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EARLY START

Trump Hints He'll Declare National Emergency to Fund Border Wall; Trump Says He's on Same Page as His Intelligence Chiefs; Interview with Former NFL MVP Von Miller. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired February 1, 2019 - 04:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[04:00:19] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I've set the stage for doing what I'm going to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: "I've set the stage." President Trump fed up with negotiations on border security. He hints he'll declare a national emergency.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Those suspicions that Donald Trump, Jr. called his dad after the infamous Trump Tower meeting were wrong. The blocked number Don, Jr. called was not his father.

BRIGGS: One more day of brutal cold today before a weekend warm-up, relatively speaking.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM BRADY, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS QUARTERBACK: After football, I'm going to play baseball. And after baseball, I'm going to play Hamlet. Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(LAUGHTER)

ROMANS: Oh, yes, it's almost time to play football. Excitement building ahead of Super Bowl LIII on Sunday. And guess who is there? Dave Briggs is there.

Is there anything Tom Brady can't do?

Good morning. It's Friday, February 1st. 4:00 a.m. in the East. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.

BRIGGS: And you are a bit under the weather, my friend.

ROMANS: Cold.

BRIGGS: Thanks for being in. I'm Dave Briggs live down here in Atlanta for Super Bowl LIII just outside this beautiful Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Right now it's time to head home for folks in Atlanta because during Super Bowl week they allow the bars to stay two extra hours until 4:00 a.m.

The Rams and Patriots hopefully getting a good night's rest, though. This is very new routine for most L.A. players. Only four have any Super Bowl experience. The Patriots, however, this is old hat here for the fourth time in five years. Third straight year. And for Tom Brady, a mind boggling ninth Super Bowl. And as you saw there, something he's never been asked to do before. His best Hamlet is coming up. Is it bad? That is the question.

I also spoke with Super Bowl L MVP Von Miller of the Denver Broncos about how to get to Tom Brady. He had to go through the GOAT to get his Lombardi Trophy. What are we doing there? Practicing Von Miller's new sack dance. He is the master of the sack dance. I'm suggesting a little Fortnite because he is a Fortnite player. I cannot dance. Hopefully he took no lessons from me.

Should be a great game and a fantastic weekend ahead leading up to our CNN Super Bowl special. That's at 2:30 on Saturday. We'll get more into that in just a bit. You can see Hines Ward, another Super Bowl MVP, as well as Coy Wire.

For you, back to you in New York.

ROMANS: Love it. Love you that you're taking the elevator. Very well done on the Fortnite dances, Dave. Apparently hours of that have been played in your household, too.

BRIGGS: Yes.

ROMANS: All right. We'll talk to you in just --

(LAUGHTER)

ROMANS: In just a minute. Thanks, Dave.

BRIGGS: OK.

ROMANS: President Trump apparently fed up with congressional talks on border security that have hardly begun. The president on Thursday called the bipartisan negotiations to avoid another shutdown a, quote, "waste of time." And he strongly hinted he will simply bypass them to fund his border wall.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I think I've set the table very nicely. I have set the stage for doing what I'm going to do.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And you'll wait out the 21 days before you take any action?

TRUMP: Yes, I'm going to wait until the 15th. I think it's a waste of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ROMANS: The president would not directly say he plans to declare a national emergency at the southern border, but he said he is, quote, "not concerned by possible legal challenges." The president also suggested he will no longer work with Nancy Pelosi, accusing the Democratic House speaker of doing a tremendous disservice to the country.

Pelosi seems only slightly less dug in. She again declared the House will not put up any wall money but expressed openness to some kind of physical barrier. She was asked about enhanced fencing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), HOUSE SPEAKER: If the president wants to call that a wall, he can call it a wall. He is referencing that we already have almost 700 miles of wall. So again, is there a place for enhanced fencing? Normandy fencing would work. Let them have that discussion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: That Normandy fencing you see there, those vehicle barriers. A stopgap government funding runs out in two weeks. The House and Senate would have to vote on any deal, so that gives negotiators until February 8th or we will see a shutdown part two -- Dave.

BRIGGS: Oh boy. Also a significant development in the Russian probe involving Donald Trump, Jr. Those mysterious phone calls made by the president's son before and after his 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russians were in fact not to his father. Three sources tell CNN records provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee show they were made to two of Don Jr.'s business associates.

That would contradict suspicions by some Democrats that the blocked number at the other end of those calls belonged to then candidate Donald Trump.

[04:05:07] Investigators have been trying to determine whether Mr. Trump had advanced knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting.

ROMANS: The president also addressed the Russia probe in his "New York Times" interview. He claims he never discussed WikiLeaks with Roger Stone. Stone is charged with lying to Congress about communications with WikiLeaks and coordinating with Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks plans to release hacked e-mails.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Did you ever talk to him about WikiLeaks? Because that seemed to be what --

TRUMP: No. No. I didn't. I never did.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Did you ever tell him or other people to get in touch with them?

TRUMP: Never did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: The president also says Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has assured his lawyers the president is not a subject or a target of the Mueller investigation, but he could not say the same about the federal prosecutor in New York City where Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to paying off two women for their silence during the 2016 campaign.

BRIGGS: After publicly ridiculing his top intelligence chief, the president now insisting he is on the same page with all of them. On Tuesday the director of National Intelligence and other top security officials directly contradicted Mr. Trump on the threats of North Korea, Russia, ISIS and other things. So the president insulted them, calling them naive, telling them to go back to school. He was asked about that on Thursday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you still have confidence in Gina Haspel and Dan Coats to give you good advice?

TRUMP: No, I disagree with certain things that they said. I think I'm right. But time will prove that. Time will prove me right probably.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Despite their disagreements, the president did get his intel briefing yesterday from Coats and Haspel. Then he changed his tune, made this startling claim.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: He has said that they were totally misquoted and they were totally -- it was taken out of context. So what I do is I'd suggest that you call them. They said it was fake news.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Or you can just watch the testimony yourself and read the transcripts. Let's be very clear. The president's intel chiefs were not misquoted. Their entire testimony was public. Judge for yourself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We have won against ISIS. We've beaten them and we've beaten them badly.

DAN COATS, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR: ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ROMANS: There are half a dozen examples exactly like that. A source tells CNN Coats and Haspel are not in jeopardy of losing their jobs and aides were able to calm the president down by assuring him the full transcript of their testimony adds more context to their remarks.

BRIGGS: Members of one of America's richest families reaped in more than $4 billion in profits while their company sold both opioids and drugs to treat opioid addiction. A newly unredacted lawsuit says the giant drug maker Purdue Pharma secretly pursued a plan it called "Project Tango." The suit says Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family, pushed the pain killer OxyContin on doctors and patients.

It claimed for more than a decade they publicly denied what they privately knew, the highly addictive drug was leading to overdoses and deaths. A Purdue spokesman says the release of the unredacted complaint was aimed at singling out the company to, quote, "blame it for the entire opioid crisis." In 2017, the U.S. saw more than 47,000 deaths linked to opioids.

ROMANS: All right. Wall Street had the worst December since the Great Depression, but it was a different story for January. The S&P 500 and the Dow both up more than 7 percent in January. That's the biggest gain since January 1987 and 1989 respectively. Think leg warmers.

Stocks have been on the rise recently. Why? A combination of strong corporate earnings, continued optimism about the economy and a shift in the Federal Reserve's plans for interest rates for this year.

Today investors will be paying attention to see how the government shutdown affected the January jobs report. Economists polled by Refinitiv estimate employers added 165,000 jobs last month, a drop from the average of 220,000 jobs per month over the past year.

BRIGGS: OK. We're almost out of the deep freeze. Almost. The one that has gripped the upper Midwest, the Great Lakes out to the mid- Atlantic and the northeast. At least 16 deaths have been attributed to the cold and winter storms in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Indiana. In Chicago, one hospital has seen nearly 50 frostbite cases along with other injuries like burns and smoke inhalation from space heaters or where people moved grills indoors for warmth.

Here is another sign of how cold it was.

Wow. Michigan State police say this light post quivered and shook all by itself in a snow covered parking lot. Incredible.

[04:10:07] And this is what a firefighter looks like after battling a blaze in a windchill of 50 below.

ROMANS: Nearly 7,000 flights canceled in total this week. There is just one more day of bitter cold ahead, folks, before the desperately needed warm-up begins.

For more on that, meteorologist Ivan Cabrera is in the CNN Weather Center.

A warm-up coming but, boy, that's cold comfort literally for people who have another day to get through here.

IVAN CABRERA, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, no question about it, Christine. Not just that we're going to warm up, it's going to be a big warm-up here. In fact just amazing. We may have to break the shorts out. Temperatures on Thursday morning, we had 40 record lows and that is just half the story. The problem is the record lows were unprecedented. We haven't seen this in quite some time. We've seen them before, but my goodness, it has been well below normal.

We're going to go from that to 70 plus morning lows that are going to be warmer than average. In fact records. So we're going to jump a good 70 degrees from the morning lows that we've had in places like Chicago to the daytime highs coming up in the next couple of days. But as Christine mentioned, we have one more day, here it is, where temperatures still, as you wake up this morning, across the Midwest.

The wind is still hitting you. It is still feeling like anywhere from five to 15 to 20 below. But it's an improvement from where we've been and we'll continue with these windchill advisories and windchill warnings, 10 to 30 below.

How about this? A little bit of snow as well. This is not going to accumulate. Anywhere from one to three inches. But just keep in mind that's going to happen today where you see the purple here, anyone from one to three inches. Not a huge deal. The story is going to be again the warm-up.

Look at these temperatures here over the next few days. We're looking at teens and 20s today. That's already an improvement but we'll do even better than that especially in parts like Chicago, all this warm air is just going to continue to push up to the north and we're going to get even rid of the cold. Temperatures will actually be above average for this time of year.

So we went from the coldest since 1994, that was minus 23 Wednesday morning, to 50. I mean you've had news anchors growing beards because it's been so cold, now we're going to break out shorts I think by the time we get into Monday with temps in the 50s. That cannot happen soon enough. And we won't have to wait much longer -- Christine.

ROMANS: That's just amazing. All right. Ivan, thank you so much.

CABRERA: You bet.

ROMANS: Dave, amazing. I mean, really good luck I guess that they weren't having the Super Bowl in Minneapolis this year, right?

BRIGGS: Yes, I can't imagine. They would have had to cancel events, keep people inside. The NFL definitely lucked out.

What is Ivan talking about news anchors growing beards?

ROMANS: I don't know. BRIGGS: That's just madness. All right, we --

ROMANS: I don't know any news anchors who are growing beards.

BRIGGS: We will talk about the Super Bowl when we come back. How should the Los Angeles Rams attack Tom Brady in this Super Bowl? Well, I asked the guy who would know, a former Super Bowl MVP pass rusher Von Miller of the Broncos.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: How do you get to Tom Brady? How do you do it?

VON MILLER, LINEBACKER, DENVER BRONCOS, MVP, SUPER BOWL L: You've got to be relentless.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: More of that, plus who Miller thinks will win the big game on Sunday.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:17:08] BRIGGS: All right. Just outside of beautiful Mercedes- Benz Stadium here in Atlanta for Super Bowl LIII between the Rams and Patriots. Should be an outstanding match-up. I'm Dave Briggs here in Atlanta. Christine Romans in New York. We'll get back to her shortly.

The big question ahead of this game for the Los Angeles games really is how do you put pressure on the quarterback, Tom Brady. How do you sack them. If you can't do it, you can't beat him. It's not easily done. He's been sacked zero times this post-season despite throwing the ball 90 times and have been sacked five times in his last eight games.

One guy who knows how to do it is former Super Bowl MVP Von Miller of the Denver Broncos. He has sacked Brady 2 1/2 times in the championship game before they won their Lombardi Trophy over the Panthers.

I talked to Von about that and the big game last night.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIGGS: How do you get to Tom Brady? How do you do it?

MILLER: You've just got to be relentless. And, you know, as a pass rusher, you know, we kind of pick and choose our rushes to rush and, you know, kind of look at the formation and the situation. And, you know, kind of look at it and say, this is the rush where we need the rush. This is Tom. And you can't really do that with Tom Brady.

Every single play has got to be balls out. Every single play, you've got to play like it's your last one. You never know when the opportunity will represent itself. And if you play like that, you'll be ready to go.

BRIGGS: He's 40 plus years old. Why is it hard to get to that dude?

MILLER: Forty years old has nothing to do with their emotion, it had nothing to do with vision, has nothing to do with putting a spin and drop on the ball. You know, it has nothing to do with mental toughness. So he's a master at all of those things and, you know, he still has a lot of football left.

BRIGGS: What did you make of all the Tom Brady hater nation out there? And the Patriots haters?

MILLER: It's just purely hate. That's all it could be. You know, it's just purely hate. Sometimes we don't like success. You know. Sometimes people don't like winners. And they have definitely had a lot of wins and a lot of success. And that's how many is. Sometimes people just don't like that.

You know, for me, I'm inspired by that and if I could take anything from, you know, the Patriots' story and what they've been able to do up in Foxborough, I'm going to take it and try to apply to my teammates and what we're doing in Dove Valley.

BRIGGS: So who wins this game and why?

MILLER: I'm going with the Rams solely based off of relationship with the guys. Like I said at the beginning of the interview, I love Aqib Talib, you know, Aaron Donald, Todd Gurley, CJ Anderson. You know, all of those guys. And I know the type of happiness and how life changing a Super Bowl win can be and I want those guys to experience that again.

BRIGGS: That's not exactly hardcore Von Miller analysis. That's because you love these guys.

MILLER: Yes.

BRIGGS: Your heart says that. Your head says what?

MILLER: I mean sometimes you got to play football with your heart. You know, sometimes you got to make decisions on the --

(CROSSTALK)

BRIGGS: Yes, but your own prediction is based on your heart.

MILLER: Yes, it is.

BRIGGS: Not on your head. Do you think in your head they can beat Brady and Belichick?

MILLER: In my head I think they have a huge chance to win this game.

[04:20:05] But the Patriots have Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and all these guys. But the Rams have talented players as well. So in my heart I'm thinking Rams and in my head I'm still thinking Rams. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BRIGGS: In his head and in his heart he's thinking it's an upset. The Patriots at 2 1/2 point favorite.

Von Miller talked about his love of Fortnite which is one of the things Roger Goodell actually cited in his State of the League address but that's one of the big growth areas they've noticed. They have a partnership with Fortnite where they have NFL jerseys in the game. Their most high profiled player Ninja is actually in an NFL commercials. So it's a really interest thing that you see develop here, down here in Atlanta.

More from the Super Bowl ahead. But next, a prison hostage drama caught on surveillance video. How one librarian made it out alive after being held by an inmate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:25:22] ROMANS: Welcome back. Sources tell CNN the second summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is set to take place in Da Nang, Vietnam near the end of this month. Now the State Department's top envoy to North Korea, Steve Biegun, says that the U.S. will not withdraw troops from South Korea as a concession to Kim, a step some worry the president might take.

During their meeting last June in Singapore, Kim Jong-un vowed to work toward denuclearization, but negotiations on that front appear to have stalled -- Dave.

BRIGGS: An intense prison hostage drama all caught on surveillance video. Maximum custody inmate Timothy Monk using a prison made blade to take a male librarian hostage. This happened last month at Buckeye Prison in Tucson, Arizona.

Wow. After a two-hour standoff, heavily armed corrections officers stormed the library using a stun grenade, pepper balls and bean bags. The librarian made it out safely. Monk, already serving 97 years for armed robbery, sexual assault and kidnapping, is now facing an extension of that sentence.

Coming up, more of our Super Bowl preview of Super Bowl LIII between the Patriots and Rams live from Atlanta. Plus the president suggesting he is ready to declare a national emergency to fund the border wall. Talks in Congress he says are a waste of time.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)