Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Trump to Kick Off "Thank You" Tour in Cincinnati; Trump Delivers on Vow to Save Carrier Jobs; Hostages being Held Amid Credit Union Robbery in Florida; U.N.: 27,000+ Displaced in Aleppo in Recent Days. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 1, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:16]

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: -- Donald Trump hits the road for a victory lap today. He's thanking voters for his stunning upset and celebrating a campaign promise that he's already delivered. Mr. Trump will travel to Indianapolis where he's brokered a deal that will keep about 1,000 factory jobs from moving to Mexico. Trump had targeted Carrier on the campaign trail and vowed to keep American jobs from moving abroad. That pledge mobilized voters in the rust belt and tonight, Trump kicks off his thank you tour in the battleground states that clinched his victory. First stop, at a campaign style rally in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. But let's head live to Indianapolis for a moment. We're going to do that in a little bit, actually. First, let's get the latest on the Trump team's efforts to form his cabinet. CNN's Jessica Schneider is outside the Trump Tower. Good morning.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. You know, the palace intrigue continues out here, as we await some key posts. But the transition team, telling us not to expect any new announcements as it pertains to personnel or cabinet posts this week. Of course, Donald Trump will be headed out of Trump Tower shortly to make his way to Indiana, as well as Ohio later tonight. But despite all of that, we have seen some big news over the week, some key nominations, some big names.

Included in that name - the names of nominations this week, Elaine Chao, she was picked by Donald Trump for Transportation Secretary. Of course, she served George W. Bush as labor secretary during his eight years. Another big name, Georgia Congressman Tom Price, he is picked for Health and Human Services. He's an outspoken critic of Obamacare. In fact, over the past several years, he has plotted and proposed many of his own alternatives to the Affordable Care Act.

And also, rounding out the picks this week, two well-to-do wealthy and well-connected names that are drawing some criticism and coming under fire, of course, the former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, Steve Mnuchin, he was at Goldman for 17 years, at the Treasury Secretary post and for Commerce Secretary, billionaire investor, Wilbur Ross.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has been outspoken about the big banks. And she is slamming these two picks by Donald Trump, saying that Donald Trump campaigned on making the American government work for the American people, not for Wall Street. And now, she's saying that Donald Trump is picking some of the biggest names in Wall Street to head up his economic team.

Now, while all that is going on, of course, all of the interest continues to swirl around the Secretary of State pick. Four big names that are now being mentioned, but the biggest one of all, perhaps the leading contender being former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, of course, Mitt Romney's name swirling a lot after that dinner meeting with Donald Trump that happened on Tuesday. It was his second sit-down face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump. He came out after that meeting and singing praise for Donald Trump after that meeting. Saying that he was impressed with Donald Trump's improbable and difficult win, but interestingly, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich coming out last night with some very harsh words against Mitt Romney, saying that Mitt Romney had essentially -- or has essentially been sucking up to Donald Trump. So a lot of names still in the mix as we await some more key appointments, but likely nothing happening today or this week as Donald Trump hits the road and will be out on that Thank you America tour, a little bit later today. Carol?

COSTELLO: All right, Jessica Schneider, reporting live from outside of Trump Tower. Now let's head to Indianapolis, shall we, and to the Carrier plant where Trump and Mike Pence will meet with workers around 2:00 this afternoon. That's Eastern Time. Here's CNN's Suzanne Malveaux. Hi, Suzanne.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Good morning. Well, that's right, Trump and Pence are going to be on the very floor of the Carrier plant where ten months ago, the owners, the parent company United Technologies, announced to their workers that their jobs were going to Mexico. One of those workers captured it on his cell phone, he posted it, it went viral and Donald Trump saw that video and he used it as the center piece of his jobs platform. So, it really is coming full circle here. Carrier had confirmed that there were some business incentives coming from the state. That could mean anything from tax breaks, business opportunities, in exchange for staying here.

Also we heard on the campaign trail, Donald Trump threatening that he would impose a tariff on imported goods if those goods came from Mexico and other companies overseas. That could be part of the incentive of why they are staying here but a lot of people are looking at this and wondering is this a larger, bigger picture here, an economic policy.

Bernie Sanders also pointed to the Carrier workers during the campaign to really hit that company hard. The parent company hard, talking about offshore jobs and this morning, in an op-ed in "The Washington Post," here's what he said. He said, "Trump has endangered the jobs of workers who were previously safe in the United States." He says, "Why? Because he has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives."

Well, Carol, I talked -- to the workers here at Carrier and other companies and quite frankly, they don't really care about like how this happened, how the sausage was made. They care about the results. And so they are disagreeing with Sanders this morning because they are looking at their own interests. They are looking at their

[10:05:16] families and what this means to them. I had an opportunity to talk to one of those workers. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: How much credit do you really give him?

JOHN FELTNER, REXNORD MACHINIST: I mean, what he said is happening. So whether it's the state, everybody collectively coming together to do it, really doesn't matter. It's being done and it's wonderful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: And Carol that is John Fletcher. He is with Rexnord and he is a new grandfather, he has three grown kids, two of them that he's putting through college, and he makes up to 25 an hour. He is with a company whose jobs are going to Mexico. There is no deal with Trump or with Pence. He wants to get Trump's ear and essentially make it happen for him and his family as well.

So that is the sentiment here. People are happy with what has taken place. But again, as Bernie Sanders said and other critics, it certainly isn't an economic big picture policy. Carol?

COSTELLO: All right, Suzanne Malveaux, reporting live from Indianapolis. Thank you. So let's talk about this and more. I'm joined by CNN political commentator and assistant editor for "The Atlantic," Ron Brownstein and CNN political commentator and Washington correspondent for "The New Yorker," Ryan Lizza.

All right, so Ron is this a good deal for the American worker or -- has Donald Trump embarked on this slippery slope that every company will expect to get huge tax incentives to stay in the United States?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST AND ASSISTANT EDITOR "THE ATLANTIC": Yes?

COSTELLO: That's a yes?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. For the Carrier workers, this is a very good day. It's a good day for the Trump administration. But it is a question whether this is a sustainable model. And really, there is a much larger debate encapsulated in this, which is, it is unlikely that individual interventions in the decisions of individual companies is going to make a big dent in the long-term trajectory of a more automated and globalized manufacturing supply chain. That has reduced the amount of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. for decades, even as our output has increased. That is a big structural change that's -- not going to be reversed.

But what you really see here, I think, is the big question is that Donald Trump has a whole series of policies that corporate leaders have long sought. He's going to be -- he wants to cut corporate taxes significantly, wants to roll back federal regulation and a whole series of areas, including all the reforms on Wall Street after 2010 -- in 2010, Dodd-Frank. And he will present them essentially as ways to benefit American workers in the same way that these tax breaks for the employer here was presented as a way of preserving American jobs.

And that is going to be a fundamental debate. Ultimately, is this about benefiting American workers or tilting the playing field more toward American corporations in a way that could ultimately hurt, for example, the federal budget and the ability to fund programs? - So, this is a big debate captured in a small -- in one instance.

COSTELLO: Right. And Ryan, this is also giving companies, if this comes to pass. The scenario that Ron just laid out, this is giving tremendous power to corporations, right? And that doesn't necessarily translate into higher wages for workers or better working conditions.

RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT "THE NEW YORKER": Look, that's the danger. Look, if Carrier had moved these -- I guess originally was 2,000 jobs to Mexico against the wishes of Trump and against a pretty significant campaign promise that he talked about quite a lot, people would be rightfully criticizing Trump and saying a-ha, you promised you would keep those specific jobs in this country and you failed on one of your core campaign promises. So, you have to give him a certain amount of credit for promising something during the campaign. And you know, doing - at least keeping half of those jobs in the United States because there's no doubt we would be sitting here criticizing him if he hadn't.

On the other hand, as you know, every economist who has been on the show has said, you know, Republican and Democrat, the precedent here can be very dangerous, right? If you are a corporation, you can be very loud about the fact that you are going to offshore jobs and catch the attention of the incoming Trump administration and try and extract concessions from the government. You basically have this sort of you know, extortion game that companies can now play because Trump has set himself up this way. It's kind of like the way that Trump used to talk about lawsuits, right? He would always say he never settles lawsuits because it only attracts other people to be litigious. Well, this is undoubtedly going to attract corporations to come knocking at the front door of the Trump administration and saying we want x, y or z or we're going to offshore. So he needs a long-term -- he needs to do something about that.

COSTELLO: Right, right, I also want to talk about this thank you tour. Because it's unprecedented, right, for a president-elect. Mr. Trump isn't even President of the United States, yet he's going out and thanking voters for his big victory. His first stop will be in Cincinnati in Hamilton County, a county that went to Hillary Clinton, right? Everything around it went to Trump but Hamilton County went to Hillary Clinton. So, he's going to start there. So, is that kind of an olive branch to those people who

[10:10:16] maybe didn't vote for Mr. Trump?

BROWNSTEIN: It's a really good question. Real quick, by the way, you don't even need to get to the individual companies to get to this kind of extortion question because it's going to be more systematic. He's going to repose big cuts in taxes and regulations that companies want and argue that it's a way of systematically keeping them in the U.S. And that I think is going to be the debate whether it's carrots or sticks, as Bernie Sanders argues.

But yes, look, Donald Trump lost 88 of the 100 largest counties in America. This election had the starkest divide that we have seen in modern times between metro and non-metro America. The county Hillary Clinton only won one-sixth of the counties in the country, less than one-sixth. And the counties that she won produced two-thirds of our total economic output, according to the Brookings Institution, with data out today.

So, for Donald Trump to kind of go into - you know, go into a metro area, you know it is important because ultimately, he won without speaking to the most dynamic growing places in the economy, more to places like the Carrier plant that feel as though they are being left behind in this diversifying post-industrial globalized economy that is unfolding in our cities.

And I think, one of the big questions of his presidency is, can he speak across that divide, you know. I think the least that -- this tour, you know, it's fine, I think it makes sense for him to reconnect with his voters, but ultimately, you know it's coming at a point, he's entering the presidency with a deep cultural divide, racial divide, class divide, that's kind of welcoming him. And you know -- and the issue will be is he speaking only to his base or is he speaking to all Americans.

COSTELLO: Right. And there is still a divide within the Republican Party, too. And that's clearly illustrated by Mitt Romney, right, because Donald Trump is mulling over whether to appoint him Secretary of State. Newt Gingrich, another Republican, came out, kind of flamed Mitt Romney as a man like crawling on his belly now because he wants an appointment as Secretary of State. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: You have never, ever, in your career seen a serious adult who is wealthy, independent, has been a presidential nominee, suck up at the rate that Mitt Romney is sucking up. And I am confident that he thinks now that Donald Trump is one of his closest friends, that they have so many things in common. That they're both such wise, brilliant people. And I'm sure last night at an elegant three-star restaurant in New York, that Mitt was fully at home, happy to share his vision of populism, which involves a little foie gras, a certain amount of superb cooking, but done in a populist happy manner.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: I think Mitt Romney just blew up.

LIZZA: You know, Gingrich pronounced foie gras suspiciously well there. Anyway, look, what I find fascinating about this is that -- Trump has turned some of these positions into a public debate. You know, most transitions, the interview process is completely private. That is now an anachronism. He's got these people coming before the press in Trump Tower or his golf course in New Jersey. And he's got this big public debate over who these people should be. So he's getting a lot of feedback from the different parts of the Republican Party to know whose going to - whose noses are going to be bent out of joint if he picks Romney.

I personally think the fact that Trump is seriously considering Romney for such an important position is a very healthy sign. This is the number one critic of Donald Trump and look, what is the number one criticism of Trump always been, that he's indicative, he keeps an enemies list. If you cross him, you will never get into his inner circle. The fact that he and Romney actually are developing a relationship, I think, is a fairly healthy sign for the administration -- for the incoming administration.

COSTELLO: Even if it's over, what is it, goose liver? Is that what foie gras -

LIZZA: It is, it is, banned in California where Ron is right now.

COSTELLO: I have never eaten it and I never will. Ron Brownstein, Ryan Lizza, thanks to both of you. Coming up in the "Newsroom," they might have lost the election but Democrats are not going to take it lying down. How they are gearing up for a major fight once Trump takes office.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:18:13] COSTELLO: As Donald Trump prepares to thank the voters in Cincinnati, Ohio. Some Democrats are preparing a chilly reception for him in Washington. Last night, Senator Elizabeth Warren railed against Trump's choice of hedge fund manager, Steve Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, (D) MASSACHUSETTS: The American people are furious over what Wall Street has done. They don't want somebody who is going to come in here and say, hey, let's help Wall Street. And what Donald Trump is doing is he's literally handing the keys to the Treasury over to a Wall Street banker who helped cause the crash.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: While Democrats won't necessarily be able to block Trump's cabinet pick, they can make the confirmation process pretty painful, which would be taking a page from the Republican playbook after 2008, after President Obama won. So let's talk about this and more. I'm joined by Allan Lichtman. He's a professor of history at American University and the author of "Predicting the Next President, The Keys to the White House 2016." Welcome, sir.

ALLAN LICHTMAN, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AND AUTHOR "PREDICTING THE NEXT PRESIDENT, THE KEYS TO THE WHITE HOUSE 2016": Thank you. COSTELLO: Should Donald Trump be scared?

LICHTMAN: Donald Trump, look, if the Democrats don't want eight years of Donald Trump or eight years of Republicans, they have to take a playbook from the Republicans themselves, which was to make every effort to block the policies of Barack Obama. That's sound politics. It's also very sound strategy in terms of what Democrats really believe in because most of the Trump agenda goes directly contrary to Democratic ideology. Things like big tax breaks for corporations, repealing the regulations designed to prevent another financial meltdown, building a wall on the border, cracking down on undocumented immigrants, banning abortions, making it more difficult to vote. There are very few elements of the Trump agenda that are in accord with what the Democratic Party believes in.

[10:20:16] COSTELLO: But wait a minute. Didn't Americans become angry when Republicans were accused of being obstructionist? You want Democrats to become obstructionist?

LICHTMAN: Yes. Let me tell you what that anger has done. Republicans now have the presidency. They control the U.S. House. They control the U.S. Senate. They are going to control the Supreme Court. When Donald Trump makes the tie-breaking appointment, they have the great majority of governorships and they have the great majority of state legislatures and they are likely to shape the post-2020 redistricting.

So, forget that point. In fact, the Republican strategy has worked beyond Republican dreams. The Democrats today are a shadow party, a shattered party. The Republicans control almost every lever of power in America.

COSTELLO: So Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, I mean, they seemed to have joined forces, right? So can they make obstructionism a glorious thing for the Democrats?

LICHTMAN: I sure hope so, because that is the only viable strategy for the Democrats at this point. I think those Democrats who say, particularly the vulnerable ones in the Senate, we are going to work with Donald Trump are committing the same political error that Democrats have been committing for many, many years. And that is not seeing the forest for the trees. Maybe not even seeing the forest because they are caught looking at the leaves. They fail to see the big picture. They are only looking at the very small illusory political gains they may -- think they can get from working with Trump.

COSTELLO: OK. So that said, why did Democratic lawmakers re-elect Nancy Pelosi as their House Leader?

LICHTMAN: Well, it's very hard to change the House leadership. And you know the Democratic Party has really been mired in pretty bad strategy for a very long time. You know, President Obama has some terrific accomplishments on his plate, the Paris Accords, Obamacare, the Iran Nuclear Treaty, but he was a terrible party builder. The Democrats have not built their party. Look to Franklin Roosevelt. He was both a great policy innovator and a great party builder. The Democrats have not built their party and in every election where Barack Obama was not on the ballot, from 2010 on, the Democrats took a huge pasting. They have got to pay attention to party building. They have got to pay attention to what their agenda and their theme and their message is going to be or the party's going to be a memory. --

COSTELLO: So last question for you. You are one of the few people out there who predicted that Donald Trump would win the presidency but you also predicted that Donald Trump would be impeached. Do you still stand by that prediction?

LICHTMAN: Absolutely. Impeached, resigned. -- Let me quickly give you the reasons. One, Donald Trump has played fast and loose with the law all his life. A Lichtman rule of politics is what you see is what you get. It's not going to carry over into the presidency. Two, he has set up the potential for an enormous conflict of interest between private business interests and the national security of the United States. He's turned his business over to his children. He's kept it all in the family. This is nothing remotely like a blind trust or a blind trusty. Thirdly, Republicans in Congress understand that Donald Trump is loose cannon. He's uncontrollable. Republicans love control. Wouldn't it be their great dream to have Mike Pence as president, the predictable down the pipe conservative Republican.

COSTELLO: OK. We'll stand by. Allan Lichtman, thank you so much.

LICHTMAN: Take care, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. A bit of breaking news to tell you about out of Jacksonville, Florida, where police and hostage negotiators are on the scene as a gunman reportedly holds several people hostage inside of a Credit Union. It is unclear if anyone is hurt at this time. Police have evacuated this area. We will continue to follow the story and of course bring you any updates as we get them in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:55] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. The refugee crisis wears on and so does the terrible destruction in Syria. Government forces are pounding Aleppo with airstrikes. And recent days, more than 27,000 people have been displaced in the eastern part of that city. The United Nations describes the situation there as, "A descent into hell." Right now, the United States is still accepting refugees from Syria but that might not last much longer.

In line of what happened at the Ohio State University a few days ago. When a Somali refugee attacked and injured several people. The President-elect Donald Trump tweeting out this. "ISIS is taking credit for the terrible stabbing attack at Ohio State University by a Somali refugee who should not have been in our country."

But thousands of refugees already in the United States, those words are chilling. I talked with a Syrian family who fled home Syria for Georgia. Here's their story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO (voice-over): The locals like to say Clarkson, Georgia boasts the most ethnically diverse square mile in America. For dozens of refugees fleeing their war-torn countries who live here, this bit of Americana is a gift from God.

COSTELLO: Do you feel lucky that you're here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Suddenly, I'm lucky. I'm safe now.