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Iowa Caucus Chaos Continues; President Trump Airs List of Grievances. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired February 06, 2020 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being here.

Just one day after he was acquitted, as the third presidential impeachment trial in the nation's history, President Trump is taking a victory lap all over Washington today.

It began this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he held up this newspaper with the one word, acquitted, and attacked his political rivals.

Then the president returned to the White House into a scene that seemed straight out of a campaign rally, raucous applause, shout-outs to his legal team and congressional allies, and an hour-long speech that -- well, you judge for yourself.

Roll it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have been going through this now for over three years. It was evil. It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars.

And this should never, ever happen to another president, ever. I have done things wrong in my life, I will admit, not purposely.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: But I have done things wrong.

But this is what the end result is.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: You have to understand, we first went through Russia, Russia, Russia. It was all bullshit.

They stuck together, and they're vicious as hell. And they will probably come back for more. Donald Trump's poll numbers are the highest I have ever had now.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: So maybe they won't.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: It's no way to get your poll numbers up. It's not worth -- because, from my family's standpoint, it's been very unfair for my family. It's been very unfair to the country.

Think of it, a phone call, a very good phone call. So that's the story. We have been treated very unfairly. Fortunately, we have great men and women that came to our defense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's go straight to Kaitlan Collins over at the White House.

And, Kaitlan, after his acquittal, this is just day one. And now the president can turn his full attention to his reelection bid.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

And you're getting an indication of what those campaign rallies are now going to look like, not that it was all that different. But now it has this new sense of the president essentially being vindictive, while declaring that he believes he's been vindicated through all of this.

And you have saw him there not just talking about the impeachment inquiry and going after Democrats like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, but also about the Mueller investigation and all of these investigations that have really come to mark his presidency.

And, essentially, he said it was a celebration, but really, Brooke, it was an airing of the grievances that the president has had for the last three years since he's been in office.

And he ticked through all of them while we were there in the room together. Now, he went after Democrats. He went after Mitt Romney, saying, tell the people of Utah I'm sorry about Mitt Romney to another senator from Utah, of course, Mike Lee, who was there in the room.

But, Brooke, one thing that the president did make clear is, he is rejecting those statements that you're hearing from people like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, saying she believes the president learned a lesson through all of this, because he says he does not think there was anything wrong with that phone call.

And he said he acknowledged that some people may have to say, well, oh, he shouldn't have said this on the call. He said that is totally incorrect and those people are wrong, essentially saying that he does not have any remorse that some of those Republicans, members of his own party who did vote to acquit him, thought he may show today.

BALDWIN: Kaitlan, thank you for that.

I want to analyze all of this.

Peter Wehner served in the administrations of Republican Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He was also a senior adviser to George W. Bush.

And in his new column for "The Atlantic," he praises Mitt Romney and his vote to convict President Trump for abuse of power, calling it a profile in courage.

And so, Peter, I'm so excited to have you on. Thank you for being here.

PETER WEHNER, ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER: Thanks. Thanks for having me on.

BALDWIN: Before we get to Senator Romney -- and we just played teeny bit of what the president said today. I just want your thoughts.

WEHNER: Right.

BALDWIN: I want you your thoughts on that ceremony and everything he did and said.

WEHNER: Look, I think he's unhinged and he's unwell. That's not new news. I think we have known that for a while. This is just the latest manifestation of it, the latest stage in which it plays out.

And I say what's worrisome is, you have a person who is suffering from some variation of sociopathy, I would say. And he's just slipped the noose, in a sense. He's more emboldened than ever before. And he has a huge amount of power.

That's the danger, and the fact that he has distorted personality. A lot of people in the country and the world have that, but what they don't have is the power of the presidency.

So this idea that Senator Collins, Senator Alexander and others said, which is Trump's going to learn his lesson and -- because of what happened, that was a joke. They must have known that it was a joke.

He now feels more free rein to go after his enemies and to attack and to destroy more institutions, to cross more lines. So this is a dangerous time for the country.

[15:05:00]

BALDWIN: Yes, you just reminded me. I was reading Sherrod Brown's opinion piece, Senator Brown's opinion piece, in "The New York Times" this morning.

And he was talking about his Republican senator colleagues and, well, then how do they answer for, what if the president does something even worse down the line, and he's been acquitted from this?

WEHNER: Right.

BALDWIN: And the response was just like sheepish shrugs, and not much more.

I want to get to Senator Romney, because --

WEHNER: Right.

BALDWIN: -- you write in your piece that Romney did something that is nearly unheard of now. He put his country above his party. And I know you worked on the Romney 2020 (sic) campaign briefly.

Were you surprised at all by his decision?

WEHNER: No, I was not. I expected he would do that.

Mitt Romney is a person of tremendous personal integrity. And I think almost everybody who has known him and worked with him knows that. And he's a person of a deep, deep faith as well. And, as he spoke those eight-and-a-half minutes on the Senate floor, which was a very moving speech, the most moving moment for him was when he actually spoke about he was a person who was defined by his faith.

BALDWIN: Yes.

WEHNER: And so that informed his decision. He's a person that has a wider spectrum on life than a lot of politicians do.

So it didn't surprise me. It was clear leading up to the speech that he was a person who had real concerns and had questions. He wanted John Bolton to testify. He wanted others. So it didn't surprise me. He's an impressive man. He showed it yesterday.

And it was an important moment. I mean, it was a single voice. But one voice can be important, because I have heard from countless people who have e-mailed me, who have spoken to me that said that, basically, Mitt Romney gave voice to what they believed, and that's important.

They didn't feel alone. And the other thing I want to say, Brooke, is that he acted honorably, but he acted alone. And that is important too. The Republican Party is complicit in all of this. Many of these -- Senator Romney's colleagues know the same thing he does, has the same view of Donald Trump as they do, but they don't have the courage that he did.

And they were not willing to do what he was willing to do. And that's why what he does deserves to be praised. It was a rare act of courage. And I applaud him for it.

BALDWIN: Yes, he talked about those calls, right, to stand with the team.

WEHNER: Right.

BALDWIN: And he didn't. He didn't.

Back to your point, though, about his faith, right, and that's when he took that long pause and got emotional during that speech yesterday.

WEHNER: Right.

BALDWIN: And it was the precisely the point about faith that then prompted this jab from the president. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Then you have some that use religion as a crutch. They never used it before, an article written today, never heard him use it before.

But, today, it's one of those things. But it's a failed presidential candidate, so things can happen when you fail so badly running for president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: What's your response to that, Peter?

WEHNER: Well, look, he's -- Donald Trump is a cauldron of rage and vindictiveness and anger.

In a sense, I must say, when I hear him, there's a sense of sadness. He's a broken man in so many ways. Now, that sadness is also combined with a sense of anger, in the sense that he is not just crude, but cruel, that he uses his power to hurt people. And that's the great damage.

But, look, Mitt Romney, whatever you think of his faith, it is central to who he is. And anybody who knows him knows that. For Donald Trump, faith, as best as anyone can tell, is not a part of who he is. And so he can't understand how a person of integrity and faith would act or how faith would inform a person's public actions, because, for him, it's outside his spectrum of understanding.

It's like trying to explain color to a person born blind. He just doesn't understand it. He's just using this as an occasion to go after Romney. Why? Because Romney stood up to him. Donald Trump can't stand it.

He becomes psychologically unsettled and enraged when he does not bend and break people to his will. The problem is that he's basically broken, bent and broken the entire Republican Party to his will. And that's why what Senator Romney did was so important.

BALDWIN: But they went along with him.

WEHNER: Yes.

BALDWIN: He may have broken them, but, again, to Senator Brown's point, it's fear, perhaps.

Peter Wehner, thank you so much. I appreciate you.

WEHNER: You bet. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

BALDWIN: Just as we get close to final results in the Iowa caucuses, the chair of the Democratic Party is now calling for recanvassing of the votes. So we're live in Des Moines, as Senator Sanders tries to claim victory.

You're watching CNN. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:14:05]

BALDWIN: We're back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

A big step today from the chairman of the Democratic Party. Tom Perez is asking for a recanvass of all of the results from Monday's Iowa caucuses.

The still incomplete precinct numbers show former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie for the top spot.

Here is Senator Sanders earlier today:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: At the end of the day, what will I expect almost definitely happen is that Mr. Buttigieg and I will end up with the same amount of delegates, 11 now each, probably a little bit more.

That's what will happen. It ain't going to change. And what certainly is not going to change is the fact that, in terms of the popular vote, we won a decisive victory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: The Sanders campaign has also just announced that he raised $25 million just last month. That is the Vermont senator's highest monthly total since entering the race.

Let's go to CNN senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny, who is still in Des Moines, Iowa.

[15:15:02]

And so now that we're hearing from Tom Perez recanvassing, Jeff, what does that even mean?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, good afternoon.

That tweet from Tom Perez certainly blindsided, I'm told, Iowa Democratic Party officials here. They were not expecting that. They did not know that was coming. He said, enough is enough. And they were on the verge of working through some more numbers to release.

But an interesting response from the Iowa Democratic Party. They did not respond directly, but they said this. Let's put this up from the chairman, Troy Price.

He said this: "Should any presidential campaign, in compliance with the Iowa delegate selection plan, suggest a recanvass, the Iowa Democratic Party, the IDP, is prepared."

So, basically, the rules here, as they're explained to us, it requires a campaign, a candidate to call for a recanvass, not the chairman of the DNC. So, as of this moment, we do not believe any campaigns have asked for a recanvass.

But, Brooke, it almost seems certain that that's where this is going, because there are discrepancies throughout the information. And analysis by a CNN and other news organizations as well are finding discrepancies basically in how the math was added up. Some places have too many delegate equivalents -- excuse me -- and other places, the math just isn't quite working out.

We should point out, this is a complicated process here. It's not just by the raw popular vote. It's an Electoral College-type system, where each person is an average of a state delegate equivalent.

So we will see how this impacts the overall count. They were almost finished; 97 percent of precincts were counted. I'm told that more numbers are expected to be coming soon, but unclear if they will have to recanvass from the very beginning.

But, Brooke, one thing this is showing, it is highlighting the tensions between the Iowa Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee, as well as the individual campaigns.

The Buttigieg campaign now just narrowly holding on to a delegate edge. The Sanders campaign, of course, is touting the popular vote. But we have to think of it as a general election, Electoral College vs. popular vote, and that's how you get delegates.

But Senator Sanders is right that they basically will have a draw here in terms of the number of delegates. So the candidates obviously have moved on in New Hampshire. But this certainly is putting a shadow over the process here.

So we will see if that recanvass starts or not -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right, and we will see if that -- to your point, if that affects those final totals.

Jeff Zeleny, thank you.

CNN, by the way, has just learned that Pete Buttigieg's campaign is about to announce that it raised $2.7 million in just the days following his strong performance in Iowa. And it seems some of his rivals are now perceiving him as really this growing threat into New Hampshire. Whether in name or policy, we heard repeated criticism against the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have great respect for Mayor Pete and his service to this nation.

But I do believe it's a risk, to be just straight up with you, for this party to nominate someone who's never held an office higher than mayor of a town of 100,000 people in Indiana.

(APPLAUSE)

BIDEN: I do believe it's a risk.

TOM STEYER (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I can put together the kind of diverse coalition that we need to have to beat Trump. And that's something, if you look at the people who are running for president, there are people who are struggling to do that, like Pete Buttigieg.

ANDREW YANG (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think candidates who say we should abolish the Electoral College, one, it would require literally like a dozen states to shoot themselves in the foot and say they don't want that kind of power anymore, which is a nonstarter.

But, two, it would end up disadvantaging rural areas, because you would just campaign in major media markets, and that's not what the framers of the Constitution intended.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: CNN political commentator Mitch Landrieu is the former Democratic mayor of New Orleans.

Mr. Mayor, pleasure, as always. Welcome.

MITCH LANDRIEU, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hey, Brooke. How are you?

BALDWIN: I'm doing all right.

I'm fascinated to now fully cover 2020. And my question to you is just on Pete Buttigieg and his experience, do you think it's a risk?

LANDRIEU: Well, listen, I think mayors are well-situated to serve as the president of the United States.

Whether or not every mayor is, depending on what city they came from, is maybe another issue that they have to litigate from candidate to candidate. But, clearly, being a mayor of a major American city puts you in a position of doing things very similar, absent declaring war and signing treaties, than what the president of the United States does.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: I know you're coming from New Orleans, but even if you're the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, population 100,000?

LANDRIEU: Well, I think -- listen, it's all a matter of scale.

You can say about Andrew Yang he's never held a government office. So you could say about Tom Steyer he's never been involved in government.

Once Donald Trump gets elected president of the United States, it's hard to say that there has to be a certain level of experience.

BALDWIN: I hear you.

LANDRIEU: So, they will have to kind of beat that back.

But Pete's getting pushed on because he did well in Iowa. And now the target is on his back. And that's what happens during these cycles. You can expect every candidates to try to either lift up or knock down whoever they think their opponent is going to be, and he's going to have to figure out a way to respond in an effective way.

[15:20:01]

BALDWIN: What about on money?

I mentioned a second ago that the Sanders campaign announced that they raised $25 million just in the month of January. That's the highest monthly total --

LANDRIEU: Yes.

BALDWIN: -- with an average individual contribution of 18 bucks.

So why do you think he's resonating with these types of donors so well?

LANDRIEU: Well, first of all, a couple of things. That's a big money haul. And this is going to be a long slog. This is not going to happen early. It's going to happen later.

And the people that can raise money are going to have more staying power. And, of course, Senator Sanders has demonstrated that he has the capacity to do that from a lot of small donors. On the other hand, Mike Bloomberg is out there writing checks to the -- almost up to $250 million.

And if you have more money to spend and more money -- more people can hear your message, you have a better chance.

The thing that's very interesting to me about Iowa, besides the fact that the whole thing crashed and why it crashed, which is a story for another day that I think people are going to get by, is we have for the first time four candidates that are splitting only 41 electoral votes.

So all this noise that we have had in the last couple of days, Bernie and Mayor Pete are fighting over electoral votes, when you actually need 1,990 to win, just to give the public a sense of how far we are away from anybody coming close to being able to claim that they're a front-runner.

And, of course, the race changes dramatically once you got get out of New Hampshire and go into Nevada and South Carolina. So I'm really interested to see how this plays out. You are not going to have a typical year where one of these candidates does well in one state and then catapults themselves into front-runner status.

That's not going to happen in the next couple months. I think that should be clear to everybody. And we should understand that we're not going to get any real clarity until after March 2, Super Tuesday.

BALDWIN: Yes, Super Tuesday.

Yes. No, and I think we left typical a long time ago.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: Let me ask you about the president of the United States.

LANDRIEU: No question.

BALDWIN: Let me ask you about President Trump, right?

LANDRIEU: Sure.

BALDWIN: His acquittal, highest approval numbers, yet his base is energized. Still, it's kind of blurry on which Democrat will challenge him.

How concerned are you, Mitch Landrieu, that President Trump will be reelected?

LANDRIEU: Well, just a couple of general things.

First of all, incumbents usually get reelected, and incumbents with good economies almost always get reelected. So it's very telling to me that he's not at 90 percent, but he's at 50 percent. And he demonstrated why today.

He is -- this is a man whose soul is just dark. He can take something that is absolutely beautiful and transmogrify it into something that is grotesque faster than any human being that we've seen.

And my sense is, the American public, even for those people who like what he's doing, are going to say, you know what, enough of this. Even today at the press conference that he had, it was just hard to watch, in terms of trying to move the country on.

If this was a thoughtful person, a thoughtful leader that had one ounce of goodness in his soul, he would have said, look, I have been acquitted. It's really now time to heal the nation. Let's move to a better place.

But he can't seem to do that. And I just think that we are in for a hellacious battle in the next couple months. He's going to be very formidable. He's got more money than he had before. He's at 50 percent. And the Democrats, if we're going to win, have to get focused, talk about things that people really care about, and then take it to him.

And I think we have a good chance. But it's going to be tough.

BALDWIN: I think we just got a preview of what an acquitted President Trump will look like. And we're going to have interesting conversations in the next couple months.

LANDRIEU: Well, to that point, a number of these senators let him off the hook by saying, oh, he got the message. He clearly didn't get the message.

He didn't think anything was wrong with what he did. And he's clearly stated he's going to do it again.

BALDWIN: Right.

LANDRIEU: So, I would strap it on and get ready, because this guy has demonstrated he is who he is. He's not going to change his behavior.

And the question for the country now is not who he is. The question is, who are we?

BALDWIN: Who are you?

LANDRIEU: And what kind of country do we want to have and what kind of leader do we want? That's on us. That's not on him.

BALDWIN: Mitch --

LANDRIEU: He's already said who he is.

BALDWIN: Yes.

Mitch Landrieu, great to have you on. Thank you.

LANDRIEU: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, the nasty back-and-forth today between the president and the speaker of the House.

We're live on Capitol Hill just to talk about what can possibly be done in Congress as the personal attacks get uglier.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:28:53]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person. And she wanted to impeach a long time ago.

And she wanted to impeach a long time ago. When she said, I pray for the president, I pray for the president, she doesn't pray. She may pray, but she prays for the opposite.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: But I doubt she prays at all. And these are vicious people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: President Trump going after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, as he celebrated his acquittal at the White House.

But this war of words is coming from both directions.

Earlier today, Speaker Pelosi vigorously defended her decision to rip up her copy of the president's State of the Union speech.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You often counsel your members to be dignified in their response to the president --

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Yes.

RAJU: -- take the high ground.

Did you step on that message by tearing up the State of the Union?

PELOSI: No, I did not. No, I did not. I tore up a manifesto of mistruths.

It's very hard for us to get you to talk about the issues that we are working on, HR-3, infrastructure and the rest. He misrepresented all of that.

It was necessary to get the attention of the American people to say, this is not true, and this is how it affects you. And I don't need any lessons from anybody, especially the president of the United States, about dignity. Dignity.