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New Day Sunday

New Poll: Pete Buttigieg Surges To First Place In Iowa; Democrat Defeats Trump Ally In Deep-Red Louisiana; U.S. And South Korea Postpone Joint Military Drills In New Diplomatic Push; Morrison Said He Understood Sondland Was Getting Direction From Trump; President Trump Undergoes "Quick Exam And Labs; Prince Andrew Defends Ties To Jeffrey Epstein; Colin Kaepernick Abruptly Moves NFL Workout; Stephen Miller Privately Promoted White Nationalist Stories. Aired 6- 7a ET

Aired November 17, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:23]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a new Democratic front-runner in Iowa tonight. His name is Pete Buttigieg.

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D-IN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: How about that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The incumbent Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards narrowly beat out his Republican challenger who was backed by President Donald Trump.

GOV. JOHN BEL EDWARDS (D-LA): You didn't just vote for me. You voted for four more years of putting Louisiana first. And as for the president, God bless his heart.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are learning more about President Trump's trip to the doctor's office today. Reporters were asked to keep quiet about the president's visit to Walter Reed Medical Center.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The president decided to go to Walter Reed and kind of get a head-start with some routine checkups. That's all it was.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY WEEKEND with Victor Blackwell and Christi Paul.

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Good Sunday morning to you. Guess what? Well, there is a new front-runner in Iowa. Oh, yes for the very first time Mayor Pete Buttigieg is sitting on top of the latest Democratic poll there. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren fighting for second place in that state.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump he did not get the big win that he was looking for in Louisiana. Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards won a second term ending Republican's attempt to flip that state.

PAUL: And back in Washington. The president made an unannounced visit to Walter Reed Medical Center to get part of his annual physical completed, we are told.

BLACKWELL: The White House says he took advantage of some free time yesterday to get the process started.

PAUL: So glad to have you with us here. And we want to start with more details about this new poll showing Mayor Pete Buttigieg surging ahead in Iowa. Here's Jeff Zeleny.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: There is a new Democratic front-runner in the 2020 race in Iowa and his name is Pete Buttigieg. For the first time, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor holds a clear lead among voters who say they are likely to participate in the Iowa caucuses. He climbs to 25 percent in a new CNN/Des Moines Register Iowa poll.

Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are all locked in a three-way race for second place. Amy Klobuchar, the only other candidate to break out of the lower tier with 6 percent.

But take a look at how they race has changed since only September. Buttigieg rising 16 points while Warren and Biden have slipped. Sanders and Klobuchar have also narrowly increased. But the race remains fluid with 30 percent saying they have made up their minds, but still, 62 percent of likely Iowa caucusgoers say they could still choose another candidate. That, of course, gives a sense of hope to more than a dozen other Democrats still in the race here.

Now, this is why second choice is so important. Elizabeth Warren is the second choice of 20 percent of likely caucusgoers followed by Buttigieg at 14 percent, with Sanders and Biden each at 13 percent. But electability is a critical question for Democrats. That remains the core bit of Biden's strength, of the four top candidates tested, a majority, 52 percent say Biden could beat Trump, the rest do not reach the majority point.

So, this is where the race is standing right now. There is a sense of pragmatism, however, hanging over Iowa voters as well. Sixty-three percent say they prefer a candidate with a strong chance to beat Trump compared to 32 percent who support someone who shares all of their views. So, that's where the race is now, some 80 days or so before the voting in 2020 begins.

Now the question for Pete Buttigieg is, how does he handle the pressure of being a front-runner?

Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL: So, here's how Mayor Pete Buttigieg responded when we told him the news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just released a poll one minute ago that shows in Iowa, with the Des Moines Register, you, in Iowa, are in the lead at 25 percent.

BUTTIGIEG: How about that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is your reaction?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, that's extremely encouraging. We have -- obviously we have felt a lot of momentum on the ground especially with the work that we've been doing not just in terms of my visits to the state but over a hundred organizers there building relationships, getting our message out. And even now we know that we are not as well known as some of my competitors.

So it's very encouraging and, at the same time, there is a long way to go and there are a lot of states in this process. So I recognize the work that we have got to do both to consolidate our gains and to make sure that I am earning every vote as we head into the caucuses in the primaries.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Now let's head to Louisiana. CNN projects Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards has narrowly won the reelection beating out Eddie Rispone, Republican businessman backed by the president.

[06:05:07]

PAUL: CNN National Correspondent, Dianne Gallagher is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Dianne, I'm wondering what the reaction is there -- and good morning.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christi and Victor.

Yes. So, here is the thing. John Bel Edwards, the Democratic governor here in Louisiana, reelected and I am looking at two different things here. We spoke with voters yesterday. We started to notice the split. Those who were Trump voters who also were John Bel Edwards' votes.

I did ask a couple of people how they kind of -- how they were OK with the fact that the president had had two rallies in just the past 10 days at that time trying to get the vote out for Eddie Rispone and yet they were still voting for the Democrat. They simply said that Trump was wrong about Louisiana in that case. They still plan to vote for him in 2020 but he wasn't right in this case.

Also its turn out. When you look at parishes, you look at New Orleans, the turn out just from the initial October primary until yesterday four in places like New Orleans the African American vote, heavily African American cities started to increase in that area. So perhaps Donald Trump's -- perhaps Donald Trump's visits to Louisiana may have impacted the vote in a way that he didn't expect. And Edwards alluded to something like that in his victory speech.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EDWARDS: Our shared love for Louisiana is always more important than the partisan differences that sometimes divide us. And as for the president, God bless his heart.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: Yes. Bless his heart, never quite the good thing when -- here in the south when you hear them say that.

John Bel Edwards was a relatively popular governor anyway. I think people look at this and they see Republican versus Democrat. He is a very conservative Democrat and a lot of the voters here did allude to the fact that he, in their words, pro gun, his views on abortion, and the fact they believe that he has been working on getting the state's finances in order after the Jindal administration.

BLACKWELL: All right. Dianne Gallagher for us there in Louisiana. Dianne, thank you.

PAUL: Washington bureau chief of the "Chicago Sun-Times" Lynn Sweet with us now. Good morning, Lynn.

LYNN SWEET, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Good morning.

PAUL: OK. So, I want to talk first about the Des Moines poll -- CNN/Des Moines poll about Mayor Pete Buttigieg being in the lead, 25 percent. Your gut reaction to his elevation and really at the end of the day what Iowa means to 2020 overall in the bigger picture.

SWEET: Iowa is always crucial but as big the story is of Mayor Pete, which Jeff covered so well, I think the slow implosion of former Vice President Joe Biden is as dramatic a story. The Biden front-runner mime or momentum story is going to be questioned right now and puts more pressure on him for New Hampshire and the other states.

So, let's get back to Pete -- Mayor Pete. This shows in my analysis that there is a search for something different, a candidate of the future which is not what -- and -- and a candidate that is not too far left. The other interesting about the poll is how far away from the 4.4 margin of error he is in this.

So this -- this is truly a significant finding here on this, that he is clearly -- there is something happening and it also shows as much as the unsettled part of the presidential race as anything else, even though a large percentage of the -- of those polled said that they are happy with their first choice and are locked in, there is still a lot of people who are undecided. But even a poll like this is going to give Pete momentum far ahead to watch out for this week. We do have a big Democratic debate coming up. PAUL: We do. So you think that what Mayor Pete does in Iowa will bleed in other states?

SWEET: Well, he has done terrific in fund-raising any way, both small dollar donor and traditional big donors and bundlers. He is the only one who has been able to work both sides of that street. Sanders and Warren have not. Joe Biden has not. No one else has.

So, a poll like this makes his fund-raising even better and more robust, which gives him the ability to get -- to get organized, get delegates. This is the time where the infrastructure of a campaign has to show its stuff and doing a hard work of actually qualifying for ballots.

PAUL: All right. I want to move on real quickly to the Louisiana governor's race that we just heard Dianne Gallagher there say -- you know, she talked to President Trump's supporters who voted for Bel Edwards in this case because they said President Trump just didn't know Louisiana.

[06:10:05]

This, however, off of Kentucky's Republican loss also this month, what does that say to you about the potency of President Trump to sway people?

SWEET: Well, on a national level the -- even Trump was tweeting about this several times yesterday too and urging people to get to the polls. So, I wonder what he will do this morning with the -- with the loss and how he will try to explain it away or maybe he'll say it would have been a bigger loss if he wasn't there. But what this says is that Trump, alone, cannot force an election and the implication of that may not lead though into the presidential race where people do know how to split their tickets.

PAUL: Lynn Sweet, always appreciate seeing you. Thank you.

SWEET: And thank you.

PAUL: Absolutely.

BLACKWELL: Breaking overnight. The U.S. and South Korea are postponing joint military training exercises. This is an attempt to make some progress with North Korea.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK ESPER, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Minister Jeong and I have jointly decided to postpone this month's combined flying training event.

We have made this decision as an act of goodwill to contribute to an environment conducive to diplomacy and the advancement of peace.

We encourage the DPRK to demonstrate the same goodwill as it considers decision on conducting training, exercises and testing. We also urge the DPRK to return to the negotiating table without precondition or hesitation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Well, that announcement is after North Korea's warning on Wednesday that it considers military drills a breach of the agreement Kim Jong-un made with President Trump in Singapore last year.

PAUL: Stay with us. When we come back the White House says the president is -- and this is a quote -- "as healthy as can be" but he makes a last-minute trip to the hospital for a head-start on his 2020 annual exam that had people questioning what was going on.

BLACKWELL: Yes. In the impeachment investigation, more transcripts, more people with more testimony about what they saw and heard as President Trump dealt with his Ukrainian counterpart.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:15:52]

PAUL: Fifteen minutes past the hour right now.

And we are learning some surprising new details regarding President Trump's phone call with Ukraine's leader last July.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And one White House official proposes the possibility that that transcript of that call or at least the rough transcript ended up on that highly classified serve by mistake.

Here's CNN's Lauren Fox.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAUREN FOX, CNN POLITICS CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: On Saturday we got new details about Tim Morrison, a former NSC official, who testified to congressional investigators last month that he came to understand that E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland was getting direction from President Donald Trump when he was pushing the Ukrainians to announce investigations into the president's political rivals.

Morrison testified behind closed doors that he believed that Sondland and President Trump had spoken approximately five times between July 25th the date of that phone call between President Zelensky and President Trump, and September 11th when nearly $400 million in U.S. military aide to Ukraine was finally released.

He said in one of those conversations he spoke directly with Gordon Sondland after Sondland had gotten off the phone with President Trump. Here's what he testified -- quote -- "He told me he had just gotten off the phone with the president." He told me, as it relates to Ambassador Taylor's statement, there was no quid pro quo, but President Zelensky must announce the opening of the investigations and he should want to.

Now Tim Morrison also providing details about the 25th phone call, especially the fact that that was put in a secure server. There are questions, of course, why it was put in that server but Morrison said he came to understand from the top NSC lawyer that it had been put there by mistake.

Here is what he told investigators -- quote -- "John Eisenberg related that he did not ask for it to be put on there, but that the Executive Secretariat staff misunderstood his recommendation for how to restrict access."

Now this is a reminder that next week both of these individuals, Tim Morrison and Gordon Sondland, will testify publicly in front of these congressional investigators and the American public.

For CNN on Capitol Hill, Lauren Fox.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL: Now the White House is brushing off questions about this unannounced visit by President Trump to a military hospital yesterday. A source telling CNN the president's medical exam was on schedule but the White House denies the president has any health issues.

BLACKWELL: Kristen Holmes is following this from Washington. Kristen, there had been some peculiarities in the president's past with public releases and these exams. What is going on with this one?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Victor and Christi.

Well, there is a lot of strange circumstances surrounding this. So just to go back. President Trump, yesterday, unannounced going to Walter Reed which is where he has his annual physical. And he was there for about two hours.

Now, according to the White House, he was just having some quick exams and labs as part of his routine annual physical. But let's talk about the circumstances here. He's had two other physicals while in office and they really followed the same plan here. They were announced ahead of time. They were noted on his daily schedule and the president took Marine One to Walter Reed.

This was a completely different kind of trip. Not only was it not announced but sources say it wasn't even on his schedule as of Friday and he took the motorcade which means less exposure to cameras, less exposure to reporters. So all this raising a lot of eyebrows.

Now late last night President Trump tweeting about this saying that he "began phase one of my yearly physical. Everything good (great). Will complete next year."

So this is the White House line here that he was having just part of his annual physical. Keep this in mind though his last physical was in February. So this would be very, very early and here is how Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham explained this timeframe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) STEPHANIE GRISHAM, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We have got a really busy year ahead, as you can imagine. And so the president decided to go to Walter Reed and kind of get a head-start with some routine checkups as part of his annual exam. That's all it was. It was very routine.

[06:20:00]

We had a down day today. And so he made the decision to head there.

JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS HOST: And there is no truth to the rumors that it was something else? Because the rumors are flying.

GRISHAM: Oh, the rumors are always flying. Absolutely not. He is healthy as can be. I put a statement out about that. He's got more energy than anybody in the White House.

That man works from 6:00 a.m. until, you know, very, very late at night. He is doing just fine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: And as you said, Victor, there are always been some questions here about what they released and what they don't within this administration when it comes to his annual physical. And the press secretary was asked whether or not they were going to release details from this routine annual physical and she said, no, they were not going to release any details until the entire physical had been done.

PAUL: All right. Kristen Holmes, appreciate it so much. Thank you.

So, the White House says, listen, there is nothing to see here. There is a former secret service agent and CNN law enforcement officer that had this perspective on Twitter. He writes this.

"This doesn't add up; the White House Medical Unit has very comprehensive facilities at the White House complex that could easily accommodate most of what is needed in an annual physical. As a former USSS Agent assigned POTUS, I have never seen the annual formality occur in stages."

BLACKWELL: All right. Let's bring in CNN Political Analyst, Julian Zelizer, a professor and historian at Princeton University --

our historian here. Julian, good morning to you.

JULIAN ZELIZER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Thank you for having me.

BLACKWELL: I mentioned these peculiarities in the past with the president. You'll remember during the campaign this letter from a doctor that says every test is positive, which is actually a bad thing. Dr. Ronny Jackson said that with a few tweaks he could live to 200.

What do you see here when we see the president getting phase one of a physical, phase two, a couple of months later? What do you see? ZELIZER: Well, it's Trumpian intrigue. Annual exams are always notoriously unreliable from presidents. Presidents have a long history of hiding what is going on and not telling the public the full results. But then you add to that, President Trump's tendency not to tell us what is going on and to manipulate these kinds of traditions and that's why there is so much suspicion and questioning about what happens.

That is where this is. That's why the phases are happening. And it's all in the context of the impeachment. So every act by the president becomes a source of question.

BLACKWELL: You'll remember all of the accusations that Donald Trump candidate made about others' health. Imagine what he would have made if somebody making an unscheduled to a phase one of a physical.

Let's turn to your piece on CNN.com. You write that predicting the impeachment backlash that some Democrats were concerned about that it likely won't materialize. Why? What supports that?

ZELIZER: Well, look, the private hearings and now the first week of public hearings have been incredibly damaging. It's just the consistent story about what was going on in the White House and this very clear picture about an effort to sway foreign policy for the purposes of helping the president's reelection bid. And we are getting testimony from a number of people that all keep confirming the story.

So I don't think anything that is happening is going to undermine Democratic support or cause some kind of political backlash against Democrats from independent voters. And this is an important part of the political story. It's allowing Democrats to move forward on a pretty solid base, based on what they are revealing to the public.

BLACKWELL: So we have got two major political parallel stories this weekend. Both what has come out from the impeachment depositions and also this victory for the now reelected governor, a Democrat, John Bel Edwards in Louisiana. Where is the overlap, if you see one?

ZELIZER: Well, it's a little like the health exam. Everything that happens, we see how does it connect to this big story of impeachment? And Republicans are trying to look at the electoral tea leaves and say, what kind of damage might this cause to us, to our party, and to their maintaining their seat.

And here's a deep red state where the president went all out to help the Republican candidate and the results are in. And it's looking like Trump didn't help and that that state went Democratic. And so that's going to scare a lot of Republicans as they look ahead to 2020 and see what some of the political fallout going to be on their party from supporting President Trump.

BLACKWELL: Does the president start the second week of these public hearings of the impeachment inquiry on dramatically different footing than he did -- that he ended last week? ZELIZER: Oh, absolutely. He now starts watching the hearings with mountains of evidence at this point and testimony about this rogue group of foreign policy makers with nobody failing to confirm the basic story that came out of the whistleblower's report.

[06:25:06]

And so now the president and his team, they are on the defense and I suspect that this week will be even more damaging. And the president has added to the whole thing with that tweet the other day where he took the kind of action that is actually at the heart of the investigation. So he's not in go on shape and the president supporters have every reason to be worried about how this week unfolds.

BLACKWELL: Yes. Week two includes Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who is increasingly a crucial witness here in the inquiry.

Julian Zelizer, good to have you. We got to wrap it there.

ZELIZER: Thanks for having me.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

PAUL: Well, one of President Trump's main complaints about the impeachment hearings is that he has been denied due process. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that simply is just not true.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: If he wants to take the oath of office where he could do it in writing. He has every opportunity to present his case. But it's really a sad thing.

I mean, what the president did was so much worse than even what Richard Nixon did. That at some point, Richard Nixon cared about the country enough to recognize that this could not continue.

The intelligence committee is leading this part of the inquiry. There are other depositions that are being taken by more committees.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: The president there continues to argue that he should be allowed to confront the whistleblower who wrote the initial complaint about the July 25th phone call.

BLACKWELL: Still ahead, Prince Andrew defends his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and pushes back on one of his own accuser's claims.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you saying you don't believe her, she is lying? PRINCE ANDREW, DUKE OF YORK: That's a very difficult thing to answer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:30:00]

PAUL: 30 minutes past the hour right now. And for the first time, Prince Andrew is publicly defending his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In a sit-down with the BBC that aired in full last night, Queen Elizabeth's son addresses allegations of sexual abuse he, himself, is facing.

BLACKWELL: CNN Reporter Hadas Gold is here to walk us through what he said.

Hadas, what is his defense? How is he defending these ties to Jeffrey Epstein?

HADAS GOLD, CNN REPORTER: Yes. Prince Andrew hoped that sitting down with BBC for this forensic and extensive interview that actually took place in Buckingham Palace would somehow quell the controversies surrounding him seem to have only fanned the flames even further.

One thing that I found really astonishing from the interview is that at one point, he says that he and Jeffrey Epstein weren't actually that great of friends and yet he defended why he went to visit him again 2010 after Epstein had already been convicted of sex crimes. Prince Andrew said he went to meet with him again to break up the friendship in person.

Take a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EMILY MAITLIS, BBC HOST: I'm just trying to work this out, because you said you went to break up the relationship and yet you stayed at that New York mansion several days. I'm wondering how long would --

PRINCE ANDREW, DUKE OF YORK: Because I was doing a number of other things while I was there.

MAITLIS: But you were staying at the house of a convicted sex offender.

PRINCE ANDREW: It was a convenient place to stay. I mean, I've gone through this in my mind so many times. At the end of the day, with the benefit of all the hindsight that one could have, it was definitely the wrong thing to do. But, at the time, I felt it was the honorable and right thing to do.

I admit fully that my judgment was probably colored by my tendency to be too honorable, but that's just the way it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP) GOLD: Yes, interesting answer there. Prince Andrew also addressed the allegations leveled against him by Virginia Roberts Giuffre who said in a 2015 federal court filing that she was forced to engage in sexual acts with Prince Andrew and she has detailed in the past several occasions where she said she went out with Prince Andrew dancing with him at a club. She said she noted that he got very sweaty.

But in an interesting response, Prince Andrew actually told the BBC that he had a medical condition that meant he could not sweat properly, and that's actually why one of the alibis he said as to why he could not have been in contact with this woman. He actually says he has no recollection of ever meeting her, despite the fact that there does appear to be a photo of them allegedly taken together in 2001.

Another issue addressed in this interview, which Virginia Roberts Giuffre has called on Prince Andrew to speak to investigators to testify, to talk under oath in the United States, saying, if he's so willing to sit for this interview, why won't he talk to an investigator? Prince Andrew said he would do so only if the legal advice said that that was a good thing for him to do. Victor, Christi?

PAUL: Hadas, any indication as to why he chose this moment to have this conversation?

GOLD: Yes, it's really interesting. So, actually, in the interview, they talk about how it took them about six months to even get this interview arranged because of schedules, because of other issues. There's a lot of questions about the wisdom of doing this both P.R.- wise and legal-wise of why he was willing to sit down for this, because some people are finding a lot of these answers sort of unsatisfactory. They find them incomplete.

And if he really thought this was going to somehow solve the issue or fix this problem and get him over this controversy, the papers this morning in the U.K. are all focused on Prince Andrew and the further questions that they have about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and the allegations against him by Virginia Giuffre.

PAUL: All right. Hadas Gold, we so appreciate the reporting today. Thank you.

BLACKWELL: So we are getting new details about a Boston marathon bomber's link to a triple homicide, of course, several years ago, during the investigation of the bombings back in 2013. A friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev claimed they committed the killings during a robbery about two years before the bombings. Court documents filed last week included details about the incident, including that Tsarnaev decided to eliminate witnesses to the robbery, and that after slitting the throats of the victims, they spent more than an hour cleaning the crime scene of fingerprints and other identifying details.

[06:35:05]

The documents were found by Tsarnaev's younger brother who is appealing his conviction and death sentence.

PAUL: Well, the NFL gave teams a chance to work out Colin Kaepernick. Hear why the former Q.B.'s plans changed at the very last minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: So Colin Kaepernick had his much anticipated NFL workout yesterday. We were talking about it for the last couple of days, in fact. But it didn't exactly go as was scheduled or as anybody really planned.

BLACKWELL: Right. Carolyn Manno tells us why. She has this morning's Bleacher Reporter. What happened?

CAROYLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christi and Victor. Well, the weekend was really three years in the making for Colin Kaepernick. 25 NFL teams showed up to the Atlanta Falcons practice facility on Saturday to see if the quarterback that they remembered from 2016 would show up too.

[06:40:05]

But at the very last minute, Kaepernick told league officials he would not be attending. He abruptly arranged a workout at a high school football stadium about an hour away. Now, representatives for Kaepernick say the move was made to ensure full transparency. They felt the media should be granted access to the session. And in addition to that, the quarterback's camp was also dissatisfied with the liability waiver that the NFL wanted him to sign.

After his workout, Kaepernick had a message for the league.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLIN KAEPERNICK, FORMER SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS QUARTERBACK: I've been ready three years and I've been denied three years. We all know why I came out here and showed you today in front of everybody today we have nothing to hide. So we're waiting for the 32 owners, the 32 teams and Roger Goodell, all of them, to stop running. Stop running from the truth and stop running from the people.

We are out here and we are ready to play and we are ready to go anywhere. My agent, Jeff Nalley, is ready to talk to any team, interview with any team at any time. I've been ready. I'm staying ready. And I'll continue to be ready.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANNO: The NFL expressed disappointment in Kaepernick's decision but they say he is still a free agent. He is still able to sign with any team. At least six team representatives did watch the workout at the high school.

In the meantime, a pair of superstar quarterbacks taking the stage in Baltimore later today as Lamar Jackson and the Ravens host Deshaun Watson and the Houston Texans. The MVP candidates did meet three years ago in college. Watson's Clemson Tigers beat Lamar's Louisville Cardinals. The duo combined for eight touchdowns that day. A lot of college football fans remember that game.

And Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is out for the year, the potential top pick in April's NFL draft, dislocating his right hip during a lopsided win against Mississippi State over the weekend. Red Shirt sophomore Matt Jones is the next man up for the Crimson Tide. The chances of making the college football playoff are even more of a question mark now, Christi and Victor, after an absolutely devastating injury to their team.

PAUL: Yes, right. And, Carolyn, we appreciate it. Thank you.

BLACKWELL: So leaked emails show that senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller was promoting white nationalist stories. We'll talk about this with CNN's Brian Stelter, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:45:00]

BLACKWELL: All right. Let me read a few of them here. A disastrous, stupid, fake, nothing impeachable here, the messages from Fox News' primetime host to President Trump about the impeachment hearings.

PAUL: Yes. Several hosts and nearly every guest on the network have said the Republicans are winning, the Democrats are losing, you're probably saying why does this matter?

CNN's Chief Media Correspondent Brian Stelter says it matters and he knows why.

Good morning to you, Brian.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning. I think it matters because the president is hearing this every hour of every day and then repeating these talking points back to his fans. I think it's a good reality check for all of us after a few days of these public impeachment hearings, which where we've seen damning evidence about the president and about his inner circle.

We are seeing more and more evidence of this alleged extortion plot. And yet the message on Fox News in primetime is that there's no there there, this is a joke, it's a plot to take down the president just because Democrats don't like him.

All of of this rhetoric, sometimes contradictory, is coming out every hour of every day. So if you thought that maybe some of the president's supporters were going to have second thoughts or were going to be moved by the evidence, I've got to tell you, I have watched for several days, there's no signs so far of any cracks in his support on television or on radio, at least, among his loyal supporters.

BLACKWELL: Let's go to another topic here, Brian. We learned this week from emails that have been that senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who has been at the center of the immigration fight for the White House, promoted stories from white nationalists.

Tell us about it and are we hearing anything from the White House about this reporting?

STELTER: The White House has mostly defended and supported Stephen Miller despite these new revelations which were first published by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

There is no -- there is no argument whether these emails are real or not. These are real emails that Stephen Miller was sending several years ago where he was sending articles and links to Breitbart, the far-right website, trying to get them to publish anti-immigration stories.

And some of the links that Stephen Miller was sending were from clearly white nationalist websites. I don't want to even name them. These are hateful websites that spread anti-immigrant lies. But he would send these links trying to get Breitbart and others to publish and share these stories.

They were from a variety of outlets, some of which had clear white supremacist connotations, others that are really fringed and extremist groups.

The point is that Stephen Miller was sharing this content and it was clearly influencing him because he wanted to promote it more widely.

Now, the defense from the White House has been twofold. First, the White House said that we haven't read the articles. Stephanie Grisham my colleague, Oliver Darcy, we haven't read this article, we haven't read the emails, we don't know what it's about.

Later in the week, there's been an argument that because Miller is Jewish, this is an anti-Semitic attack against him. That's been another line of argument from the White House. I don't think that holds up. I think that's hogwash. But, so far, there's no indication the White House is going to take action against Stephen Miller, even though everybody can go to the Southern Poverty Law Center website for themselves and read some of this disturbing content.

BLACKWELL: Brian Stelter, thanks so much.

STELTER: All right. Thanks.

PAUL: Remember, you'll see him today at 11:00 on Reliable Sources.

And listen, this is no T.V. show. Two chemistry professors accused of cooking meth in their science lab.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:50:00]

PAUL: We talk about the fact that there are so many studies showing too much screen time can be unhealthy for young people. Well, this week's top ten CNN Hero is teaming up with hospitals to make screen time healing time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZACH WIGAL, CNN HERO: Sometimes people believe that video games are corrupting the minds of America's youth, but video games are incredible tool for all of my kids to find a source of fun and relief during stressful and difficult times.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To people who think the games are just games, they are so much more than that. You don't have to talk about me being sick. We can play the game because that is way more cool than having to talk about me being sick.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: A good escape for them. To vote for your favorite top ten CNN Hero, just go to cnnheroes.com.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSE PINKMAN: What are you doing?

WALTER WHITE: These are my good clothes. I can't go home smelling like a meth lab.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: Of course, that's a scene from the hit AMC show, Breaking Bad. Well, it appears life might have imitated art in Clark County, Arkansas.

BLACKWELL: Sp two chemistry professors at Henderson State University are accused of cooking meth in a school science center and now facing charges from manufacturing meth and using drug paraphernalia. Both men were arrested after of the reported smelling a chemical odor.

[06:55:01]

Now, the university says the professors are on administrative leave.

PAUL: Stay with us. Next hour of your NEW DAY starts after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Just edging in to the 7:00 hour here and President Trump is waking up realizing that he didn't get the big win that he was looking for in Louisiana.

[07:00:03]

BLACKWELL: Yes. Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards won a second term, beating out Eddie Rispone, a Republican businessman who is backed by President Trump.