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EARLY START

No Movement On Border Wall Talks; Border Battle, Dueling Rallies At Mexico Border; Fairfax Facing Impossible Impeachment; America's Choice 2020; Trump, Executive Time Is A Positive; Governor Walter Jones Dead At 76; Buzzer Beater. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired February 11, 2019 - 04:00   ET

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


[04:00:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DAVE BRIGGS, CNN HOST: Border wall talks break down just four days. The deadline for a new government shutdown.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN HOST: Virginia's governor digs in during his first TV interview still refusing to quit over that racist yearbook picture.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: On this snowy day on this island, we say enough is enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: And the latest Democrat to join the 2020 race uses cold weather to try to get a hot start.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the Grammy goes to Invasion of Privacy, Cardi B.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Rap music and female artists are the big winners at the Grammy's. The 61st Grammy's, quite a star-spangled night. Good morning, everyone and welcome to Early Start. I'm Christine Romans.

BRIGGS: Good morning, I'm Dave Briggs. It was a fantastic Grammy's night. I spent 10 minutes watching a Dolly Parton tribute on the way in, which was fantastic. She is a national treasure.

ROMANS: Love the Dolly.

BRIGGS: It's Monday, February 11th. It is 4:00 a.m. in the East. We will get to the Grammy's in a moment. We start with another shutdown looming with just four days to go. Until government funding runs out, negotiations to avert another partial shutdown have stalled. Friday's optimism among lawmakers, now giving way to deep concern. Sources tells CNN talks broke down over two points. Democrats want a cap on the number of people ICE can hold in detention in the interior of the country. Without the cap they say they won't give in on more spending for border barriers.

CNN's Boris Sanchez has more from the White House.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Dave and Christine, sources familiar with ongoing negotiations between Democrats and Republicans to try to keep the government open past Friday's deadline indicate that there is an impasse in negotiations, specifically over a proposed cap that Democrats brought up that would limit funding for a specific number of beds inside ICE Detention Centers.

Democrats are arguing that that would keep immigration and customs enforcement from detaining too many people, specifically people that are not criminals or felons. Republicans have argued that Democrats are trying to limit the ability of ICE agents do their work.

The president weighed in on this on Twitter several times on Sunday accusing Democrats of acting irrationally and suggesting that congressional leadership on the Democratic side was holding back the Democrats that are actually in the committee negotiating.

Meantime the acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney weighed in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: We cannot definitively rule out a government shutdown at the end of this week?

MICK MULVANEY, ACTING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: You absolutely cannot and here's why.

TODD: OK.

MULVANEY: Let's say for the sake of this discussion that the Democrats prevail and the hardcore left-wing Democrats prevail. It was a Democrat congresswoman who put out a tweet yesterday about zero dollars for DHS. So let's say the hard core left wing of the Democratic Party prevails in this negotiation and they put a bill on the president's desk, what say zero money for the wall or 800 million, some absurdly a low number. How does he sign that? He cannot in good faith sign that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Now, if talks continue to stall, a Democratic aide told CNN that Democrats in the House were prepared to offer up a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security at least through September and keep the federal government open past Friday's deadlines, but it's still unclear if the Republican-led Senate would actually take up that bill. And if they did and passed it, there's no certainty that President Trump would actually sign-off on it. Dave and Christine? BRIGGS: Boris Sanchez there, thank you. Dueling rallies meanwhile at the Mexican border with El Paso. In the national spotlight, President Trump and rising Democratic star Beto O'Rourke, both in the West Texas city tonight. O'Rourke plans to lead a one mile march celebrate in the culture, history, and the diversity of the region.

His speech afterward timed to coincide with the president's rally at the El Paso County Colosseum. Mr. Trump will once again be arguing there is a national security crisis at the border.

On Saturday, dozens of Trump supporters waving American flags and wearing MAGA hats created a human wall at the border to show their support for fencing.

ROMANS: Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is refusing to resign. He tells CBS, Gayle King, he considers stepping down with the racist photo in his medical school yearbook went public. But now he claims he has to stay in office for the good of his state.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RALPH NORTHAM (D), VIRGINIA: Right now, Virginia needs someone that can heal. There's no better person to do that than a doctor. Virginia also needs someone who is strong, who has empathy, who has courage and who has a moral compass. And that is why I'm not going anywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Northam also sparked anger on social media with the comment he made about the first Africans who came to Virginia four centuries ago, a comment that Gayle King felt the need to correct.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[04:05:07] NORTHAM: If you look at Virginia's history we're now at the 400-year anniversary. Just 90 miles from here in 1619 the first indentured servants from Africa landed on our shores and O-Point Comfort what we call now Fort Monroe and while --

GAYLE KING, CBS NEWS HOST: Also known as slavery.

NORTHAM: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: You hear Northam there as he indentured servants. Pardon me. Northam says his Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax must resign if sexual assault allegations against him prove to be true.

Today, Virginia delegate, Patrick Hope, plans to introduce articles of impeachment against Fairfax. If the resolution passes the House, the Senate will conduct a trial that could lead to his removal. Fairfax claims his interactions with two female accusers where consensual. He's calling on the FBI to thoroughly investigate the women's claims. ROMANS: Two new candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination

declared over the weekend, Senator Amy Klobuchar, launching her bid in the teeth of a Minnesota blizzard. The Minnesota Democrats highlighting her working class personal stories, the daughter of a teacher and the newspaper man, and vowed to, quote, heal the heart of our democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KLOBUCHAR: I am running for every American. I am running for you. And I promise you this, as your president, I will look you in the eye. I will tell you what I think. I will focus on getting things done. That's what I've done my whole life, and no matter what, I'll lead from the heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: During and after her speech Klobuchar appointment to the rally and a heavy snowstorm as a measure of what she called her grit. She promised to take on issues including money and politics and climate change getting President Trump an opening to tweet mock her campaign launch.

He wrote, "talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard, bad timing. By the end, she looked like a snow woman." Klobuchar did not let the insult pass. She tweeted back, "science is on my side, Donald Trump, and I wonder how your hair would fair in a blizzard."

BRIGGS: OK. Elizabeth Warren also kicked off her campaign over the weekend. In Iowa, Sunday, on her first full day of campaigning, the Massachusetts Senator said that by Election Day next year President Trump may be in jail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, (D), MASSACHUSETTS: By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be president. In fact, he may not even be a free person.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you expand on that a bit more?

WARREN: Oh, come on, how many investigations are there now into him? It's no longer just the Mueller investigation. They're everywhere, and these our serious investigations. So we'll see what happens.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Warren said that every day the president posts what she called a racist tweet, hateful tweets, something really dark and ugly. It was a notable shift for Warren who until recently was reluctant to take on the president on by name, but she said candidates, activist and the media should avoid the trap of engaging with the president and everything he does.

ROMANS: All right. It is tax season and early filers are starting to see smaller refunds. According to the IRS, the average refund is down about 8 percent under the first full year of the overhaul tax code. Refunds averaged $1,865 that compares with $2,035 for the tax year 2017.

Filing season opened days after the government shutdown. The Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said Friday we think the Treasury and IRS employees who have been working diligently to ensure the system is processing these returns efficiently.

The new tax code lowered most individual rates and nearly doubled the standard deduction. Some workers saw a bump in their take-home pay after employers started using the new IRS income tax withholding tables. Experts had said people could see smaller refunds and expected if they didn't ingest their paycheck withholdings after the changes took effect.

Others could see their tax burden increase because the revised code eliminated some popular deduction, especially if you live in the northeast, you will see big changes, if you live in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, places like that.

BRIGGS: Just a brutal kick in the teeth for a lot of Americans.

Ahead, the lawyer for the boss at the National Enquirer fires back at Amazon's Jeff Bezos in allegations of extortion.

ROMANS: Well, President Trump wants you to know about his workday and executive time

[04:10:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: President Trump wants everyone to know executive time is not downtime. He's responding to last week's Axios report that featured leak copies of his private schedule.

BRIGGS: It found roughly 60 percent of the president's stay was unstructured executive time. The president putting his own unique spin on it, tweeting, "the media was able to get my work schedule, something very easy to do, but it should have been reported as a positive, not negative. When the term executive time is used I am generally working, not relaxing. In fact, I probably work more hours than almost any past president."

ROMANS: Right after that tweet, Axios obtained the president's schedule from four days last week. Fifty percent of it was unstructured executive time. Here's acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney explaining why that is good.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MULVANEY: That executive time on there is to allow the president to prep for the next meeting, to debrief from the previous meeting. The phone calls start at 6:30 in the morning and they go until 11 o'clock at night. So I can assure that the gentleman is working more than what's on that calendar.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Mulvaney went onto say the administration is close to identifying the person who leaked the president's schedules with a possible resolution this week.

BRIGGS: The lawyer for the National Enquirer CEO denies the tabloid extorted amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos.

[04:15:03] In his blog entries for the website Medium, Bezos posted e- mails from a lawyer for AMI which owns the Enquirer. The lawyers say Bezos should say publicly he had no evidence that Enquirer coverage it's politically motivated. AMI Chief Executive. David Pecker, is a confidant of President Trump.

In return, the AMI lawyer said the Enquirer would not publish lewd pictures and text to and from Bezos in its possession. Bezos called that blackmail and extortion. On Sunday, speaking on ABC's this week, Pecker's attorney rejected the extortion claim and the so-called Saudi angle advanced by Bezos.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELKAN ABRAMOWITZ, ATTORNYE FOR AMI CEO DAVID PECKER: It absolutely is not extortion and not blackmail. What happened was the story was given to the National Enquirer by a reliable source that had given information to the National Enquirer for seven years prior to this story. It was a source that was well-known to both Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sanchez.

That is not extortion because all of AMI wanted was the truth. Bezos and Ms. Sanchez knew who the source was. Any investigator that was going to investigate this knew who the source was. It was not the White House. It was not Saudi Arabia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Pecker's attorney said he could not confirm or deny if Sanchez' brother was the tipster who provided the texts and photos. After the Enquirer asked Bezos for comments last month about his alleged affair with Sanchez, Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, announced they were divorcing.

ROMANS: All right. Amazon maybe having second thoughts about opening a new campus in the shadow of Manhattan. According to the Washington Post, Amazon executives are considering alternatives after a backlash from some New York politicians and from residents of Long Island City where HQ2 was supposed to be built.

In November, the company's elected New York and Northern Virginia to share duties as second headquarters. The New York Times reports Amazon officials are frustrated by the cold reception, but no decision has been made to back out.

BRIGGS: Republican Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina has died. The statement on the congressman's website confirming his death yesterday saying after faithfully representing the people of East and North Carolina in Congress in the state legislator for over 34 years, Jones passed way. His office says he was placed in hospice when his health declined after breaking a hip last month. Jones died on his 76th birthday according to "The Washington Post."

ROMANS: All right in Denver, thousands of public schoolteachers are set to walk off the job today. Negotiators for the Teachers Union in Denver schools met for six hours on Saturday, after which union leaders announced they would go through with the strike as planned.

The two sides have been negotiating for 14 months on how to improve the current pay scale for teachers which the Union says is tied to their city's teacher's turnover rate.

BRIGGS: Seattle is still digging out after one of the heaviest snowstorms to hit the city in decades. Now, there is more snow on the way. The National Weather Service says Seattle could get another six to eight inches by Tuesday. It is already the snowiest February on record in Seattle with more than 14 inches of snow falling. The Sea- Tac Airport has seen more snow fall over the past week than it typically does for an entire winter.

ROMANS: Wow.

BRIGGS: Meanwhile, we here out east can't get a lick of snow, just rain.

ROMANS: I know. I know.

All right. A basketball player shot launched in desperation, launches his team to a last second victory, next.

[04:20:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIGGS: Music's biggest night was a big one for rap music, the genre that has often been shunned by the Grammy awards.

Cardi B. making history at the 61st Grammys Sunday becoming the first solo woman to win best rap album for her debut record, "Invasion of Privacy." Childish Gambino, who did not attend the show, won four awards including song and record of the year for "This is America." It's the first rap song ever to win those honors at the Grammy's.

ROMANS: It was also a golden night for country star, Kacey Musgraves. She took home a total of four Grammy's including the top prize, album of the year for Golden Hour.

Lady Gaga won three Grammy's including two for her smash duo Shallow with Bradley Cooper and that movie is "A Star is Born." It's so fascinating we see --

BRIGGS: Great movie. No Bradley Cooper though last night.

ROMANS: And you know, there was a surprise appearance by former first lady Michelle Obama to help open the awards show. It seemed fitting on a Grammy night that celebrated diversity and women.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE U.S.: Music shows us that all of it matters, every story, within every voice, every note within every song.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: She later tweeted that she was thrilled to help celebrate the unifying power of music. And you say the crowd went so crazy for her that she could almost like not finish her speech.

BRIGGS: She started her speech, the crowd went so nuts that she had to wait a good 10 or 12 seconds. They were overcome with emotion to see and to hear her. She had to step back. It was a great night for music last night.

[04:25:06] OK, Lindsey Buckingham, the former Fleetwood Mac singer and guitarist recuperating at home after emergency heart surgery resulted in damaged to his vocal cords. Buckingham wrote and sang from the Fleetwood Mac most well-known songs including "That one, go your own way."

Last year he was kicked out of the band during their world tour without any formal explanation. He is now suing his former bandmates for millions and lost earnings. Buckingham's wife, in a social media post says it is unclear at this point if the vocal cord damage is permanent.

ROMANS: A few athletes have had as many ups and down in their careers as an American skier Lindsey Vonn. On Sunday, just days after clashing in the Super G, she took the bronze medal in the downhill on the World Championships in Sweden, in what was the final race of her illustrious career.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LINDSEY VONN, AMERICAN SKIER: I wanted to end my career on a high note. I didn't want to crash, but I also wanted to risk everything, so it was just hard for me to manage those emotions, but I kept it together, and I did well enough for a bronze, so it was an amazing day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Congratulations to her. Lindsey Vonn, took part in four Olympic Games and won three Olympic medals. She retires as the winningest female alpine skier of all time. Go, Lindsey.

BRIGGS: A legend and a warrior. All right. It's already being called the miracle in Missouri. In case you missed it, take a look the Missouri State Bears, trailing by two, under eight seconds to play. Illinois State just has to inbound the ball, but it's intercepted. There's a mad scramble for the ball at center court, and then this happens.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Loose ball. Time running down, Dixon in desperation.

(END VIDEO CLIP

BRIGGS: Oh, that happened.

ROMANS: Best day of his life.

BRIGGS: You see Jared Dixon backing home the three-pointer from midcourt for the win. After the game, he said as soon as he let it go he knew it had a chance. Just gets you fired up for March madness, 36 days away. Put you in the edge of the tournament. That is brilliant. Good start.

ROMANS: All right, well that is fun. This isn't. Shutdown talks now stalled. Just days before the deadline President Trump heads to the border to rally for his wall. The latest on the negotiations and the sticking points next.

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