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New York Attorney General Targets Trump Organization; Florida Governor Unveils Redistricting Map; President Biden Set to Hold Press Conference. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired January 19, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:12]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: It's the top of the hour on NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell. Good to be with you.

In about an hour, President Biden will mark one year in office with a rare news conference. He is sure to face some tough questions. He's working to contain the pandemic and inflation. A bitterly divided Congress is stalling critical parts of his agenda. He has some successes, though, like the historic infrastructure deal, the $2 trillion COVID relief package.

But the president is now entering his second year with the second worst approval rating of any modern-day president.

CNN is also learning that some top Democrats are growing frustrated with President Biden, saying he has no plan to help with the midterm elections and to tackle the threat of a Republican takeover of the House.

In three dozen exclusive interviews with CNN, top Democrats say the White House political operation is unprepared and unresponsive even to basic requests for help.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny is at the White House.

So, Jeff, what are we expecting to hear from the president in an hour?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, and Victor, President Biden obviously knows well the challenges that are before him.

In fact, he's watching this unfold in real time, when that voting rights legislation that he's been pushing for and made a priority is likely to fail this evening, just hours after his press conference. That is a -- sort of a sign of the limits of presidential power.

But he also has been in this town long enough to see that things go up and they go down at the White House. At this moment, he believes this is a moment for a reset, to reset the just the very fact that he has command of all the challenges going on. Talking to a White House official just a short time ago, this is how they framed what the president plans to do at the press conference. Yes, he will tout his accomplishments, no doubt, but will also lean into some of those challenges.

The official tells me this: "The president knows there's much more work to do. So he's going to level with the American people about the challenges we still face, especially when it comes to COVID-19 and higher prices, and the actions he's taking to tackle them."

Higher prices, of course, other people call inflation. So we will see exactly what the president says about his remedy for fixing some of that. But the reality is, a majority of Americans somehow feel that the U.S. is simply on the wrong track here.

COVID is entering its third year, and this has been a weight around the president's neck. But what this offers is a chance for him to explain his way forward, if he wants to change anything in this administration or not in his West Wing, in terms of his agenda or his staff, as well as just answering a lot of questions.

It's been 10 months since he's had a formal press conference in the White House. He's had some overseas and he takes questions regularly. But this is -- the formality of doing this in the East Room of the White House certainly raises the stakes for the president.

But he's trying to turn the page and clear the air, if you will, as he begins this second year in office tomorrow -- Victor and Alisyn.

BLACKWELL: Jeff Zeleny at the White House, thank you.

Let's discuss now with CNN's chief political analyst, Gloria Borger and CNN senior political commentator, David Axelrod, host of "THE AXE FILES."

Good to see both of you.

David, let me start with you.

I spoke with Congressman Clyburn, an ally of the president, at the top the last hour, said, no need for a course correction. It's only been a year. There's an obstructionist portion of the Senate that's keeping him from passing anything. He can't get the filibuster out.

How deeply should the president lean into this, we have got to reset, I know there are challenges, when we hear from at the top of the next hour?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I think what -- something Jeff said is really important, which is that you can't panic in moments like this.

I have lived through moments like this in the White House. And I remember when people were writing Barack Obama off, and you have to recognize the these -- there are these valleys and troughs. And we are going through a major crisis. I don't think you can

overestimate the impact of three winters of COVID and what that has done to the national psyche, what it has done to our economy. He's navigating through some pretty choppy waters here.

I think the trick is to claim the credit for the successes that he's had. Yes, he's reduced unemployment by 40 percent from 6.4 to 3.9. But inflation is at a 40-year high, and people are feeling that in their lives. He has gotten hundreds of millions of people vaccinated, but we are still mired in COVID.

So he needs to strike that balance, not triumphalism and not defeatism, but a real hooking up with people's experiences in their own lives. I think that's -- that is the task here.

The last thing I would say, Jeff talked about command. People feel that things are out of control. I think the virus has done a lot of that. And they want to see a president who seems like he's in command. And I think that, as much as anything, is the challenge for Biden, not just in this press conference, but in the weeks and months to come.

[15:05:04]

CAMEROTA: In keeping with that, Gloria, there's some new CNN reporting I will just read to everybody.

"According to many in Congress, at the various Democratic campaign arms and others involved in Democratic politics, the Biden White House doesn't have a clear point of contact for allies. 'Who's in charge? Who's running the thing?' said one exasperated Democratic House member requesting anonymity to speak candidly about their frustration."

Is this all President Biden? Is there a clear sense of -- that he's getting the best advice and that somebody is in charge of what Democrats want to accomplish?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, look, first of all, Democrats are nervous, and they have a right to be.

They have a president who's got low popularity. They're facing headwinds in the midterm elections. They have had a record number of retirements. They're afraid of losing control of the House and the Senate.

And they feel out of touch with the White House. And this is a president who had spent 36 years in the Senate. And in many ways, his White House is still being run like a Senate office, rather than a White House.

And there are members of Congress who are complaining they don't get enough outreach. There are moderates who are saying, you got led around by the progressives, and you didn't care about us, and we're the ones who are going to lose our seats in the midterm elections.

So this is about their political survival. And they're upset, and they're angry, and they do want to see a reset. They want to see Biden go out there and not look like he's being led, but rather look like the leader, as David was saying, and they don't think that they have seen that.

So they want to see a compromise on Build Back Better. They want to see a couple of pieces of it getting passed, so they can go home and say, look, we reduced your cost of prescription drugs, for example, which is popular. They don't want to see the infighting in the party anymore. They want to see the president do this and make it happen and figure out a way to help them get reelected.

BLACKWELL: Gloria, let me stay with you on that infighting in the party.

I'm going to read just one line of this new reporting as a result of the three dozen exclusive interviews with Democrats.

"Real and perceived fumbles play into the deep fears that he," the president, "is not up to the job and that Democrats are incompetent."

The Democrats we spoke with in the fall and winter, during the infighting, the negotiation over the Build Back Better plan, said that it was not going to damage the president, damage the party.

Did it? Are we seeing the result of that now in this new reporting?

BORGER: Yes, they were wrong? It did. It damaged the president, because the public was watching every turn of the wheel here. And that isn't pretty.

And it looked like he couldn't lead. And then, in the end, they ended up with -- they got the infrastructure bill, which is great. But they didn't get the rest of the package or even part of the rest of the package.

So it did hurt the president's standings. It did hurt the Democrats. And I think they have to figure out a way to remedy that. And I think -- I was thinking back to 1994. Bill Clinton did that, lost the House and the Senate, and then figured out a way to pass legislation that was more popular at that time, and win his way back into the hearts and minds of the American public.

Whether Biden can do that or not, it's an open question.

CAMEROTA: Well, David, you know Joe Biden. You obviously worked with him when you were in the White House. He was vice president.

I mean, knowing his style, what exactly would you advise him to do? And I don't just mean on camera today. I mean, behind the scenes too.

AXELROD: Well, one thing is, I wouldn't set up tests that you're going to fail. I mean, the voting rights vote today is an example of this, Build Back Better.

He exudes confidence about being able to get these things done. That's part of his personality. But he's got an impossible situation, with a closely divided House and an evenly divided Senate. And so this is a thicket for him.

So I would downplay -- he wants to -- he has 36 years of experience in the Senate. He wants to stress the his ability to get people to work together. But he needs to get away from all of that.

I think the biggest damage that the Build Back Better debate had was that it gave people a sense that he was distracted and caught up in this legislative thicket, as I said, instead of focusing on the problems that are right in front of them on inflation, on the virus. I think he needs to elevate those activities and that messaging and identify with people's sense of struggle, and not make the entire focus his legislative battles within his own party.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKWELL: Go ahead, Gloria.

BORGER: The irony here is, of course, that Joe Biden's superpower is supposed to be empathy.

AXELROD: Right.

BORGER: And so the American people, as you were saying, David, they're not in a good mood right now.

[15:10:01]

They look at inflation. They see COVID going into another year. They're worried about their kids. They're worried about their families. They're worried about perhaps what's going on with Russia.

And the president has sort of been out there. Last July, he told us we were going to have barbecues, right? And so they -- for the first time, I think, with Joe Biden, they don't feel he's feeling their pain. And you have to get back to that.

And he has to get back to saying to them, look, we may have screwed up with testing. But we're going to -- we're really going to get on top of this Omicron and the COVID. And that may have hurt us a little bit. But here's what I intend to do to make your life better.

AXELROD: Yes.

You know, can I just say -- add one thing? Gloria said something really important. It is important for him to do something that he doesn't do very well naturally, which is acknowledge when there are mistakes, acknowledge, we didn't get to where we wanted. We had some successes. There are other areas in which we fell short. And we're going to do better.

I think that's very, very important. And I think people are willing to accept that. What they don't want is to be told that things are great when they're not great.

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: Yes. Go ahead. Go ahead.

BLACKWELL: Gloria, last thing here on, how much is the shadow of his predecessor playing into what we're seeing over this first year?

BORGER: Well, I think that, when you had the last election, people wanted the other guy out, OK?

And so compared to -- they were sick of Donald Trump. And so Joe Biden was going to be the person who was going to get the country back to some sort of sense of normalcy. And that's what people really wanted. And they thought that Joe Biden was the person who was going to be able to bring that sense of normalcy to the country.

For whatever reason, largely COVID, I believe, that sense of normalcy just hasn't returned. And so there is, yes, this sort of overhang of Donald Trump in that sense, which is that Biden couldn't deliver what people really wanted. And I think they're not happy. They're not happy about that.

And maybe they don't blame him 100 percent for it, but they're not feeling great about their personal situations or the state of the country. And that is really what they voted for.

CAMEROTA: All right. Well, we will see.

AXELROD: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Yes, go ahead, David, do you have a few seconds?

AXELROD: No, I was going to say, he has delivered on decency, which is one of the things they wanted to restore to the White House.

BORGER: Yes. Yes.

AXELROD: He hasn't delivered on normalcy. And that is something that defines their lives. And so he -- it has been a struggle.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

I mean, we will see if he leans into all that or if he touts all the accomplishments. So, in less than an hour, we will be watching that.

Gloria Borger, David Axelrod, thank you.

BORGER: Sure.

BLACKWELL: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proposes his own redistricting map heavily favoring Republicans.

CAMEROTA: And New York's attorney general reveals new details about the investigation into the Trump Organization, while Letitia James says she has significant evidence of fraud.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [15:17:27]

BLACKWELL: Every 10 years, each state redraws its congressional boundaries and the final result can really affect the balance of power for decades.

And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just submitted what some have called the most brutal gerrymander proposed by a Florida Republican yet.

CAMEROTA: His proposed redistricting map heavily favors Republicans, giving them the advantage in 20 of the state's 28 districts.

CNN's Steve Contorno joins us live from St. Petersburg.

So, Steve, what happens now?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: This now goes to the Florida legislature, where Republicans control both the House and the Senate.

Those Republican lawmakers will have to decide whether they want to follow DeSantis' lead. Democrats have already said that they believe this map is a blatant violation of the Voting Rights Act and the state constitution. And they expect a long legal fight over whether or not it can be adopted.

Whether Republicans want to join that fight and follow DeSantis' lead remains to be seen. Up until last week, they had proposed a map that many outside observers said was fair and competitive. And now we will -- but that was before the governor weighed in and really threw a surprise wrench into the process.

BLACKWELL: All right, we will see where that goes. DeSantis also just announced an initiative to create a new police unit to enforce voting laws.

Tell us about that.

CONTORNO: This is something that governor first proposed back in November at a time when Republicans across the country were following Trump's false claims of voter fraud and pushing for audits and other sort of election security measures.

Now, there had been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Florida. But Governor DeSantis contends this is still needed. This is what he says.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): To ensure that elections are conducted in accordance with the rule of law, I propose an election integrity unit whose sole focus will be the enforcement of Florida's election laws.

This will facilitate the faithful enforcement of election laws and will provide Floridians with the confidence that their vote will matter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CONTORNO: Now, Republicans have yet to say whether they support DeSantis on this plan, which would cost almost $6 million.

Democrats are saying that this is a problem -- a solution in search of a problem.

CAMEROTA: OK, Steve Contorno, thank you for that reporting.

Let's talk about it.

We want to bring in our CNN legal analysts Elliot Williams and Jen Rodgers. They're both former federal prosecutors.

[15:20:05]

I don't know, Elliot. I mean, what Governor DeSantis describes as an election integrity unit is being described by others as a special police agency to monitor elections. This is so Orwellian-sounding. I don't even know what this would look like. Do you?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: No, I don't.

And there's sort of a couple big problems here. One, our nation has already tried using local law enforcement to harass people when they seek to exercise the franchise and vote. We did it for, frankly, most of the country's history. It didn't end well back then. And, frankly, it's not going to end well here.

So this seems like a political move more than any one based in sound law enforcement strategy. That's point one.

Point two, we have been having a long national debate centered around the fact that police are stretched thin as it is. And the idea of taking precious resources away from police doing other things, where they could more effectively keep the public safe and serve the community, it's a very odd use of resources, but also a very odd use of law enforcement.

BLACKWELL: Yes, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, they will have arresting power and will act on tips. So we will see how far that goes in the state of Florida.

Let's turn to this new filing from Letitia James, the New York A.G., last night, significant evidence, she says, that she has, Jen.

Is it customary to reveal this much information in a filing like this about the cases it's moving forward?

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's not customary to talk much about an investigation at all, Victor, until they're done.

But the problem is, Trump sued to try to avoid being deposed. So she has to say something. They're in court now. She's having to defend her investigation against claims that it's politically motivated to try to get her depositions done. So you can't really blame her for talking to the court a little bit about the importance of the investigation and in broad strokes what she's learning.

It's just a little bit of the tip to all of us that, in fact, it doesn't seem like she is spinning her wheels. I think she is going to get these depositions from the court. And it sounds like she's going to be prepared to file a lawsuit at some point.

CAMEROTA: We just had Michael Cohen on, who, as you know, was Donald Trump's former fixer.He has now come out and said that he is helping with any investigation, basically, that's going on. And he happens to know a lot, he says, about these kinds of inflations and deflations of the Trump real estate fortune, because he was basically in the room.

So here's what Letitia James put out late last night, OK, in terms of her evidence of the stuff that was deflated or inflated, depending upon, Michael Cohen says and she says, whether Donald Trump needed a loan or was trying to impress a journalist. And, as you can see, there are things that, I mean, swing in value by tens and dozens of millions of dollars over the course of a year or two or three.

And then here's what -- OK, well, I mean, basically, that seems pretty obvious to me, OK, Elliot? It doesn't seem like you need to be a mathematician to see that something is wrong there. And we were asking Michael about why then Tish James would need more information from Donald Trump's children.

Here's what Michael Cohen said:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER ATTORNEY/FIXER FOR DONALD TRUMP: That's not something that you need Don Jr. or Eric's testimony on.

In fact, I think what they're just trying to do is to be more than 100 percent certain by having others who could also be involved with these type of inflation and deflation of the assets, have them held responsible too.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Elliot, what do you think? Why do they need more than what we just showed in that graphic?

WILLIAMS: I will tell you exactly why, Alisyn.

Look, valuation cases can be very hard to prove for a couple reasons. One, they're hard to prove factually because values are subjective. I may have an idea of what I think this house I'm sitting in right now is worth hand. And it's not $10 million. However, it's a subjective belief.

And even lenders may disagree with the owner of the property as to what it costs. And so you're going to have to establish in court what that is, number one. And, number two, the president and the Trump Organization can make the argument that lenders and others didn't rely on their valuations, that, while we recommended what we thought the property was worth, but, at the end of the day, the folks who lend us money actually made their own independent assessment.

So they need -- the attorney general's office really needs to pile up evidence here if they really want to succeed on this.

BLACKWELL: All right, Jennifer, last one here.

The January 6 Committee, they subpoenaed the phone records of Eric Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr's girlfriend, I think girlfriend. His fiancee? Girlfriend, at least.

CAMEROTA: I think fiancee.

BLACKWELL: Fiancee? OK.

They were handed over from the communications companies to the committee. Would these have to have been targeted because they know what they are looking for in these records specifically?

[15:25:04]

RODGERS: Usually, especially when you don't see them asking for everything at once.

I mean, if they sent over a list of 100 people whose phone records that they want, they might not really know what they're looking for. But, here, when they're kind of going piece by piece, I think what they're doing is building these communications pathways, right?

They know who Kimberly was speaking to. They know who Eric was speaking to. They want to get more information about those communications, not including the content, of course, to build their case about who was speaking to whom when. And that helps them figure out what they were talking about.

I mean, Kimberly Guilfoyle was talking to the president on the day of the big riot that led to the insurrection. So she's someone who might have had communications about what was going on. Eric Trump, of course as well was at the rally.

So they're building this case piece by piece. I don't know exactly what they know, but they're going to find out these communications pathways, which will help the case.

BLACKWELL: All right, Jennifer Rodgers, Elliot Williams, thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thanks.

CAMEROTA: Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in the Ukraine today, warning that Russia could double its military buildup at the border. We have more on that ahead.

BLACKWELL: And soon, at the White house, President Biden will hold a news conference marking his first year in office.

Stay with CNN for our special coverage.

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