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NEW DAY

Trump May Ask FBI to Review Policies After Roger Stone Arrest; Mueller: Russians Shared Non-Public Info to Discredit Probe; Deep Freeze Pummels Much of the U.S.; Medicare-for-all Emerges as Litmus Test for 2020 Dems; Foxconn Scraps Plan to Add Factory Jobs in Wisconsin. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 31, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arctic temperatures, bitter wind chills, whiteout conditions.

[05:59:46] ROCHELLE DAVENPORT, CROSSING GUARD: It's freezing cold. My face, my toes, everything.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Being outside for just a few minutes can start causing frostbite.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R), ILLINOIS: I don't see the reason to enter a public spat with your intelligence agency.

CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), FORMER GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY: The president had a gut distrust of the intelligence community.

LEON PANETTA, FORMER U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: It really is not only unprecedented, I think it's dangerous.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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, January 31, the very last day of January. Six p.m. here in New York. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill joins me this morning.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Nice to be with you.

BERMAN: You miss January already. I can tell.

HILL: It's amazing. I blinked and it was over.

BERMAN: All right. Happening now, new evidence that Russia is attacking the U.S. justice system, while the president complains that system is being too hard on his friend Roger Stone. Stone is charged with several crimes, but the president says he's thinking about a review of how the FBI treated him. Stone was arrested at his Florida home, indicted on seven counts,

including obstruction of justice. The Mueller team said Stone was a flight risk and investigators were worried he would destroy evidence, but the president seems to think he knows better. This is what he said: "When you have 29 people and you have armored vehicles and you had all of the other -- you know, many people know Roger, and Roger is not a person they would have to worry about from that standpoint."

HILL: Now meantime, the Justice Department alleges Russia is behind a disinformation campaign targeting Robert Mueller's investigation. Officials say a pro-Russian Twitter account stole and spread nonpublic material from the special counsel's team all as part of an effort to discredit the Mueller probe.

The information itself appears to have come from items that were shared with attorneys for a Russian company. That company is accused of interfering in the 2016 election.

BERMAN: All right. Joining us now to discuss this, John Avlon; Laura Jarrett, CNN justice reporter; and Margaret Talev, senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg News.

Friends, we would like to begin this with a dramatic reading from The Daily Caller interview with Donald Trump, which took place late yesterday. The subject of Roger Stone came up. I will be playing Donald Trump. Erica will be playing the reporter.

HILL: Yes.

BERMAN: All right. Trump: "I'm speaking for a lot of people that were very disappointed see that go down that way. To see it happen where it was on camera, on top it, that was a very, very disappointing scene."

HILL: "Would you ask the FBI to review its use of force, its militarization when it handles cases like this?"

BERMAN: "I think it's a good question for you to ask, and it's something I think about."

HILL: Idea planted.

BERMAN: Scene. All right. Laura Jarrett, Roger Stone arrested on seven counts, including obstruction of justice. The president of the United States saying he wants to review how it all went down. You cover the Justice Department. What do they say about how this arrest was made? Anything unusual?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: So I think even FBI agents, our own analysts have come on our air and explained that this is just how arrests look nowadays. It's part of their protocol. It looks like a lot to us, I think to lay people, to have someone bang on your door. Obviously, a scary experience for anyone.

But the idea that they did something unusual here or the idea that it wasn't commensurate with the crime, I think is misplaced and not consistent with what their protocol is.

It's also worth noting that when the president chooses to weigh in on when he thinks law enforcement has gone too far. I think it's not a coincidence that this is the same president who said, "You can't be too nice. You shouldn't pat them on the head. Go ahead." I mean, he said that to a law enforcement group. And he's now saying that the arrest of Roger Stone for lying to Congress, a federal crime, "Ah, you know, we got to look at that."

HILL: We should also point out, too, that Roger Stone said that the FBI agents were, in his words, extremely courteous.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I mean, the ultimate offense here is, of course, that Roger Stone is his friend and that now, all of a sudden, you know, it's not get tough law and order stuff. It's, you know, why don't we treat it with a little bit of kid gloves?

BERMAN: It's beyond that, though.

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: I mean, he's fomenting a conspiracy theory. It's basically the same thing as ignoring your intelligence services, which he's done over the last 24 hours. What he's saying here is that "The Justice Department, law enforcement, the way they've chosen to do things is wrong, and I don't approve of it."

AVLON: Right. Which has a, you know, "L'etat, c'est moi," different feel to it.

But I do think the intelligence services thing is far more serious. It is far more pervasive. And what we saw today and what we're hearing reported out is the president, in private, viciously attacking his own DNI, Dan Coats, because the intelligence services contradicted him in front of Congress; because they have information they've given to the president that the president chooses not to listen to, instead preferring to foment conspiracy theories and play to his base.

HILL: And Margaret, what's interesting, too, is he's pushing back against all of that. We saw in this tweet storm yesterday morning in terms of Iran, North Korea, ISIS. We didn't, though, hear as much pushback from the president when it came to Russia, which was specifically brought up in that assessment.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. You know, if you set aside for a little -- for just a minute the Russia policy and the China policy, what you see here is the president, I think, accurately assessing that, in the testimony and in the report itself, not just by Dan Coats but by the entire intelligence community, it's in a lot of ways a pushback or repudiation for kind of the predicate for a lot of his foreign policy moves, the emphasis on the upcoming Kim summit and some of these other -- some of these other pieces.

[16:05:12] But on Russia, you see this really interesting kind of dual track thing, where on the one hand, there's the sanctions with Rusal and some of the ways the president has seemed to take Putin's advice or assurances on things.

And on the other hand, you see the U.S. preparing to suspend and probably withdraw from the INF treaty this coming weekend. So on Russia, there's still a lot of juxtaposition. It's a little bit confusing if you're following along.

But overall, it is obviously embarrassing for the president to have, simultaneously, his entire intelligence community and some key senators like Mitch McConnell use the legislative process and congressional hearings to raise real questions and try to slow down the pace of withdrawal from Syria, prioritization of the relationship with the North Korean leader, and this sort of stuff.

BERMAN: And Laura, it's so interesting. And again, this all ties together in my mind, at least, the president being critical of how Roger Stone is being treated as part of the Russia investigation on the day when the Mueller team announces that Russia is trying to attack the Russia investigation.

JARRETT: Yes.

BERMAN: Really interesting.

JARRETT: Yes. And it shows they're not deterred. Even after dozens of people have been under investigation, even after all of the indictments we've seen, they're still at it. They're still after this disinformation campaign.

In this latest case, we've seen from court payers from Mueller's team, we don't know how they got the documents, the law firm that has been receiving this all of this discovery as part of the Concord Management case, that Russian troll farm. They got those documents legitimately. How they end up on a pro-Russian Twitter feed, it remains to be seen.

But, again, it raises the question of what is -- what is the administration doing about this?

AVLON: And it shows also, because another thing the intelligence community said in front of Congress was Russia is continuing its disinformation campaign. Not only were they active in 2018, but they're going to try to influence 2020, as well.

And incidentally, Chris Wray's statements about China playing in this game are really striking. He said he hadn't seen a threat like this. So it's just more evidence that the intelligence community is dealing with facts, and Trump is too often just dealing from self-interest.

SIDDIQUI: Yes, I think John is exactly right. I mean, I think if you had any doubt about Russia's interest in hacking or disinformation, the idea that this could get from Concord suddenly, miraculously into the global bloodstream with some key alterations so as to confuse the process, should tell you everything you need to know.

And it has forced Bob Mueller, for the second time in only a couple of weeks, to actually sort of come out and show a little bit of his cards to the public when he likes to keep all of this very close to the vest.

But that sort of need to publicly correct the record is quite unusual, and things like this are forcing him to show the court system and the American public a little bit more about what he's doing and what's not doing.

BERMAN: You know, there's another really interesting part of this interview that the president gave "The Daily Caller yesterday. Let me just note: the president hasn't been seen in public for five days. This is day six that we're going into right now.

And what he's doing, at least last night, was giving interviews to a friendly media site. "The Daily Caller" asked good questions, and we made news. There was new out of these interviews, but a friendly news site nonetheless.

He tried to compare or juxtaposition, Laura, the Mueller investigation to the Las Vegas shooting investigation. Let me preface this by saying, the one place where I've seen that repeatedly is on Tucker Carlson on FOX News. Tucker has made that a big deal, saying the FBI can't solve Las Vegas, because they're spending too much time on Mueller.

This is what the president said: "You had so many people killed and so badly wounded, because I went to the hospital." I don't think he meant that they were killed and wounded because went to the hospital, but he did go to the hospital.

JARRETT: He wants credit for going to the hospital.

HILL: He wants -- yes, talking about how he saw them, yes.

BERMAN: "You had people so badly wounded. People never talk about the wounded, the level of hurt and devastation for a whole lifetime. You know, many people just devastated for a lifetime. They'll never be the same. And you look at that by comparison to the Russian hoax, it's a shame."

So again, questioning how Roger Stone was arrested, suggesting the FBI can't solve Las Vegas. Somehow drawing in the Mueller investigation to that.

JARRETT: Yes. It's apples and oranges. And on that one, it's particularly egregious, because on the Las Vegas issue they actually were very transparent, I think, in explaining, "Look, we don't know a motive here, and that should worry people. We should wonder why this person took such an egregious and heinous crime, and we can't figure out why." But at least they said it and explained.

HILL: Right.

JARRETT: They don't also always provide all that much information about sometimes investigations like that. And the fact that they actually came forward and said here, "We don't know what happened" is actually, you know, an airing of transparency. HILL: I think it's important, to your point, about these are apples

and oranges, because he was asked specifically about resources and about the money, too, being spent in Las Vegas in that investigation and the Mueller investigation.

I mean, just -- just to be really clear here and put a point on it, can you compare the resources and the money on a mass shooting investigation with the special counsel and everything else that's going on over here?

[06:10:08] JARRETT: No.

AVLON: No.

JARRETT: No. They're totally different appropriations, even. Remember, Mueller --

HILL: Right.

JARRETT: -- was allowed to keep going during the shutdown. That money is set aside. It's completely different. It doesn't --

AVLON: Exactly. The only apples-to-apples comparison is previous special counsel investigations or independent counsel investigations.

JARRETT: Exactly.

AVLON: And look, the deadliest mass shooting America, the fact there's no motive is simply a reminder, if nothing else, that evil exists and sometimes you can't put a fingerprint on what spurs somebody.

But -- but the attempt to blur the lines, the fact it's picking up a FOX News talking point -- and we should remind viewers also that Tucker Carlson is the founder of "The Daily Caller." So there's -- you know, there's an invested sense there.

But it's the extent to which the president is still playing to the base. He's in hiding, in effect. He's bunkered up, and he's not -- and that necessarily involves an obligation to duty when your job is, allegedly, to talk and try to unite the American people around a common set of facts.

This president does not to do that. That's effectively been outsourced to other people in the administration.

BERMAN: You know, I will note, again, tying this all together, the Roger Stone thing, Lindsey Graham, who is now the chair of the Senate Judiciary, says he does want to look into how the FBI treated Roger Stone.

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: Graham now an ally of the president.

But look, oversight is the business of Congress. If they want to go ask the questions and have the FBI or Justice tell them, "This is the way it's done," if they'll accept that answer, that might be a worthwhile endeavor in that case.

Margaret, you cover the White House or have covered it for so long. We're now in day six of no public events for President Trump in the wake of a shutdown battle where, you know, he ended up opening the government against his will on Friday. Is there any rhyme or reason as to when the the president disappears from public view?

TALEV: Yes, we've actually been trying to find him ourselves.

But look, I think, certainly, the president is in regroup mood. He's going to be doing the State of the Union address in a couple of days. We are seeing him, but we're seeing him in the way he wants to be seen, which is in a controlled environment through these interviews that are kind of on the terms and the timing that he sets.

So I think what we're seeing is an attempt to kind of reset the narrative away from the critical coverage that he faced during the shutdown.

And one of the real questions is, what's going to happen in a couple of weeks when we hit that February 15 threshold? Are we going see the president, you know -- are we going to see travel? Are we going to see more border wall messaging? And I think a lot of that is what's being worked out behind the scenes right now.

BERMAN: All right. Margaret, Laura, John, thank you all very much.

HILL: Millions of people across America waking up this morning to yet another historic, brutally cold day of temperatures. The polar plunge shattering record lows all over the map. Those numbers are just surreal. Six states in the Midwest with temperatures as cold as the South Pole, and already, we know of ten weather-related deaths.

CNN's Ryan Young is live in Chicago this morning with more.

Ryan, I'm sorry you're there outside again, my friend.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Back at it again. Of course, a day we're not in the confines of the city.

You see this beautiful shot behind us. We are on one of the beaches outside of the city and, of course, you can see just the air coming off of this.

But when you think about just how powerful this storm has been, you're talking about 80 percent of the country below freezing and, like you said, nearly ten people have died because of this winter storm.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

YOUNG (voice-over): A brutal arctic freeze sweeping over nearly a quarter of the country, bringing the coldest air in a generation to parts of the Midwest.

DAVENPORT: It's freezing cold. My face, my toes, everything.

YOUNG: With a low temperature of negative 23 and a wind chill of negative 52, the Windy City's temperatures lower than parts of Antarctica and Alaska, causing giant ice breaks to blanket the river and a wall of ice to form along Lake Michigan across the skyline.

The dangerously cold weather even showing its strength inside.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The steam froze around where the leaks are in my front door.

YOUNG: In Minnesota, a wind chill of 65 below 0. Those ultra- marathoners crossing the finish line with faces completely covered in ice. Police uniforms frozen completely upright to showcase the freezing cold.

Residents in both Minnesota and Michigan asked to turn down their thermostats to conserve natural gas.

Meanwhile, snow squalls ripping through the Northeast, bringing near whiteout conditions and winds of up to 30 miles per hour in New York and Philadelphia.

This time-lapsed video showing the squall blowing through New York City, lake-effect snow causing blizzard-like conditions in upstate New York. Dropping 2 to 3 inches of snow per hour in Buffalo where temperatures dipped to negative 35 below 0.

Near Rochester, a 21-vehicle wreck bringing this highway to a standstill. A snow squall also to blame for this 27-vehicle pileup near Reading, Pennsylvania.

ROBERT STRAUSE, DRIVER: We can't see anything because the snow is being driven perfectly horizontal.

YOUNG: First responders across the country forced to brave the treacherous conditions.

[06:15:03] DEPUTY CHIEF JOHN BUSH, MAHAFFEY COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT: The temperature normally affects the manpower, but also the hose lines freeze up instantly.

YOUNG: Firefighters in Indiana covered in ice as they battled this house fire in negative-22-degree weather.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

YOUNG: Yes, Erica and John, you can really think about those firefighters who are outside and using water and, of course, dealing with the temperatures outside.

Yesterday on the way home, I actually saw some people trying to help some homeless folks get off the street. You think about those -- these brutal temperatures and the idea that people have been sitting out exposed to it for several hours. I can't imagine being stuck outside in this. Of course, we are for short periods of time, but at the end of the day

this cold snap will last, it looks like, a few more hours and even a day for some of the more northern states. Hopefully soon, though, it will start to warm up.

All right. Ryan Young for us on the beach. Ryan, it is decidedly not beach weather. Thank you for us.

All right. How cold will it get and how long will it last? CNN meteorologist Chad Myers with the forecast.

Hey, Chad.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Hi, John.

Pretty much what you see is what you get. It doesn't get a lot colder than this. We begin to come out of this deep freeze. But Chicago breaking a record this morning, daily record of 20 below right now. They actually were down to 21.

Aurora, Illinois, down to 28 degrees below zero, and that's not the wind chill. That's the air temperature trying to freeze you and your pets.

Wind chills right now, you add another -- subtract another 10 degrees from there. Chicago it feels like 36 degrees below 0.

Now, today we warm up a little bit, but Chicago hasn't been above zero since Monday. Wind chill factor 3 below, even for tomorrow morning. So, yes, that's better than 30 below where we are now. And the frigid air does move away.

There's going to be something in your forecast. If you live here, you're going to live -- if you live through there, your ground is so cold -- and your local forecasters are going to miss this, because I've done it -- there's going to be humidity coming up with this mild air. And when that humidity comes and the ground is 4, that humidity is going to freeze to the surface, and there's going to be an ice event that nobody forecasts. So just get ready for it. It will be Friday or Saturday, depending on where you live in that circle that I made.

We go from minus 2 to 38 and rain. Somewhere in there there's going to be a problem. So yes, we're warming up, but there's going to be one ice event. New York City by Tuesday, all the way to 58. Enjoy that.

BERMAN: It's interesting to think of 32 degrees as a heat wave, but that is a huge jump in temperatures.

HILL: Thirty-two is looking really nice right about now.

BERMAN: All right, Chad. Thanks very much.

MYERS: You're welcome. BERMAN: All right. New Democratic candidates jumping in the race,

but where is Beto O'Rourke and what are his plans? He has emerged for a brief on-the-record comment. We will tell you what he said, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:21:27] HILL: The Iowa caucus is almost exactly a year away. One thing, though, is very clear at this point. Medicare-for-all is emerging as a litmus test for Democratic contenders. This, of course, after Senator Kamala Harris revealed her position.

Joining us now, Harry Enten, senior writer and analyst at CNN Politics; Alex Burns, national political correspondent for "The New York Times"; and M.J. Lee, CNN national political correspondent.

What's fascinating is, in everything that we've seen this week, from the Kamala Harris town hall, to what we're hearing from Howard Schultz, to the backlash, to all of it -- I'm most fascinated by the conversations that are happening with real people.

And M.J., I am particularly fascinated by what you overheard sitting at lunch just listening to people. No, but this -- I think there's so much in here.

Listening to people talk about what's actually happening right now in the race for 2020, they're fairly engaged, but they also have some questions.

M.J. LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, the thing I was so fascinated by -- and this was a lunch where I was sitting at a restaurant in Chinatown, and a group of probably six people next to me having a very, very involved discussion about 2020.

And the thing that surprises me every time is how closely people are paying attention. They know the candidates that are up. They know the candidates that are down. They know the candidates that you would assume that most people wouldn't really be able to name, including their title, their background. But they are paying such close attention.

And this group was clearly a group that does not want to see the president reelected, and they had some really interesting thoughts on which people they thought they should get in, which people they thought should not.

Joe Biden's name came up, and there was consensus around the table that his time was up that; didn't really seem like he wanted to get in that. That kind of stood out because, as you said, this is a moment where a lot of Democrats are starting to get in. And I think, as more time passes -- and we've talked about this before -- the questions are being asked, if he hasn't gotten in now, then that probably signals that he may not want this badly enough.

BERMAN: So, Alex, you have a whole article, a whole giant article in "The New York Times" about this notion of the middle lane in the Democratic Party. Will there be moderate Democrats who enter the race as a counterpoint to perhaps Kamala Harris or Bernie Sanders, who's not in yet, or some of the others who are seen as moving the party to the left?

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. There's -- there are a number of candidates. Joe Biden's one of them. Michael Bloomberg is another. There are eight to a dozen other sort of white guys closer to the political center who are thinking about running, right? John Delaney, former congressman from Maryland, wealthy former healthcare executive, already in the race, funding a pretty serious operation in Iowa, actually.

And the question for all of them, even the better known and sort of more obviously formidable candidates is: is there an open lane right now as the other candidates run to the left? Or does that lane not exist anymore? Or is there going to be, like, a nine-car pileup in that lane? Right.

Because if you had just Mike Bloomberg running as the centrist counterpoint to Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders, yes, there's an argument to be made that there's, you know, a third to -- a third to 40 percent of the party that really does want somebody closer to the political center.

But there are clearly fewer centrists in the Democratic Party than there are liberals; and so the more centrists get in, the dicier that proposition gets.

HILL: How do we break this all down by the numbers? Because we also -- we were talking about Beto just before the break.

BERMAN: Well, I have a dramatic reading again.

HILL: Yes.

BERMAN: One, Beto O'Rourke --

HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: We look forward.

BERMAN: Beto went on his road trip. Beto O'Rourke went on his road trip. He's speaking to Oprah next week --

HILL: Yes.

BERMAN: -- in Times Square, which I don't think should be ignored, frankly.

"The Wall Street Journal" did a piece about the fact that people in El Paso say they don't know what he's going to do. And O'Rourke did emerge for an on-the-record comment here.

[06:25:09] He says, "I'm not doing interviews right now. Not ready to speak to reporters until I've made a decision about what's next." OK. So that was on the record.

Harry, you've looked at the numbers. ENTEN: Sure, and I will say presidential candidates, they of course,

don't need press at all; and of course, you know, if you want to run for president, you should keep yourself quiet.

No, look, I think if you look at Beto O'Rourke, you can see that his poll numbers over the last month have, in fact, fallen nationally as he's sort of pulled himself back from the national scene.

And I think this goes to the point that was being said over on this side of the table. That is the more you sort of stay out of the race, the longer you stay out, the more people say, "Eh, maybe not for me."

I think people really are invested in this race right now, and if people want to run, they should run.

Now, you know, Beto will get a huge bump, probably, if he does run. But I do think that voters want to feel like you're in it as much as they are; and they want to feel like you want to defeat the president as much as they are.

BERMAN: Does he fill that middle void to any extent? And I should say, when we talk about the issues here, Medicare-for-all we brought up in the very beginning here, the fact that this is being discussed as much and as widely as it is and debated shows you how much I think Democrats care about this race and care about the issues.

But if there is an appetite for a candidate from the middle, might he fill that in some way?

LEE: He might. The Medicare-for-all example is so interesting, because as much as we talk so much about the Democratic Party having moved a lot on that issue, and it genuinely has, there is still a spectrum, right?

And if you look at it as a policy issue, Medicare-for-all, single payer, is very different from a public option. And a candidate might argue that both count as Medicare-for-all.

But I think the thing that so sort of shocked and surprised a lot of people when Kamala Harris came out at her town hall and straight up said, "Let's just get rid of the insurance companies." I think people were reading into that a lot, because there were people who were skeptical that she was necessarily gung-ho in the Medicare-for-all single payer camp.

And then, when her adviser said the day after, you know, "She's also open to moderation," I think the people who are inclined to be skeptical that she fell in that camp to begin with wanted to read it a different way.

HILL: There's also -- there's also a really important question about messaging. Right? I mean, as Democrats try to figure out who is going to be their best option, who is the best person to put forth their message, this is a message they have to get right, because otherwise, this could very easily become their version of the wall that Mexico was going to pay for. If we don't know what it is, who's going to pay for it and if you can

keep your plan, OK, what are you promising?

BURNS: Well, and the wall is a really interesting comparison. The one I was going to make was the Republican repeal-and-replace slogan.

HILL: Right.

BURNS: That it sounds great, because you could imagine that "replace" is whatever you want it to be, right?

And if you like a public option, if you like, you know, just lowering the Medicare eligibility age, if you like, you know, sort of Obamacare plus, you can imagine that Medicare-for-all means any of those things, right?

But over the course of a long campaign, candidates are going to have to be pretty specific and very articulate about exactly what changes they would make to the healthcare system; and change tends to freak people out.

There is always the Donald Trump option, right, of just promising everything: that you're going to get rid of Obamacare, lower costs, improve service, improve benefits. But, you know, we have seen pretty clearly over time that that has been kind of a trap for the president.

BERMAN: All right. On the subject of promises that don't always bear out, Foxconn, giant technology company, had promised to invest heavily in Wisconsin, bring 13,000 jobs there, build a plant -- blue-collar jobs, in exchange for enormous tax breaks and tax incentives. This is something that Donald Trump, to an extent, took credit for and praised.

Let's just play what the president said when this deal was struck.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Moments ago, we broke ground on a plant that will provide jobs for much more than 13,000 Wisconsin workers.

So I had this incredible company going to invest someplace in the world, not here necessarily, and I will tell you they wouldn't have done it here, except that I became president, so that's good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Well, it doesn't look like Foxconn is doing it here or there, at least not in the way that was originally promised, maybe not 13,000 jobs, certainly not 13,000 blue-collar jobs, Harry. And when you look at this, I know you see it as a number in terms of electoral votes in Wisconsin.

ENTEN: Yes, I see it as -- I mean, look, Donald Trump won the presidency, because he broke through that blue wall in the Midwest: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. If you flip those states over to the Democratic side in 2020, and you add Hillary Clinton states, then you get a majority of electoral votes for the Democrats.

And stuff like this: Donald Trump made promises about bringing back these blue-collar jobs. And if he's not bringing them back, then those Midwestern states may swing just a little bit more than nationally, and you could get a situation where maybe the Democrat wins by two points in the national vote but actually wins the Electoral College this time.

Stuff like this is very damaging to the president. He's the jobs president, and if he can't bring jobs, then what exactly is he doing?

BERMAN: It's interesting. Christine Romans, it's her birthday, by the way. She's not here.

HILL: Happy birthday.

BERMAN: Happy birthday, Romans.

END