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Winners & Losers of 2018 in Politics; Will Congress Be Able to Get Anything Done in 2019?; Government Shutdown Continues over Border Wall Funding. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 1, 2019 - 08:00   ET

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


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[08:00:32] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Robert Mueller has announced charges against 13 Russian individuals.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Mueller is highly conflicted. We did nothing. There's no collusion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Michael Cohen's arrangements are particularly important. We are building to the home stretch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.

TRUMP: I'm placing tariffs on for imports of steel and aluminum.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just don't do stuff like that off the cuff. Trade wars, it makes no sense.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not overly concerned about the market volatility.

TRUMP: The United States is paying far too much. Other countries are not paying enough.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is a real threat to the democratic, liberal, post-war world order.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sometimes it feels like we punch our friends in the nose and hold our hand to people working strongly against us.

TRUMP: He's a very talented man. He loves his people. He loves this country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any violation would be something that America would take very seriously.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kim Jong-un is successfully playing President Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president thinks another summit is likely to be productive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota on John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to this special New Year's Day edition of NEW DAY. Happy New Year. I'm John Berman here along with Alisyn Camerota.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Happy New Year.

BERMAN: I'm choked up over 2019 already.

CAMEROTA: He's very emotional to say goodbye to 2018.

BERMAN: It is. It was hard. It was hard. I miss it already. But 2019 is already shaping up to be a blockbuster year in politics. For the first time President Trump will face a divided Congress. How will he handle it? And will he be able to get his agenda passed? As for 2018, I miss you so, no shortage of drama in Washington D.C. Chris Cillizza will be here to share his picks for the best and worst moment in politics.

CAMEROTA: That will be juicy. And they endured a 27-hour surgery in order to live a normal life. So Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to revisit those once conjoined twins Jadon and Anias McDonald to see how they are doing now.

BERMAN: And she made Americans laugh and cry. Now we're learning about Gilda Radner's life in her own words as we preview the new CNN film "Love Gilda." We have that and much more on this special New Year's edition of NEW DAY. But first, let's get a check of your headlines from the News Desk.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning and happy New Year. I'm Ryan Nobles.

A rain-soaked crowd helped ring in 2019 in Times Square. This year's celebration in New York was dedicated to the freedom of the press, and CNN's Alisyn Camerota joined honored journalists on stage.

To the other Manhattan now, Manhattan, Kansas, people jammed the streets at the stroke of midnight for a celebration called the little apple drop. San Francisco celebrated with first moment of 2019 with a fireworks display over the bay. And in Atlanta it is the peach drop, a 30-year tradition that marked the start of 2019.

First responders in Texas, a dense fog may have played a role in a crash involving 20 plus vehicles near Austin overnight. According to a series of tweets by Austin, Travis County EMS, a, quote, level three mass casualty incident sent a total of nine people to area hospitals. There are no reports of any serious injuries.

Police in the United Kingdom now confirm that they are treating a New Year's Eve stabbing attack as a train station in Manchester, England, as a terrorist investigation. A suspect is in custody. Authorities say he stabbed a man and a woman in their 50s and a British transport police officer at the Manchester Victoria rail station. None of the injuries are considered life threatening.

Democrats have a strategy to reopen the federal government just hours after they assume control of the House on Thursday. They plan to vote on six bipartisan Senate spending bills in a stopgap measure to reopen the Department of Homeland Security. But it really appears to be a nonstarter in the Republican controlled Senate. The majority leader there, Mitch McConnell, says he will not move forward any legislation until President Trump is on board.

Meanwhile, the president continues to push forward his border wall with several tweets on Monday, including this one that read in part, "without the wall there can be no border security."

We'll have more headlines in 30 minutes. Happy New Year.

[08:05:03] BERMAN: This past year the headlines comes from the Trump administration could make your head spin, and chances are they did make your head spin. And this year perhaps we will see even more, perhaps, upheaval from the Russia investigation, White House shakeups. Let's look into our crystal ball. We're joined by Nia-Malika Henderson, David Gregory, and John Avlon. David, to you, your crystal ball is dated, what, 1967 roughly?

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: So what does the is a 1967 version of David Gregory's --

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think there could be a Tet Offensive this year.

(LAUGHTER)

GREGORY: There are two words for you in this New Year. They are haute couture. Those are my two words.

(LAUGHTER)

GREGORY: When you go down a list, what's amazing is a Democratic Congress this year, all the investigation of President Trump that is going to be public and in the open because Congress is doing it however the Mueller investigation winds up. And then the big factor is also the economy. Whether it's more muted in the United States, as it's been around the world. There is a downturn underway. People are feeling it in their investments, in their long-term investments in the market which at the end of the year were in such a bad way. I think there is going to be so much anxiety within the White House that bubbles up with those three factors alone.

CAMEROTA: Nia, what are you imagining for 2019?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: In terms of Trump, I think he's going to start laying the foundation for his reelection. He's going to ramp that up immediately, you imagine, in this New Year. He is going to consolidate the RNC with his own campaign, apparently, so it's going to be sort of a new structure for reelection, and he's got to do that against all the headwinds that you are talking about. The House Democrats looking into everything about him and his family as well, and he has to figure out a way to keep a grip on not only the grassroots folks who probably will stay with him no matter what, but certainly Republican elected officials. We've seen them pretty much stay aligned with him. So I think that is going to be his plan going into 2019.

GREGORY: He's got the ability to both try to define what his election campaign looks like, but also try to define his Democratic opposition. Anybody who pokes their head up, he is going to take them up, have a nickname for them and go after them.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, but, look -- yes, investigations, oversight, the economy. But a lot of Trump's powers politically have stemmed from being buoyed by a good economy. So one area where he's been above water consistently, remember, lowest approval rating in his first two years of any president with the lowest unemployment in aggregate for the two years. So if that starts falling away, the laws of gravity are going to start to apply. And just because you come up with a clever nickname and play offense, yes, he may not lose his base, but a lot of his ability to coral and cow his critics is going to be diminished.

BERMAN: One of the things that I like to say during the holiday season at the Christmas parties was, what is the thing that worries the president most about the Russia investigation? The economy, because if the economy starts to turn, if it really starts to sink in, then he might lose that unwavering Republican support. The Republicans who haven't bothered to pay attention or get outraged yet, they might start.

GREGORY: Most of the rank and file Republicans who came home to him in 2016 much to the surprise of everyone, who gave him such high approval ratings throughout all of his outlandish statements and behavior so far in the presidency, people have said, this is anecdotal, but I talked to people who support Trump, and they'll say, yes, I don't pay attention to x, y, and z, but how you're portfolio doing? At some point the answer to that was loosening up regulations and freeing up business spending and so forth has not been enough, even if the economy is growing that there has been so much on trade and other things that have hurt the economy overall.

CAMEROTA: The president of course had promised when he was elected to drain the swamp in Washington, 2018 was pretty swampy. There were lots of people who had to exit amid some humidity from the swamp.

HENDERSON: That's right. And we might see more of that. Lots of turnover in 2018 with the chief of staff, a position, obviously Sessions being ousted by this president. So we'll see. This is a president that likes to keep people guessing. He likes to have a continuous round of not only chaos but "The Apprentice" as well. And people rise and fall continuously in this White House. So we'll see who is in and who is out going forward in 2018. But it's a constant theme with this White House. AVLON: Yes, the president's desire to stage manage his own reality

show, which we all have to live with and constantly have cliffhangers and changing characters, the constant theme that's out of his control is the ethics investigations, the tone coming from the top. And this is where his ability to distract and deflect gets limited, not just by the economy maybe all of a sudden creating conditions where people say that's not the thing I can just look to and ignore everything that's happening inside the Oval Office, but that overall tone and tenor, because even his strongest defenders at this point can't say he's drained the swamp. He's simply restocking it.

[08:10:00] BERMAN: So can he get anything done? And I ask that question, and let me remind to 2017 because the moment where President Trump looked the most comfortable in the atmosphere in Washington where the meetings with Chuck and Nancy. He was in the Oval Office talking about immigration, talking about the budgets, walks in and he strikes a deal with the Democratic leaders, looks natural doing it, sounds natural doing it, speaks the language that they spoke, and that lasted about eight-and-a-half minutes.

HENDERSON: It did. And we saw part two of that in the Oval Office with sort of a Nancy Pelosi smackdown of Donald Trump when they were talking about the government shutdown and immigration and the border and all of that. So that seems to be where things are headed with this emboldened, Nancy Pelosi who will likely be speaker, and the idea that there's going to be some Kumbaya moment with all those folks, it just seems unlikely.

BERMAN: I always thought, though, there was a path, there was a path at one point for the president to work with Democrats, and that would be to truly upend everything.

HENDERSON: But then he starts to hear from his base, that he wants to hold to.

CAMEROTA: And they win. They trump everything.

GREGORY: They win because I think he's been persuaded, and his own gut is you don't have to build a coalition that crosses barriers. You just have to solidify his base of support, and that's how he wins in 2020.

BERMAN: John Avlon, Nia-Malika Henderson, David Gregory, the answer is, yes, we would like to see your etchings.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Thanks so much for being with us.

CAMEROTA: Happy New Year.

GREGORY: Yes. Clearly, I can take it.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Going into 2019, it helps to remember what even happened in 2018. I can barely remember it. OK? It's all a blur, but Chris Cillizza is not a blur. It is crystal clear to Chris Cillizza. He has winners and losers of the year, next.

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CAMEROTA: 2018 brought us another year of unbelievable political headlines.

[08:15:01] So, joining us is the best and the worst of them, CNN politics reporter and editor at large, Chris Cillizza.

Chris, you've been burning the midnight oil. I don't know you could ever figure out what the best and worst headlines are -- were.

CHRIS CILIZZA, CNN POLITICS REPORTER AND EDITOR AT LARGE: Well, I always feel like it's 2018 for me was ten pounds of feathers in a two and a half pound bag.

CAMEROTA: Wow, you really clean that up.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: That's why he's the best. He's my best list.

CILLIZZA: In 2019, there will be no use of expletives.

CAMEROTA: Is that right by you?

CILLIZZA: I would say your number one winner, and this, I think, is pretty clear to most people is Nancy Pelosi. And I say that because Pelosi was the person who -- and I bring her up many times -- multiple times.

CAMEROTA: When will you learn?

CILLIZZA: So after this election, there was some talk after the 2018, well, Pelosi, she may not be the speaker. I have bet against Nancy Pelosi enough times. She emerges remarkably again as almost certainly to be the speaker of the House. More than a decade after she first won it, not as history-making and that she's now the first female speaker again. But still, I think a really remarkable run.

CAMEROTA: OK. Your next winner is also from upside down world, which is Beto O'Rourke.

CILLIZZA: Yes.

CAMEROTA: He lost, I'll just remind you.

CILLIZZA: Great point. Appreciate you.

So, here's what's interesting about politics. You can win by losing at times. O'Rourke losses to Ted Cruz by two points. It's the best showing for a Democrat in Texas in a very long time. But if politics is judged by winning and losing, he lost.

But look at 2020 polling in Iowa, excuse me, and in New Hampshire nationally. Beto O'Rourke is in the top three. He's right up there with Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, which is remarkable given that two years ago, if we were doing this at the start of 2017, let's say, Beto O'Rourke was some guy who was a member of Congress from Texas. No one had ever heard of him.

So, he now has a chance to make a yes or no decision on president that will have an impact. My guess is he probably runs because the timing works for him.

CAMEROTA: How can you not when you have that amount of money and momentum?

CILLIZZA: That, and, Alisyn, the other really important point to that is momentum matters hugely in politics. And there is not another obvious race for him to run.

BERMAN: Your last winner is an entity often beaten up by the likes of Alisyn Camerota, polling.

CILLIZZA: Look, I am a pretty big defender of polling generally speaking, the broad swath of them. I think you can take a poll and say, wow, this really missed the mark. And they do at times.

But I would say, in 2016, polling took a giant hit, I would say, in somewhat underserved, in that most polling had Hillary Clinton winning. She did win --

BERMAN: The popular vote.

CILLIZZA: -- the popular vote. She lost the Electoral College. I'm not disputing any of that. I think pollsters were getting better at polling sort of Trump's America. Obviously, 2020 is a much bigger test.

CAMEROTA: OK. We'll do a lightning round.

CILLIZZA: OK, lightning losers.

CAMEROTA: Lightning round. You see, number one, President Trump.

CILLIZZA: Yes, he divided government now. I don't think he realizes yet how bad that's going to be for him. But that meeting he had with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer at the end of 2018, welcome to his next two years.

BERMAN: The second loser is one actually the president will take great joy. And you say it was Elizabeth Warren.

CILLIZZA: Yes, I just think Elizabeth Warren, and I'll throw Biden in there, too, I think both of them had not great 2018s. Biden because I don't think the Democratic Party wants to elect an older white man who's been in office for 50 years as its standard bearer.

Warren because she tried desperately to put this whole Native American ancestry thing behind her. She made it much, much worse, and I think lost a ton of momentum. It doesn't make she can't get it back obviously. But not a great year.

CAMEROTA: Here is something that we are fans of, and I'm sorry to see it in your losers category -- facts.

CILLIZZA: This is a depressing one. You know, your producers asked me losers, and facts came right up. Unfortunately, I looked at the president of the United States in his first 649 days in office said 6,500 things that aren't true. He is averaging 9.9 mistruths, distortions and lies a day. That's according to "The Washington Post" fact checker.

One day in September on the campaign trail, he said 125 false or misleading things. He -- does he pay a long-term price for this? We'll find out in the 2020 election.

In the near term, though, I am stunned at the amount of people that roll their eyes and say, well, that's Trump being Trump. The devaluing of facts and capital T, truth, I think is a huge problem and got worse in 2018.

I also tell people, facts are not a partisan position. I feel like we should repeat that over and over and over again.

CAMEROTA: Chris Cillizza, thank you. You're our winner.

CILLIZZA: Hey, I'm going to add that to my list.

CAMEROTA: Do that.

BERMAN: Who is our loser?

[08:20:01] CILLIZZA: Also me.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Chris is also our loser.

All right. So when Democrats take control of the House this year, President Trump will face a divided Congress for the first time. Will Washington be able to get anything done?

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CAMEROTA: Welcome back to this special new years edition of NEW DAY.

We have a lot to get to in this half hour, including what President Trump is up against in 2019. For the first time, he will face a divided Congress. So, will he have a hard time pushing his agenda through?

BERMAN: Also, they endured a 27-hour surgery to live a normal life. We check in with once conjoined twins, Jadon and Ainas McDonald.

And she made America laugh on "Saturday Night Live", of course. Now, we are learning so much more about Gilda Radner's inspiring life off screen. So, we're going to preview the new CNN film "Love, Gilda". But first let's get a check of your headlines at the news desk.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and Happy New Year. I'm Ryan Nobles.

The family of an American detained in Russia is now speaking out. Paul Whelan's twin brother David releasing a statement saying the family is deeply concerned for his safety and well-being.

[08:2:03] Whelan apparently was in Moscow for a wedding, but the Kremlin says Whelan was arrested while, quote, carrying out an act of espionage.

A federal employee labor union is using the U.S. government over the partial government shutdown, now dragging into its 11th day. The American Federation of Government Employees alleging the federal government is violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by forcing essential employees to work without pay. The White House has no comment.

NASA's new Horizon spacecraft creating the most distant flyby yet of an object in our solar system. It's called the Ultima Thule, an icy body some four billion miles from earth. NASA scientists believe it could hold clues as to the formation of the solar system as we know it.

I'm Ryan Nobles, and those are your headlines. Happy New Year.

BERMAN: A big change is coming to Washington this week. Democrats take over the majority in the House of Representatives.

So after years of gridlock with Republicans controlling the House and the Senate, will anything get done in 2019?

I want to bring back, Nia-Malika Henderson, David Gregory and John Avlon.

If you are Nancy Pelosi, David, and you are beginning this new year as the once again speaker of the house, what's the first thing you want to do?

GREGORY: Well, you want to set the ground rules for how you are going to take on Trump. And I think she did that by the end of last year by taking him on quite publicly in the Oval Office.

But she's got this dual job. She has to, you know, clench the thirst to investigate the administration, but also show the way for Democrats who want to retake power in Washington in 2020. And they have got to actually accomplish something.

So, she's got to be able to do both things well. And on the investigative front, if that's a run away train, that's going to play into Donald Trump's hands, I think she knows that. She's got a pretty fractious caucus. Democrats are in a weird way right now. They are going through their own fracturing right now as they figure out who they want to be, especially in a presidential race. She is really the most important political figure going into this New

Year.

CAMEROTA: What do you think their top priorities are? What do they really want to get done in 2019?

HENDERSON: You know, I think if you are a Democrat, you have to look realistically at the Senate, right? And if they want to go too far to the left, say, for instance, on something like health care, voting rights, student loans, any infrastructure even, that's going to be tough.

Is it just a matter of kind of laying out what the Democratic Party stands for, putting a bunch of bills up they get out of the House with the full knowledge they will not get anywhere in the Senate? Or will they try to meet in the middle somewhere and frankly, possibly hand Donald Trump a victory, right? If he signs a big infrastructure plan, then that goes to him. That possibly helps his re-election.

But you have got to really, I think, balance those two competing ideas. On the one hand defying Democrats, but not giving too much to Donald Trump.

AVLON: As you walk that line, I mean, they may want to pass something that has big spending ticket on it, with the Republican president, it produces some of the political culpability. Look, they're going to be opening up literally with an anti-corruption and pro-democracy bill, which is very good, probably doesn't have a prayer in the Senate, but it's the kind of stuff that people really do need. It includes things like voting rights, producing too much money in politics, things that I think are really do feed a lot of the anger and anxiety in politics.

But I think it will be something like infrastructure, if there's a prayer. It will be something like prescription drugs. I think probably Nixon in China on immigration reform, probably too much to hope for.

On the investigatory front, I think the baseline will be how early does the chair release Trump's taxes? That is included within the power and per view, something that needs to be done.

CAMEROTA: Why wait?

AVLON: I don't know that there is a good reason to wait. I think you get that out early. And then, no one should be an impeachment enthusiast. There are folks on the far left certainly who are.

But see what the Mueller report comes forth with. But I think that will be one of Nancy Pelosi's most difficult jobs is corralling that caucus.

GREGORY: But I do think financial corruption, when you see some of this ethical, financial corruption within the administration, within cabinet, I think, and we know from Jeff Toobin's reporting in "New Yorker" at the end of the year that Adam Schiff, who's running the intelligence committee as a chair, wants to look into the financial relationship that the Trump organization had with overseas interests that might have conflicted with his presidential ambitions.

I think that's a potential big story in this administration and within Trump's orbit. I think voting rights is important in terms of getting to 2020. I also think shoring up health care becomes very important. Democrats did well at that in the midterms in 2018. So, I think those are going to be the priorities.

BERMAN: Congress may get brought into a situation where they have to do things on health care, depending on what happens in the course in this, this overturning, the district court who overturned Obamacare. They may have to do something if the economy turns sour. Although, I'm not sure you could provide much stimulus, given where we are with the tax cuts that are already existed.

But, you know, you just don't know.

AVLON: That's what the dangers of what Donald Trump did early on as he poured gasoline on already burning economic fire.