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New Day

New Signs of Economic Recovery Fuel Optimism Across U.S.; Meadows Sues Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), January 6th Panel to Block Subpoenas; Trump Looms Over Divide Between GOP's McConnell, McCarthy. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired December 09, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:06]

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: He's shouting at players, taking a selfie, he's really feeling himself, until he feels this. Bam, Chelsea star blasting him, Sam Kerr took matters into her own hands, a body-check to the ground. Guards eventually chased the guy out the pitch, game continued to a scoreless draw.

John, Brianna, get this, the referee gave Kerr a yellow card for this. Fans there were cheering. If anything, many would argue she should have gotten player of the game for what she did.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAYS: The yellow card actually I think was a half measure, an acknowledgment that it wasn't the worst thing in the world. If he really wanted to punish her, he would have tossed her but probably had to do -- he had to do something, but that measure, I think, indicated with a wink and a nod that maybe it was okay.

WIRE: That is true. What also is true, do not mess with Sam Kerr, NWSL all-time leading scorer, if she's on the pitch, you stay in the seat.

BERMAN: She is so good. All right, Coy, thank you so much.

New Day continues right now.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. It is Thursday, December 9th. I was surprised by the Thursday thing. It's a pleasant surprise.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAYS: It creeps up on you.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman alongside Brianna Keilar.

One hour from now, President Biden kicks off a two-day democracy summit at the White House. It's a virtual meeting that will gather leaders from 110 countries to push back on what the Biden administration has warned is a global democratic recession.

Now, two nations not on the guest list, Russia and China. Both have attacked the Biden summit. They call it hypocritical. When the summit begins, we're going to bring it to you live.

KEILAR: First though, experts say there are new signs of economic recovery fueling a wave of optimism across the country. I do love these good news, economic stories that we've been able to tell in the last days. Among the reasons here, pay raises are coming down the pike. There's a radical drop in energy prices. JPMorgan has made the prediction that 2022 will mark the end of the pandemic.

CNN Business Reporter Matt Egan joining us now on that. Hey, Matt.

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Good morning, guys. There have been some promising developments, including on inflation, especially with the biggest problem child of them all, energy. First, prices at the pump are ticking lower. The national average is down to $3.34 a gallon. It's not cheap but a seven-week low. Even more encouraging, the federal government is projecting for a bigger drop ahead. The energy department's research arm is calling for gasoline to average $3.01 in January, $2.88 for the full year next year. That is a big decline.

Some on Wall Street are calling for an even bigger drop. CitiGroup is calling for a radical drop in energy prices that lowers oil below $60 a barrel by late next year to nearly $50 a barrel late 2023. That's now from 72 today. We have also seen natural gas prices get cut nearly in half. That bodes very well for home heating costs.

There's also some glimmers of hope on the supply chain front, which has been a major driver of inflation. We've seen that port congestion is easing. Sky-high shipping costs are starting coming down. Also, deliveries are speeding up, albeit from pretty slow levels. But that's not to say the supply chain nightmare is over. It's not. And it may not get back to normal any time soon.

Here's how one economist at Moody's Analytics summed it up to me. He said, I'm increasingly optimistic, I'm increasingly confident that the worst appears to be over. Now, that's a big deal, because if the supply chain mess finally starts to get cleaned up that should take pressure off of inflation.

BERMAN: So, Matt, one of the structural things that has happened that I think will take some time to understand is the number of people leaving their jobs. Some people call it the great resignation. And that reached, what, record numbers in October. And it says something sort of specific on the macro level. What do you take from it?

GGAN: Well, it really shows this job market is absolutely booming. There's 11 million job openings right now. That is just shy of the all-time record set in July. Workers have all the leveraged right now and they know it. That's why they are quitting their job at a near record pace. They realize that they could get another job elsewhere probably for more money, maybe better benefits, possibly more flexible working arrangements. It's like free agency season on Main Street, and every team is desperate for starting pitching.

And it's not just about workers quitting. Let's look at this dramatic decline in unemployment claims. They have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Companies, they are desperate to hire workers so they don't want to let go of the ones they have. Also the unemployment rate is down now to 4.2 percent. Remember, back at the height of COVID, the unemployment rate was at nearly 15 percent. As you can see, that's the big spike right here, nearly 15 percent, now 4.2 percent massive decline.

Also, Wall Street is starting to feel better. There was this big scare right after Thanksgiving over omicron, but the stock market has recovered nearly all of its losses.

[07:05:01]

That's encouraging. Also, there is a very optimistic take from America's biggest bank, JPMorgan. They've put out this report yesterday where they said, our view is that 2022 will be the year of full global recovery, an end of the global pandemic, and a return to normal conditions we had prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Brianna and John, I think that's something that we can all agree we would all be able to celebrate.

KEILAR: I love that. I need that. But I love how you called them free agents, very good description of the job market right now.

BERMAN: Well, everyone needs starting pitching and they're all free agents, Max Scherzer gets $40 million a year. It is good for the worker, clearly, companies and stuff may not like it quite as much and it's a little bit inflationary, but it is absolutely good for workers around the country.

EGAN: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

KEILAR: Matt, thank you.

EGAN: Thank you, guys.

BERMAN: So, Mark Meadows has gone from cooperating to go litigating in a matter of just a few short days. Donald Trump's former chief of staff is now suing the January 6th committee and Nancy Pelosi in an effort to block enforcement of a subpoena issued to him and to Verizon for his phone records. Meadows explained his sudden about-face on Fox News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK MEADOWS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: We came to the conclusion that they are still going to try to question those personal private conversations that I had with the president of the United States and other senior officials in the west wing. And, quite frankly, their scope is way too broad.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: But the court is going to have to determine that.

MEADOWS: So, we're going to challenge it.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KEILAR: Joining us now, CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel and former DOJ Prosecutor and former Special Counsel Ken Starr Paul Rosenzweig with us.

Okay. First off, the committee already has some things, some important things for Mark Meadows. Last night, Congresswoman Cheney, who is vice chair of this January 6 committee, told CNN, quote, the committee has received a number of extremely interesting, non-privileged documents from Mr. Meadows. You have some new reporting. Tell us what this means, extremely interesting.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Extremely interesting. And let's remember, he has handed over more than 6,000 pages of documents voluntarily, no claim of privilege. So, what I'm told is in there are text messages and emails from his personal phone and personal email. That's critical. These are not White House work phones where he might be able to claim privilege.

And my source told me that, quote, what they're seeing is that he's, quote, exchanging texts and emails with a wide range of individuals while the attack is under way. So, people are texting him, and the committee now has this.

Who is Mark Meadows with? He's with Donald Trump at the White House. So, likely, what we're seeing here are people saying, what's the president doing? Why isn't he doing anything? So, these are critical, critical, real-time communications the committee now has.

BERMAN: Any more visibility on who he is texting with?

GANGEL: We don't know yet. But a lot of people had Mark Meadows' cell phone. A lot of reporters had Mark Meadows' cell phone. But let's think about who might be texting him, members of Congress.

BERMAN: It's Pete Aguilar who told me yesterday.

GANGEL: So, members of Congress, rally organizers, other White House officials. So, this is -- you know, he's the point person. People are not texting. Donald Trump doesn't text. And I think those are going to become public.

KEILAR: Paul, what do you think about this?

PAUL ROSENZWEIG, FORMER DOJ PROSECUTOR: Well, it's a roadmap. You don't need Meadows' testimony if you already have Meadows' textual testimony in real-time of what is happening. The president said X or words to that effect. This trove of documents, text messages, when you add it to the call data records that they're going to get from Verizon that show the identity of people, if it's not clear from the texts themselves, is going to be essentially a real-time look at what was happening at the White House, at Congress, at the riots, at the insurrection.

Now, we don't know obviously what that will prove in the end, but it certainly sounds like in real-time the president of the United States was actively engaged in conversations with the victims of and/or the organizations of the insurrection.

BERMAN: And just legally, Paul, what the committee has, they have. And they -- can they ever un-have it? I mean, if Meadows turned over this stuff already and now he is suing about other things, but they have what they have.

ROSENZWEIG: We don't have an immaculate do-overrule in law. They don't have to give it back. I suppose at some extreme, some a court could try and stop them from publicizing it. But as we know from things like the Pentagon papers, a member of Congress could go on the floor of the House of Representatives and publicly share it all and would be completely be protected under speech and debate clause from anything.

[07:10:05]

So, there is almost zero chance that the substance of what's in here will wind up not seeing the light of day.

KEILAR: There's a lot of people not cooperating who are close to Donald Trump. That seems to be actually the way that so many of his allies are operating here. I know you have some reporting about what's going on behind the scenes when it comes to this with the committee.

GANGEL: So, I think there are two sets of witnesses here. There are people, Trump loyalists, who we see every day trying to defy. But there are also, I'm told by a source familiar with the committee's work, that behind the scenes, they are getting a lot of cooperation from many, many witnesses that we do not know about. Some are voluntary. Some have been subpoenaed. We know of about 40 subpoenas. I'm now told there are, quote, lots of subpoenas we don't know about.

Some of those are called friendly subpoenas, people who don't want it to appear they're voluntarily cooperating, give me a little cover. And I'm told there are many witnesses coming in every week and, quote, sometimes multiple a day. And that when it becomes public, there will be names we recognize.

BERMAN: I have two questions, one for you and one for Paul. When will it become public? I mean, what is the timeline here?

GANGEL: So, I think that some of this will be held until the hearings, that the committee wants to build a case and then, over several weeks, have these people. They don't want to give away the story right now. But some of it, we just reported this week, that Marc Short, vice president -- former Vice President's Mike Pence's chief of staff, is cooperating. So I wouldn't be surprised if we hear little things like that along the way.

BERMAN: And, Paul, just quickly, one of my questions that I have sort of a bigger picture, what are the possible criminal referrals that could come from this committee? I'm not talking about contempt of Congress. I'm talking about actual referrals having to do with the insurrection itself.

ROSENZWEIG: Well, that's a challenging question. To some extent, it's going to depend on the evidence. But at (INAUDIBLE), I think they'll most likely are going to be what I would call simple criminal charges relating to D.C. law, assault, conspiracy to commit assault. We're unlikely to see broad sedition or insurrection charges because those are harder to prove. You have to prove an intent to overthrow the government, which we all think is there. But you have to actually get somebody to admit to that.

But it's clear as day that some of the organizers, for example, and possibly some of the president's affiliates were part and parcel of organizing the activities of that day knowing and intending that they would end in violence. And that's, you know, conspiracy to commit assault, to beat up somebody. That's a crime. If I punch you, it's a crime.

KEILAR: We don't know everyone who is talking to the committee, as you point out, Jamie. But knowing what we do know, and that they are going to be recognizable names, who are, we should find this out later, do you think that this committee is going to be able to paint a fulsome picture of what actually happened, fulfill their mission?

ROSENZWEIG: 80 percent. You won't get a full picture unless mark Meadows fully testifies, unless Jeffrey Clark fully testifies, unless Donald Trump fully testified truthfully. None of that is going to happen. I mean, yes, nobody is ever going to actually get Steve Bannon's testimony under oath. He may go to jail for that, but we won't get it.

So, it will be an 80 percent picture. And that is pretty good in U.S. government work, better than I ever did in math.

KEILAR: It is a B-minus, which is, I will say. Jamie and Paul, thank you so much to both of you.

Which Republicans would dare take on Donald Trump in 2024?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Have you made any decisions about running for president?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: All right. Stick around for Mike Pence's reply, just ahead.

Plus, Instagram boss promising parents that he is going to keep the site safe. We'll have live reaction from a mother of three who doubts that.

BERMAN: And did the CIA spy -- the CIA we're talking about here -- on James Brown? New reporting suggests --

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KEILAR: Brand-new CNN reporting this morning on the growing divide between the two most prominent leaders of the Republican Party, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. And looming over it all is former President Trump.

Melanie Zanona is joining us live from Capitol Hill with the details. What is the state of this union, Melanie?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Or more like disunion. Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell have increasingly taken different positions on a number of key high-profile issues lately. The most recent example is the debt ceiling. Mitch McConnell brokered this deal with Democrats to resolve the debt limit standoff, and Kevin McCarthy is adamantly opposed to it. And then, of course, there's the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Mitch McConnell voted for it. He was back home touting its benefits. And Kevin McCarthy was actively urging his members to oppose it.

Now, part of the reason for the split, of course, Brianna, is the different nature and makeups of their conferences. Mitch McConnell is dealing with a 50-seat minority. He has been forced to cut deals with Democrats and President Joe Biden, whereas on the House side, the minority party is rarely needed for votes. And it's a lot easier for McCarthy to just blink it, oppose everything.

But the other big factor, as you alluded to, is Donald Trump.

[07:20:02]

Mitch McConnell and McCarthy have completely different views about the former president and his role in the party, and McCarthy specifically sees Trump as crucial to not only winning back the majority but also to become speaker one day. And so that's why McCarthy is much more likely to listen to Trump's demands on, say, voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

But I can tell you some Republicans are starting to really sound the alarm about these two GOP leaders being on opposite pages. Listen to what Brian Babin, a Texas Republican, told me yesterday. He said, quote, we better stick together. It's imperative that Republicans all march in one direction. This is training for, hopefully, next session. So, clearly, this divide between Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy could potentially foreshadow some governing challenges if Republicans win both chambers into next year's midterms. Brianna?

KEILAR: Yes. They're supposed to be like the saucer and the cup, the Senate and the House, but it's more like the saucer and the giant bucket right now.

ZANONA: Exactly.

KEILAR: Melanie, thank you so much for that report.

BERMAN: So, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, so far, staying quiet on whether the House will vote on a resolution to strip Republican Lauren Boebert of her committee assignments. The resolution comes in response to Congressman Boebert's bigoted anti-Muslim comments toward Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

Joining us now is CNN Congressional Correspondent Lauren Fox and CNN Reporter Gabby Orr.

Lauren, you have got new reporting on what appears to actually be a split within the Democrats about whether to strip these assignments.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this has been the struggle about what to do about these Republicans who really repeatedly make these kinds of bigoted or anti-Semitic comments over the last several months on Capitol Hill. And some Democrats are saying we don't want to give people any more attention. They are raising money off of these kinds of tweets and comments. They are getting more popular among the Republican base because of these comments. And just stripping them of their committees, all it does is give them attention.

Now, there is another side of the Democratic Party that says, how could we let this stand? How can we do nothing? And that's what you saw that yesterday with that resolution that was introduced by a group of progressives saying this needed to happen, that Lauren Boebert needed to be stripped of her committee assignments.

So, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is staying neutral right now, making it clear that she is not for the kinds of Islamophobia that Lauren Boebert is spewing on the internet or talking about back home and yet making it clear to her caucus, this is a difficult moment and we're going to have to make a choice. There are some moderate Democrats who do not want to take a vote on this in part because they view it as a distraction and they view it as a slippery slope. Because if Republicans take back the House in 2022, what they are afraid you'll see is Republicans taking action against Democrats at every turn if they think a Democrat missteps.

BERMAN: There're two lenses to look at this through, right, what's right and then what's politically going to work for Democrats. And I think it speaks, Gabby, to Democrats who say, we need to take a stand. They have the luxury of taking a stand that maybe some of the moderates don't.

GABBY ORR, CNN REPORTER: Yes, they do. And they don't have this massive party figure like Donald Trump looming over them at every step. So, Democrats are free to voice their opposition to a leader like Nancy Pelosi at some point. It might not go the way they want to, but they're not afraid to do that in the same way a lot of Republicans are.

But I think it is interesting, as Lauren notes, if Republicans take the House in 2022, what are they going to do? Are they going to seek revenge against every single Democrat who has ever tried to strip them of a committee post or call out them for language that was offensive? It's definitely going to be a question that -- Donald Trump is going to be encouraging them.

BERMAN: Yes, hanging over this, as you have noted before. Excuse me, I want to beat my computer up.

Lauren Boebert doesn't care. She doesn't care about having her committee assignments taken away. So, it isn't exactly a sanction that carries a lot with it for her.

Gabby, you've got some new reporting, you brought up Donald Trump, about how Republicans are beginning to position themselves for the presidential race in 2024.

ORR: It's already happening. Yes. They are sort of self-separating into three different tiers at the moment because of the looming Trump question. Will he run, will he not run, we still don't know. He is definitely teasing a 2024 presidential run, but the jury is still out on that amongst his aides and even amongst Trump himself.

What we are seeing is that some candidates are coming out immediately and saying, if Donald Trump runs, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to invest in a race. I'm not going to put together a campaign. I'm out. Others are saying, if he does run, I'm still trying to make my decision. Do I see a lane for myself, or kind of approaching this with a bit more an open mind? And then you have candidates like Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, who are notable Trump allies but have notably said -- who have notably been quiet on this question. They haven't come out and said, I'm not running if Trump runs. And they also haven't come out and said, I'm running.

So, it's a big question and we are definitely seeing sort of different tiered approaches to that.

KEILAR: I think it is like musical chairs. They're waiting for the music to stop and to see if there is more than one chair, right, at the end of that, if they have to move fast on this.

[07:25:05]

BERMAN: I will tell you though, musical chairs could end up with Ron DeSantis sitting on Mike Pompeo's lap, which is what always happens at the end of a musical chairs game. I digress.

KEILAR: It's very true. I can't unsee that, John Berman, but thank you.

Okay, wait, so speaking of Mike Pence though, CNN's Randi Kaye caught up with him. So, let's take a listen to what happened here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Have you made any decisions about running for president?

MIKE PENCE, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: All our focus is on 2022 and doing everything we can to turn back this big government agenda of the Biden administration. We'll let the future take care of itself.

REPORTER: If Donald Trump runs for president, will you still run?

PENCE: You know, our focus is on 2022. But I can honestly tell you in 2023, my family and I will do what we have always done. That is we reflect, we pray and we determine where we might best serve and we go where we're called.

REPORTER: No matter who else is in the race?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: All right, carrying on with our musical chairs reference. I mean, judging by that, it sounds like very possibly Mike Pence may end up with someone sitting on his lap or sitting on someone else's in this game.

FOX: It's pretty fascinating that he took the second question. It almost felt like he was going to walk away, for sure. But, certainly, Mike Pence is a fascinating character because of his proximity and closeness to Trump, because of the fact that he was in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, a day in which Donald Trump ordered his protesters to go to the Capitol.

I think all of that, in all of those dynamics are going to be fascinating to watch whether or not Pence jumps in this race or decides I'm going to let Donald Trump have it. And so he's making it clear right now I'm just trying to get people elected to the House of Representatives so we can take back the House, so we can take back the Senate.

BERMAN: I had the same reaction you did. What was it that drew him want to come back and give the second non-answer? But it was something -- there was something going on there. We may never know.

But, Gabby, part of this, So, Bryan Lanza, who is a Trump supporter, said something, which I'll paraphrase here, which is, Republican voters want to see fighters. And how can you look like a fighter if you're scared to say whether you're going to run against Donald Trump or not. Trump has got them in a bind.

ORR: Yes, he does. And Chris Christie has also made the same point. He's came out and said that Republicans who basically say, I'm not going to run if Donald Trump runs, are weak and effective and do Republican voters really want somebody like that in the White House. And it is a question worth asking.

To Lanza's point though, I do think that at the end of the day, if you're a Republican running in a primary that does not include Donald Trump, if you do not have his endorsement, you are already facing long odds with his base. So, regardless of what you said two years ago, three years ago about whether you would run or wouldn't run if he got in, that's not going to matter. What's going to matter is if you're seen as the rightful heir to Trump's political movement, and if you are, how well you're able to perform at his base.

KEILAR: Gabby and Lauren, thank you so much for this game of political musical chairs. It's been such a joy with you.

Up next, one teen's desperate struggle with social media and the drastic move she wanted to make just to get away from school, her friends and her phone.

BERMAN: And how a car found in a creek could help solve a mystery dating back more than four decades. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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