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EARLY START

Capitol Hill Talks Break Down Over Wall Funding; Democrats Want ICE to Prioritize Detention of Criminal Migrants; Acting White House Chief of Staff Cites Trump Could not Sign a Bill with "Absurdly Low" Wall Funding; President Trump and Beto O'Rourke to Appear in El Paso; Estranged Virginia Governor Says State "Needs Someone that can Heal"; Virginia Governor Northam Refers to Slaves as "Indentured Servants"; Lieutenant Governor Fairfax Faces Possible Impeachment; Amy Klobuchar Announces White House Bid; Elizabeth Warren Takes Trump on During First Full Day on Campaign Trail; Americans' Average Tax Refund is Down Under New Tax Code; President Trump Claims He Works More Hours than "Almost Any Past President"; Pecker's Attorney Rejects Saudi Angle in Bezos' Blog Post; Cardi B, Kacey Musgraves and Childish Gambino Win Big at the Grammys; Lindsey Vonn Wins Bronze in Final Race of Her Career; Pebble Beach's Final Round Delayed By Hail; Missouri State Wins on Half-Court Buzzer Beater; Westminster Dog Show Opens with Agility Contest. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired February 11, 2019 - 05:00   ET

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


[05:00:00] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CO-HOST, EARLY START: Border wall talks breaks down just four days from the deadline for a new government shutdown.

DAVE BRIGGS, CO-HOST, EARLY START: Virginia's Governor digs into his first TV interview, still refusing to quit over that racist yearbook photo.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), MINNESOTA: On this snowy day, on this island, we say enough is enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: The latest Democrat to join the 2020 race uses cold weather to try to get -- try to get a hot start.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Rap music and female artists are the big winners at the Grammys. Drake showed up for the first time since 2013 in regards to Cardi B. And he wins an award, and then he says, you don't need these awards. In effect, saying, these performances don't mean anything. What it means is the fans and how you're received. It was a great

night for the Grammys. Good morning everyone, welcome to EARLY START, I'm Dave Briggs --

ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans, it is Monday, February 11th, it is 5:00 a.m. in the East. Let's begin in Washington with just four days to go until government funding runs out, negotiations to avert another partial shutdown installed.

In fact, there's optimism among lawmakers now giving way to the concern. Sources tell Cnn talks broke down over two points, Democrats want to 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 WHITE HOUSE 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 to 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)

MICK MULVANEY, ACTING CHIEF OF STAFF: We cannot definitively rule out a government shutdown at the end of this week? You absolutely cannot and here's why?

CHUCK TODD, MODERATOR, MEET THE PRESS: OK.

MULVANEY: Let's say for the sake of this discussion, that the Democrats prevail and at the heart of the left-wing Democrats prevail. There was a Democrat Congresswoman who put out a tweet yesterday about $0 for DHS. So let's say that the hardcore left-wing of the Democrat Party prevails in this negotiation and they put a bill on the president's desk with say zero money for the wall, 800 million, some absurdly 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 deadline.

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: Oh, boy sounds like another shutdown is possible. Boris, thanks. 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, celebrating the culture, history and diversity of the region. His speech afterward time to coincide with the president's rally at the El Paso County Coliseum. Mr. Trump once again be arguing there's a national security crisis at our southern 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 considered stepping down when a 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's why I'm not going anywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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 Old Point Comfort, what we call now Fort Monroe. And while --

[05:05:00] GAYLE KING, CBS: Also known as slavery.

NORTHAM: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: That got a lot of attention because indentured servants was a very specific thing, mostly people from --

BRIGGS: Yes --

ROMANS: England who in exchange for passage to get to the new world and room and board would work four to seven years and then gain their freedom. Slavery was slaves. Those 20 people from Angola were stolen and brought to this country as slaves --

BRIGGS: Not indentured servants --

ROMANS: A very big difference.

BRIGGS: Yes --

ROMANS: So you're talking about the soul searching in the state about its 400-year history founded on slavery, and he calls it indentured servitude. That was something that got a lot of attention.

BRIGGS: Not clear if he's helping or harming his case. Northam also says his lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax must resign if sexual assault allegations against him prove to be true. Today, Virginia delicate 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 the two female accusers were 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 blizzard. The Minnesota Democrat highlighting her working class personal story as the daughter of a teacher and a newspaper man. She vowed to quote, "heal the heart of our democracy."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KLOBUCHAR: I am running for every American.

(CHEERS)

I am running for you.

(CHEERS)

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.

(CHEERS)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: During and after her speech, Klobuchar pointed to the rally in a heavy snowstorm as a measure of her toughness and determination.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KLOBUCHAR: What makes me unique is I did this announcement speech in

the middle of a blizzard, and then I think we need people with grit. I have that grit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: She promised to take on issues including money in politics and climate change, and that gave President Trump an opening to tweet mock her campaign launch. He wrote this, "talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard. Bad timing. By the end, she looked like a snow woman."

She did not let the insult pass, she tweeted back, "science is on my side, Donald Trump, and I wonder how your hair would fare in a blizzard."

BRIGGS: All right. Elizabeth Warren also kicked off her campaign in Massachusetts 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.

(APPLAUSE)

In fact, he may not even be a free person.

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

WARREN: Well, come on, how many investigations are there now into him? It's no longer just the Mueller investigation, they're everywhere.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

WARREN: And these are serious investigations. So we'll see what happens.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He could be longer --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

ROMANS: All right, it is taxes, and an early fire alert are starting to get their refunds and they're a little bit smaller. According to the IRS, the average refund is down about 8 percent under the first full year of this overhauled tax code. Refunds averaging $1,865 that compares to just a little over $2,000 for the tax year 2017.

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

Now, the new tax code lowered most individual rates and nearly doubled the standard deduction. Some workers saw a bump in their take-home pay during the year after employers started using the new IRS income tax withholding tables.

Experts have said people could see smaller refunds than expected if they didn't adjust their paycheck withholdings after the changes took effect. Essentially, you got the money during the year, not in the refund now. Others could see their tax burden increase because of revised code eliminates a lot of popular deductions.

If you live in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, maybe Illinois --

BRIGGS: Illinois --

ROMANS: You're going to see this could be a really interesting year --

BRIGGS: California too if --

ROMANS: Yes, and you know, I think that it could --

BRIGGS: Yes --

[05:10:00] ROMANS: It could affect the real estate markets in a lot of those places because if you can't write off all of those states and local tax deductions, and all of those deductions in the high cost home ownership states, there's going to be a period of adjustment here.

BRIGGS: Sounds like a 2020 issue. Ahead, the lawyer for the boss of the "National Enquirer" firing back at Amazon's Jeff Bezos' allegations of extortion.

ROMANS: And what President Trump wants you to know about his workday and his executive time.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIGGS: President Trump wants everyone to know executive time is not down time. He's responding to last week's "Axios" report that featured leaked copies of his private schedule. It found roughly 60 percent of the presidents' day 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. The term executive time is used I am generally working, not relaxing. [05:15:00] In fact, I probably work more hours than almost any president." Right after that tweet, "Axios" obtained the president's schedules from four days last week, 50 percent of it was unstructured executive time. Here's acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney explaining why that's good.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MULVANEY: That executive time is on there 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 11:00 at night, so I can assure you that, the gentleman is working more than what's on that calendar.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Mulvaney said the administration is close to identifying the person who leaked the president's schedules with a possible resolution this week. The lawyer for the "National Enquirer's" CEO denies the tabloid extorted Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos.

In his blog entry for the website medium, Bezos posted e-mails from the lawyer for "AMI" which owns the "Enquirer". The lawyer says Bezos should say publicly, he had no evidence that "Enquirer" coverage is politically motivated. "AMI" Chief Executive David Pecker is a confidant of President Trump.

In return, "AMI" lawyer said the "Enquirer" would not publish nude pictures and texts to and from Bezos in his 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, ATTORNEY FOR 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 Miss Sanchez.

That is not extortion because all that "AMI" wanted was the truth. Bezos and Miss 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's brother was the tipster who provided the text and photos after the "Enquirer" asked Bezos for comment last month about his alleged affair with Sanchez, Bezos and his wife MacKenzie announced they were divorcing.

ROMANS: All right, music's biggest night was a big one for rap music. Cardi B making history at the Grammys Sunday becoming the first solo

woman to win best rap album for "Invasion of Privacy".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Childish Gambino, who did not attend the show with four awards there including Song of the Year -- a Song and Record of the Year for "This is America".

It's the first rap song ever to win those honors.

BRIGGS: It was also a golden night for star Kacey Musgraves.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: She took home four Grammys including Album of the year for Golden Hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Lady Gaga won three Grammys including two for Shallow from the movie "A Star is Born", no Bradley Cooper who is at the Baftas in London. There was a surprise appearance by former first lady Michelle Obama.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY: Those songs that fueled me through -- from the Motown Records, I Walk on the Southside --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: She couldn't get through with the applause, made her pause. For a good 10 seconds or so, Mrs. Obama later tweeted that she was thrilled to help celebrate the unifying power of music. They were shocked to see her --

ROMANS: They loved her --

BRIGGS: Overwhelmed by it. One of the best moments of the night was Dolly Parton, 73 years young, they had a tribute to her -- Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Kacey Musgraves, a good 10 artists on stage --

ROMANS: Yes -- BRIGGS: Sing Nine to Five. She is a treasure, is she not?

ROMANS: You know what? I interviewed her, I spent some time on a tour with her in 2017 --

BRIGGS: Yes --

ROMANS: And it was probably the best eight hours of my work life.

BRIGGS: I bet.

ROMANS: And she is -- she works harder than anybody in this building. I mean, she is a hard worker.

BRIGGS: Nine to five, you mean?

(LAUGHTER)

ROMANS: She works hard, and she is classy and dedicated, smart, just really love her, I can't say enough good things about her.

BRIGGS: Maybe she can sing 2 to 10 for us, 2:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. --

ROMANS: Really?

BRIGGS: All work hour, ahead --

ROMANS: She watches early by the way, she's an early bird, she gets up at 4:00 a.m., and she has -- and she watches our show, so she's --

BRIGGS: Hi, Dolly!

(LAUGHTER)

The winningest female skier in history, another national treasure, calling it a career. Andy Scholes with Lindsey Vonn's final race next in the "BLEACHER REPORT".

[05:20:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIGGS: One of the greatest skiers ever, calling it a career over the weekend. Lindsey Vonn going out on top with yet another medal. Andy Scholes here with the "BLEACHER REPORT". She is a legend, my friend, good morning.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS REPORTER: Certainly a legend, Dave, good morning to you. Yes, Lindsey Vonn, one of the most dominant forces to ever put on skis, but after multiple serious knee injuries and a bunch of scary crashes, Vonn calling it a career yesterday in Sweden at the World Championships.

The 34-year-old had a bad crash just earlier in the week in her final super-G run, but still wanted to give it one more go in the downhill, and she came through with a great performance. She raised her hands as she crossed the finish line one last time. Vonn earning bronze for that final run, she said she's going to put

that medal right next to all her gold.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[05:25:00] LINDSEY VONN, ALPINE SKI RACER: 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 it well enough for a bronze. So it was an amazing day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: And this morning, Vonn posted to Instagram, "I did it one last medal in my final race. I couldn't have asked for anything more. Thanks everyone, for the years of support, it means the world to me." Vonn retires as the winningest female alpine skier of all time.

All right, hail causing delays at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am yesterday. And some of the guys having some fun with it out on the course, making hail angels. And Phil Mickelson not a fan of the delays. He had a three-shot lead with two holes to go when the horn blew for darkness, and you can see there, Phil not happy that he's going to have to finish the final round later this morning.

All right, crazy finish in college basketball yesterday. Missouri State down by two to Illinois State with under eight seconds to go. It was a mad scramble for the ball. It finally ends up in the hands of Jarred Dixon who heaves it from half court and his prayer was answered, Missouri State wins the wild finish, 66-65.

All right, finally, the Westminster dog show kicks off tonight. Before it gets going, man's best friend hit the agility course, and check out Rudy the Bulldog. Probably, the most athletic bulldog you'll ever see. I love how they even have cameras in the tunnels now so you never lose track of where the dog is.

Rudy, a big hit on social media, he did not win, however, a Border Collie named Verb won the agility course. You know, Dave, I was pretty proud of myself when I taught my dog how to just sit and roll over, I can't imagine the work that goes into these pups, but they're certainly impressive.

BRIGGS: I'm still working on that sit command, Andy, I am with you, my friend, good stuff. All right, Andy Scholes, thank you --

SCHOLES: Oh, yes --

BRIGGS: Romans, over to you.

ROMANS: Four years with my chocolate lab and --

BRIGGS: Nothing?

ROMANS: No --

BRIGGS: Paw?

ROMANS: No, all right. The shutdown talks now has stalled just days before the deadline. President Trump heads to the border to rally for his wall. The latest on negotiations, we'll get the key sticking points, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END