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NEW DAY

Cold Weather Hits Much of U.S.; Intelligence Chiefs Testify Before Congress; Analysts Examine Statements from Intelligence Community that Seem to Contradict President's Statements; Interview with Independent Senator Angus King of Maine. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 30, 2019 - 8:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota on John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, everyone. Welcome to NEW DAY. It is a freezing Wednesday, January 30th, 8:00 in the east. We begin with this polar plunge that's gripping most of America. Life-threatening temperatures and dangerous wind chills. Look at your screen. This is what's invading much of the country today and tomorrow. Some parts of the Midwest will see the coldest weather they have had in decades. And this deep freeze will be so brutal that it will be colder in Chicago than it is in Antarctica or Alaska or the North Pole.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Combined.

CAMEROTA: Seventy degrees below zero, not below freezing, below zero. That will be what it feels like in Minnesota. The winter blast is already being blamed for at least five deaths.

BERMAN: State governments and schools are closed all over the place. Thousands of flights have been cancelled. Amtrak shut down. All trains to and from Chicago. U.S. Postal Service is suspending mail delivery in parts of at least ten states. We have some pictures to show you, heavy snow in Michigan, ridiculous whiteout conditions there. There have been crashes and pile-ups in highways all over the Midwest including Minnesota where 193 accidents were reported in just one day, 193. We have CNN's Ryan Young who's been standing outside in Chicago all morning long. The temperature, the temperature is minus 23 degrees which is awful, horrendous. With the wind chill it's 52 below.

CAMEROTA: You're really stretching this.

BERMAN: I'm sorry to stretch it out so long. Ryan, you're standing out there. It's just got to be awful.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is. And in fact, I think it actually hit us in some unexpected ways. For my photographer, his hands are frozen as he's wrapped his hands around the camera. For me it's all about the toes. That's where the pain has set so far. But shat we have noticed is we have been blocking the wind from our bodies by using some of the beautiful buildings in the downtown area. But we walk out this direction, and you can see -- hey, look, they call it the windy city for a reason. You look up here, you see the flags moving. You talk about that wind chill. Every time you see those flags moving you think about these heavy wind gusts that we're experiencing. It does feel like sort of like needles piercing through your body in the coldest temperature way. We are calling it Siberia at this point.

If you look over here, look at the frozen river. It is a beautiful sight to see. It looks like you could ice skate across it. I wouldn't suggest it, but just look how solid this looks. There are some serious ramifications to weather just like this. We know the schools have been shut down. That's the good news here, so we don't have to worry about kids being out in the weather. We also know that there's 24 warming stations throughout the city. They are taking heavy precautions to make sure people who don't have steady heat can come inside and get a little warmth.

And on top of that, we know that commuter service has also been sort of delayed in some locations including Amtrak being shut down. And as you can tell, as I continue to talk, as that wind hits you and gets into your lungs, you really feel it freezing. The side of my face feels cold. They also talk about frostbite. If you are outside for more than 10 minutes, that's what they worry about, long times of exposure. So as we feel it out here, hopefully people will heed these warnings and not try to go for a jog today or stay outside for long periods of time.

BERMAN: Ryan Young braving the cold so no one else has to. Ryan, our thanks to you. Please everyone, listen to these warnings. It is dangerously cold out there.

Just a few hours from now, President Trump will get his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office. The question is, will it make a difference? Listen to the president talk about ISIS and then listen to what his director of national intelligence told lawmakers yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have been president for almost two years, and we have really stepped it up. And we have won against ISIS.

DAN COATS, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining us now is Marc Short, former director of legislative affairs in the Trump White House, Howard Dean, former DNC chair and Vermont governor, and Shawna Thomas, Washington bureau chief at "Vice News Tonight."

Marc Short, it wasn't just ISIS. The intelligence chiefs really directly contradicted the president on North Korea, saying that they haven't denuclearized and they won't as far as they are concerned. They contradicted him to an extent on Iran and certainly on Russia's intentions in meddling in elections. My question to you, because you have been inside the White House, when the president watches this from his intelligence chiefs who drew a line clearly between what he has said publicly and what they believe, how do you think that hits him?

MARC SHORT, FORMER CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: John, I think, honestly, the president has a great relationship with the intelligence community that leads him. I think his relationship with Mike Pompeo is terrific. As you know, Mike was director of the CIA before he became secretary of state. He has a close relationship with Dan Coats. And I think that the intelligence team that he has around him is one of the strongest in the White House. And so I certainly trust what Dan Coats said to the Senate yesterday. But I think that the president's relationship with them remains pretty strong.

CAMEROTA: But then, Marc, why doesn't he believe them?

[08:05:00] SHORT: Alisyn, I think that there's two different things here. The reality is that, as the president said, 99 percent of ISIS territory in Iraq has been reclaimed. At the same time I think that there is an exaggeration when you say that ISIS is fully defeated. And so Dan Coats I think is setting that record straight in his testimony. But I think that --

CAMEROTA: Is North Korea denuclearizing?

SHORT: North Korea is not. I think the intelligence community has been pretty up front about it.

CAMEROTA: So why does the president say it is?

SHORT: At the same time, Alisyn, I think you have to accept that North Korea is not sending missiles over the Sea of Japan right now, and that they have actually begun to return the remains of soldiers from the Korean War back to the United States. So there has been progress. You can't say it's denuclearized, but there has been progress and hopefully it will continue on that pathway.

CAMEROTA: The problem is you are speaking with more nuance than the president does, and it gives the wrong impression.

SHORT: Which gives the wrong impression?

CAMEROTA: His.

SHORT: I think the president is not one to speak with nuance. I think we know that.

BERMAN: Much or any in some cases is another way you can look at it. Shawna, it was a rebuke. I don't think any other way to look at it. When the intelligence chiefs, and I don't they are going out of their way to draw lines. I think they just want to stick to the facts. Dan Coats made clear that he wants to present the intelligence that he sees regardless of the politics there.

SHAWNA THOMAS, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, VICE NEWS TONIGHT ON HBO: Yes. And the Senate wants him to do exactly what he did, which is give them a clear idea of what is happening in the world, where the threats are. I think the issue sometimes with the president is he sees things in a binary. He either wins or he loses. And he wants to win both of those arguments. He wants ISIS to be gone. He wants to get out of Syria. And he wants to be the guy who got North Korea to denuclearize. And if he says it, maybe it will come true.

The truth of the matter is it sends one of the wrong signals to our partners around the world. Our partners around the world want to know our president is in line with what they hear from our intelligence communities when we talk to them, when they talk to embassies, when they talk to the ambassadors, that everyone is on the same page. So it just creates this level of confusion with what America's policies when it comes to our foreign partners are.

CAMEROTA: And Governor, he wants to believe Kim Jong-un, and he wants to believe Vladimir Putin when they meet with him privately and tell him that things are rosy because he likes them, and he has great chemistry, as he has said, and he admires Vladimir Putin, as he has said. And the reason it's troubling to many Americans is because we know that Russia is trying to interfere in the 2020 election. And so it feels like if he doesn't believe his intel chiefs and he believes Vladimir Putin over that, that somehow things are not going to go well for Trump.

HOWARD DEAN, FORMER DNC CHAIR: The thing about all this is that most people don't believe Donald Trump. And they know he says things that aren't true 10 times a day, literally. And this is one of them. So the problem with Trump's presidency from an inside the beltway perspective, which is not how I usually think, is that the intelligence operations in the United States are mostly nonpartisan. It is true that there have been some people who have been in various positions that have done things that are outside the realm of what we normally do, coups and things like that. But for the most part, Dan Coats is a Republican, but Dan Coats is laying it out how it is. And that matters a lot. And people just don't believe Trump. Trump is, other than the fact Trump that he has his finger on the button and can order people to do things, he is irrelevant in the construction of American foreign policy.

BERMAN: It struck me that yesterday you had the intelligence community saying something perhaps that the president didn't want to hear. And you had members of his own party saying the same thing. Chris Christie, who has written a book and I think wants to generate publicity for himself, granted, he's been doing a round of television interviews, and he talked about his views on the shutdown. And he was perfectly blunt about who he blames for what happened over the last 35 days. Listen to what he told Stephen Colbert.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CHRISTIE, FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR: The president blew it.

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW": When?

CHRISTIE: When he shut the government down with no plan on how to reopen it.

COLBERT: Entirely his fault, right?

CHRISTIE: Listen, and I said this to him. Listen, if you're going to do this, you better have an exit plan, because sometimes in politics things don't go the way you expect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So again, Shawna, as he sits here this morning with no public events at least as of yet, he hears his intelligence chiefs say no, no, no, what you are saying isn't true, as he hears Chris Christie and other Republicans saying, no, no, no, the way you handled this isn't the way we would have, is he increasingly isolated?

THOMAS: It's hard to tell. I'm not sure he cares if he's increasingly isolated because there are certain things he wants. He wants parts of a wall built on the border. He wants to be the guy who denuclearized North Korea. And so if he keeps saying it, maybe it will come true.

But I think it's interesting that today is the day that the committee starts in the House and the Senate to try to figure out a Homeland Security bill, figure out our way around the wall, figure out what we're going to do about immigration, and that the people who are on the committee are pretty solid legislators.

[08:10:04] So even if he doesn't have a way out of -- he didn't have a way out of the shutdown that lasted 35 days. Even if he doesn't necessarily have a way out of a shutdown that could happen, I do think there is hope in the legislators trying to find a way to govern around him.

CAMEROTA: Marc, what is going to go differently this time?

SHORT: I think that typically appropriators like to spend money. And so they have every incentive to find a deal here, and it helps with the lobbyists who support them. It helps a lot of things. So I suspect that they're going to come to an agreement that's pretty broad across their spectrum.

But the problem right now is that the wall essentially has become a referendum on Donald Trump. And so for Republicans they will ask for the 5.7. Democrats I think will be in the position of saying we want to give him zero. And I don't know how you get past that. And so I think ultimately we are headed towards the president declaring a national emergency. And I think that the appropriators, if it weren't for having Pelosi leading them and other personalities, they would be able to find a deal. But right now I don't see that they're going to be able to do that because they're going to get stuck on the wall. They'll solve other things like immigration judges which is progress. They'll solve detention beds, which is progress. They'll solve a lot of things. But the wall has become a referendum on Donald Trump. And so therefore it is going to be a divide for Republicans and Democrats.

DEAN: I think Marc is probably right but I'm hoping he's not. I'm a little more optimistic. There is a deal to be had. One of the things the Democrats care deeply about is a permanent solution to the DACA problem. If that were on the table, you could see some appropriations. And the Democrats wouldn't call it a wall, Trump would call it a wall. I think Marc is right, that both parties are hardened into a position right now. It's not like there is no middle ground at all.

BERMAN: John McCain once said there are Democrats, there are Republicans, and there are appropriators.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Let's hope the appropriators, let's hope that behind the closed doors they do something here.

Governor, if we can, I want to get your take on the Democratic race, the status this morning. Eric Garcetti, someone you like, the mayor of Los Angeles --

DEAN: Really good guy, yes.

BERMAN: -- someone that you would have liked to see get in the race decided not to.

DEAN: I know.

BERMAN: What was it, do you think, that he saw? Was it that Kamala Harris, the senator from his home state, had a big rollout? Did he get scared off?

DEAN: I don't think so. I don't know. I'm close to Eric and very close to Kirsten Gillibrand and some other people who are either running or thinking about running, so I'm obviously not going to speculate publicly on why or why not. But Eric did his work. He was in nine states, he raised I think over $1 million for state parties. He was really taking a close look at it. His guy who does the behind- the-scenes stuff is very close to me in my presidential campaign. So I'm going to find out that out later on with a phone call today. But when I do, I probably won't share it.

CAMEROTA: Well, thanks a lot.

DEAN: Sorry.

BERMAN: Where do you think the race is this morning? Harris had the big rollout.

DEAN: We don't know. I think there are at least two people that have had a great rollout. We haven't seen Kirsten's yet because she's going to go do her traveling thing. I thought Warren had a great rollout and I thought that Harris had a great rollout. And we'll see. I think there is going to be a lot more people who get in before this is over.

CAMEROTA: Amazing that's where we are.

BERMAN: Governor, Shawna, Marc, thank you very much for being with us thank you very much.

CAMEROTA: Thank you, guys.

Up next, we'll talk to a senator who was in the room for that hearing with the spy chiefs. What did he make of the contradictions? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:17:01] CAMEROTA: The nation's top spy chiefs directly contradicting President Trump on the threats facing America. President Trump continues to relies on his gut while the intel leaders gave sobering assessments based on what they said were facts. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have won against ISIS. We have beaten them and we have beaten them badly.

DAN COATS, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria.

TRUMP: Chairman Kim -- we have a great chemistry and we're well on our way. You know, we signed an agreement that said we will begin the immediate denuclearization.

COATS: North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities.

TRUMP: I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be.

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, DIRECTOR, FBI: Not only have the Russians continued to do it in 2018, but we've seen indication that they're continuing to adapt their model.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. Joining us now is independent Senator Angus King of Maine. He serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services Committee.

Senator, great to have you.

You were there obviously yesterday when the intel chiefs briefed all of you. And so, what do you make of President Trump's different concept of national security threats from his intelligence chiefs?

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: Well, the first thing is I think Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, really summarized the mission of the whole intelligence community in a beautiful way that I had never heard before. He said our job is to seek the truth and speak the truth. To seek the truth and speak the truth.

And that's exactly what they did yesterday. There were things that were concerning, but the differences with the administration weren't that surprising. This has been the assessment on ISIS, on Iran, on North Korea and on Russia for over a year.

So that wasn't surprising, but it was -- it is still disturbing that the president doesn't seem to want to listen to the people whose job it is to give him this information. He doesn't have to listen to them. But if you look back over the past 50 years our major foreign policy disasters were usually based upon either not listening to intelligence or getting bad intelligence.

CAMEROTA: What was the biggest headline from yesterday for you?

KING: Well, to me, the biggest headline was the increasing level of communication and cooperation and relationship between Russia and China. It's been since the '50s that they have been working together. For two generations they have been rivals and there's been friction, tension and not much communication. Now they are starting to come together.

It's not a good sign for us because they are pouring money into things like artificial intelligence, hyper sonic vehicles, space weapons. They are starting to cooperate. That's not good news.

To me that was buried in the headlines, but that was the biggest story yesterday.

[08:20:04] CAMEROTA: And what if President Trump believes Vladimir Putin rather than his intel chiefs on that one?

KING: Well, that's just not good. I mean, he's got -- you know, he's going to meet with Vladimir Putin, although I think when he does he ought to have somebody else in the room.

When I was a governor, I never had a substantive meeting without somebody in the room. Different people hear different things. You want to have somebody there to keep a record, particularly when you're talking about heads of state. So, you know, he says he believes Putin, not the intelligence community.

Listen, Alisyn, the evidence on what the Russians did in 2016 and to some extent in 2018 is absolutely overwhelming. I mean, it's not even worth arguing about. Unfortunately, the president's continued unwillingness to acknowledge that in effect harms our ability to defend ourselves because he's telling the American people you have nothing to worry about when in reality we have a lot to worry about. And part of our defense is knowing what's happening.

CAMEROTA: Yes, we have something new to worry about I thought was pretty chilling. I mean, mind-blowing when you see it. It's called deep fake video.

KING: Yes.

CAMEROTA: It is worse than some trolls in Macedonia creating fictitious stories that are fake news about pizza-gate. You can't believe your own eyes and ears. We have a little portion of what was played for you all yesterday about what a deep fake video looks like and how it could try to affect our thoughts for 2020. So, watch this video.

KING: Sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a dangerous time. Moving forward, we need to be more vigilant with what we trust from the internet. It's a time when we need to rely on trusted news sources.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK. So that was an actor mimicking President Obama's voice and changing the words that he said. That's the next frontier in terms of all of the false stories that we'll see online. What did you learn?

KING: Well, I pushed on that yesterday. That's going to be, as you say, the next frontier. They now have the technology -- and that's a fairly primitive example, the one you showed. It's getting better and better, where you can have a politician making a speech, being at a site and totally change the reality, the words coming out of their mouths. It goes online and it gets back to what I said before.

This is tricky for us to, in effect, regulate. We have the First Amendment and all of those things. The best defense is for people to be skeptical, to dig in and find out the facts, because this is -- listen, as a politician, this is terrifying that a video could surface showing you doing something that isn't you and you not doing it. But then you're on the defensive saying, oh, no, I didn't kick that dog walking down 5th Avenue.

It's a really dark omen, I'm afraid, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: No, I agree. It's Orwellian, I mean, beyond Orwellian. And the idea that we have to use our critical thinking skills only gets us so far.

And so, if the president is on a different page, if the president is saying, you know, you have already heard President Trump say you can't believe what you see and hear. So if he's on a different page than the intel chiefs, it seems like it's setting up a really troubling situation as we approach the next election.

KING: Absolutely. It's going to continue.

One of the things we learned from 2018 is that the Russians don't have to create content. What they do is boost content. They take something that some fringe group produces, a conspiracy theory of some kind, and they can use bots and technology to suddenly make it a big story.

So they are really clever about this, Alisyn. They are smart about it. It's cheap. I made a calculation once sitting in a committee meeting that Putin can hire 4,000 hackers for the cost of one jet fighter.

And they are disrupting our country and our democracy. By the way, it's not just us. Director Coats yesterday testified that he was once in a meeting of European leaders, 29 countries. He said which of you hasn't had interference in your democracy by Russia? No hands went up.

So, this isn't just us. This is a deliberate effort and the Chinese are now joining in the Russians with this to under mine the idea of democracy and representative government, because they believe their model of dictatorship works better.

[08:25:00] CAMEROTA: Senator King, thanks a lot for worrying us even more this morning.

KING: Anytime, Alisyn. Welcome to my world.

CAMEROTA: Wow. I feel for you. Thank you very much, Senator.

KING: Thank you.

BERMAN: You were talking about the deep fakes, those incredible videos. People should check out CNN.com. They have an unbelievable investigative series on what it means.

CAMEROTA: That's helpful.

BERMAN: It will blow your mind.

All right. We have all heard President Trump's claims about the situation at the Mexico border. The question is, where did he hear about this? One possible answer, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: President Trump keeps trying to make his case for a border wall by repeating some unproven claims. Could he be confusing Hollywood make-believe with reality?

CNN's Miguel Marquez is here to explain.

This is really interesting.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm shocked we're doing these stories. This one you might call stranger than fiction, this episode. The president's frequent claims and similarities with a certain film are just a little too -- scripted.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ (voice-over): "Sicario: Day of the Soldado", the 2018 sequel starring Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin is a dark and violent take on the U.S.-Mexico border, Middle Eastern terrorists, drug cartels and U.S. government.

[08:30:00]