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Suspected Cop Killer Arrested in San Antonio; Trump's $1 Trillion Infrastructure Plan; Donald Trump's Tangled Business Ties. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired November 22, 2016 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:30:17] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: A suspect is in custody for the shooting death of a veteran San Antonio police officer. Police say Otis Tyrone McCain targeted Detective Benjamin Marconi as the officer sat in his patrol car Sunday morning writing a traffic ticket.

CNN's Polo Sandoval is live in San Antonio with more.

What have you learned, Polo?

POLOS SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, there seems to be this mix of relief and grief here in San Antonio. People grateful this accused cop killer is behind bars, but at the same time, they're also grieving the loss of this police officer.

Investigators here saying that there were several leads that took them directly to Otis Tyrone McKane. He's a 31-year-old San Antonio man. He seemed apologetic as he was led by officers out of the police department yesterday. Take listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: What were you upset about, sir?

OTIS TYRONE MCKANE, SHOT AND KILLED SAN ANTONIO POLICE DETECTIVE: Society not letting me see my son, lashing out at somebody that didn't deserve it.

REPORTER: Did you know the officer?

MCKANE: No, sir.

REPORTER: What were you doing down here on Sunday?

REPORTER: Why was it his fault you couldn't see your son?

MCKANE: I've been through several custody battles.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: That's the suspect in Officer Marconi's death. Again, he's fairly apologetic, here saying that he was mad at society and didn't necessarily know the officer when he pulled up to the curve on Sunday, opening fire, ending the life of a 20-year veteran of the police force here. We hear from prosecutors, Chris, who say they're waiting for this case to be handed to them. They expect this to be a capital murder case and eventually they would decide if they would pursue a death penalty in this case -- guys.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Polo, thank you for fighting through the cold to bring us this information. Important development. Appreciate it.

All right. At least three people were injured after a 6.9-magnitude earthquake that struck off the northeastern coast of Japan. It triggered a three-foot tsunami at the Fukushima plant, the site of the one of the world's worst nuclear disasters, as you'll remember. Tremors were felt as far away as Tokyo. Tsunami warnings have since been lifted, but aftershocks are expected.

CAMEROTA: Well, Donald Trump is promising to rebuild America's infrastructure at a cost of $1 trillion. So, how will he pay for that?

Christine Romans takes us inside the numbers, next.

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[06:36:25] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We're going to rebuild our infrastructure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was President-elect Donald Trump promising to invest in America's infrastructure. So, what is his plan exactly? And how will he pay for it?

CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans joins us to break it all down.

Christine, great to see you.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: I have a political question for you before we start.

ROMANS: Sure.

CAMEROTA: Why do Republicans love this $1 trillion infrastructure plan when they hated President Obama' infrastructure stimulus plan?

ROMANS: I'm not sure they all love this infrastructure plan. They want to make sure, I think, it's paid for, it's really paid for. So there's some controversy on how this is going to look. Let's talk about what it is they want to do here first. Donald Trump

-- we don't have a blueprint, per se, pun intended, but we do know that Trump wants to spend about a trillion dollars over ten years. Here's how that stacks up. Hillary Clinton's plan on the campaign trail was $275 billion over five years.

The American Society of Civil Engineers says we got a lot of stuff to fix. They say we need to spend almost $4 trillion by 2020. There is a lot to do.

CUOMO: But a big distinguishing characteristic is Clinton was going to do the normal funding mechanism, which a lot of GOP doesn't like, which is raising taxes or floating debt to make it happen. Trump has a different idea of how to it that essentially will privatize a lot of our nation's infrastructure, and that's causing some controversy too. It's complicated.

How do you explain it?

ROMANS: It's complicated and it's sort of creative.

So, let's look at what needs to be done first. You know, where will all this money be invested before we get it?

This is the traditional stuff, right? Think La Guardia airport, airports, air traffic control systems. A long-term clean water projects, energy pipelines and coal facilities. Remember those coal jobs? Security infrastructure.

You heard him in that video last night talking about protecting that could be technology spending that is infrastructure spending, not necessarily a shovel in the ground.

CUOMO: Very expensive because America has old hardware.

ROMANS: That's right.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. This is need. It's hard to argue against it. It's just who pays for it and how does it get done.

And remember, as President Obama said when he failed, basically, at the infrastructure building, well, the shovel-ready projects weren't as shovel ready as I thought. What's different now?

ROMANS: That's interesting because I was hearing from CEOs that there not as many shovel-ready projects.

CUOMO: What does that mean shovel-ready, they don't have the job?

ROMANS: It means that they're not ready to go with appropriate permits, with appropriate EPA approvals, with appropriate all --

CUOMO: Maybe those are some of the regulations.

ROMANS: Exactly, exactly. So, look, this is the public/private partnership we're talking about, how to pay for it. $137 billion in federal tax breaks to private investors. So, tell investors, we're going to give you tax breaks so you can get in on this, instead of just making it state and federal government and local government. We're to have federal, private investigators. Also, new tax revenue, all this new worker, growing economy, it's going to be new tax revenue.

The criticism is this only addresses a narrow slice of infrastructure spending here.

CUOMO: But also, you would have tax dollars put out to help float this project. Then you'd have it privately owned at the end of it. So, all the revenue from the tolls wind up going to this investor group, not back to taxpayers.

ROMANS: Exactly. There are other ways you get revenue. Think of water services and things that have a steady stream of revenue that come in. So there's some things that --

CUOMO: Do we want private companies building bridges?

ROMANS: Exactly.

There's also other ideas. Direct government investment. Cutting regulations and red tape. That would free up some money. Think of this -- this is, one of his -- Steven Moore, one of his advisers has said, if you had a tax holiday for the trillions of dollars big companies have overseas, that money would come back here. The taxes that would be paid, even though it would be less taxes than the 35 percent corporate rate, could be used to fund this.

[06:40:02] And there's also the idea of an infrastructure bank, right? So, you have the Congress putting a bunch of money into a bank. And that bank also takes private investors and works together, giving returns and loans that way to do deals.

Let's talk about what the pushback is. Go back to your first question. Here's what Bernie Sanders has said, "Trump's plan to repair infrastructure is a scam that gives massive tax breaks to large companies and billionaires." That's what he says.

If you look at --

CUOMO: That bridge needs help.

CAMEROTA: Yes, that is a shovel-ready project.

CUOMO: That is shovel-ready.

ROMANS: Listen to Paul Ryan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MODERATOR: -- Donald Trump pass a $550 billion or more infrastructure program. Would that be something that you would help him achieve?

REP. PAUL RYAN (R), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: That's not in the better way.

MODERATOR: That's not in the better --

RYAN: Just so you know, we didn't pass the biggest highway bill since the 1990s.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: That doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of Donald Trump's plan to spend a whole bunch of money. That's when that was a $550 billion infrastructure bank.

CAMEROTA: Was it the slapping of his knee that made you think he didn't agree with it?

ROMANS: I think, look, Congress -- this is all going to have to go through Congress. Donald Trump is going to have a delicate dance here.

I'll tell you one other thing that CEOs are saying to me. They like the idea of spending infrastructure. It's one of the reasons why the stock market is so high right now. But they're worried there aren't enough workers for some of these.

CAMEROTA: Wow.

ROMANS: Four-point-nine percent unemployment. A trillion dollars over ten years. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of people being put to work. They're worried they can't find the people.

CAMEROTA: Christine, thanks so much for helping us understand all of this.

CUOMO: And as they define it more, we'll come back and tell you what makes sense and what doesn't.

So there was a big historic event in the NFL. They had their first game ever in the regular season outside the U.S., in Mexico City. Something happened in that game we have not seen before. We'll tell you in our bleacher report. There's a hint, just flashed on your screen.

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[06:45:50] CAMEROTA: More snow being dumped on parts of the country just as millions are set to hit the road and go to airports for Thanksgiving.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers has what you need to know today.

What are you seeing, Chad?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, if we could back up or push forward Thanksgiving just one week, we'd have no problems whatsoever because there was no weather at all literally last week. Now, we've turned colder. The snow is coming down. And we will get

something to slow airplanes down, especially Chicago for tomorrow. But let me just stack this up for you. Here's where we were one week ago: 0.3 percent, less than 1 percent of the country was covered in snow. Now, we fast forward you seven days.

Now, we're almost 16 percent covered in snow. So that's going to make some slippery driving conditions. We all expect that, especially at night as the sun kind of melts some things during the daytime and refreezes at night.

So, if you're traveling across the country, as so many of you are, there will be some new snow, just not that much significant new stuff, Duluth, Minneapolis, Minnesota, yes, you'll get some snow. But you expect that. Also, a couple of thunderstorms across parts of the country. A slow down or two especially over Chicago.

But for the most part, Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, looks pretty tranquil just about everywhere across the country -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right. Thank you very much, my friend.

So, the Texans and Raiders went down to the wire in Mexico City last night. This is the first time a Monday night football game was played outside the U.S. And it was worth the wait.

Now, Coy Wire has more in this morning's "Bleacher Report".

We had other games in London, obviously, outside the U.S. and elsewhere, but this was the on Monday night, it was so something weird, like what's going on here in the studio right now. A little bit of noise here. Those are jaws dropping from the game last night.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn dropping her coffee mug over there? What's going on?

CUOMO: I think she's throwing stuff at me. Good thing I got cat-like quickness.

WIRE: Good morning to you.

The NFL, Chris, has invested heavily into the globalization of the sport, expanding their brand outside the U.S. So, was a big deal last night when the NFL returned to Mexico for the first time in more than a decade. A sellout crowd of more than 76,000 fans packing Estadio Azteca. It's one of the most famous sporting venues in the world.

Now, the fans there, they got a little overzealous at times. And here's a moment. Check out the green laser pointer on Houston's Brock Osweiler's face. The quarterback there dropping back in a pass. That's something the fans do at soccer matches there in the past.

Everything was fine. That was about the only drama we saw, until the end of the game. Oakland's high-powered offense stymied until the fourth quarter. Then their star quarterback David Carr came to life. Two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to give the Raiders the lead for good. Oakland wins 27-20. They are the number one seed in the AFC.

Some big soccer news yesterday as the manager of the men's soccer team, Jurgen Klinsmann, has been fired after five years on the job. Klinsmann took over in 2011. He led the U.S. team to the round of 16 in the 2014 World Cup. But some disappointing losses recently, Mexico and Costa Rica in the world qualifying matches, those were seemingly the final straw for Klinsmann.

It's been rumored that L.A. Galaxy coach Bruce Arena will take over for Klinsmann. It would be his second run at leading the U.S. team. His last stint as manager was from 1998 to 2006.

Whoever the coach is, Alisyn, they're going to have some time for their next qualifying match to practice with that team. It's not until March. That is against Honduras.

CAMEROTA: OK, good to know, Coy. Thanks so much for all of that.

WIRE: You're welcome.

Donald Trump's web of business ties present a bunch of conflicts of interest. We'll take a closer look at those, next.

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[06:53:17] CUOMO: All right. Donald Trump has a lot of businesses in and a lot of different countries. That raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest between those dealings and his duties as president. Trump and his transition team says no laws are being broken. That's probably true because there are like no laws that apply here. This is about ethical standards.

And as our new CNN poll shows, 59 percent of Americans do not think Trump is doing enough to prevent conflicts of interest as president.

Let's discuss with CNN's senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Jeffrey Toobin.

Always a pleasure, my brother.

Now, a little bit of irony in here, he was crushing Clinton during the campaign about perceived conflicts of interest, and now we are dealing with a situation where we don't even know what we don't know. He has disclosed almost nothing about conflicts. How does this size up legally, ethically?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think it is, at this point, much more of a political issue than a legal issue, because, you said, every president in modern American history has put their assets in what's called a blind trust so that they don't even know what their assets are so they can't, you know, act to favor them.

That's a tradition. It is not a law. There is no law requiring presidents to put an asset in a trust.

CUOMO: It's also very traditionally easy, because we're talking about securities usually. They put them in a trust, they put them in a legal vehicle, so whoever is investing them does it on their own and you don't know. That's not his scenario. I don't know that a blind trust would work.

TOOBIN: Well, the only way it would work is if you simply sold the whole company and then put the money in stocks or bonds, or something like that, which he said from the very beginning of the campaign, he was not going to do.

[06:55:04] But now that he's becoming president, the nature of the conflicts are becoming obvious. I mean, let's just talk about one thing. You know, he had a meeting with the prime minister of Japan. Ivanka is sitting right there. Ivanka is going to be one of the people managing the company.

CUOMO: The poll also shows overwhelmingly the majority of Americans do not think the kids should be having a hand in the business and in the government. They shouldn't even have the security clearances, which is debatable.

TOOBIN: But again, he promised that they were going to have a hand in the business and they were close advisers to him. So, his position is, look, I ran for president, openly saying this is what's going to happen. I won, so in effect, it's all grandfathered in.

But now, it's becoming clear just how intertwined the business and the government are going to be.

CUOMO: The allegations that foreign representatives are staying at the Trump hotel in D.C. and that there's some kind of encouragement of that, that he met with some of his Indian partners as part of his transition meetings about what's going on abroad. What's your read on these in terms of obvious conflict?

TOOBIN: The hotel thing seems very minor to me. So what? You're talking about hotel rooms. The much bigger issue is, I think, what about his investments abroad? If he owes money, we think, to foreign banks, to sovereign funds, there -- you know, if you were negotiating with Russia and you owe Russia money, that's -- that is a position of real peril.

It also goes back to the whole tax return issue. Because he never released his tax return, we don't know exactly.

CUOMO: And his guy said he will not change his answer going forward. Every year, as you may or may not know, presidents put our their taxes and they get reviewed by all of us. We look at what they have. He's not going to do it.

TOOBIN: Can I make a prediction? Those of us in the news business after this election shouldn't be making many predictions. We are never going to see those tax returns. Remember he said, it's going to be on when it's -- we are never going to see his tax returns.

CUOMO: Do you think anybody can compel Trump to make more of his business dealings public, even if only to some congressional committee so that they ca get some comfort about who the guy is doing business with? I mean, on one level, it is a little absurd that nobody knows who his business dealings are with. It's a little absurd for president of the United States. It never happened before.

TOOBIN: It is unprecedented, as you point out. But, I mean, remember, this is a political matter. You're talking about a House and Senate that are completely in Republican hands. They're partners with Donald Trump. You know, barring some sensational disclosure that we have not yet seen, what are the chances that the House Judiciary Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, which are partners with Donald Trump, are going to start insisting that he'd be more transparent.

I mean, it just seems extremely unlikely to me. They're the only ones who remotely have the chance of doing it. The Democrats have no power to do it.

CUOMO: The irony that he got so much currency during the campaign for crushing Clinton about the foundation and the money making and perceptions of conflict of interest that were vetted in large part by the FBI. Nothing every came from it. And with this man, we know nothing about it.

TOOBIN: And, by the way, the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton, he has never repudiated the idea that he's going to continue to investigate and perhaps even prosecute Hillary Clinton.

CUOMO: Right. They're supposedly that's going away.

TOOBIN: Supposedly? Do you think Jeff Sessions is desperate --

CUOMO: No, but there's word coming out of his transition it's not going to happen. You're right, we need official word.

Let me ask you something while I have you here. Constitutional convention. You need two-thirds of the state legislatures to do it. You now have 32 of the state legislatures Republican. You need 34 to have two-thirds of 50.

Do you think there's any chance that the Republicans get together from the state legislature base and have a constitutional convention, and if so, what could they change?

TOOBIN: Well, the second question is t. What could they change? They could change the whole Constitution.

I think there is a lot to worry about and be concerned about in this country. A constitutional convention is not one of them.

CUOMO: Even though they're only two legislatures away?

TOOBIN: You know, there are legal questions about whether each of those calls is actually binding because they have happened over many years. When you look at the fact that we have not had a constitutional convention since the first one in the 18th century, I think leaving the Constitution as it is, is a widely popular position. If you want to amend it, there is an amendment process. There had been --

CUOMO: That's hard because you have to go through Congress.

TOOBIN: That's true. I just don't think we're going to have a constitutional convention.

CUOMO: Only one convention --

TOOBIN: But another prediction --

CUOMO: Please?

TOOBIN: I could be wrong.

CUOMO: Only one convention, 27 different amendments.

Jeffrey, thank you so much.

TOOBIN: Yes, sir. All righty now.

CUOMO: A lot of news coming out of transition committee, coming out of events around this country that we need to tell you about. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: I want the next generation and production and innovation to happen right here on our great homeland, America.