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Trump Said to be "Pissed at Damn Near Everyone"; Trump Continues to Push False Voter Fraud Claims; Broward County Finishes Election Recount. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired November 15, 2018 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00] ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Thursday, November 15th. It's 6:00 here in New York.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: NEW DAY, same topics.

BERMAN: You're looking at me expectantly like I have actually something --

CAMEROTA: I was. I was trying to see what the new thing that you were about to tell us.

BERMAN: OK. Are you ready?

CAMEROTA: I'm ready.

BERMAN: So, if the White House were "Sesame Street," the letter of the day would be P and the number infinity, because the president, "he's pissed at damn near everyone."

Was that worth the wait?

CAMEROTA: That was worth the wait.

BERMAN: All right.

CAMEROTA: Yes, it was.

BERMAN: So it is a direct quote. It comes from a White House official noting that the president's mood is darker than normal this week. So dark -- would you like me to continue the children's theme?

CAMEROTA: Please. Please.

BERMAN: It's so dark that the president has ventured into the land of make-belief. He's inventing stuff about cereal and hats.

We're going to have much more on that in a moment. His listed grievances includes -- I got more.

CAMEROTA: I can see that. BERMAN: His listed grievances includes --

CAMEROTA: You're on a roll.

BERMAN: -- looking like a bossed around husband after the first lady publicly ordered the dismissal of one of his top advisers. This morning Deputy National Security adviser Mira Ricardel is out of a White House post, though she is expected to remain in the administration.

Also nagging at the president, that trip to Paris that was something of a PR debacle. We're told the president is furious at Chief of Staff John Kelly for that. And then there are the election results which keep getting worse for the president. Two more House races were called to the Democrats overnight.

CAMEROTA: I see your cereal, and I'm going to raise you some cereal right now.

In a new interview with the "Daily Caller," President Trump did not give a resounding vote of confidence on the future of Chief of Staff John Kelly or DHS Secretary Kristjen Nielsen. He only said that he will make a decision on Homeland Security soon and to expect some changes before the end of the year.

Now the deadline for that Florida recount is today. And the president continues to make bizarre claims about voter fraud and cereal.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: For some reason people are carding President Trump when he tries to buy Fruit Loops.

BERMAN: It's true. Seriously. He claims --

CAMEROTA: I killed that.

BERMAN: He claims you need a voter I.D. to buy cereal.

CAMEROTA: You need an I.D. to buy cereal.

BERMAN: Is that all kinds of cereal?

CAMEROTA: I don't know. But we're going to get to the bottom of it.

Joining us now CNN White House correspondent Abby Phillip, CNN senior political analyst John Avlon, and former Ted Cruz communications director Alice Stewart.

Great to have all of you.

John, it's already one off the rails so let's continue.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That was just the most delightful opening to a show.

CAMEROTA: OK. So what we're talking about with the cereal.

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Is that President Trump has come up with this scenario that he thinks that people are parking in vans outside of voting booths and going in with one outfit and coming back out and putting on a disguise, a hat, and going back in to vote again. And you believe this scenario is cribbed from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

AVLON: It has the feel of an old-school Hanna-Barbera cartoon. This is where the cat character would change the hat, put on glasses, maybe a shirt, and fool the storekeeper.

CAMEROTA: The squirrel.

AVLON: This is the squirrel who's currently running the commissary in this particular scenario. This is just the sign of -- this is a deep unreality. This is land of make believe as John Berman said. Because the accusation of voter fraud is serious, particularly at a time when we're having recounts in one of our key swing states, and the president's explanation for the mechanics of it are land of fantasy. I mean, it's --

BERMAN: "Fantasy Island."

AVLON: A fantasy. And the serial thing is just like, you know, I don't even -- I mean, millions of Americans who buy cereal know for a fact it's not true and it doubles down on his line above the grocery store needing I.D. where he got slammed on that two months ago. So zero percent learning curve.

ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think John makes a good point, you know, integrity of our elections are critical and it's important and there are issues where we need to take a closer look at elections. But to the point of, you know, using an I.D. for a box of cereal, like I need an I.D. when I buy a box of wine at the grocery store but not a box of cereal. So I think unfortunately a lot of the seriousness of the issue of integrity of our elections get lost with statements like this.

BERMAN: Yes, look, his flat-out making stuff up. Period. Full stop.

STEWART: Right. Right.

BERMAN: The question is why. What's going on in his head? And there has been this three-day sort of rush of speculation and reporting, Abby, that his mood is incredibly dark. You know, we have the reporting this morning, he's pissed at damn near everyone. That's a direct quote there. He's mad at a number of things including what happened with his wife, basically firing publicly Mira Ricardel. She's gone this morning, right?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, she's not at the White House. We don't know where else in the administration she is. But the president is upset. And it's not the first time he's been upset but this is particularly bad mood and we're seeing in public some of the public ramifications of that, which is that the president is sort of spinning into conspiracy theories in public.

He is lashing out at his aides in private. He is in some cases seeming to not want to do certain parts of the job, not going out of his way to do certain things, like for example, on Monday spending the entire Veterans Day holiday at the White House holed up there.

[06:05:02] Look, this is all a lot of negative things for President Trump converging all at one time. We have the midterm elections, which didn't go his way. A Paris trip which didn't go his way and as we know an impending process in which he has given written answers to Robert Mueller about an investigation that he continues to think is a witch hunt.

The problem, though, is that the president might be pissed at damn near everyone, but he is not ever really turning that inward, not looking toward himself to see if there's anything that perhaps he might have done to contribute to some or all of these negative headlines swirling around him. I mean, one of the points of contention over the weekend was the decision to skip the cemetery trip in Paris.

Well, that's seen -- that seems obvious that he would have gotten some flack about that, but the president is apparently, according to our sources, really angry with John Kelly, his deputy Zach Fuentes, who apparently advised him that it would be OK to skip it, it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Look, John and Alisyn, I mean, I think this is just once again a president who is looking around him, at a lot of things not going his way, and trying to replace staff, trying to lash out at them, blaming them for a whole host of problems. But of course the one consistent thing about this administration from day one is that President Trump is the person leading it and never does that seem to ever be something that is on his mind as he's going forward on some of these issues.

AVLON: No. I mean, the president is the president, and this isn't a reality show. It's actual reality. And the president is creating his own problems whether he wants to admit it or not. One really just obvious example is he's upset about the optics and the press response to skipping the cemetery visit in France.

BERMAN: Let me read you this quote. It's directly from CNN's reporting, and then you can keep going, John. "Whiling away the empty hours at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris, Trump complained the entire trip to France was poorly conceived and executed. He longed discovered the events on Sunday would not include a grand military parade like the one he witnessed a year ago on Bastille Day leading him to wonder, what the point of the trip was."

(LAUGHTER)

AVLON: I'm delighted that you chose that paragraph because I was going to try to do it from memory. And that -- what's the point of the trip if there's not a big parade? This -- this really sounds like a petulant preteen who's upset about missing a parade. The point is obviously the 100th anniversary of World War I. The president skips the cemetery visit. He's upset about the response. And then in zero percent learning curve land, he spends Veterans Day in the United States not going to Arlington Cemetery. These are a series of compounding self-enforced errors but the president of course wants to last out to other folks.

STEWART: And you all know these foreign trips are -- it's all about optics. And there's three key ideas that you have to keep in mind when you're on these foreign trips, important policy things to keep in mind. Get up, dress up and show up. Pretty simple. That's all you have to do is show up and the optics are there. They kind of lay out for themselves. And the fact that that didn't happen, I think, understandably, I would be frustrated, too. It should have happened.

But more importantly the bigger picture from this is what we're hearing with the frustration with Macron and the policy by tweet. The optics are one thing, we missed that opportunity, but from there on the tweets that he did with regard to really stoking the fires with our allies overseas were also unfortunate.

CAMEROTA: OK. So here's one of the things, Abby, that, as we've discussed, as the reporting suggests, has really gotten under the president's skin, and that is the first lady exerted her wishes publicly. So she felt that -- I guess she couldn't get any hearing with John Kelly and so he resorted to trying to take out Mira Ricardel publicly.

So here is the reporting. "After his wife ordered the astounding statement be released Tuesday afternoon, Trump was furious that what had been an internal staffing matter was now thrust into public view leaving him to look like a bossed-around husband."

I mean, I don't know what you do about that one.

PHILLIP: This is one part marital dispute in some ways and in another part a really serious development in I think United States public policy in which the first lady is now publicly weighing in on the appointment of a deputy National Security adviser. That's a pretty senior role in the National Security Council. This is a person who has an administrative role in the government and is not someone -- she's not a social secretary. This is someone who has actually -- an actual policy job.

And apparently the dispute between Melania Trump and Mira Ricardel's office has to do with her Africa trip, has to do with some disputes over seating on the airplane, has to do with some disputes over Mira Ricardel's tone and her way of conducting herself within the government. Now those may all be legitimate disputes but the question is why did Melania Trump decide to go nuclear here. And it seemed that she couldn't get this done privately.

[06:10:02] She had raised it privately with her husband, with John Kelly, with John Bolton and she was being stonewalled on this issue, so she and her office decided to put out a really public statement, essentially cornering President Trump on this issue. The result was that President Trump was forced to do something. Now they tried to split the baby a little bit by saying OK, she's

going to be out of this particular job but still in the administration somewhere, but clearly President Trump was really upset about how this played out. The White House -- the West Wing had absolutely no heads up that this was all coming down the pike.

And again, I think we still -- even after all of this, still left with a lot of questions about what went wrong here, what is going on that Melania Trump simply can't -- her voice is not being listened to within the West Wing. Normally first ladies can get these things done quietly behind the scenes. Clearly she was not able to do it in this case.

BERMAN: What was the phrase that you like to use about how normally first ladies can get these things done?

CAMEROTA: That there's usually pillow talk. Yes.

BERMAN: And every good marriage counselor would tell you never let a deputy National Security adviser get in the way.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Of a relationship.

PHILLIP: Marriage counselors do say that.

CAMEROTA: Wow.

BERMAN: I want to come back to the president's state of mind in a little bit because I think there's a lot more to talk about, there's more from the CNN reporting about the president's appearance and his demeanor. But there is a significant policy development over the last 24 hours and I absolutely think we need to pay attention to it because the president has signed on to the First Step Act which is criminal justice reform which is one of the few things on earth that there is bipartisan agreement on, or some.

This is an area where people have been working together, Van Jones and Jared Kushner among others. And the president came out yesterday in support of it. Let me just tell you some of the things that this legislation will do if it passes Congress. Reduce three strikes drug penalty from life behind bars to 25 years, it reduces sentences when a firearm is used during another crime, reduces the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine, and allows judges to issue shorter sentences for low-level crimes.

This is significant. This is something that people on both parties have been working for for a long time and this might be something that only President Trump could get through.

AVLON: Yes. Yes. Look, this is the Nixon-in-China opportunity. The president's frustrated because he feels backed into a corner, and he doesn't see a way out for his presidency. That -- this announcement yesterday actually shows a path forward of how he can govern effectively with divided government by taking on some tough issues that other presidents haven't been able to get done. And criminal justice reform is one of them.

Look, this was something that President Obama wanted to get done and couldn't. They were talking about coalition, Cory Booker and Rand Paul. Never materialized. But this president has got such sway to the base that he may be able to get something like this done. That's a vision to how to make the next two years productive for the country and his presidency. So he deserves applause.

CAMEROTA: Well, there you go. And so quickly, Alice, I mean, that's the point. So whatever his dark mood is the effect that it has nationally I think is what we're interested in. The effect that it should have on Americans, and at the moment the fact that they're still able to get something done, it seems like OK, he can stew all he wants but something is still proceeding.

STEWART: Right. Right. And you need a check in the win column every now and then. This was a good check in that column. And this is, in my view, a good first step for the First Step. There's a lot that still needs to be done. I think we do need criminal justice reform. This is a good way to start the conversation. There are others, Tom Cotton, my former senator from Arkansas, said this is basically criminal leniency and we need to take a look at it.

The one issue I'd take with this is that they claimed this makes neighborhoods safer. I take a little issue with that. I think that there are some concerns with just opening up the door on this issue, so we need to begin the conversation. I think is -- it's not the final step we're going to see in this because there are concerns and I agree with Senator Cotton on some of the it.

BERMAN: And Senator Cotton is opposed to it, and the reason why President Trump's support of this is so significant is he might be able to bring more Republican senators who never would have been for this under President Obama or even President Bush. Trump can bring them along.

Much more to talk about. We do have some breaking news. Moments ago election officials in Florida's Broward County, they finished.

CAMEROTA: And went home.

BERMAN: Their ballot recount. Look at this. They're done. They did the whole recount and in just hours machine totals from every county must be submitted to Florida's secretary of state. The results, though, from Palm Beach County, they may not be ready in time.

Our Rosa Flores is live in West Palm Beach for the latest from there -- Rosa.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, what a roller coaster but here we are on deadline day and as you mentioned, most of the counties have already said that they either had finished the recount or they are confident that they will finish recounting except for Palm Beach County where I am here today, this morning.

Now the supervisor of elections here has said from the get-go that she was probably not going to finish, and on top of that they had some serious issues with the machines. They are old, they overheated, they had to fly in technicians. And so they -- it's been quite a mess here in Palm Beach County. Reporters asked the supervisor of elections about these challenges and about the calls for her to resign and here's what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:15:05] SUSAN BUCHER, PALM BEACH COUNTY SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS: We're in prayer mode to finish on time, ma'am. I am working as hard as I can and I can't give anymore. You know what, this is our democracy and I am here to count every vote and I will take the time that's required.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: Except the time is up, and according to the secretary of state if those recounts are not submitted then the votes on record stand. Now that is probably bad news for the Democrats because they were hoping to gain some votes in this blue county.

What is good news for the Democrats this morning is a partial win in court. The Democrats filed a lawsuit alleging that the state law that requires, that the signature in mail-in ballots match the signature that is on record unconstitutional, was actually deemed unconstitutional by a judge and a judge extended the deadline for those voters to cure their ballots until Saturday.

Now, Alisyn, the big question is, well, will that actually have an impact because the margin between Nelson and Scott is about 13,000 votes and according to both parties about 4,000 to maybe 5,000 votes could be impacted by this judge's ruling, so is it enough? Not on its own.

CAMEROTA: Yes, it does not sound like the math is going to necessarily work, but it's good to know that the system works.

So, Rosa, thank you very much.

BERMAN: It all come down to handwriting. It's actually a modern -- a story about modern times where people don't concentrate on their signatures as much as they used to because no one writes anymore.

CAMEROTA: Mine is illegible now. Mine has become illegible because I blame my computer for so much.

Democrats picking up more seats in the House but what is next? Does Nancy Pelosi have the support to be the next speaker? We get into that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:20:34] CAMEROTA: OK, it's been more than a week but results from the midterms are still coming in. And Democrats just picked up two more seats in the House. In New Jersey's 3rd District, incumbent Republican congressman, Tom MacArthur, conceded to the Democrat, Andy Kim, and in California's 10th, Democrat Josh Harder defeated incumbent GOP Congressman Jeff Denham.

So the balance of power shows Democrats with 227 to Republicans' 200 in the House. Dems have picked up a net gain of 32 seats, and eight races remain to still be called by CNN.

So we are back with Alice Stewart, John Avlon , also joining us CNN political contributor, Hilary Rosen.

OK. So things -- very quickly, Hilary, just things keep looking better for Democrats than they did a week ago.

HILARY ROSEN, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Better and better.

CAMEROTA: But obviously nothing else changes in the Senate.

ROSEN: Yes. And in those eight undecided seats, Democrats are leading in about five of them so I think we're going to have a pickup of well over 30 seats.

BERMAN: It's interesting to see how the president has treated some of these election results. And California clearly bothers him as all these races get called for the Democrats and this is where he comes up with these invented -- I don't even know what they are, fever dreams is what Jake called them yesterday. He says that people vote change and then go vote again.

Listen to this, "The Republicans don't win and that's because of potentially illegal votes. When people get in line that have actually no right to vote, and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again."

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Hilary, you're laughing. Is it funny?

ROSEN: It's beyond funny. It's just goofy. I mean, I -- it's almost unhinged, only it's -- I think that people are looking at how this president has behaved in the last week since the election, and wondering whether he actually has a handle on what he wants to do going forward because this behavior is so erratic. Even his own staff who, you know, I talk to occasionally, don't understand what he wants to do or how he wants to manage, you know, the next year and a half.

CAMEROTA: John, look, you have pointed out in the previous segment, it is cartoonish.

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: His image of whatever he thinks is happening at voting booths is cartoonish, and as we know and I mean, we much fact-check because that's what we are tasked with.

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Voter suppression is a much bigger problem in this country than people who are so enthusiastic to vote that they change costumes to go back and vote. And, you know, some secretaries of state across the country have said that they have not detected voter fraud in this election.

BERMAN: Right.

AVLON: Right. And the president is deeply committed to this (INAUDIBLE). Now there's a cartoon version of what might be happening that's nefarious. But obviously the serious issue isn't just voting suppression and the integrity of our elections. It's making sure that when people do vote it gets counted and that's why what's going on in real time right now in Florida couldn't matter more and the president diminishes it when he sort of --

CAMEROTA: Right.

AVLON: Pulls the curtain back and you realized he's got a Hanna- Barbera cartoon running through his head.

ROSEN: And in Georgia. Let's not forget.

AVLON: Absolutely.

ROSEN: We got serious --

AVLON: Provisional ballots.

ROSEN: Valid issues in Georgia.

BERMAN: This is the cereal quote, just so people can see it. "If you buy a box of cereal, you have a voter I.D. They try to shame everybody by calling them racist or calling them something, anything they can think of, when you say you want voter I.D. when voter I.D. is a very important thing."

CAMEROTA: Where is he buying a box of cereal that he has to be carded?

BERMAN: Yes.

STEWART: I can't imagine he's been to the grocery store anytime lately. So, you know, probably never bought a box of cereal in a long, long time. Look, the integrity of our elections is critical. And it's an important issue. I support voter I.D. I think when -- if you have to --

BERMAN: To vote. Not to buy cereals.

STEWART: Not to buy cereal. To buy a box of wine and to vote, you should have an I.D. I think that's important. But here's the thing. We do need to make sure the integrity of our elections are intact. We have not seen widespread evidence of voter fraud and people doing things in an illegal process but what we have had in Florida is some of the deadlines haven't been met, especially in Palm Beach and Broward County. They haven't fully reported the number of votes that came in. So that is an important issue but that does not mean there's been widespread voter fraud. So I think the validity of the concerns that we have sometimes get lost in some of these outlandish things.

ROSEN: Look, after the last election, there was a bipartisan commission on voting and those recommendations were that states needed to upgrade their voting systems, that there actually was no widespread voting fraud, and many states have taken up the challenge and some states haven't.

[06:25:03] And honestly, the truth is that the states that haven't taken up the challenge of doing the most voting reform are states led by Republican secretaries.

BERMAN: Just to put a final point on the whole hat stuff and the cereal stuff, it's laughable. I don't know if it's funny. It's laughable which is why we've had some fun with it, and it gets to the president's mindset, which I -- you know, I'm not a psychologist, but the people who come to me and say they have the biggest concerns about what's going on aren't elected officials. It's the national security types and the people who deal with diplomacy, who say they get concerned that he'll play one of these cereal games in an area that matters on national security.

CAMEROTA: Well, of course. I mean, we're already seeing it. He is refuting the "New York Times" reporting on North Korea. So North Korea -- I mean, this is just one example, that there is surveillance, National Security surveillance of North Korea beefing up some of their nuclear sites and the president yesterday or three days ago called it fake news. And so already we are seeing some real world examples.

BERMAN: Right.

AVLON: And the other thing going on by the way that may be affecting his mood isn't just the absence of a sufficient parade but the actual act working with lawyers to submit written questions from Mueller. And don't forget, one of the reasons his past lawyers have said, as was accounted in Bob Woodward's book, that he shouldn't testify, was that they didn't know if he had the ability not to lie. That's about -- you know, that is a serious gut check about the ability of this president to stay grounded in reality.

BERMAN: And Maggie Haberman --

ROSEN: One quick thing, after the election this past week, let's not discount that so much of what the president is probably thinking about and not thinking about and trying to distract us all over the place, is his taxes may end up getting subpoenaed, like all of these information, the personal information that he's managed to withhold, all of a sudden might become public. That's got to be --

BERMAN: That's because -- that's a good segue. That's because the Democrats have taken over the House. And that's because there will be Democratic leadership in the House. The question, Hilary, is who will be Democratic leadership there? Because there's this CNN poll and I was surprised among Democrats who should be House speaker. 46 percent said someone other than Nancy Pelosi. Now I guess the count is there are 17 people, 17 Democrats committed in a House --

CAMEROTA: You think more, you think it's up to 23?

ROSEN: I think about 23 have said internally that they may vote against her in the caucus. Look, two things. One is, I resent the fact that Republicans have so demonized Nancy Pelosi that now Democrats think that Republicans ought to choose our leader.

Nancy Pelosi got us to this place this week with the help of a lot of other people but she clearly led the charge. This woman, I've never met a leader better at hurting cats, and cats are what we have in this Democratic caucus. We have moderates, we have progressives, we have people who want to impeach the president, we have people who want to work with him and get infrastructure done.

Really, Pelosi, I think, and everybody in the caucus really knows this, is the only leader who can marry all of those.

STEWART: And --

ROSEN: Conflicting dishes.

STEWART: And I agree with that in terms of her bringing people together. We wouldn't have Obamacare if it had not been for her. And you know, I'm old enough to remember, you know, we have to pass this bill because we can see what's in it. So she is tremendous at that. But she has made herself the number one foe for Republicans. You go across this country, you're not campaigning as much against Donald Trump, you're campaigning against Nancy Pelosi.

CAMEROTA: But does that mean she should step down?

STEWART: If --

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Clearly the number showed --

ROSEN: The number of Democrats -- Republicans would lay off the next one, right, like any replacement. Republicans are going to all of a sudden say, oh, you're right, we like that leader, that's not -- you know, that's not Nancy Pelosi, so let's be really nice to this one.

AVLON: But is it the net effect of decades at this point of demonization of Nancy Pelosi as a San Francisco Democrat, which is the sort of exemplar in middle America of, like, out of touch Democrats, and so she carries that baggage and it's reflected in the poling, but she actually isn't the center of her caucus. Not the far left. And even though I think you've got some committed folks saying we need leadership, that may have political optical benefits, I don't think it's likely as a practical level, as Hilary said.

STEWART: And there are a lot of Democrats that campaigned on I will not support Nancy Pelosi for speaker. And they have to follow-through on that vote.

BERMAN: OK, panel, thank you all very much for all of the insights. Great to talk to you. BERMAN: All right. We're following dangerous weather across the

country. The death toll is rising in the wildfires in California. Firefighters might be starting to get a handle on at least one of those blazes.

CAMEROTA: Also, on the other side of the country, there's snow and ice, creating havoc already for the Midwest and the south and that storm is heading east. We have details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)