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Far-Right Republicans ignore McCarthy; Dr. Oz Runs for Senate Seat; Meadows Cooperating with January 6th Panel; Rain Galls in Greenland. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired December 01, 2021 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:32:17]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Republican lawmaker facing off against each other over anti-Muslim comments made by far-right lawmakers. At the center of the current exchange, Rep. Nancy Mace, who slammed fellow Republican Lauren Boebert for making anti-Muslim comments about Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and others. In response to Mace's comments, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted in part, Nancy Mace is the trash in the GOP conference. Mace, you can back up off of Lauren Boebert and just go hang with your real gal pals, the jihad squad.

Mace slammed Greene on Twitter and said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): Make no mistake, Marjorie Taylor Green is a liar. She's crazy. She's insane. She's bad for the party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, after that, Congresswoman Greene tweeted that she had spoken with Trump about Mace, to which Mace responded, bless her f-ing heart, although she didn't say f-ing.

And in comments later, she said this about Greene's anti-Muslim rhetoric.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): What it says to me is that if you say something that's batshit crazy, you say something extreme, you're going to raise money. And that is the only reason that she does that. I mean she's a grifter of the first order and she does it to raise money.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And, this morning, new CNN reporting showing that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy held separate meetings Tuesday with Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as Nancy Mace, urging them to end their public feuding. Moderates fear that the infighting is going to threaten their party's efforts to win back the majority next year.

CNN's Melanie Zanona joining us now on this.

I mean, wow, Kevin McCarthy is really stuck in the middle here. I have a three and a five year old and he has a tougher job than I do brokering some of the things I do after work.

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Absolutely. I mean GOP leadership knows they have a problem on their hands. This is a huge distraction for Republicans. They would much rather be talking about the Biden agenda, an area where they are very united.

So, with that in mind, Kevin McCarthy hauled in both Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene for separate, private meetings. And I'm told his message was essentially knock it off. Stop attacking each other. But I'm not sure that the message actually stuck because after the meeting I caught up with Greene and she took another swipe at Nancy Mace. She said, Mace does not have the support of Donald Trump. And Greene also said that she would support a primary challenge against Nancy Mace, which is a huge, potential threat.

And then Nancy Mace, as she was exiting her meeting and was walking on the House floor, told reporters, all I want to say about Marjorie Taylor Greene is bless he f-ing heart.

And, again, she did not use f-ing. She -- she fully went there.

So, clearly, the tensions have not cooled down.

KEILAR: Fascinating. It's interesting, I will say, like the false equivalence that Kevin McCarthy has here, hauling them both in. Just a point I will make there.

ZANONA: Yes.

KEILAR: Melanie, thank you. Great reporting.

ZANONA: Thank you.

BERMAN: So, some political news out of Pennsylvania, or entertainment news depending on how you look at it.

[06:35:05]

Controversial TV Dr. Mehmet Oz announced he is running for U.S. Senate as a Republican and in Pennsylvanian for that matter. So, what are his chances?

CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten joins me now, when I get to him.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Oh, hello.

BERMAN: Harry, talk to us about Dr. Oz and his chances, where he stands among Republicans right now.

ENTEN: Yes, I mean, look, here's the deal, if you look at the polling before Dr. Oz got in the race, look at this, last month, 78 percent of Pennsylvania registered Republicans were undecided in who to vote for in the next primary. So this is a field that is wide open for Dr. Oz to get into.

BERMAN: All right. What are the betting markets? I -- first of all, I should note, one of the reasons it's so wide open is Sean Parnell, who was seen as the leading candidate, more or less dropped out because of legal issues he had been having.

ENTEN: Correct. Correct.

BERMAN: But what do the betting markets say?

ENTEN: Yes. So, the betting markets, which is essentially a view of conventional wisdom, right, so this is basically your chance of winning per the betting markets. Look at that. He's already up at 36 percent. He's ahead of the rest of the field. And part of that is because unless you're really into Pennsylvania politics, you probably haven't heard of these other three that are going on here because, as you mentioned, Sean Parnell left the race. He was endorsed, I believe, by President Trump, former President Trump. He was sucking up all the oxygen in the room. All of a sudden he gets out, it leaves the room wide open for somebody who can build name ID very, very quick in that state.

BERMAN: Now, in terms of the Republican primary, obviously, Donald Trump will be a major factor.

ENTEN: Donald Trump will be a huge factor. And the reason Donald Trump will be a huge factor is because Donald Trump, just like with Republicans nationally, in the state of Pennsylvania, he is beloved. Look at that, a 75 percent favorable rating in the last -- in an average of the last two Franklin and Marshall polls. So this just gives you an idea that if you get in the race in Pennsylvania, right, and you're a Republican, you can't annoy this guy because if you do, Pennsylvania Republicans will turn against you.

BERMAN: He had endorsed -- Trump had endorsed Sean Parnell, who dropped from the race.

ENTEN: Correct.

BERMAN: One of the questions is, will Trump get behind anyone here. Mehmet Oz, a fellow entertainer. Who knows?

ENTEN: Who knows?

BERMAN: Mehmet Oz has been speaking glowingly about Trump the last few days.

Let's talk about the general election.

ENTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: If Oz were able to win the Republican nomination, then what? ENTEN: Look, President Joe Biden, his numbers in Pennsylvania, just like they have nationally, have dipped. You can see this very well. You know, if you look back at October of 20th, his favorable rating in the state of Pennsylvania was 52 percent. You look in October of 2021, it's 45 percent. That tends to be a pretty good recipe for Republicans to make gains nationally. And it's also probably going to be the case in Pennsylvania.

And if you don't mind, I'm going to jump ahead a slides. You may have a question, but I'm going to jump ahead just because I think it works so well as a transition. When a president's approval rating is below 50 percent in Pennsylvania, look at these Senate races in Pennsylvania in midterms since 1994. The president's party has lost all four, '94, '06, '10, '18. And, obviously, Dr. Oz is not in the president's party. He is running in the opposition party.

BERMAN: Right.

ENTEN: The opposition party has won all four of those places. So a Republican on the ballot, if President Joe Biden is unpopular in Pennsylvania a year from now as he is today, that would leave the door wide open for a Republican to win.

BERMAN: We have a lot of history in Pennsylvania in these competitive Senate races where you can learn from something like this.

All right, what do we know about celebrity politicians in general?

ENTEN: I mean, look, they can be fairly successful, right? You know, obviously, we think of former President Trump as a successful politician in so far as he won the presidency. But he's not the only one. You know, you go back to 2008. Al Franken won in Minnesota. You go back to 2003 in California, Arnold Schwarzenegger won. In '98, Minnesota, Jesse Ventura. In '94, Tennessee, Fred Thompson winning a Senate race. Of course, Ronald Reagan, who was probably the original celebrity who won the presidency, started off winning the California gubernatorial race in 1966. So the idea that as a celebrity you can't win in politics and that Donald Trump was somehow unique doesn't help. There are plenty of celebrities who have made that jump from being a celebrity or an entertainer to winning political office, major statewide political office. Will Dr. Oz be one of those? We don't know. But it's certainly -- there is a road map there -- here. It has worked before.

BERMAN: I will say, most of these people were involved in the political world in some way between their entertainment role.

ENTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: Much more so than Dr. Oz. But we'll see.

ENTEN: Well, I mean, look, we will see. But this is a unique time in our politics. And as I pointed out earlier on, you know, when you essentially have 78 percent of the field that's undecided, that's something you can really jump into and get name recognition, spend a lot of money very quickly, which Dr. Oz is planning on doing. He has a real shot here.

BERMAN: This may be the most important number you showed us. That's a very high number in this state.

ENTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: Harry, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you, sir.

BERMAN: So, a new sign that climate change is accelerating. Rain fell last August in Greenland. May not sound like a big deal. Actually, it does sound like a big deal. Sounds like a huge deal. And we'll explain much more about why.

KEILAR: And former Trump chief of staff, Mark Meadows, finally cooperating with the January 6th committee.

[06:40:04]

But just how helpful is he willing to be?

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BERMAN: First on CNN, former President Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has finally agreed to cooperate, some, with the House select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection. According to Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the committee, Meadows has provided around 6,000 emails to investigators. A statement from Meadows' lawyer reads, quote, as we have from the beginning, we continue to work with the select committee and its staff to see if we can reach an accommodation that does not require Mr. Meadows to waive executive privilege or to forfeit the longstanding position that senior White House aides cannot be compelled to testify before Congress.

Joining me now, CNN chief legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin, and anchor of "EARLY START" and attorney at law, Laura Jarrett.

[06:45:08]

So, Jeffrey, explain to me what's happening here. He's turning over emails. He's agreed to appear before them. But he's not waiving executive privilege. How is this all going to happen?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: We don't know. And I think it is -- there was a confluence of interest here, is that Mark Meadows, unlike Steve Bannon, does not relish the idea of being indicted. So he wants to avoid that fate. The committee doesn't want to get bogged down into another long, legal fight that will get them nothing.

So, Meadows is going to provide something. Obviously he's provide some emails. Whether he will actually provide useful testimony and meaningful emails, frankly, I don't know and I don't know if anyone knows at this point because that is a very ambiguous statement from his lawyer, George Terwilliger.

LAURA JARRETT, ANCHOR, "EARLY START" AND CNN CORRESPONDENT: The question is, why did he change his tune? You know, if the whole goal of this stuff was to sort of slow walk things, and even if you knew you were going to get, you know, overturned by the courts eventually, the goal was to just delay, delay. That seemed to be the end goal. Why now? Is it because the court of appeals appears to be willing to rule against the president on executive privilege? Is it -- we just -- we don't know all the ins and outs of the (INAUDIBLE).

TOOBIN: We don't know. But, you know, Steve Bannon was indicted.

JARRETT: Yes.

TOOBIN: And that's a criminal case. He's been arraigned in federal court. I don't think Mark Meadows wants that to happen.

JARRETT: No, he's a former member of Congress.

TOOBIN: Right.

JARRETT: He doesn't -- he does not want that. As you said, he doesn't relish it.

TOOBIN: And he's a real lawyer. He -- he wants to --

JARRETT: And he has a good lawyer.

TOOBIN: And he wants to preserve his place in civilized society. It's not a good thing to be indicted. So that's -- I think that's his incentive in trying to resolve this.

BERMAN: Just very quickly, the way to play out in theory is inside the deposition he could sit there, the House committee could ask him questions, and the lawyer -- his lawyers could say he's not going to answer that because of possible executive --

JARRETT: A la Jeffrey Clark.

BERMAN: Yes, executive privilege claims, but he could answer other things that have nothing to do with the president. What about your conversations with x, y, and z, who aren't the president?

JARRETT: Well, and members of the committee have signaled, at least publicly, that they are interested in conversations that he has had with other people. You know, there's a lot of work that the committee is doing on what was going down inside the Willard Hotel in the day leading up to it. Now, we don't -- we don't know that Meadows was there, but was he talking to people in the room?

BERMAN: Right.

JARRETT: Was he talking to Jason Miller. His conversations with Jason Miller and Bernie Kerik are not privileged. So, certainly anyone like that they could ask him about. BERMAN: All right, I want to ask you guys, there's so much news today on all kinds of different fronts, including Mark Meadows on a different thing. The president, the former president's Covid test.

But when -- what might have the most lasting significance today are the arguments before the Supreme Court about the Mississippi abortion law.

And this has the potential, Jeffrey, to completely overturn Roe versus Wade.

TOOBIN: This is a case of epic importance. And just so to orient people, Mississippi has banned abortion at 16 weeks of pregnancy. Since Roe v. Wade, the law of the land has been the government cannot impose an undue burden on a woman's right to choose abortion before viability, which is, say, 22 to 24 weeks. So, 16 weeks, everyone acknowledges is not a viable fetus. That is a -- if they uphold this law, Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land. That's enormously important.

JARRETT: But what's interesting to note about this is just how transparent the state has been, right? In other cases, you see them sort of trying to wriggle around, say, well, this doesn't count for whatever reason. There's a carve-out or let's just chip away at Roe a little bit on the edges. This is a full-out brawl. This isn't a -- this is a full-out desire to overturn the law that they have been explicit about.

TOOBIN: And one reason why the oral argument today will be so interesting, which is at 10:00 Eastern Time, it's actually being streamed on the web by the Supreme Court, is, will the justices, in their questioning, try to find some sort of ground to uphold the law but not specifically overturn Roe v. Wade. That will be interesting, especially from Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Barrett, who have not spoken out on abortion since they've been on the court.

BERMAN: I was just going to ask you, from whom Kavanaugh, Barrett, those are the ones to watch.

TOOBIN: Absolutely.

BERMAN: Jeffrey, Laura, thank you both very much.

JARRETT: Sure.

BERMAN: So, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar played this disturbing voice mail she received after her call from Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who implied she was -- who made a bigoted anti-Muslim attack on her.

KEILAR: Plus, a nation numb. Eleven people shot at school. Three of the students killed in what is the 651st mass shooting in America this year.

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[06:53:56] BERMAN: So, for the first time ever, rain fell in Greenland during the month of August at the highest point of Greenland's ice sheet (ph). And this comes as a new study reveals that the rainfall comes decades before scientists had previously expected, which, obviously, is an indicator of the accelerating climate crisis.

Joining me now, CNN's chief climate correspondent Bill Weir.

Talk to us about the significance, Bill, of this rain.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: This is so massive, John, it's hard to -- it's hard to put into words. Yes, if it rains somewhere on the planet one day, you shrug, that's life, right? But you've got to put it into context. This is two miles high in terms of altitude in the coldest place in the world. I was just up there. And the sheer scale of this ice sheet on the biggest island in the world is staggering.

The climate models predicted it wouldn't get warm enough to rain up there at least until 2090 or 2100. They were conservative by 70 years. And now new science says this will be the norm.

And this -- this rain event in August followed the one -- a melt event in July in which 8.5 billion tons of ice turned to water on a single day and raised sea levels permanently.

[06:55:04]

Just a little bit. But when that keeps happening, you've got to worry about the Maimis and the Shanghais of the world.

BERMAN: Well, talk about that. What does this mean? What does it mean if it rains on Greenland's glaciers? What does it mean for the glaciers and what does it mean for the people of Miami?

WEIR: Well, if you think about, you know, an ice berg is in ice. If it melts, the level is going to stay the same. Kind of like the ice in your glass.

This is land ice. And when it comes off the land and goes into the oceans, the oceans get higher. We've built so many trillion-dollar economies along our coastal edges now. And just one glacier in Greenland, if it goes, and it's going. It's going faster than anybody ever predicted, is enough to raise sea level rises by two feet.

And then on top of that, the fresh water that's coming off of Greenland and flowing into basically a gulfstream This is this conveyor belt of warm water that comes from the Caribbean up the East Coast over to Ireland and the U.K. and down, and that controls the weather in the western hemisphere. And all that fresh water has created this lens which changes the physics which could make it super frigid in the U.K. and unlivable in the Caribbean.

BERMAN: Oh, and it -- it could all happen very quickly once this starts to go. WEIR: Yes. I went up there, actually. I want to just mention this guy's name. I went to Greenland to sort of pay homage to one of the first responders of the climate crisis, who's a scientist named Conrad Steffin (ph), one of the OG's of building camps and then hosting with Anderson Cooper and Nancy Pelosi up there, trying to sound the alarm. He became the first man to drown on the ice sheet last summer when he fell through a thin film of ice into a watery crevasse.

And these -- every drip it becomes more dangerous to do this work up there. So I think we should pay attention to what these folks are saying. Hey, the arctic is going three times faster than the rest of the planet. Let's pay attention.

BERMAN: What an awful, tragic irony that is.

WEIR: It really is. It really is.

BERMAN: Bill, thank you so much for your reporting on this.

WEIR: You bet.

BERMAN: So, stunning new revelations about the former president. A report that claims Donald Trump tested positive for Covid earlier than we knew, before his first debate with Joe Biden.

KEILAR: And another community in mourning after a deadly school shooting. What we're learning about the 15-year-old suspect, next.

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