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CNN NEWSROOM

Wrong Envelope at Oscars; Trump's Budget Blueprint; Immigration Policy; Vandals Strike Jewish Cemetery; Immigrant Shooting Suspect in Court. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired February 27, 2017 - 09:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:31:10] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm John Berman.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: No, I'm John Berman.

BERMAN: Yes, exactly. Just like the Academy Awards. Still -

HARLOW: What? Stop reading my lines.

BERMAN: It's still too soon, I think.

HARLOW: Still a little too soon.

Hollywood's biggest night ending in a bang. Just not exactly the bang that anyone wanted or expected.

BERMAN: Yes, suffice it to say, no matter how bad your day is, you're having a better day than Pricewaterhouse. What was easily the biggest mix-up in Academy Award history, "La La Land" was awarded the Academy Award for best picture, until it wasn't.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARREN BEATTY, ACTOR: And the Academy Award - for best picture -

FAYE DUNAWAY, ACTRESS: You're impossible. Come on.

"La La Land."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you to the Academy. Thank you to Lions Gate. Thank you to our incredible cast and crew. We're all up here right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And to the Hollywood community that I'm so proud to be a part of. And to the Hollywood in the hearts and minds of people everywhere. Repression is the enemy of civilization. So keep dreaming, because the dreams we dream today will provide the love, the compassion and the humanity that will narrate the stories of our lives tomorrow.

Fred (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To the love of my life, Ally Lowy (ph), I'm up here because of you. I love you so much. To my family, mama, papa, Jeff, (INAUDIBLE), Matt Pluff (ph), you kicked this off. And (INAUDIBLE), we're standing on your shoulders.

We lost, by the way, but, you know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What, guys, guys, I'm sorry, no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a mistake.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a mistake. "Moonlight," you guys won best picture.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Moonlight" won.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come up. This is not a joke.

This is not a joke. I'm afraid they read the wrong thing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is not a joke. "Moonlight" has won best picture. "Moonlight," best picture.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think you guys should keep it anyway.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, Warren, I'm sorry.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guys, this is very unfortunate what happened. Personally I blame Steve Harvey for this. I would like to see you get an Oscar anyway. Why can't we just give out a whole bunch of them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to be really proud to hand this to my friends from "Moonlight."

BEATTY: I wanted to tell you what happened. I opened the envelope and it said Emma Stone, "La La Land." That's why I took such a long look at Faye and at you. I wasn't trying to be funny.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You know, I suppose the good news is "La La Land" won for at least a minute, right? Everyone should win an Academy Award for best picture.

HARLOW: Everyone is a winner.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Exactly.

BERMAN: All right, we are joined by CNN's senior media correspondent Brian Stelter, host of "Reliable Sources."

Brian, how on earth does this happen?

STELTER: It is incredible. And even the folks who were on stage don't know yet. I just spoke with Jordan Horowitz. He's the one you see go up to the mike so graciously and say, I'm sorry, "Moonlight" won.

HARLOW: Yes. STELTER: "Moonlight," this is your prize. This is not a joke. He said, he doesn't know exactly what happened, but after he gave his acceptance speech thanking his wife and kids, he - we saw the commotion behind him. People were passing around this card which had the actual result. So he thought he had to go up to the microphone and explain what really happened.

Now, he said he's not angry. He doesn't want an apology. He actually said what you said, Poppy. He said, hey, I won the best picture prize. I got to thank my wife and kids.

HARLOW: Yes.

STELTER: And then I got to present the best picture prize.

HARLOW: There you go.

STELTER: Who can say they got to do both? So he's taking it in good stead. They were out partying all night because they did win six prizes for "La La Land."

HARLOW: Right.

STELTER: But "Moonlight," of course, was - it was the dark horse of this Oscar season. Some people thought it wasn't going to quite win. Wasn't going to beat "La La Land," but it sure did. It's an incredible film. And I think the best thing to do today, given that, you know, people feel like it's been snubbed or overshadowed by "La La Land," is to go see "Moonlight."

[09:35:13] HARLOW: Yes.

STELTER: You know, it's on iTunes. It's on Amazon. People can rent it. It's a fantastic film.

BERMAN: Pricewaterhouse should buy everyone in America tickets to "Moonlight."

STELTER: Oh, maybe they're watching. That's a great idea.

You know, 83 years PricewaterhouseCoopers has been running this for the Oscars. And here's their statement.

HARLOW: Yes.

STELTER: They are taking full responsibility for this, saying, well, they're not saying who exactly was at fault, but someone at the company was at fault. They say, "we sincerely apologize for the error that was made. And during the broadcast the presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope. And when it was discovered, it was immediately corrected." Well, not quite immediately. "We are currently investigating how this could have happened and we deeply regret that this occurred." So we don't know exactly who screwed up here, but clearly someone handed Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong envelopes. HARLOW: Right. I was just looking through my notes because I have

something here that they put out in 2015. And it was a statement that said basically like this is the cornerstone to show our integrity as a company. We audit. We do the Oscars.

STELTER: They take it so seriously. We can show part of the process on screen. The producers decide the order of the awards. So there's two sets of envelopes, one for every one of the 24 categories. There's two people sitting on either wing of the stage. And that's why there's two sets of envelopes. So somehow there was some confusion about that. But, you're right, this is embarrassing for the accounting firm. I'm sure they'll be back next year, but -

BERMAN: This is the biggest understatement I've ever heard -

STELTER: No?

BERMAN: This is embarrassing for the accounting firm.

STELTER: Well -

BERMAN: "The New York Daily News," what was the headline? You had one job.

STELTER: You had one job.

BERMAN: You had one job.

STELTER: One out of 84 years, how bad is that?

BERMAN: And it wasn't for sound design or -

STELTER: That's true, it wasn't for sound mixing. It wasn't for editing.

HARLOW: Guys -

BERMAN: All right, Brian Stelter, thanks so much.

HARLOW: Thank you, Brian.

STELTER: Thanks.

HARLOW: All right, still to come for us, coming up, the president wants big tax cuts and he wants to spend a whole lot more on the military. So we asked a Republican congressman, does that math work for you? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:41:18] BERMAN: All right, new this morning, the president is unveiling his first budget outline. He wants to cut taxes, boost military spending, big league, as he might say, and leave entitlements untouched, which is big league, as he might say, in its own way.

HARLOW: You just wanted to say big league this morning. BERMAN: It's big league, it's big league, not bigly (ph). There's a

big debate about that.

HARLOW: Yes. But - John's been on vacation for a week. We're so glad you're back.

BERMAN: (INAUDIBLE). Big league vacation.

HARLOW: But on all seriousness, he does want to spend a ton of taxpayer money on boosting up the military. This is all part of this big budget blueprint that is going to come today, at any moment. He has to get Congress on board. And let's just say not touching entitlements, which is the other part of this, that's not exactly music to a lot of conservatives' ears.

How is the math going to work out? With us now to talk about that, Republican Congressman Tom Garrett of Virginia. He's on both the Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs Committee.

Nice to have you on, my friend. I hope you were good at math in high school because I'd like you to do the math on this because you're the one who in 2015 said - blamed President Obama for, quote, "a reckless pattern of deficit spending at home." You said you will be a tireless warrior to fight that. How are you going to be that warrior on this one?

REP. TOM GARRETT (R), VIRGINIA: So what you've got to do is you have to really first give credit where credit's due. So here's my bipartisan moment. John Kennedy started that supply side theory, and Ronald Reagan reinitiated it in the '80s. There's two ways you can generate revenue. You can either grow the economy or raise taxes. Mr. Trump's economic plan is betting that we can get economic growth that outstrips that which we've seen in the last eight years. And really if you look at 2004, 2005, 2006 -

HARLOW: But it's not. It's based on a - but it's based - sorry to correct you, it's based on a -

GARRETT: We were having economic growth in the 4 percent - 4.4 percent range on a regular basis. So it's been done before. We need to see if he can actually put his money where his mouth in.

HARLOW: Your point, it's based on a budget with 2.4 percent growth.

BERMAN: It is. And also on the supply side, I mean you could argue with merit that supply side economics may have created jobs during the Reagan administration, but it didn't reduce the deficit. In fact, it probably increased the deficit. When you increased military spending and you cut taxes at once, there were plenty of deficits during the Reagan administration.

And, congressman, just to be clear where you stand on some of these issues, on entitlements, you've been very clear that you think there needs to be something done to reduce spending and entitlements. And, again, I'll quote from your website here, those who paid into the system their whole lives can't have the rug pulled out from under them. But we also can't continue to make the same promises to the next generation of retirees because the money is simply not there.

GARRETT: So you guys have given me a great opportunity to talk about our student security plan that would allow people to remove student loan debt by voluntarily changing the date at which they accept Social Security. It solves two problems at once. You've got a Social Security System that's unviable in 2034. You've got a dark cloud of student loan debt that stimming the creativity of an entire generation. We actually have a plan to tackle these two things.

One of the problems we're running into is that the budget scored on a ten-year period in a plan like this doesn't work that way, but it does allow us to keep our promises to our seniors. It forces no one to do anything, but allows a pathway out and actually would invest about 60 cents on the dollar as it relates to current Social Security rates if people chose to use the delayed benefit to pay off student loan debt.

We've got to have creative, outside-the-box solutions and yet you don't change the promises you made yesterday. You need to maybe make different promises tomorrow.

HARLOW: All right, so if you don't see enough of those creative out of the box solutions in whatever budget the president does present, and you see it as a budget that will blow a hole in the deficit, will you do what your office said that you would do, which is you're not afraid to, quote, "vote no on bad budgets"?

GARRETT: Yes, look, I was in the Virginia senate for five years. I think I voted for one budget out of five. And so if that happens here - what we're looking for is a budget that has a definable pathway to being balanced in a definable amount of time.

[09:45:04] Unfortunately, we've got ourselves in a situation where you just can't balance it in a year. But they need to show myself and folks who think like me a route to a balanced budget. Because there was a study that was out a few weeks ago that said the top eight people of - the top eight people in the world controlled as much wealth as the bottom 50 percentile. If you took every dime from those people and tried to apply it to the U.S. debt, you wouldn't get to 5 percent of the current debt. It's absolutely unsustainable and irresponsible. It's intergenerational theft. And we're going to fight to get that budget balanced -

BERMAN: Will -

GARRETT: And (INAUDIBLE) we have obligations we need to meet.

BERMAN: We will - we will have you back on once we know the meat that's on these bones of the budget. We'll ask you if you do support it then.

Congressman, I want to get your take on one more thing, and that is the travel ban.

HARLOW: Yes.

BERMAN: We expect maybe as soon as Wednesday the president to reissue his executive order on that. Just a little while ago former President George W. Bush, he was asked in general terms about whether he supports the ban that has been discussed. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I think it's very important for all of us to recognize one of our great strengths is for people to be able to worship the way they want to or not worship at all. I mean the bedrock of our freedom - a bedrock of our freedom is the right to worship freely.

MATT LAUER, NBC: Are you for or against the ban? You're against the ban?

BUSH: I am for an immigration policy that's welcoming and that upholds the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: What do you make of the president's statements?

GARRETT: Well, I mean, any time you quote Jefferson, right, that's sort of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, shall make no laws establishing religion nor (INAUDIBLE) free practice thereof. It's hard to lose. I'm with President Bush. I'm also with President Trump. I think we have a responsibility to do all we can to ensure the safety of the people who are in America, while continuing our role as a beacon of hope and freedom to people around the world. Our office is currently working to get some J2 (ph) refugee visas for some imprisoned clergy members in the Sudan. So, yes, I mean we need to vet folks, but we need to continue to be America as well.

BERMAN: Congressman, "La La Land," "Moonlight," do you have a preference?

GARRETT: You know what, I was thinking maybe they'd name me the best picture winner after all that (INAUDIBLE) last night. So -

BERMAN: It could happen to anyone apparently. Apparently, you know, it can happen to anyone.

HARLOW: Berman.

BERMAN: Congressman Garrett, thank you so much for being with us.

HARLOW: Thank you, congressman.

GARRETT: John and Poppy, wonderful being with you. You all have a great day.

HARLOW: Thank you.

You can't get over this.

BERMAN: I think it's amazing. And the more you watch the video, I just can't get over that it actually happened. HARLOW: It happened.

BERMAN: It did.

HARLOW: Welcome back to reality.

BERMAN: Welcome back.

All right, still to come, police say the man accused of a shooting attack on two immigrants admitted what he did. But there are still plenty of questions about why. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:52:05] BERMAN: This morning police in Philadelphia are looking for the vandals that hit a Jewish cemetery. Between 75 to 100 headstones were overturned. This happened Saturday night.

HARLOW: So police are still looking for a motivate. They're still trying to figure out who did this. This is a week after that Jewish cemetery in Missouri was targeted. The one that the vice president went to to help clean up.

Our correspondent Alison Kosik is live in Philadelphia with the latest.

Good morning.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

We are at the Jewish cemetery where these headstones were damaged, were broken into two. But what's interesting about this story, Poppy, is that you're seeing the community actually come together. You're seeing Jews, you're seeing Christians, you're seeing Catholics, you're seeing Muslims come together to try to fix what was done to this cemetery on Saturday night. In fact, a rabbi who came here on Sunday after the vandalism here at this cemetery went on FaceBook and talked about how he saw Muslims come to the cemetery on Sunday and helped fix some of these headstones that had been damaged or destroyed.

Also one other thing to think about is, is investigators are being careful in calling this a hate crime. They're not yet calling it a hate crime. They're not yet calling it an anti-Semitic act, especially since two weeks ago two miles from here at a catholic cemetery something similar had happened to about a dozen or so headstones. So officials are being very careful in calling it a hate crime or an anti-Semitic act.

Back to you.

HARLOW: Horrible to see regardless.

Alison, thank you for the reporting there. Let us know when you have more.

Meantime, we want to take you to Kansas because the suspect in the shooting of two Indian immigrants in Kansas is due in court later today.

BERMAN: One of the victims was killed, the other survived. Adam Purinton is being held on $2 million bail and charges of murder and attempted murder. The FBI is trying to determine right now whether this was a hate crime. It comes as we learn more about the moments leading up to the arrest.

Ryan Young in Kansas with the very latest.

Ryan, what are you learning?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, we learned that accused shooter apparently travelled to an Applebee's 70 miles away from that shooting scene and was talking to a bartender. She's apparently the one who called 911 telling them that they wanted police to come very quickly and not to make a big noise when they showed up because they were scared what the man would do inside the bar. But according to her, she told police about the fact that he admitted to doing the shooting.

Now, back at that bar, the two friends were watching basketball. Apparently this man walks in and starts saying, "get out of my country." And once he was kicked out, he came back with a gun later on opening fire inside that bar. And this was according to witnesses inside that bar. One of the men inside jumped up and tried to stop him from continuing with the shooting. He was shot once in the arm and the chest.

Just yesterday there was a huge rally of support for all the members of this community. About a thousand people showing up to show their support of not only of family who lost someone, but for the Indian people in this community. A lot of folks still shaking their heads about exactly what happened here. We'll learn more today in court about exactly what happened in that hour preceding that shooting, which has so many people still shaking their heads.

[09:55:10] BERMAN: All right, I can understand why. Ryan Young for us in Kansas. We'll get more on this as it develops. Thanks so much, Ryan.

The next hour of NEWSROOM begins after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Good morning, everyone, I'm John Berman.

HARLOW: I'm Poppy Harlow. So glad you're with us.

At any moment, the White House is expected to release the outline of President Trump's first budget. We're told it's going to reflect his big campaign promises, major hikes in military spending, major cuts to some domestic agencies, big tax cuts and not touching Social Security or Medicare at all. Not a penny taken from those underfunded programs.

BERMAN: Which may take some magic, some budgetary magic if you're not trying to increase the deficit. It does set the stage for the president's prime time address tomorrow night. He addresses a joint session of Congress in Washington. We will, of course, be covering that live.

[10:00:10] Let's get straight to the White House. Joe Johns is there with a preview.

Joe.