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Alabama Senate Race; Massive California Wildfire; Weather Forecast; Trump's TV Habit. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired December 11, 2017 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00] ANDREA LINDENBERG, MORNING RADIO SHOW HOST, TALK 99.5 BIRMINGHAM: Right after that "Washington Post" article came out. Our listeners calling in, the ones who may have been undecided after listening to the allegations and hearing the facts now are calling us and saying, look, I may not have been a Roy Moore supporter, I supported someone else in the primary I this election, a different Republican, but we're going to back the Republican in this election. And then we get back on the regular cycle and start voting for our Senate -- the next Senate candidate next year.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So, Matt, explain that. So people who weren't Roy Moore supporters now feel like they may be Roy Moore supporters. Do you have a sense that the accusations of all of these women have worn off?

MATT MURPHY, MORNING RADIO SHOW HOST, TALK 99.5 BIRMINGHAM: Well, I wouldn't say worn off, Alisyn. I would say that there's nothing new with Roy Moore to Alabama voters. He's always been a controversial figure.

Now, obviously, these allegations are very serious. And Alabamians have taken them very seriously but we've come to the conclusion that we will not know the truth by the time we go and vote tomorrow. We have to take these women at their word to a certain degree. But, at the same time, the judge says none of this happened. So you kind of revert back to the issues. And from an issue perspective, Alabamians are more in line with Roy Moore and Donald Trump's agenda than they would be with Doug Jones.

CAMEROTA: And let's talk about some of the issues that people outside of Alabama don't necessarily know about Judge Roy Moore and some of the controversial positions he's taken, Andrea. He has said that homosexuality is an inherent evil. It should actually be illegal, he believes. He has said that -- oh, he calls Islam a false religion. He didn't believe that Keith Ellison should be sworn in to Congress. He says that our best days in this country were during slavery. How are Alabamians feeling about those other controversial positions?

LINDENBERG: Right. Well, this is a candidate we've known for decades now and the controversy surrounds him. And, again, I think you have to go back and look at the primary. There were so many strong Republicans running in this. And Roy Moore was the one who made it out of that. Like I said, he may not have been the first choice for many Republicans in the state of Alabama, but he is the one left standing in this.

And those statements that you just read, some of them give people here heartburn. Others say, yes, I believe exactly what he says. But, again, we're down to the Democrat and the Republican. Or you can stay home or you can write in a name if you want to. So that's where we are.

CAMEROTA: So, Matt, Doug Jones is the Democrat. He has to -- in order to win, the conventional wisdom is that he has to turn out the black vote. So he has this mailer that he has sent out to Democratic voters. And let me just put it up on the screen for everybody. I don't know if you guys can see this but it's basically a campaign ad that says, think if a black man went after high school girls anyone would try to him a senator? And you see a very skeptical young black man there.

So, do you think that this will work?

MURPHY: Well, we were at a Christmas parade yesterday and we were talking to several African-American -- younger African-Americans at the parade and all of them were appalled that Doug Jones would drag race into something that really they didn't feel like had anything to do with race. Clearly he has to get the African-American vote in Alabama in order to have any shot of winning. And I'm not seeing Doug Jones reach out to those communities in the way that I think's going to draw a turnout on a very odd election day. December 12th is a very odd time to go and vote.

But to infuse race in that way, I think that's a step over the line. And I think a lot of our listeners and a lot of the callers, particularly the African-American community, feel the same way.

CAMEROTA: Hey, Matt, I read that you're not going to vote tomorrow.

MURPHY: No, I'm not. For the first time since 1999, since I've been in Alabama, I've decided that -- Judge Moore has always been a figure that I've kind of disagreed with, with regard to the rule of law with his past Ten Commandments decisions and that sort of thing. So I've always had a little bit of heartburn in that regard.

And, you know, a candidate has to earn my vote. Doug Jones doesn't line up with my values, but Roy Moore has not earned my vote. Not based on whether I believe the women or not, but based on how his campaign has reacted to some of these reactions. He sort of disappeared and for that reason I've decided I'm not voting for either man.

CAMEROTA: Why not write in somebody?

MURPHY: Because it's an exercise in futility at this point. We couldn't coalesce behind one singular write-in candidate. In order for that to work, you would have to get one name and one name alone for a write-in candidacy to be effective and we've not done that in Alabama. And there's only one vote on the ballot tomorrow, so I'm not going to vote for any of these other races. So I've decided to stay home.

CAMEROTA: Andrea, can I ask how you're feeling personally? LINDENBERG: Sure. He's taken a lot of heat for that stance, obviously

--

MURPHY: Yes, I have.

LINDENBERG: And I've had to listen to it.

I respect the voting process. I'm going to the poll. I'll get the "I voted" sticker. And I'm considering writing in a candidate, Alisyn. And, in fact, the candidate I voted for in the first election that we had, the primary race.

CAMEROTA: So, Matt, what do you think the effect of President Trump now fully endorsing Roy Moore, coming down almost to the Alabama border and saying that he wants Roy Moore to win, what do you think the effect has been on your callers and the state there?

[06:35:00] MURPHY: Well, I mean, it's interesting. In a state that went almost 2-1 for Donald Trump, clearly we are a conservative state and we believe ion some of the issues that Trump presented during that race. We didn't go with Donald Trump during the primary. Donald Trump campaigned for Luther Strange. We saw through that, did not believe that Luther was acting in a manner consistent with the guy that we knew and so we went another direction. We went with Roy Moore.

So while the president -- you know, obviously, his words are going to hold weight based on the weight of that office. I think Alabamians are going to do their own thing. And if the polling is any indication, that thing is to elect Roy Moore to the United States Senate.

CAMEROTA: Hey, Andrea, very quickly, where was Roy Moore this weekend? Why wasn't he out campaigning?

LINDENBERG: Hey, that's a good question. I don't know. I know he sat down with someone in our state who does reporting and has a show. And I had to watch that to see what his stance was on a lot of these issues. He -- I don't know where he was. Do you?

MURPHY: Disappeared.

LINDENBERG: He's gone.

CAMEROTA: I mean some reports were that he was at the Army/Navy game, but you'd think this was kind of a critical weekend in your state.

But, guys, thank you very much. Great to talk to both of you, as it has been having you on the ground throughout all of this. We'll talk to you later, after tomorrow. Thanks so much.

MURPHY: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we're monitoring these fires out west. They are as historic as they are horrible. Hundreds of homes burned. Tens of thousands forced to evacuate. These fires are consuming an area of southern California that is bigger than New York City. We have a live report from the front lines, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:40:55] CAMEROTA: Wildfires in California still burning out of control. The Thomas fire is now the fifth largest wildfire in the state's modern history. It's forced more than 94,000 people from their homes.

CNN's Miguel Marquez is live in Santa Barbara County with all of the breaking details for us.

Miguel, what's the latest?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're about as close to the fire line as we can get, Alisyn. The wind is still blowing toward the ocean, toward that way. The fire is up there in the Los Padres National Forest. You can see that home where that structure, just below it. That is Carpinteria and Montecito, just south of Santa Barbara, north of Ventura.

Of the six fires that have burned across California in the last week or so, this one, the Thomas fire, stubbornly will not go out. Firefighters actually reversed the containment that they had for it from 15 percent to 10 percent. The concern, those winds and that very, very low humidity. They cannot get ahold of this fire because the wind keeps blowing it toward the ocean into new brush land, into new forest land, and those humidity -- these humidity levels are just almost at zero, five to 10 percent. Overnight you don't get any more moisture in any of the wood, so it just burns.

We were up nearer to the fire earlier. It sounds like a rushing river, like a massive rushing river as you get close to that fire, it is burning so hot up in those woods.

What they are concerned with is that that wind is going to continue to push that fire down these hills into some of these neighborhoods just south of Santa Barbara and there are many, many evacuations occurring right here right now. Nearly 800 structures in this one fire have already been destroyed and they are not sure when they will get this one under control.

Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Miguel, take it easy out there. Take care of you and the crew. People don't understand how accrete (ph) it is out there and how sick you can feel very, very quickly. Be well. We'll check back with you. Thank you for the reporting.

So, is there any relief in sight to what we're seeing out there? We know the simple answer is no.

But let's get some perspective from CNN meteorologist Chad Myers.

Something this big just doesn't go away overnight.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It doesn't. Better than last week. That's the big story. But 25 miles per hour is

better than 70, but it's not helpful. I mean we haven't laid down this wind at all.

This weather is brought to you by Keurig. Brew the love.

We will see the wind continue for 20 million people out there with the red flag warning. Now that means dry conditions and windy conditions, 25 to 30 this morning. And then again tonight we lay down a little bit, down to about five to 10. But tomorrow morning we're back up to 20 again. So it's just day after day.

Now, finally, by Wednesday and Thursday, it gets better. But we're not getting an onshore flow. L.A. is still going to be above 80. You should be 68. So that's still the offshore flow pushing the air down the hill from the desert and into L.A.

Now, New York, you're finally done with the snow. Philadelphia, done. Atlanta, finally done. It warms up a little bit in New York to 47. But, look back here, on Wednesday, we're back to 30. Another cold front comes in, this time, though, without snow.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK. Good to know, Chad. Thank you very much.

MYERS: You're welcome.

CAMEROTA: All right, so White House insiders say President Trump often watches cable news for four hours a day. And wait until you hear about his diet. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:48:38] CUOMO: The word is, some of you will be surprised by this, but people close to President Trump say he spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes even more than that, watching television, particularly cable news. This is according to a riveting "New York Times" report. The article comes as the president reignites his war with the media.

Let's discuss. CNN's senior media correspondent Brian Shelter and CNN media analyst Bill Carter.

Four hours of TV today -- a day, maybe more. We know he watches this show. We know he is very reactive to television. It dominates his agenda very often. What's the upshot?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Well, the average American watches between four and five hours of TV a day. So, on this front, President Trump is a lot like the voters.

However, we have not had a president like this before that is so attuned to cable news or to television news in general. We -- of course, there's those famous pictures from the '60s of the three TVs of nightly news casts in the Oval Office. This is very different, however. If President Trump is only hearing what he agrees with from Fox News during the day, that's a problem. If he's only hearing people that he wants to hear amens from, that's a problem.

CUOMO: He parrots --

STELTER: I think it's a good sign that he also watches CNN.

CUOMO: He parrots the prattle that comes off that couch on Fox on a regular basis.

CAMEROTA: Yes, retweets it and stuff.

BILL CARTER: CNN MEDIA ANALYST: Retweets it.

CUOMO: You know.

CAMEROTA: Yes. But I think we need to dive into the details here because I think this is a stunning headline, OK.

CARTER: Yes. Fantastic details. Yes.

CAMEROTA: So if he watches between four and eight hours is what it says --

CARTER: Right.

CAMEROTA: Of cable news --

STELTER: Right.

CAMEROTA: Basically a day.

[06:50:02] First of all, that's more than even doctors recommend. Second, I mean, second of all, shouldn't the president be busier?

CARTER: Well, that's the point.

CAMEROTA: OK. But he tapes it. So he watches it in his free time.

CARTER: He does. Yes, he --

CAMEROTA: He tapes it. He records it. And then at night and in the morning --

CUOMO: If you go through the commercials, you can watch eight hours of television in 19 minutes.

CAMEROTA: Well, there you go. That's -- that's helpful.

CARTER: But, look, most of the content -- most of the content -- if you're watching cable news all day, or repeating it, you're going to see the content over and over again. So he's absorbing the same things over and over again, the message from Fox News, for example, he gets all day.

One of the interesting things in that article, though, was, he felt when he started he told the people in the administration to think of it as a TV show. There's an -- everyday was an episode of a TV show in which he vanquishes his rivals --

CAMEROTA: Yes, he told -- according to the -- the insiders, that he told them, his top advisers, every day is a TV show.

CARTER: Right.

CAMEROTA: I mean what's funny about this, Bill, is that we suspected that.

CARTER: Yes, we did.

CAMEROTA: OK. But now it has been confirmed that that was the message from the president to his advisers.

CARTER: And what kind of show is it? It's a reality show, right? And a reality show, who's the most compelling figure? The villain. It's almost like he's playing out these things that he's -- that he was on TV doing in the past.

CUOMO: All right, so --

CARTER: But he's the president now and you would think he has to have -- spent some of his day paying attention to policy.

CUOMO: All right. So the personality assessment checked the box. He habits, he checked the box. His latest, though, strategy of doubling down on attacking the media is a little bit different than just how many Big Macs he eats. You know, there's a --

CAMEROTA: I do want to get to that.

CUOMO: There's a danger to this. And, you know, just to juxtapose the Big Mac with some broccoli. The good news for people is, you know, because everybody is saying, I've never seen anything like this. It's the worst. It's the worst.

If you go back and look at the Alien and Sedition Acts in the late 1790s, it is uncanny, it is scary how common it is -- you look at the two phases. What Trump is doing --

CAMEROTA: To claim fake news?

CUOMO: And the people around him, the fake news, attacking the media, we can't let them do this to us. It all happened once before and was tied to the fear of immigrants as like kind of the overarching political issue.

We're reliving it right now. The media won that time. But there was public support for it then that we don't have now. The president knows that. He does not go after big targets that he doesn't think he can beat.

STELTER: He's using language and it actually -- in very effective ways. He calls -- he said over the weekend fakers, fraudsters and then called the press a stain on America.

CARTER: Right.

STELTER: Very reminiscent of what he said in February, which was, enemy of the American people.

CUOMO: High ground on making errors when his --

STELTER: Yes.

CUOMO: He has an unprecedented number of errors himself.

CARTER: Yes.

CUOMO: None of which he has never corrected or apologized.

CAMEROTA: Right, but we can't use that standard, OK?

So, in the media, we have to be better than that.

CARTER: Yes.

CAMEROTA: In the press we have to be better than that. We have to get it right.

CUOMO: Better than the president of the United States?

CAMEROTA: Yes, we have to get it right all the time. That's our --

CUOMO: He used to be -- that position used to be at the top, by the way.

CAMEROTA: I understand. I get it. But our credibility has to be up here.

CARTER: And the president used to called to account for mistakes. This guy is not really called to account. He can make them every day --

CAMEROTA: Right.

CARTER: And not be called on them. The press makes one mistake, they're called on it.

CAMEROTA: And, furthermore, our --

STELTER: And we should be called on it. But the hypocrisy does burn.

CAMEROTA: Yes, and I appreciate that you used that, that you said the hypocrisy burns, for sure. But, of course, it's also our job to call out the hypocrisy, to show the times that he makes a mistake, or the discrepancies or lies. That's our job. That's not being anti- president.

CARTER: No.

CAMEROTA: That's not being anti-Trump. That's our -- that's what we're tasked with.

However, all of that aside, when the media, when the press makes mistakes, it is also our job -- and I do feel like we need a refresher course for this and for the viewers, to immediately correct it.

CARTER: Right.

CAMEROTA: And that's what we do.

CARTER: Yes.

CAMEROTA: That's not fake news.

CARTER: No.

CAMEROTA: That's our job responsibility.

STELTER: But when CNN made a mistake on Friday --

CARTER: Oh, we're --

STELTER: There was an announcement on the air by 3:45 about the mistake, about WikiLeaks and Trump. That would actually support the idea that we take this stuff seriously. That corrections are important. And that when there's an error, we address it.

CAMEROTA: Of course. That's our mission statement.

STELTER: That actually -- that actually rejects the notion of fake news because it shows that when there's an error, it's addressed properly. That is the --

CUOMO: Right. But, look, one of the things that the media struggles with -- and I don't believe in the media as a monolith.

CAMEROTA: Right.

CUOMO: But entities individually.

CARTER: It's not really.

CUOMO: We're not very politically savvy. Here's the play that's being put on the media, which is, if you make a mistake, they are assuming that you knew it was a mistake when you put it on.

CAMEROTA: Right.

CARTER: Right.

CAMEROTA: Right.

CARTER: Yes.

CUOMO: That's the fake part. That's what Trump is advancing.

CARTER: Right. CUOMO: The irony is --

CAMEROTA: You were trying to get rid of it.

CUOMO: That is true about him.

CARTER: Him, yes.

CUOMO: He says things that he knows are not true for a fact.

CARTER: That he knows are wrong. Yes.

CARTER: That is not the way it works in the media. You will lose your job if you go with something --

STELTER: Look at --

CARTER: What he's asking -- he literally is telling people that they should be fired. That's another thing. You go back to the 17 -- whatever. We -- the bill of (INAUDIBLE), you're not supposed to go after an individual like that.

CUOMO: Yes. Yes.

CARTER: That was put into the Constitution to protect people from doing what he's doing and saying this guy should be fired (INAUDIBLE).

STELTER: And yet he's saying Brian Ross should be fired from ABC.

CARTER: Right. Exactly.

STELTER: He's saying Dave Weigel should be fired from "The Post."

CARTER: Right.

STELTER: I think it's really telling. And over the weekend this guy Weigel at "The Post," he deleted a tweet because he put up a picture of the crowd size in Pensacola.

CUOMO: Yes.

STELTER: He was wrong. There was a bigger crowd than it looked like in that picture. He apologized when Trump called him out. But then Trump went further and said, he should be fired.

Now, "The Washington Post" is not going to fire Dave Weigel.

CARTER: It wasn't even in "The Washington Post." It was on Twitter.

CUOMO: Right.

STELTER: But to borrow a comment from Stewart Stevens on Twitter, why is it that President Trump criticized Dave Weigel more than say Vladimir Putin? It's just another example of the strange selection of targets by President Trump.

CARTER: Right.

CUOMO: Because he goes after targets he thinks he can bully and beat.

2CARTER: Yes.

CUOMO: That's why.

CARTER: Right.

[06:55:01] CAMEROTA: I also promised a little tidbit about his diet.

CUOMO: What have you got?

CAMEROTA: He drinks 12 Diet Cokes a day.

CARTER: That's right.

CAMEROTA: Twelve Diet Cokes a day. I mean this is according to insiders in the White House.

CUOMO: That's a lot of volume.

STELTER: That should be a fun experiment just for the day, try to drink 12 Diet Cokes. I might try that.

CAMEROTA: I would -- I -- my head would explode.

Thank you very much, Brian and Bill.

CUOMO: All right, Alabama matters. It's a big special selection. The voters in the state are heading to the polls tomorrow morning. Who will the new senator be? President Trump says you need to believe in Roy Moore, the man with the allegations of child molestation. The state of the race, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:59:57] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Get out and vote for Roy Moore.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), MAINE: I'm disappointed that the RNC has resumed its support.

ROY MOORE (R), ALABAMA SENATE CANDIDATE: I know I've stood for moral values, and so they're attacking me in that area.