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Trump Vetoes $740 Billion Defense Bill; Biden Still Mulling Who to Nominate as CIA Director; Restaurant Advocacy Groups Say COVID Relief Plan Falls Short; House Republicans Meeting Now After Trump Says He May Veto $900 Billion COVID Relief Bill; Trump Pardon's Blackwater Guards Convicted in 2007 Iraq Massacre. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired December 23, 2020 - 15:30   ET

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

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Just minutes ago, the president doing precisely what he said he would and vetoing this critical defense bill. CNN's senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny is live in Wilmington, Delaware. And Jeff, now another moving part for the Biden administration to deal with.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, it absolutely is. I mean, the relationship between the incoming president and this Congress was already, you know, very much potentially a tumultuous one, but it couldn't be as rocky as this one. What we've seen really in the last 24 hours is pretty extraordinary.

Yes, we knew that President Trump was going to veto this bill. Actually following through on threats. But you know, the idea now is we're just a couple days before Christmas as he's getting ready to leave for Mar-a-Lago, that he's still threatening to veto the spending bill and the COVID relief bill is certainly a governing style that president-elect Joe Biden will not repeat.

He has repeatedly said help is on the way. That is what he means by that. But Brooke, all of this is happening as he's still working to fill his cabinet. If course, naming the education secretary, Miguel Cardona, here earlier today in Wilmington. But also focusing on some of those unfilled seats.

We talk about the Attorney General a lot, but also CIA director. We are learning really an update of what is going on with the CIA director position. We're learning that Mike Morell, who was the Obama acting CIA director is out of the picture, so now there are at least three contenders. David Cohen, he was a former CIA deputy director in the Obama administration.

Lisa Monaco, perhaps a familiar name and face. She was a homeland security adviser under President Obama. Also close adviser to Joe Biden during his vice presidential pick. And as well as Darrell Blocker, if selected, he would be the first African-American to lead the CIA. He's a long-time CIA veteran, about 28 years or so. So we are told that those are three of the names the president-elect

is considering as he goes into the holiday break here. And not expecting any big announcements of any of these until after the holidays, potentially, Brooke, until after the new year.

BALDWIN: We'll stay tuned as we know you will. Jeff Zeleny, thank you very much.

Ahead here on CNN, forced to shut down during the pandemic and now Congress is too late to help. I'll talk to a chef who lost her restaurant. What she says needs to happen to keep other owners from losing theirs, next.

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BALDWIN: In just days from now, pandemic assistance money will run out. And while Congress did finally pass a deal, President Trump, who has been pretty much on the sidelines for months, is suddenly taking this interest and saying the current bill is a no go in its current status.

Also unhappy with this legislation, America's restaurant industry which has been completely crushed by this pandemic. One of the country's leading restaurant advocacy groups says why this isn't going to cut it.

Writing in part, quote, when we've been asked by the government to change the way we do business, our elected officials need to help us stay in business. It's clear Congress wants to help us, and we gave them a plan to do that. This legislation isn't it.

Frank Bruni is a CNN contributor, and spent years as a "New York Times" restaurant critic. And he's an op-ed columnist at the "Time." And Camilla Marcus is the co-founder of ROAR -- stands for Relief, Opportunities for All Restaurants. She's also the former chef and owner of the wonderful restaurant, West Born, which she was forced to do close this fall. So welcome to both of you.

And I want to start Frank with you. Because I read your piece -- your op-ed in the "Times" a couple of days ago, and I really wanted to have this conversation. So you write this piece about how New York City is the great restaurant city, the best in all of America and how is actually hurting more than we know. How do you mean?

FRANK BRUNI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well I mean, a lot of us have spent much of the pandemic in our apartments. We've been avoiding public spaces. So you know maybe we've read about this restaurant or that restaurant closing, we don't know it in an immediate sense. We may not know about restaurants we love that are closed because we haven't called to make a reservation. We haven't kind of walked down the street and noticed that where there used to be all these people spilling out on the sidewalk in a great mood, there's just stillness.

Because we're not using restaurants fully during the pandemic, they're closing, but it also means in this sort of weird catch-22, we don't experience that loss yet. It's a loss that's going to be delayed into the future, and I don't think we appreciate the magnitude of it.

BALDWIN: So speaking of losses, Camilla, to you. You know, you had to close down West Born in soho earlier in the year, but you say this is not goodbye. What has this experience been like for you, and equally, what advice do you have for other chefs to hold onto their businesses?

CAMILLA MARCUS, CHEF: Look, this has been a year of devastation unlike anything I think any of us were prepared for or could have even fathomed. And I think the worst part is we've been hit the hardest. It affects more people than any other industry. We're the second largest private employer next to health care, and we've been totally ignored by every level of government. Neither states, cities, nor the federal government have agreed to give us any form of industry-specific relief or a restructuring plan.

And you know, our industry is collapsing before their very eyes, and we know, to what Frank said, beautifully wrote on his Sunday piece, you know, this touches every facet of our culture, of our society, of our neighborhoods, and 100 percent a huge economic driver.

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And we've just been seen as collateral damage, unworthy of helping. And that's brutal for the 11 million of us that have dedicated our lives to taking care of others.

BALDWIN: You know, to that point, Frank, I thought what you did do so beautifully in your piece is you were stressing the importance of, you know, people thinking less about restaurants as, you know, fancy indulgences, you know, eating out, instead of thinking of them as the job creators and the economic forces that they are. Can you just speak a little bit more to that, and where do you think the city -- other cities' restaurants go from here?

BRUNI: Yes, I'd be happy to. It's absolutely -- it's so important. I mean, I think the correct statistic is 15 million jobs in this country is what, in a typical time, the restaurant industry -- that's how many people they employ. And that doesn't even count, Brooke, all the kind of -- you know, you've got the linen supplier and you've got the food deliverers, the producers -- the food producers, they're also getting jobs from those restaurants.

And I just feel there is this weird thing I've picked up on when I listen to conversations around me where people think, well restaurants, as you said, those are an indulgence, a fancy indulgence. Most restaurants aren't fancy at all. They are dynamic job creators.

Believe me, there's nothing fancy for the dishwasher who's lost a job in the restaurant he or she was working in, the bartender, the server. These are not fancy people who were living high on the hog. These are hardworking people who now no longer have jobs because that is among the most hardest hit sectors of our economy.

There is legislation that the House passed, and nothing has happened in the Senate yet. But I think there really needs to be targeted restaurant industry relief, because it's not about propping up a bunch of rich restaurant owners. Most restaurant owners are not rich, they're middle class people. It's about all the jobs that have been lost within all of these restaurants, and that is something that is having profound effects on the American economy.

BALDWIN: Camilla, as you wait for Congress to specifically help you all in your industry, for every American watching who has that beloved favorite local restaurant, maybe it's shuttered, maybe it's not, you know, what can we do as humans who enjoy food and a glass of wine and supporting our local businesses? What can we do to help?

MARCUS: We at the independent restaurant coalition -- I'm a founding member and sit on the advisory board -- we had outlined what we need from Congress and from this government, and it's going to take an enormous amount of public pressure to finally get this over the goalpost, which we've seen. We've been asking for help for nine months. Call your congresspeople. You can go to saverestaurants.com. Call them every day, take five minutes.

Every person that is supposed to represent you, force their hand to actually represent you and save these gems. You know, I think Frank again hit it on the head. There are so many human lives being devastated in the wake of this, and we've already waited nine months with our calls unanswered. It has broad bipartisan support, and we need the public to be as outraged and as pained as really each of us has been, to go through this and to lose so many jobs that are not going to be absorbed by other industries, certainly not now.

So without the restaurants act, I don't know what kind of hope, you know, we're supposed to be hanging our hats on and keeping people productive at work and putting food on their table, especially now during the holidays and during a very harsh winter ahead of us. This is just the beginning.

BALDWIN: Saverestaurants.com. Call your member of Congress. Camilla Marcus, thank you, owner of West Born. Thank you. Frank Bruni, thank you so, so much, to both of you.

MARCUS: Thank you.

BALDWIN: We are following our breaking news this afternoon. I want to get right to that. House Republicans are holding a conference call right now to discuss their next moves after President Trump signaled last night that he might veto that bipartisan coronavirus relief bill. CNN's Phil Mattingly is back with us on this. So Phil, conference call. What are you learning?

Phil Mattingly, CNN correspondent: Yes, actually right now that call is still ongoing. And according to a couple people who are on that call who I've been texting with. There's a couple of top lines. One, there's no definitive answer yet as to what the president is actually going to do. And that is been the problem throughout the course of the last 18 to 20 hours. Even those of his closest allies don't know how the president is going to handle the combination COVID relief and spending bill, that he panned at length last night on video. However, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, told

members on the call that he had spoken to the president. And while the president had been frustrated with the bill, he was not committed to vetoing it. So it's not a sure thing that a veto is coming, however, the president did express frustration.

One of the more interesting elements of the call, Brooke -- at least according to what I'm being told right now -- is the reaction from Republican members. Keep in mind, Republicans voted almost en masse for this bill, for this package, and it's a very expensive package which a lot of Republicans tend not to want to support.

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And the frustration from members who voted for this bill, voted for this package assuming the president was behind them because the administration said he was. And now according to one member, Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska, on this call saying, it feels like we've been thrown under the bus.

Another member, Virginia Fox of North Carolina, was talking about how Republicans need to get on TV and talk about the positive elements of the bill, because they know that's where the president tends to get his messaging or information about what's going on. That's not how she put it, but that was the implication at least based on the person relaying this to me from the call.

And I think the bigger issue, a couple members I'm told on the call, laid out, is that they're not sure where things go from here. When the president attacks something kind of so viscerally as he did last night, his supporters, of which many of them are in the districts of these members, take the president at his word. Even though much of what he was saying last night was untrue or conflated about the two different bills that were put together.

And members right now are genuinely concerned how do they react or how do they deal with their constituents who now think they all voted for something that the president is deeply opposed to? So kind of a lot of frustration going on, a lot of people trying to feel out what the end game is here. And while the president did tell the Republican leader Kevin McCarthy that he's not committed to vetoing this bill, we still don't actually know what's happening next -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Remind our viewers, Phil -- you bring up Kevin McCarthy -- what's the relationship between President Trump and the Republican House leader?

MATTINGLY: Very close. Very close. There is no question about it. We talked about this earlier and I've talked about it a couple times today. One of the biggest questions that I've gotten from people on Capitol Hill and people who kind of Republican officials in the general orbit over the course of the last 12 hours is, who are the people in the president's ear that perhaps could get him on track with this, with this bill that got large majorities of Republicans in the House and the Senate? Obviously, the president has turned his angst toward Mitch McConnell

over the course of the last week, because McConnell darned to acknowledge Joe Biden --

BALDWIN: Reality.

MATTINGLY: -- as the president-elect. Did the same thing with the number two, John Thune.

Yes, the reality. Did the same thing with the number two, John Thune. McConnell generally is the person who plays that role with the president in terms of -- picks up the phone, doesn't attack him publicly, but has a good relationship with him going back and forth, letting him know kind of where things stand on The Hill. That relationship is not super relative -- or it doesn't exist to some degree right now, and so that all kind of lands on the shoulders of Kevin McCarthy.

There is no Republican on Capitol Hill with a closer relationship to the president than Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader. And so, how he manages this, they talk constantly. I can't tell you, Brooke, how many times we'll be walking through the hallways with leader Kevin McCarthy, and his phone will ring, and in evidently, it's the president of the United States.

That's how close the relationship is. And so how McCarthy plays this, one, it will be a good indicator as to where things are going when he makes public statements and makes public comments. But also what he's telling the president behind the scenes. Because, again, a huge number of his members voted for this bill. McCarthy was in the room negotiating this bill. McCarthy signed off on this bill. And so how he operates -- you make a great point -- who are the close allies? Who are the people with the president's ears -- at the presidents ear?

Kevin McCarthy is still one of them, and so watching him throughout this process will be interesting. One final note, Brooke, I want to make. Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear that tomorrow she will go to the House floor and try to bring up via unanimous consent a bill to basically address what the president wanted, $2,000 in direct payments.

McCarthy made clear on this call that Republicans believe that's a political stunt. Any one person in the House chamber could object to it and essentially kill what Pelosi and the Democrats will try to do tomorrow. Somebody is going to object to that tomorrow. So there will not be a unanimous consent for the $2,000 checks. It will be a political battle, I'm sure, on the House floor during the pro bono session, but right now I think everybody is just kind of waiting to see.

BALDWIN: Everybody including, as you pointed out for months and months, all those millions of Americans struggling who need the assistance. Phil Mattingly, thank you so much for all the context. You are so, so good.

Still ahead here on CNN, why the pardoning of four former Blackwater security guards is so controversial. We speak with a man who led the FBI evidence response team at that horrific scene in Iraq in 2007.

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BALDWIN: More breaking news this afternoon President Trump has just vetoed a massive defense bill, despite the legislation having overwhelming Republican support in passing both chambers with a veto proof majority. It is unclear if Republicans will defy the president and override his veto. Let's first go to the Pentagon to our correspondent there Barbara Starr. And Barbara just help us all understand, you know, how this $740 billion get spent.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well think of it as a policy bill laying out for this spending for that vast sum of money. Trump -- President Trump is the commander in chief. The U.S. military is an apolitical organization. He's just changed all that as his time in office winds down. He has now imposed an over lay of his partisan political agenda. I think there's no question about that -- over this bill. So what is the risk?

That $748 billion is to cover everything from some pay raises for the troops, to setting critical priorities on spending for confronting adversaries in the future like China and Russia. One of the critical things the president is against in the bill is language that would set the policy to begin to rename army bases that are currently named after generals that were in the confederacy back in the civil war. He is very opposed to that. He says that is a blight on troops in U.S. military history.

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Many top leaders in the Pentagon -- in fact as I say that I can't think of one who doesn't support changing those names in the year 2021 upcoming to have anything named after generals who served in the confederacy that was against having a united country. It is a time that has well passed by in their view.

So, this is something that now he is basically imposed his partisan views. He wants to veto it. He has vetoed it. That puts the U.S. military right in the middle of partisan politics. And that, I would say, is the biggest risk right now. That is not what top commanders want to see.

So, what about the civilian leadership at the Pentagon? Right now we have an acting Secretary of Defense, Chris Miller, a small group of Trump supporters serve in a close circle around him. They don't speak in public. We actually, right as I talked to you, Brooke, so far have no real idea of what the civilian leadership that is in charge is actually thinking about this and whether they even supported the idea or even knew if the president was going to veto the bill. We just do not know the answer. Talk about uncharted territory.

BALDWIN: Indeed. Barbara, thank you very much.

STARR: Sure. BALDWIN: Raven 23, the Nisour Square. If you come from a certain part of the world, those two terms have an unbreakable association with death and the worst of the American military industrial complex. Blackwater guards from that unit killed 17 Iraqi civilians on September 16th, 2007.

According to a FBI investigation 14 of those killings were unjustified. A jury convicted four men in connection with the violence and then sentenced one of the guards, Nicholas Slatten, to life in prison. And President Trump just undid all of that, pardoning all four.

Joining me now, Tom O'Connor. He is a retired FBI special agent and served as the FBI evidence response team leader to the Nisour Square massacre. Agent O'Connor, welcome. You say you have never been this mad ever. Tell me why.

TOM O'CONNOR: LED FBI EVIDENCE RESPONSE TEAM AFTER 2007 MASSACRE: I can tell you that I'm disturbed and disappointed in what just happened yesterday. The FBI methodically investigated this incident, this shooting that took place in Nisour Square. It was done through forensic evidence and interviews. And you know, we know interviews can sometimes be a little off. But the forensic evaluation of physical evidence linked with those interviews are what brings a case forward.

So, in this investigation, we just did that. We used physical evidence to show the story of what happened. And really what happened? The bottom line is that there were no incoming rounds to Raven 23, there were none that could be found. The evidence that we were told was there of incoming rounds impacting one of the vehicles. By the time we got to review the vehicles, it had been painted. They had been sanded and there was no evidence there.

But we were able to show through forensic evidence that the impacts on to that vehicle were done through a M-203 grenade that was fired by one of the Blackwater guards himself and it came back. The story that I'm so -- I think is so important is the story of the victims, the people who died at Nisour were maybe not U.S. citizens, but they were human beings.

And the stories that are behind them are Ali, a 9-year-old boy who was seated in the backseat of his father's car. They took numerous incoming rounds. And when Ali's two little cousins that were sitting next to him, when they screamed that Ali has no hair and his father got out of the car and came around, opened the door and his son fell out of the car and literally his brains fell out on the floor on to the ground at his father's feet.

I know this is a fact because I processed that vehicle. I processed the trajectory of the bullets that impacted that rear driver's side door and struck Ali and we cleaned the brain and matter off of the seat so we could do the collection of evidence.

There's also the woman sitting in the back of a city bus who was struck by a bullet that was fired through the rear of the bus as the Blackwater team was leaving the square. So, this is a story of victims. There were 20 people that were seriously injured. As you said, 17 people who were killed that we are able to actually bring to court.

And a court heard the physical evidence. They heard the witness statements. They heard the witnesses in their own words. A jury heard this, saw the evidence.