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Shutdown Reaches Day 24; New Polling on Shutdown; Closs Kidnapping Suspect in Court. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired January 14, 2019 - 08:30   ET

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


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[08:32:29] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The longest government shutdown in U.S. history now enters day 24 with really no end in sight. An official says the Office of Management and Budget is preparing for the possibility the impasse could last through February.

Let's bring in Democratic member of Congress, Katie Hill of California.

Thank you so much for being with us. Congratulations on your first few weeks in office.

REP. KATIE HILL (D), CALIFORNIA: Thank you.

BERMAN: I want to figure out where we are in these negotiations. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, suggested the possibility of reopening the government for three weeks, getting back to the table and talking. And if that doesn't work, the president would declare a national emergency.

Is that a hopeful path, do you think?

HILL: I mean I think it's certainly better than where we are right now and it's something that I think many of my Democratic colleagues would welcome. We are at a place where at this point our biggest priority is getting the government back open. And we're willing to come to the table after that and talk about what the right solutions are around border security and around immigration reform. The reality is that Democrats have, for decades, been in favor of border security. Exactly what that looks like is what the debate should be around. And it -- we know that it's not a 2,000-mile long concrete wall. President Trump and his allies have stopped calling it that. They've given up on that whole idea because they know how impossible it is. But we do need to have those talks and the first thing needs to be getting federal employees back to work.

BERMAN: And you told my colleague, Poppy Harlow, that you would vote for some money for some kind of new physical barrier, correct? So if you went back to the table, if these negotiations were to start up again, with the government reopen, could you vote, will you vote for some new fencing? HILL: Only if the government is open will I even consider such an

idea. And it has to be part of a bigger package. But there have been proposals on the table before. Last year there was the Hurd-Aguilar proposal that included components of border security, including some physical barriers where it makes sense, but really with a focus on, you know, the ports of entry and on personnel and on dealing with the immigration backlog and, you know, these other aspects that are so important.

So it has to be part of an overall package. But I don't think that we -- we need to be so fixated on -- on, you know, writing everything off. I think we need to -- we need to say that, look, we're coming back to the table with an open mind. We have -- I think everybody across the board has written off this concept of a wall and so now it's what makes sense. What -- how are we negotiating this in --- with respect to the most logical solutions that are going to be as effective and meet the needs of the American people.

BERMAN: So the president and his supporters who were in that last meeting where the president walked out and said bye-bye say that he asked Nancy Pelosi, if I go back to the table and negotiate, could you support or would you allow for funding for some kind of new barrier, and she said no.

[08:35:17] So what's your message to Nancy Pelosi here?

HILL: Well, first of all, I don't think he said some kind move to barrier. I think he said the wall. And I think that's a really important distinction because, again, the connotation around the wall has so much to do with the hateful rhetoric that he's been spewing for, you know, at this point years. So I think it's -- it's really important for us to say that, look, we -- we're not going to fund this wall, right? There's just -- there's just zero path where that's going to happen. It's a $60 billion project at a bare minimum. It's just -- it's just not going to happen. But where -- there are aspects where some physical barriers make sense.

BERMAN: Some new barrier in some places.

HILL: Right.

BERMAN: Because that's a different position than we've heard from Nancy Pelosi the last six weeks.

HILL: I don't know that it is that different, to be honest with you. I think -- I think that she's -- she has certainly said that in the past. She's supported various different packages about that in the past. But, really, it's this kind of hardline no wall. So -- and reopen the government first.

BERMAN: You're the first member of the House we've had a chance to talk to today. So, very quickly, Steve King, Republican from Iowa, who said, among other things, white nationalists, white supremacists, how did language like that become offensive? He's going to meet with Republican leadership, I understand, very shortly.

What do you think should happen to Steve King in the House?

HILL: I mean, I think he should be out. At the very least there should be the harshest repercussions from his own party possible. He should be removed from committees. And then I think his own party needs to be running somebody against him as quickly as possible. But the right thing to do is for him to step down.

BERMAN: Katie Hill, new member of Congress, a Democrat from California, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

HILL: Thank you so much for having me.

BERMAN: Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, so who do Americans blame for the shutdown? Harry Enten breaks down our new poll numbers, next.

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[08:40:52] BERMAN: This is now the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. And over the weekend, for really the very first time, we got a huge dump in new polling about where the public stands on all of this, including a new CNN poll that finds a majority of Americans blame the president.

Let's dig deeper inside this new polling.

Joining us is senior writer and analyst for CNN politics, there is something about Harry Enten, who just inhaled half a can of hairspray.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER AND ANALYST: Oh, my God, I feel like the Fonz or something like that, though Henry Winkler never actually did his hair on air. He was very opposed to that. So he just looked in the mirror and said, a (ph).

CAMEROTA: He was also too cool for hair spray, let me be clear.

ENTEN: Yes, he was a little too cool for hair spray, but he, like I, am a beautiful cool Jewish guy.

BERMAN: All right, well, Henry Winkler loved polling.

ENTEN: He did.

BERMAN: So what does the polling say about the shutdown?

ENTEN: OK. So I think this is a key point that kind of is getting missed in some of the coverage, and that is obviously this is an average of "The Washington Post" and CNN polls that came out over the weekend.

Look, Trump and the GOP are blamed overwhelmingly compared to the Democrats. But what I think is interesting here is, look how the Republican blame has shot up, going all the way from 47 to 54, while the Democratic blame has stayed pretty consistent. So, to me, this is a great indication that Republicans and President Donald Trump are losing this shutdown and Americans are more likely to blame Trump and the GOP than ever before.

CAMEROTA: That's interesting. I wonder if his primetime address moved the needle at all?

ENTEN: I don't think it did. If anything, what seems to be happening is that his position is getting worse and worse and worse. And I think that this is a rather interesting sort of note about this, is his position on the shutdown is actually worse than opposition to the wall. So we look back at the prior slide by 23-point net margin people are blaming Trump and the GOP over the congressional Democrats on who to blame for this shutdown. But if you were to say, OK, do you support the wall or oppose the wall, only by a 15-point margin are voters more likely to say that they oppose the wall. So there's a certain segment of the population out there that may like the wall but doesn't like the shutdown, doesn't like the way Donald Trump is going about it.

BERMAN: That's interesting, the wall is unpopular, but the shutdown even more unpopular than the wall.

ENTEN: That's exactly right. And indeed, this, to me, is also a very interesting thing, which, you know, if you're talking about sort of what's going on in the president's standing and how things are happening, as we see, Trump's approval rating is going down. That is his net approval rating was minus 10 percentage points before the shutdown. It's at minus 13 percentage points now. It's a clear indication that this shutdown is blame -- is hurting Donald Trump. It's not helping his position at all.

CAMEROTA: I think you might have just done -- already done it, but the wall versus Trump. What is that one?

ENTEN: So let's take a look at this. This is --

CAMEROTA: I'd like to look at this.

ENTEN: Why don't we look at this. And this is essentially indicating that the president's approval rating is going with the wall. That is, there's a very, very high correlation between the two of them. If you don't like Donald Trump, you don't like the wall. And, indeed, this correlation that we're seeing right here, look at this, 41 percent approve of President Donald Trump's job, 41 percent support the wall, 54 percent disapprove of President Trump's job in an average of polls, 55 percent oppose the wall. That's one for one.

And, indeed, I went back and looked at the 2018 exit polls, right, and what we saw in those races were, if you like Donald Trump, you were probably going to vote for the Republicans. If you dislike Donald Trump, you were probably voting for the Democrats. The correlation in the 2018 exit poll between voting and approval rating was actually lower than it is for this. This is so highly correlated, I just don't really ever see anything like this. Ever.

BERMAN: One of the ways this could end is the president could declare a national emergency. What do people think about that?

ENTEN: Yes. So, this is just a disaster because I just don't understand where -- how President Trump gets out of this because the ABC News/"Washington Post" poll asked, do you support using emergency powers to build a wall. Only 31 percent support that, only 31, 66 percent are opposed. That's far different. That's far different. You know, if you were to go here, you know, 41 percent actually support the wall. But using emergency powers to build the wall? Only 31 percent.

So, again, this is something that I think needs to be pointed out, which is that people actually are a little higher on the wall than they are on the shutdown and then they're a little higher on the shutdown than they are on supporting emergency powers. Each move that the president can possibly make to get out of this is worse than the overall support for the wall. The president has backed himself into a corner.

[08:45:13] CAMEROTA: OK, what's your last slide?

ENTEN: My last slide. This is my last slide. This is an Axios sort of, what -- how different people are being affected by this. How many federal workers. And what we see, you know, Axios kind of sold this as blue states or a little -- red states are a little more affected then blue states. I'm not quite sure that's right. I would say that people across the border are affected. So you see this. You know, right in this Washington, D.C. area. You see these -- the blue states of Maryland and Virginia, which is turning into a blue state, and, obviously, the District of Columbia.

CAMEROTA: You have them as green states, may I say.

ENTEN: They're green states. This is what -- this is what they had.

CAMEROTA: I mean --

ENTEN: I'm just -- we threw this slide --

CAMEROTA: You're just going with it.

ENTEN: I'm just going with this. I had the hair spray put in late. I had, you know, woken up at 5:00 --

CAMEROTA: I felt like you were trying to trick me because I see green there.

ENTEN: I'm not trying to trick you, though my father, who was color blind, might have seen green there. He couldn't tell the difference. But then also look in this region --

BERMAN: Yes.

ENTEN: You see a lot of jobs that are being lost there. So, to me, what you see in the different types of analysis, this is just one of them. But in different types of analysis, we see people across the political spectrum. States across the political spectrum that are being affected by this.

BERMAN: In closing, Rachael Bade, at the very top of the show, which was many, many hours ago --

CAMEROTA: Many days ago.

BERMAN: Said that Republicans on Capitol Hill feel and have felt for a while that the president is losing the messaging war here. Does the polling bear that out?

ENTEN: I think he's absolutely losing the messaging war here. And, I mean, I would just go back to this, which is the president's job approval rating, which has been so stable throughout his presidency, right? Pretty much nothing moves him. A three-point drop in the net approval rating across just a month is a huge drop. It's very clear that this is hurting the president of the United States and he can't lose any more support than this.

CAMEROTA: Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Always fascinating.

ENTEN: Hey.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh.

All right, she is alive. She is safe with her extended family after being missing for three months. How police say Jayme Closs cracked her own case. We get the latest, next.

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[08:51:03] CAMEROTA: The man accused of kidnapping 13-year-old Jayme Closs and holding her hostage for nearly three months will appear in court in just hours. Police say Jayme Closs escaped from a home about 60 miles away from her own home where her parents were murdered. A neighbor recognized Closs and called 911.

Joining us now is Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald.

Sheriff, thank you so much for being with us this morning. This case is so mysterious and so shocking. Do you have a sense of why this suspect and how was able to target and take Jayme Closs, though he lived two counties and 60 miles away?

CHRIS FITZGERALD, SHERIFF, BARRON COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT: Yes, we're -- that's the million-dollar question we're trying to figure out as we speak right now. So, no, I don't have that answer. I wish I did. But hopefully today in the criminal complaint we'll be able to release more information about that. But I do know that he acted alone, and he acted -- he was -- his very targeted approach and planned out attack on the Closs home.

CAMEROTA: I had heard one report that he had perhaps worked with Jayme's father. Is that true?

FITZGERALD: He worked at the same plant, but that was over three years, and he only worked there for one day, so we don't believe that was the connection with the Closs family.

CAMEROTA: And is it true that they had -- Jayme Closs and this suspect had no prior social media contact? This wasn't somebody that she, say, met online?

FITZGERALD: No, there was no social media contact, no digital footprint at all that we've been able to uncover at this time to show any connection between the two of them at all or anyone money -- or any one in the Closs family home at all.

CAMEROTA: How is Jayme doing today and what has she been able to tell you about this ordeal?

FITZGERALD: We're not commenting on what Jayme's talked to us. I can tell you that Jayme has talked with investigators and that's worked. And -- but we don't -- I don't know what they've talked about. What I can tell you, though, is, I did meet with Jayme last night. And that shy 13-year-old girl that we've been describing for 88 days has got a big smile on her face. And that was priceless. Very heartwarming for me personally and our team behind us that had been working so hard on this case.

CAMEROTA: I mean, look, I don't have to tell you how rare it is for a missing child to be found.

FITZGERALD: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I mean particularly after 88 days. So this is, you know, the best possible outcome, though, of course, I mean, she will bear the emotional and mental scars of this ordeal for the rest of her life.

I had read that the suspect is cooperating. Can you tell us what he's telling investigators?

FITZGERALD: Yes. I'm not commenting on anything Mr. Patterson has said or talked with or who he's talked with in the jail at this time. That's -- I just can't comment on any of that at this time.

What I can tell you is there was a will of a 13-year-old girl to survive. There was a lot of hope in the community. And when you put those two together, they're unstoppable. So Jayme's the hero here and the will of her to survive has been the greatest present we could ever ask for.

CAMEROTA: That is remarkable. And in terms of her will to survive, can you tell us more about how she escaped?

FITZGERALD: I don't actually know the details. We're still working on that. We just -- we turned the scene back over to the family, the Patterson family yesterday. So we were still -- this is very -- an active case still. We had two missions when we set out 88 days ago, one to find a 13-year-old girl and, two, to convict the person who killed the Closs -- Denise and James. And so that's been our goal and now we're on step two now that we have Jayme back home with family and a smile on her face, our job is to put a conviction together, a case together for our district attorney for a conviction in this case. CAMEROTA: Have you, personally, or your detectives, been inside the

suspect's home?

[08:55:05] FITZGERALD: I have not, but my detectives have. Our evidence team has been up there. The Wisconsin State Crime Lab has been up there. And so, yes, we have all the evidence here in Barron or in Madison at our crime lab and that's being processed as we speak.

CAMEROTA: And do you know if she was restrained? Do you know if she was locked in a room?

FITZGERALD: I don't know exactly the details. All I can tell you is that she did escape out of the house, and that's when she found the lady walking the dog, who then went for help at the neighbor's house and 911 was called up in Douglas County and we have Jayme home here in Barron.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh. I mean, again, it's just so remarkable when somebody is observant and immediately they know the right thing to do. And the second that that woman who was walking the dog saw Jayme Closs, she recognized her. And I just find it so, you know, chilling that she went to a stranger, a neighbor's house, and said, this is Jayme Closs, call 911 and, you know --

FITZGERALD: And they recognized her, yes.

CAMEROTA: It's remarkable.

Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald, thank you very much. We will look forward to having these questions answered at some point.

FITZGERALD: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: All right, new revelations in the Russia investigation. Transcripts of testimony reveal the FBI's concerns that Donald Trump was working against American interests.

Also, why is the president hiding all of the details of his meetings with Vladimir Putin?

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