But some of the others on the ballot with Trump in November really don't want bad relations with the president. So I think it is a useful warning to them.

And what you suggested is absolutely true. This is all about sending a message to the handful of Republican senators, who might be willing to vote for witnesses and it was a good sell (ph) for the president because the president sometimes does not like to hear this kind of bad news in person.

McConnell, Senate via the media. So whatever upset the president had was not (INAUDIBLE) directed at McConnell. (INAUDIBLE).

VAUSE: Let's finish up with jumping the shark in terms of legal arguments. TV lawyer and the guy who got O.J. off, Alan Dershowitz, seems to (INAUDIBLE) multiple times on this question on what is and is not abuse of power. Here's part of it.

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ALAN DERSHOWITZ, TRUMP ATTORNEY: It would be a much harder case if a hypothetical president of the United States said to a hypothetical leader of a foreign country, unless you build a hotel with my name on it and unless you give me a $1 million kickback, I will withhold the funds. That's an easy case. That is purely corrupt and in the purely private interest.

But a complex middle case is I want to be elected. I think I'm a great president. I think I'm the greatest president there ever was and, if I'm not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly. That cannot be an impeachable offense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: If that argument was applied in any case, like Watergate, Richard Nixon, then that article of impeachment would not be applicable because clearly Nixon thought he was great. Every president thinks they're great. It's nuts.

SABATO: No, it's a crazy argument Dershowitz has made on other occasions but he's gone to a new extreme here. Essentially if we take the Dershowitz standard then no president will ever be guilty of abuse of power as long as they can cite benefit to themselves and claim that it's a benefit for the country.

So it was a very unimpressive argument. Even if you're balanced on this and you haven't taken a position on whether Trump should actually be ousted, whether he is guilty of what the Constitution specifies as high crimes and misdemeanors, I think the precedents being set are disturbing.

And it won't be long before another president is going to use these precedents and it could be a Democrat, to get off whatever charges are brought.

VAUSE: Larry, good to see you, thank you.

SABATO: Thank you.

VAUSE: Next week we should see the first glimpse of who Democrats want as their nominee for president. Results from the Iraq caucus will start coming in on Monday night. History has shown it's a very rare candidate who wins the party's nomination without winning Iowa.

And right now a poll suggests Bernie Sanders will be that candidate. For more now on Bernie is Bianca.

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BIANCA NOBILO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When it comes to running for U.S. president, Bernie Sanders has been there, done that. He ran in 2016 but lost to the centrist Hillary Clinton in a contentious primary.

In fact, Clinton, in part, blames Sanders for her eventual loss to Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders is back in 2020 and this time some of his most progressive 2016 ideas are being treated as mainstream.

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SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Many of you will remember that when I was here four years ago, many of the ideas that I talked about were seemingly wild and crazy ideas, ideas that the political establishment rejected, the media rejected.

Well, guess what?

Virtually all of those ideas are being talked about by almost every candidate running for the Democratic nomination.

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NOBILO: Income inequality, the Green New Deal, Medicare for all: these are all topics championed by Bernie Sanders that have become some of the biggest talking points of the campaign.

Sanders has lots of Washington experience.

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NOBILO: He was first elected by the entire state of Vermont to the House of Representatives in 1991 and stayed there for 16 years. Since then, he's been ever-present in the Senate, winning three terms.

But questions have arisen about the 78-year old's health especially after a heart attack last October. His foreign policies are also being scrutinized, with his previous praise of Castro's Cuba and Venezuela frequently criticized by Republicans.

Sanders actually sits in Congress as an independent even though he is running for president for the second time as a Democrat. He touts his wide-ranging small donor base of supporters as he bids to go one step further than last time.

Back then he tapped into a young, energetic electorate.

Will he be able to do the same in 2020?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Still to come, is it au revoir or goodbye and so long?

Proving breaking up is hard to do, a tearful farewell to the E.U. to the U.K. and it's just the beginning.

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VAUSE: Thank you for staying with us. Welcome back, I'm John Vause. An update now on the top news this hour.

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VAUSE: Make the most of that opener, because we will not be using it for much longer, because, on Friday, as Big Ben strikes 11:00 pm in London, midnight in Europe, after a long, drawn-out bitter divorce, the U.K. will formally withdraw from the E.U.

European Parliament gave final approval with a vote, 621 to 49. One more vote is needed Thursday by the European Council, but it's a formality at this point.

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E.U. officials are calling this an "au revoir," not "adieu." But Britain's Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage, says Britain's never coming back.

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NIGEL FARAGE, BREXIT PARTY LEADER: I know you're going to miss us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not. FARAGE: I know you want to ban our national flags, but we're going to wave you good-bye, and we'll look forward in the future to working with you as sovereign nations.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you disobey the rules, you get cut off. Could we please remove the flags?

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VAUSE: What a rebel, what a rebel.

So in the days ahead, Brussels will say farewell with U.K.-themed events leading up to a somber moment. Wednesday's E.U. session ended, though, with tears, holding hands, and singing.

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VAUSE: Brought a tear to my eye, Don. CNN European affairs commentator Dominic Thomas with us now from Los Angeles.

OK, really, though, this all is ending sort of with a relieved whimper, rather than with a bang. And now that it's almost here, there are some dire warnings, which I have to say never materialized, especially predictions that Brexit would be a trigger. The desire to leave would spread across the bloc. It would unravel like swiss cheese or something.

The E.U.'s foreign policy chief described Britain not so much as an epidemic, but rather, he said it worked as a vaccine, and that seems pretty much on the money.

DOMINIC THOMAS, CNN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: I think it is, John, and if you look at the evidence, that really, not long-term, but just at least going back to the Brexit vote three and a half years ago, in June 2016, that the favorability rating of the E.U. has essentially gone up in most E.U. countries, especially among the young.

The E.U. 27 have worked together in a really kind of concerted fashion. And I think at this particular stage, they're just waiting to see what will happen, you know, now that the U.K. is officially leaving the European Union, and that, if anything, debates that we were looking at a few years ago about Frexit and Nexit, in France and the Netherlands, have pretty much disappeared, and most people have taken this as a fairly sort of serious warning, and are not going down the same road that the U.K. has followed.

VAUSE: Yes, the only thing we got was Megxit, I guess, you know.

Anyway, much of the focus has been, at least, on Britain, and the economic impact it will -- it will go through. And I guess at this point, that's still to manifest itself in any significant way, but let's wait and see.

But what has also sort of gone unnoticed is the -- the hit that the E.U. will actually take. Britain is the second biggest economy in Europe. It makes about a 12 percent net contribution to the union's budget. Beyond that, there's a power vacuum which will be left behind.

And this hasn't really really been talked about a lot, but Britain has always played this very important role in soothing relations between France and Germany, and they won't be there anymore.

THOMAS: Yes, and it's not just France and Germany. It's also the way in which the United States, obviously under the Trump presidency, there's a goal to weaken the European Union and its institutions, in the same way that Putin and Russia has been doing this. And the E.U. has found itself sandwiched between these two spaces.

But they benefited from having the U.K. as a particular member. And it is true now that, with the departure of the United Kingdom, some of these age-old rivalries and tensions between countries can potentially be there.

Certainly, we're at a moment of transition. I mean, not only in terms of the leadership of the E.U. Commission and the E.U. Council, but Macron is under pressure at home; Angela Merkel will be stepping down soon from her chancellorship; and that creates some kind of uncertainty there.

But I think that, really, when it comes down to the economics, yes, it's absolutely true that, for the European Union, this is a significant shift, but I think the E.U. 27 can absorb it. It's United Kingdom that finds itself in a much more precarious position, potentially finding itself unable to access the European Union market, which has represented a far more significant trading partner than it has for the European Union looking the other way.

And it will be interesting to see whether the U.K. is able to gain and maintain access to that, while at the same time striking a deal with the United States, when we know that the interests of Donald Trump are not automatically going to be those of the European Union.

VAUSE: For the leader of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, others may be saying "au revoir." He's saying goodbye forever, and he warns this is the beginning of the end for the E.U. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FARAGE: It is globalism against populism. And you may loath populism, but I'll tell you a funny thing: it's becoming very popular.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: That smirk.

[00:35:03]

But there is this unanswered question, right, about what's happening in Europe and U.S. and where we are in this cycle of nationalism or populism and this push against globalism. Are we sort of at the beginning? Is it coming to an end? Where do you think we are?

THOMAS: Well, I think we're -- you know, obviously, we're at a moment of tremendous uncertainty, certainly for Nigel Farage. He will not be missed in that building at the European Union headquarters. That's absolutely clear. He's been nothing but a detractor there. And one would just hope that he will finally disappear.

Now, we see some interesting signs in Italy, for example, in recent elections. Salvini, the leader of the far-right, popularity has dwindled over time.

I think that the Trump election coming up, and the future of the Trump presidency is going to be important here.

What we clearly do not have yet is, on the one hand, a global kind of response to this rise of populism. Nobody has really found a way yet to go about countering this and to come up with real alternatives to this. And therefore, we have not also be able to deal with the underlying factors -- poverty, wealth discrepancy, and so on so forth -- that are fueling this drive for populism. And as you said, not just United States but in Europe, in Brazil, and in other parts of the world. So it is a moment of tremendous uncertainty, again.

VAUSE: Very quickly -- we're almost out of time -- but let's put this in simple terms. Britain voted to leave the E.U. in that referendum 1,316 days ago. British lawmakers approved the withdrawal agreement. That was last week, 1,309 days. That was after the referendum.

Essentially, that was how to end the relationship. Now they have 336 days until the end of the year to negotiate terms of their future relationship. That's not going to happen.

THOMAS: It's extremely unlikely to happen, and I would say no, it's not going to happen, John. And then once again, as we were touching on just a moment ago, what's going to be so interesting is how the Brexiteers, now that they're finally at the helm, are going to be able to reconcile their political goals and objectives with all the misleading comments, even the lies that were told along the way.

Let's not forget that Brexit was so much a debate around emotions, and so on and so forth, that to actually translate that into some kind of new economic and political model for the U.K. We have uncertainty over Scotland. We have uncertainty over Northern Ireland. We do not have a trade deal either with the European Union or with the United States.

And so that's really going to be the interesting challenge ahead, is how to reconcile both of those sides of the -- of the equation and to -- and to be able to move forward in just that very short time period.

VAUSE: Yes. We're out of time. It's a bit like the dog finally caught the car, and now -- now they're going to work out what to do with it.

Dominic, as always, good to see you. Thank you.

THOMAS: Thanks, John.

VAUSE: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has arrived in London to discuss America's relationship with the U.K. after Brexit. Pompeo told reporters his meetings with British officials would cover a lot of topics, including trade and security concerns over Chinese telecom company Huawei. On Tuesday, the U.K. said it would allow Huawei to help build its next-generation wireless networks, despite U.S. opposition.

Well, see -- soon to come here, we've seen politicians kissing babies, shaking hands, knocking on doors to get votes. But U.S. presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg takes it to another level, trying to win over man's best friend. But they can't vote. Just saying.

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VAUSE: Well, when you're billionaire running for U.S. president, you can pretty much do whatever you want. Here's Jeanne Moos.

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JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's not that Mike Bloomberg doesn't know how to shake hands. It's what he shook when he glad-handed a dog, instead of doing this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Paw.

MOOS: "I regret to inform you that Mike Bloomberg attempted to shake a dog's mouth."

Oh, sure, he topped it off with a nice tickle. But still, ay, yi, yi.

Tweeted one wage: "He thought it was Bernie."

And it wasn't the first time Bloomberg shook a dog's snout. A second imaged emerged. Does this mean he's another billionaire lukewarm to pooches?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And the guy choked like a dog.

MOOS: President Trump's first wife wrote about his cold war with her dog, Chappy, "Donald was not a dog fan."

Bloomberg's girlfriend once gave him two Labs. "The New York Times" reported the then-mayor told her, "The dogs could stay, but she would be looking after them."

And now this. To warm up his image, Bloomberg posted a video featuring the two dogs he currently owns, captioned, "Starting the day with my senior advisers, Cody and Libby."

(on camera): Bloomberg's social media team turned to the doggy demo, whipping out this instant ad.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mike Bloomberg is the man to lead up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He will create more jobs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mike is not afraid of the NRA, not one bit.

MOOS (voice-over): Contrasting their master with President Trump, Bloomberg's own dogs chimed in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He does not tweet.

MOOS: It could have been worse. At least Bloomberg didn't attempt the Trumpian grab and yank on the dog's mouth.

(on camera): Bloomberg's snout grabbing inspired someone to paraphrase that famous Trump quote: "when you're a billionaire. they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the snout."

Hashtag #DogsFurMike to the rescue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I like Mike. I lick Mike.

MOOS: but don't bite Mike. Instead of this, stick with this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Meet the president. Yes.

MOOS: Jeanne Moos, CNN --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm Mike Bloomberg's dog. I approve this message.

MOOS: -- New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Who knew dogs can talk?

Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause. Please stay with us. WORLD SPORT with Patrick Snell is up next.

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(WORLD SPORT)

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VAUSE: Hello, everybody. Thank you for being with us. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Studio Seven at CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta.

Ahead this hour, with international airlines rescheduling or canceling flights to mainland China, cruise lines postponing some voyages, along with tougher international border checks for Chinese travelers, the Wuhan virus is leaving China increasingly isolated and counting the costs of this outbreak.

A very Trumpian defense for an impeached president.

END