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Front Lines of War Against ISIS; Trump Cancel's Pelosi's Trip; Trump Directed Cohen to Lie. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired January 18, 2019 - 06:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:33:09] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: CNN is on the front lines of the war against ISIS. Kurdish troops are still battling their way into a handful of villages that remain under ISIS control in northern Syria. Four Americans were killed in a terror attack there earlier this week. And our Clarissa Ward has an exclusive report from northern Syria.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The battle against ISIS is still raging as the U.S. allied Syrian Democratic Forces, known as the SDF, push in on the last sliver of territory under the militant's control. Here, the fighters prepare to move into the village of Chafa (ph). Flares turn the dark night into day. Coalition aircraft circle overhead, providing crushing air power.

By daylight, they push further in. This is where ISIS ends, SDF Commander Simko Shikaki tells his men.

Moments later, panic breaks out. ISIS has launched a counterattack. The SDF fire back and Chafa is quickly liberated.

We travel down to the frontline as they approach the next village. Our escorts insist on taking an armed vehicle. Even liberated territory is far from secure.

WARD (on camera): These roads are still dangerous, especially early in the morning because there are ISIS sleeper cells in the area that come out overnight and they plant roadside bombs.

WARD (voice over): We stop at a house that the SDF took from ISIS just days earlier. Mortars are fired off at militant positions. Commander Shikaki takes us up onto the roof to show us the front line.

[06:35:05] WARD (on camera): So the next village over, Susa (ph), is where the front line is now, and they're hoping that they'll be able to liberate that by tomorrow.

WARD (voice over): American forces provide assistance from just a few hundred yards away. The commander warns the battle is not over.

The pressure we had militarily is ending, he says, but the fundamental war is eradicating the ideology of ISIS.

That will be a much tougher fight to win. Support for ISIS still lingers here.

On the way back, we passed through another recently liberated area.

WARD (on camera): This is what is left now of the town of Haji (ph). You can see it's basically been completely obliterated. And to many of the people who were living in areas like this and others, this is what liberation looks like, miles and miles of rubble.

WARD (voice over): Many here fear that buried in the destruction, the seeds are being sown for another war.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WARD: That Kurdish commander said that there were U.S. positions dotted all around that house. They were providing technical assistance. They were spotting. They were firing off mortars. And as we were actually leaving the front lines, we saw another large U.S. military convoy heading right down there, ammunition, resupplies, giving you the sense that even as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw from here, they are still a fundamental part of the fight on the front lines.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Clarissa Ward, so important to have you there, thank you so much, where U.S. Troops are fighting and dying this week. Thank you, Clarissa.

All right, the breaking news this morning, a report that the president suborned perjury asked Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. Where does that fit in now in this budget debate, this government shutdown that lingers on by the day?

We'll be right back.

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[06:41:07] CAMEROTA: All right, President Trump hitting back at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The president has denied Pelosi access to a military plane to go to a war zone, and in the process revealed the destinations of her secret trip.

Joining us now is John Avlon, Joe Lockhart and Rachael Bade, congressional reporter at "Politico."

Rachael, turnabout is fair play, OK. So Nancy Pelosi sort of disinvited him from the State of the Union and Donald Trump had a trick up his sleeve, President Trump, and canceled this co-del (ph), congressional delegation as it's called, where she was planning to go to Afghanistan, among other places. So, tit for tat. This is where we are today.

RACHAEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, it's funny because, you know, Democrats were actually already on a bus that was getting ready to leave the Capitol Building to head to the airport. They were all packed up. And this came at the last minute and totally upended their plans.

You know, the White House is trying to say this is about security and about, you know, sort of the same reasons Pelosi gave for delaying the State of the Union saying we can't be doing something like this when employees are not getting paid. You can't use the security, et cetera.

But make no mistake, this was not about security. This was about revenge. And this was about the president hitting back at Nancy Pelosi after she clearly insulted him by taking away sort of this televised address that he was looking forward to. And I -- you know, it might have had some temporary gratification for the White House, but long term this is going to make it even harder to find a deal to get out of this shutdown. We are in day 28, I think, and it feels kind of like we're in the congressional version of "Mean Girls" right now with people just trying to one up each other. We're nowhere near a deal on this.

BERMAN: The question is, who is trying to make fetch (ph) happen in that case, Rachael?

Look, the added switch here is also, yes, it may be tit for tat. In this case, what the president used was telling the Taliban where Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders were going. Hey, these people, they're coming to Afghanistan. Be that as it may, John, how does this bring us any closer to ending the shutdown with 800,000 federal workers not being paid and the economy being hit twice as hard as economists originally thought?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It doesn't. And the president doesn't even seem to be focused on that goal. He seems to be dug in and waiting to see if he can make Democrats blink. The problem is, the real world costs of this are escalating.

We are now in week four. This is a week longer than the longest shutdown in American history before that. It is multiples longer than the average length of shutdowns. This is a singular act of incompetence. It is self-inflicted by the president and members of Congress. Lindsey Graham and others have tried to offer up a deal. That deal could probably get done. Open up the government and then, you know, pass a balanced plan with border security and the dreamers, let's say. The president seemed uninterested in that to date. There's probably no other resolution than something like that because the president's vision of victory, where Democrats suddenly capitulate and say you can have border security for nothing, ain't going to happen right now.

CAMEROTA: But, Joe, why does this make it harder? Keeping everybody in Washington, a forced, you know, stay occasion, keeping everybody there, why doesn't it make them roll up their sleeves and have to get this done?

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Because it isn't about location or geography. There's a big difference between what Nancy Pelosi did and what Donald Trump did. Nancy Pelosi did something that was strategic. She was taking something that Trump needs. He needs the national stage. The State of the Union is the single best day every year for the president of the United States. So she used -- is using her leverage to try to get a deal. Trump took nothing from Nancy Pelosi. Maybe she want go to Afghanistan and would have --

CAMEROTA: Well, some power. I mean it was a power play.

LOCKHART: It was a power play, but to what end? What -- how does it weaken her position? Democrats are not going to -- this is what Trump needs to understand, Democrats are not going to move. The reason is, elections matter. They won the last election by almost 10 percent. Trump made it about immigration, made it about the wall, and the voters said no. So they're not going to -- so the only -- we're going to get a deal when Trump backs -- finds a way to back down. That's the only way we're going to get a deal. And that's why Pelosi's move was strategic.

[06:45:13] The missing piece in all of this, in all of this, is Mitch McConnell.

AVLON: Yes.

LOCKHART: The House has passed the bills. The Senate is holding them up. I've read the Contusion. There's nothing in the Constitution that says the Senate has the power to prevent Republican senators from taking hard votes. That's what Mitch McConnell's doing.

AVLON: MIA Mitch is one of the real (INAUDIBLE).

LOCKHART: And that's -- yes, and that's -- that's why this is only a matter of Trump finding an exit ramp. He doesn't -- he seems more interested in playing this tit for tat than finding that ramp. That's how this is going to end. It's not going to be Democrats caving.

BERMAN: I will say, the other thing the president did by keeping that bus load of Democrats here was keep Adam Schiff and other Democratic committee chairs around to comment on the "BuzzFeed" story that the president suborned perjury.

CAMEROTA: The law of unintended consequences.

BERMAN: Telling Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

Rachael, you know, this story broke, it was 10:11 last night p.m. So it hasn't even been 12 hours since. There are already Democrats reacting on the record, some suggesting this will be the trigger to hold impeachment hearings.

Where do you see this going and how do you see the maneuvering playing out today?

BADE: Yes, I mean, I do think we're going to hear Democrats start using the "i" word. I mean I was watching Twitter last night as this was blowing and one tweet caught my attention. Congressman Ted Lieu. He's a close Pelosi ally. He's a veteran of California. The two of them are pretty tight and they're always in lock step. And he was saying it is time for the House Judiciary to start considering whether the president committed high crimes.

And that's surprising coming from a Pelosi ally specifically because Pelosi has told people, do not use that word. And if you're hearing an ally use the word impeachment and phrases like high crimes, that means you're going to -- this is like a game changer, right?

And you put that in the middle of this intense standoff over the shutdown, it's just -- the toxicity on The Hill has reached a level I have never seen in my time being up there. I can tell you on the floor yesterday we heard Republicans yelling at Democrats -- literally yelling at them saying, go back to Puerto Rico, where some of the Democrats were on a co-del (ph) the weekend before. You have freshman Democratic lawmakers going back to Mitch McConnell, as we were just talking about, starting this hash tag, where is Mitch and running around the Capitol making sort of this scene about where is Mitch McConnell since he's not leading on this issue.

You know, throw the Michael Cohen narrative in the middle of this, it's just toxicity everywhere. And the only way I see, beyond the president backing down on the wall right now, is this whole declaring a national emergency. I'm really interested to see if that talk is going to pick up in the next couple of days given what we've seen happen over the past 24 hours.

CAMEROTA: This is madness, John.

AVLON: Yes.

BADE: It really is.

CAMEROTA: All of this yelling at each other. And as Rachael points out, all the toxicity.

And in terms of Congressman Ted Lieu, he's getting out too far ahead of it. I mean we have to confirm the "BuzzFeed" reporting.

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: And if it is confirmed, it is unambiguous that this is an impeachable crime. But we're not there yet.

AVLON: We are not there yet. These are very good reporters, but you don't begin proceedings based on a report. You do it when an actual report, the Mueller report, is dropped.

But this -- this is the problem. Donald Trump and this entire circumstance we are in, to some extent, is a symptom of a larger problem that's been percolating for a long time. Polarization and hyper partisanship. The inability to reason together. Demonizing people you disagree with. And now you're seeing it hit a boiling point. And it could be at a boiling point exactly at a time when the founders hoped that people could rise above their partisan nature in the most basic sense. That principles would trump partisanship. There's no evidence of that in Capitol Hill, but that's going to -- what will be required if we're going to have anything like a deliberative discussion about impeachment. So don't get ahead of -- let's get the report done and then let's see where the chips fall where they may.

BERMAN: I don't think the suborning perjury, by the way, is divorce necessarily from the shutdown here --

AVLON: No.

BERMAN: Which is that the president will use the shutdown and the wall to keep his base in line as he fights the allegations against him.

All right, guys, thanks very much.

CAMEROTA: All right, if you live in the eastern U.S., you're about to get extremely cold. Bitterly cold. And intense snow. It is huge. It's coming. Your forecast, next.

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[06:53:12] CAMEROTA: John, I hope you brought your parka today because if you are like us and you live in the eastern U.S., prepare for snow and an arctic blast.

BERMAN: Long johns.

CAMEROTA: Long johns. We're wearing them right now.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers is live.

What do you see, Chad?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I see snow, ice, an ice storm, and then rain to the south of there. This is going to be a very taxing forecast for a lot of meteorologists and the storm is just now in Colorado.

So what you see now, the light snow, that's not it. It's not even close to it. It is still way out to the west. Later on tonight, it's still in Oklahoma and Kansas. So a long way to travel and it doesn't start impacting the northeast until Saturday and Sunday.

But by tomorrow morning, already snow into Indianapolis. Snow into Cleveland by tomorrow night, all the way through the Poconos and the Adirondacks and then finally the ice storm through New York City where this warm front makes all the difference. It's going to be 40 and rain. It's going to be 32 and rain. It's going to be 30 and sleet. And then a major snowstorm up to the north.

Now, because this storm is still 1,500 miles away, there's no way to say, is this going to go over Atlantic City or is this going to go over New York City? It depends where this storm goes. Where the low itself goes. We're guaranteed snow up here. This will be the best weekend, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, for skiing in New York into Vermont, New Hampshire, in decades. No question, this is powder snow.

But there is the problem. This is the ice storm we're worried about. And by tomorrow morning, things are going to look fine. But by the time we will wake up Monday morning, power lines are going to be down. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people will be without power.

John.

BERMAN: Chad Myers, got your work cut out for you over the next few days with this fast-moving storm.

MYERS: I'll be here.

BERMAN: Appreciate it, Chad.

[06:54:57] We have major, breaking news. "BuzzFeed" reports that President Trump told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a Trump Tower project. Telling someone to lie to Congress is a crime. It is impeachable. There are huge implications here. We discuss next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY.

We do begin with breaking news.

An explosive new report from "BuzzFeed" claims that President Trump personally instructed his then personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow. That would be a federal crime. Michael Cohen has admitted to lying and is now a convicted felon, but the "BuzzFeed" report cites two federal law enforcement officials who say that Robert Mueller's office learned of this through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and through company e-mails, text messages, and other documents.

[06:59:56] BERMAN: You'll remember in November Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Russia investigation. He claimed negotiations about the Moscow Tower project ended in January of 2016, when, in fact, they ended in June of that year.