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New Day

Legal Battle Over Trump's Travel Ban; Patriots Pull Off Historic Super Bowl Win; Trump Obamacare Replacement May Not Happen Until 2018. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired February 06, 2017 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATE: You had 109 people out of hundreds of thousands of travelers. All we did was vet those people very, very carefully.

[05:58:47] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Trump is preparing now for an additional showdown.

MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to challenge the judge's order.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The vetting order wasn't vetted.

TRUMP: I say it's better to get along with Russia than not.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), MAJORITY LEADER: Putin is a former KGB agent. He's a thug.

TRUMP: We've got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country's so innocent?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's in! Patriots win the Super Bowl.

TOM BRADY, PATRIOTS QUARTERBACK: We're bringing this sucker home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. It was quite a night. I went to bed at halftime and, once again, woke up to a new world order.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR; This is our team. You harness the shock of people who don't get to witness these things, and I bear the brunt of staying up and witnessing every torturous moment of it.

CAMEROTA: So what a game. What a halftime show. And we will get into all of that for you.

CUOMO: And in a culture now where all of these things are undecided, we now know for sure the Patriots are the best franchise in the history of American football. They just...

CAMEROTA: And Tom Brady the best...

CUOMO: He is the best quarterback we've seen.

CAMEROTA: Ever.

CUOMO: So welcome to all of you, viewers in the United States and around the world. This is your NEW DAY. It's Monday, February 6, 6 a.m. in the morning here in New York.

So who will decide what happens with travel to America? The courts or the president? That's the proposition.

Right now, one court has stopped the travel ban. Another has refused to undo the order, for now. A federal appeals court refusing to reinstate the order, but the Justice Department does have 12 hours to put in its defense of why the travel ban makes America safe. The law could go either way.

CAMEROTA: meanwhile, President Trump on Twitter is going after the federal judge who temporarily halted the ban, suggesting that Americans should blame him if something bad were to happen. The president also making news in a big Super Bowl interview. It's day 18 of the Trump presidency.

Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Jessica Schneider. She's live in Tampa, Florida, with the latest. Hi, Jessica.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

President Trump's tweets, well, they were relentless this weekend. They ranged from defiant to derogatory and then, of course, they also targeted not only that federal judge out in Seattle but the entire judicial process.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Mr. Trump launching attacks against the judge who temporarily halted his travel ban, accusing Judge James Robart of "opening up the country to potential terrorists," even suggesting Americans should blame the judge and court system if something happens.

All of this after calling Robert, a Bush appointee, a "so-called judge" when the ruling was handed down on Friday.

PENCE: The president of the United States has every right to criticize the other two branches of government.

SCHNEIDER: Vice President Pence defending the president's tirade against the judiciary and saying the White House believes Robart's ruling will be overturned.

PENCE: We're very confident the president is operating within his authority as president.

SCHNEIDER: This intensifying legal battle comes as President Trump faces criticism for comments he made in Super Bowl interview, equating the American government's actions with Russian President Putin's regime.

BILL O'REILLY, FOX NEWS HOST: Do you respect Putin?

TRUMP: I do respect him.

O'REILLY: Do you? Why?

TRUMP: Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get along with them.

O'REILLY: Putin is a killer.

TRUMP: There's a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?

SCHNEIDER: That remark provoking sharp rebuke from members of the president's own party.

MCCONNELL: Putin is a former KGB agent. He's a thug. I don't think there's any equivalency between the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is no moral equivalency between the United States of America, the greatest freedom-loving nation in the history of the world, and the murderous thugs that are in Putin's defense of his cronyism.

SCHNEIDER: President Trump also announcing that Vice President Pence will head a commission to investigate voter irregularities but providing no proof that millions voted illegally, despite repeated claims.

TRUMP: We can be babies. But you take a look at the registration. You have illegals. You have dead people. You have this. It's really a bad situation. It's really bad.

SCHNEIDER: And the president acknowledging that the timetable to replace Obamacare could take longer than promised.

TRUMP: I would like to say by the end of the year, at least the rudiments, but we should have something within the year and the following year.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: President Trump spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago state. A little bit later -- estate. A little bit later this morning, he'll make his way here to Tampa to MacDill Air Force base. Once here, he will receive a briefing from senior officials at Central Command. He'll then sit down to lunch with the service members here before making remarks to coalition reps and U.S. commanders -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Jessica, thanks so much for bringing us all of that. Well, lawyers from Washington state and Minnesota say that reinstating

President Trump's travel ban would, quote, "unleash chaos again." So they filed new briefs just hours ago to the federal appeals court. The Justice Department now has 12 hours to defend the president's order.

CNN's Dan Simon is live in San Francisco outside of the 9th Circuit with more.

What have you learned, Dan?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, hi, Alisyn.

The 9th Circuit has to decide whether or not to keep this suspension in place. The next step in this process is for both sides to file their legal briefs; and the states of Minnesota and Washington have already done so. As you said, they argued that it would unleash chaos if this ban was restored.

Now, the federal government has until 6 p.m. Eastern Time to make their position now. Now, in addition to all of this, you have a letter. A lot of other parties who are sort of weighing in. You have nearly 100 technology companies. They filed an amicus brief, saying that this ban is unconstitutional. It would harm immigrants and their families. It would also harm business.

And you also have this unprecedented move now by former federal government officials, ranging from Leon Panetta, Madeleine Albright, saying they're not afraid of any specific threat around the world that would justify this ban.

So this is going to be decided by a three-judge panel that could decide whether or not they want to have a hearing. There could have a hearing in person, or it could be done by video or by phone, or they could just simply rule. We don't know what they're going to decide. But the bottom line here is everybody seems to think that this is just one step in the process, that ultimately, the losing side will appeal this to the Supreme Court.

[06:05:12] Chris, we'll send it back to you.

CUOMO: All right. Thank you very much. Good reporting on this.

Not a simple situation. No guarantee that SCOTUS would take this, by the way.

So let's discuss. Senior congressional correspondent for "The Washington Examiner" and host of the podcast, "Examining Politics," David Drucker; CNN political analyst David Gregory; CNN political director David Chalian. We kept it simple everybody has to have the same name this morning.

So let's put up these next steps again, David Gregory, to just kind of get everybody's head around how this doesn't happen today. The court obviously wanted more information. That's why there was a new round of briefing called by both sides of this litigation. The amicus brief that people are talking about having come in from all these former government officials has no legal effect; it's just advisory for the court.

So all the arguments get in today at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. The judges are going to decide, en banc, OK, so that is assigned to the seriousness here. "En banc" is French. It means "in bench." So they're all three of them are going to hear this. They're going to decide whether they're ready to rule. They need a hearing, or it's going to go away. So that will be the big moment to see what they do. If there's a hearing, that's going to be very impressive. So David Gregory, what's at stake?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, the order itself is at stake. The very question of how much authority the president has vested in him through the Constitution to determine who comes in and out of the country and who can make immigration laws and determine a national security threat. And that's why this could, of course, be ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. That could take as long as months, if they get involved. And the fate of the order in the interim is the real question, since this was never really organized upon the implementation. That's a very serious legal question. The president knew, the White House knew, presumably, that they were testing the bounds of that presidential authority. Most time the courts are differential. Here it's being tested.

CAMEROTA: David Drucker, do you get the sense that it's been a bit of a rude awakening for President Trump, who after all, has been the king of the Trump Organization for decades. He says "Jump," everybody jumps. And now he's confronting the checks and balances of the American democracy. And he says "Jump," and a federal judge says, "No."

DAVID DRUCKER, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER": I think that's true. And that's -- what we've learned over the past couple of weeks is to watch them try and rush things through to make good on his campaign promises and to realize that, not only do you have checks and balances between the judicial branch and the congressional branch, but you've got a sprawling executive branch bureaucracy; and you've got to have -- make sure that all of your ducks in a row.

I mean, one of the reasons why this order didn't quite work. There are legal ramifications, but as we now know, the White House didn't fully communicate with the executive agencies that are charged with carrying this out. That led to indecision and some bit of chaos as to how it was supposed to work. You saw them pulling things back on the fly. And even though those sorts of things are not supposed to matter when it comes to jurisprudence, when you go before the courts, when there's an argument, they can see that the executive branch doesn't necessarily know exactly what it's doing.

Judges are human, and it's one of the reasons, I think, that this executive order ran into trouble.

CUOMO: The just disability of this case, whether they're standing, whether the court will check all the boxes it needs to, to review the case is up in the air. It's not -- it's not an easy call, David Chalian, but politically, how did it play for the president so far, especially with his comments? Is it written off the way the vice president wants it to be? That, hey, he's allowed to criticize other branches of government. That's all it is.

CHALIAN: Right. Mike Pence was sort of playing the role again of what President Trump meant to say was, because he wasn't just criticizing the ruling. He was calling this judge a so-called judge.

So -- so clearly, he was trying to attack the judge personally, as well. We've seen this before in Donald Trump's track record. Again, to Alisyn's point, as a way we saw him operate in this business, which is press every advantage possible. One advantage he has now is sort of marshalling his army of supporters to see his way of thinking of this, even if it is not within sort of the bounds of tradition of what we normally see about how an executive deals with the judicial branch.

I think Donald Trump's potential problem here is that it's one thing to have his army of supporters, but when he starts crossing those lines, where his own party in Washington, congressional officials on the Republican side, start questioning whether or not he's stepping out of bounds where his vice president has to go out and say he's just questioning the ruling, I think it shows that Donald Trump is not fully comfortable yet in how he interacts with the other branches.

[06:10:04] CAMEROTA: And David Gregory, as I understand it, now because it is going through the court system and may go as high as the Supreme Court, all of Mr. Trump's tweets become part of the record, and they could end up hurting him.

Here's one tweet that is significant, that he sent out yesterday: "Just could not believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something bad happens blame him and the court system. People pouring in. Bad."

Well first, people are not just pouring in unchecked. That's not our system. But what do his tweets now mean, now that this is in a different arena?

GREGORY: I mean, obviously, he sounds like an old man sitting on his porch, yelling at somebody to get off his lawn. I mean, that's just the reality. I think we -- I think we'll do well to start separating his rants as president of the United States from the actions that the administration is taken. They are appealing. They are following the procedures they want to.

But now you've had, in the first 18 days, successive weekends where he has completely derailed what his administration is trying to do with a kind of personal indulgence by attacking people personally, launching an attack on the separations of powers. But what it really comes down to this is this obsession with himself, and I think that's going to start to wear thin.

CAMEROTA: All right. David, stand by, please. We have many more questions for you, but we have to get to this big news. The New England Patriots pulling off a wild and historic win to become

Super Bowl champions. Tom Brady is now the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls. CNN's Coy Wire is live in Houston with all the highlights.

CUOMO: He played for the Falcons.

CAMEROTA: I did not know that. So Coy, how are you feeling?

COY WIFE, CNN SPORTS: Wiping my tears away this morning. I'm not feeling good at all, but I was going to talk about the positive. Tom Brady is the greatest of all time. A record four Super Bowl MVP, a fifth Super Bowl title. That's more than any quarterback in NFL history. It wasn't just what he did. It's how he did it. Let's take a look.

They were down 28-20, the Patriots were, in the fourth quarter. About two minutes to go, and Julian Edelman would go Houdini pulling Arab bit out of a hat. How does he catch this, Cuomo? I don't know. Watch it again in slo-mo. I don't even know why I'm rhyming at this point. This is incredible.

But, look, Tom would then have to go for two. They would score a touchdown, but they still have to go for two to tie it. Tom would find Danny Amendola, who runs into a wall of humanity but still fights that ball across the line. So we would go to the first ever Super Bowl overtime.

This is the moment the Pats would claim victory. James White on the toss around the edge, capping off the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history. They were down by 25 points at one point in this game. No team had ever come back from being down by 10.

Now, Brady was overcome with emotion after the game. Here's Brady letting out those emotions and some answers from some big-name folks I spoke with just moments after the game about Tom Brady.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRADY: Thank you to all our fans. Everyone back in Boston, New England, we love you. You've been with us all year. We're bringing this sucker home.

ROBERT KRAFT, PATRIOTS OWNER: I think what happened to Tommy the first four games engaged fans even more because they know we weren't treated fairly. And now we had a chance to go through the year, and I think results speak for themselves.

ROGER GOODELL, NFL COMMISSIONER: It's the biggest stage, and he always steps up on the biggest stage and plays unbelievable. And he did it again tonight. To bring that team back is just unbelievable.

ROB GRONKOWSKI, PATRIOTS TIGHT END: Brady is the best ever, and Belichick is, too.

(END VIDEO CLIP) WIRE: Well said, Gronkowski.

Now, one crazy note, guys. After the game, Brady's jersey is stolen. He doesn't know where it went. It is gone. He actually said afterwards I'm sure it's going to show up on eBay, but oh, my goodness, the most incredible comeback in Super Bowl history by the greatest quarterback of all time.

CUOMO: The jersey is missing, says Coy Wire with an unusually puffy sports coat.

WIRE: I think Burns (ph) has it.

CUOMO: You're looking a little puffed up today. Is there anything in your coat you want to show us?

WIRE: Oh, man. I don't have the jersey.

CUOMO: Yes, sure you don't. Your head's starting to sweat. Don Burns (ph), you better check that story. It's a great game, Coy. Thanks for bringing it to us.

CAMEROTA: So coming up in just minutes, we're going to talk live with that running back that did it, not on the first effort, but the second. James White scored the game-winning touchdown. That's a moment he'll have for the rest of his life, and he'll share it with all of us.

CAMEROTA: All right. President Trump claiming once again that millions of people voted illegally. He said this in a Super Bowl interview, so we're checking that and his other unchallenged claims.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:18:30] CAMEROTA: President Trump sat down for an interview with FOX News host Bill O'Reilly before the Super Bowl. And the president doubled down on his unsubstantiated claim that millions of people voted illegally.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Has to do with the registration, and when you look at the registration and you see dead people that have voted. When you see people that are registered in two states that voted in two states, when you see other things, when you see illegals, people that are not citizens and they're on the registration rolls. Look, Bill, we can be babies, but you take a look at the registration. You have illegals. You have dead people, and this, it's a really bad situation. Really bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Let's bring back our panel for some fact checking. We have David Drucker, David Gregory and David Chalian. David Chalian, I'll begin with you. President Trump doesn't draw the distinction between problems with

voter registration and voter fraud. There might be voter registration fraud, where somebody is registered in a couple of different places, as is Mr. Trump's own senior staff; but dead people, it's very hard for dead people to vote, and he doesn't seem to recognize that.

CUOMO: You have to be uniquely motivated.

CAMEROTA: Yes. You're have to.

CHALIAN: Very in tuned ears, Alisyn, and you can hear his administration officials, when they talk about this, really have been focusing on this issue of registration. That is not what Donald Trump has been harping on. He muddied the waters there a little bit in the interview with Bill O'Reilly. Perhaps because he was listening to his advisers, who were telling them to move away from this totally unsubstantiated claim that three to five million illegal votes were cast. There's just zero evidence of that whatsoever.

But the administration doesn't want to completely throw the president under the bus. So you hear Sean Spicer from the podium. Kellyanne Conway and others talking about the registration rolls; and if that, indeed is this blue panel commission now headed by Mike Pence that Donald Trump is going to put together, if that's what they're looking in and just sort of, like, cleaning up the registration rolls, that's one thing. That has nothing to do with this ridiculous claim that three to five million illegal votes were cast.

CUOMO: Everybody knows that there are problem with the system. Mitch McConnell came out and put it the right way. Don't spend federal money on this. Let the states figure it out, because that's what runs on the election process at the levels where we're seeing the problems.

O'Reilly literally let the president, David Gregory, wave away the suggestion. He was like, "So you really think 3 million people" -- "Forget about that. Forget about that. Let's go to registration." And he let it happen.

But maybe O'Reilly has got to focus on bigger problems. He's got the Kremlin coming out now, insisting that he apologize for calling Vladimir Putin a killer. This seemed to be the biggest exchange of the interview. Let's play it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: Do you respect Putin?

TRUMP: I do respect him.

O'REILLY: You do? Why?

TRUMP: Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get along with him. He's a leader of his country. I say it's better to get along with Russia than not.

O'REILLY: Putin is a killer. TRUMP: There are a lot of killers. You've got a lot of killers.

What, you think our country is so innocent? You think our country is so innocent?

O'REILLY: I don't know of any government leaders that are killers in America.

TRUMP: Well, take a look at what we've done, too. We made a lot of mistakes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Did you hear, David Gregory, to your ear, the president of the United States putting the United States on par with the actions of Putin and other bad actors in the world?

GREGORY: Yes. I mean, that's exactly what he was doing. You know, this continued flirtation with Putin, it seems to me at one level that the president doesn't want to give into the news media, to his critics that would like him to take a different line with Putin. I think he probably harbors some desire to pull off some kind of deal with Putin that's in America's interest that would make the president look good.

But again, I mean, it's just -- it is so undisciplined, so you know, so untrue to start comparing America and our system to Russia's system or to Russia's leaders. And it's embarrassingly so to the Republican Party, who have to go out there and disagree so publicly with the president

And again, this is another issue where the White House is either maybe not competent enough to reign him in, or they have no ability to reign the president in. Both of which I think is going to be of concern to both supporters, Republicans and opponents to the president.

CAMEROTA: David Drucker, I heard something different in that statement. For years FOX News had a favorite expression when somebody like President Obama was seen as criticizing the United States. They called them the "hate America first crowd," and they applied that liberally to people that criticized America, the idea. And they did it on Bill O'Reilly's show. Hate America first was an expression on Bill O'Reilly's show.

And the idea that Bill O'Reilly let President Trump put the U.S. on par with Putin and say we're killers too, we've made a lot of mistakes. That would have been called "hate America first."

DRUCKER: It is part of the "blame America first crowd."

I think what's interesting here, Alisyn, is that Donald Trump now is the United States. I mean, he's talking about the U.S. in the third -- as though it's this other entity. He is now the president of the United States.

We just had a raid in Yemen, where we were going after some very bad people. There was some collateral damage. And -- and to take Donald Trump's standard, you could apply that to a raid that he OKed, because some people got killed that we didn't intend to.

So first of all, I think he has to get used to the fact that he is the president; and he is now part of this story. And it's not -- he's not just a guy criticizing the government for things it does wrong.

I think the other thing here, though, and Chris, we 've talked about this a lot. Sure, we want to get along with Moscow. I mean, they're a major power and they have nuclear weapons.

But I think the question needs to be asked by the administration. Do we want them to get along with us on our terms? And what seems to be going on here is this president's desire for a new Russian reset, where we continue to try to figure out how to get along with Russia on their terms.

I think that's a mistake President Obama made. I think it's a mistake George W. Bush made earlier in his term. And now, it looks like a mistake that Mr. Trump is making.

CUOMO: Obamacare came up, the time line for replacement, David Chalian. Obviously extended. What did you hear in that interview?

CHALIAN: I heard a President Trump who's trying to reset expectations for the American public after he promised that he would go to Congress and get them to repeal Obamacare on day one of his administration.

We now hear a president who's saying, "Well, it could take this whole year, maybe even to next year to replace this." We heard Republicans on Capitol Hill trying to explain their rhetoric about talking about repairing the bill as the means of repealing and replacing it.

Here's the reality. In 2010, Republicans won a House majority. In 2014 they won a Senate majority; and in 2016 they won the White House, largely on the promise to their voters that this bill would be repealed and replaced and would be done so quickly.

And I think you're seeing Republicans in a bit of a bind right now because of how complicated the healthcare system is, trying to unwind from Obamacare. It is far harder in reality than it is in campaign trail rhetoric.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much.

CUOMO: All right. A new CNN/ORC poll revealing how Americans feel about President Trump two weeks into his term. Brother Chalian will come back and walk us through the historic numbers.

CAMEROTA: Plus, the White House press secretary gets the "SNL" treatment. What did Sean Spicer think of Melissa McCarthy? We'll tell you.

CUOMO: Those are your words.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)