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EARLY START

Trump Pressed to Have Hillary Clinton Prosecuted; CNN Exclusive: Zuckerberg Not Going Anywhere; E. Coli Concerns for Romaine Lettuce; Cold Turkey; Judge Blocks Mississippi Abortion Law; Tiger and Phil Up the Stakes for "The Match". Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired November 21, 2018 - 05:00   ET

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


KAYLEE HARTUNG, CNN ANCHOR: The clearest case yet of the president misusing the Justice Department. He tried to get the DOJ officials to prosecute Hillary Clinton.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[05:00:04] LAURIE SEGALL, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: So, you are not stepping down as chairman?

MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO, FACEBOOK: That's not the plan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: A defiant Mark Zuckerberg vows to stay on the job. CNN has an exclusive sit-down with the embattled Facebook chief.

HARTUNG: Keep romaine lettuce off your thanksgiving table. An E. coli scare forcing a warning from health officials.

BRIGGS: And temperatures taking an epically cold turn. Wind chills in the single digits in New York City for Thanksgiving, putting those balloons in the parade in jeopardy. It should be a chilly one.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Dave Briggs.

HARTUNG: And I'm Kaylee Hartung, in for Christine Romans.

I'm not sure I packed appropriately for this trip to New York, given the forecast.

BRIGGS: I assure you did not.

HARTUNG: It is Wednesday, November 21st, a little after 5:00 a.m. in the East.

It turns out the president's calls to "lock her up" weren't reserved for campaign rallies. They were also heard inside the White House where the president was taking steps to have the Justice Department prosecute Hillary Clinton. The source telling us that he pressed then-White House counsel Don McGahn to make it happen.

BRIGGS: The president had been attacking Clinton for years by that point over her emails, the Clinton Foundation, and other matters. "The New York Times" first reported on the president's push to have Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey prosecuted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, this is what happens in authoritarian countries. The president orders, the president, the leader, orders the investigation and prosecution of his political enemies. Fortunately, there are people in the White House here who understood the traditions and the rules of the American legal system and said you can't do that, and it didn't happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARTUNG: McGahn fended off the president's repeated requests to have his rivals prosecuted. "The Times" reports McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo warning the president about all the consequences including possible impeachment.

McGahn has since left the White House after extensive cooperation with the Mueller investigation, including 30 hours of interviews that unnerved this president.

BRIGGS: A CNN source says the president also spoke repeatedly with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Matt Whitaker, now the acting attorney general, then chief of staff to Jeff Sessions. Mr. Trump asked them about Justice Department progress investigating Hillary Clinton.

HARTUNG: And Whitaker came to the meetings prepared to tell the president what justice was doing on Clinton-related matters, although our source says Whitaker did not seem to cross any line. More broadly, the president pressing Whitaker at the time, it seems to prove he was lying this month when he said this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't know Matt Whitaker. Matt Whitaker works for Jeff Sessions, and he was always extremely highly thought of. And he still is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Mr. Trump had been clear, for sometime, he intended to go after Hillary Clinton including this remark at a presidential debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.

TRUMP: Because you'd be in jail. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Boy, it's a remarkable exchange looking back on it. So far, no comment from the Justice Department on all of this.

Top Senate Republicans slamming President Trump for standing behind Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the wake of the murder of "Washington Post" journalist, U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.

In an official statement peppered with exclamation points, the president wrote: It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event. Maybe he did, and maybe he didn't, exclamation. That being said, we may never know all the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

HARTUNG: That stand contradicts a CIA assessment that the crown prince did order the killing, a finding of which officials are highly confident. The president stood by his statement speaking to reporters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Why are you siding with the Saudis over your own intelligence?

TRUMP: Because it's America first to me. It's all about America first. Saudi Arabia, if we broke with them, I think your oil prices would go through the roof. I've kept them down. They've helped me keep them down.

We'll see how that works out. It's a very complex situation. It's a shame, but it is what it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARTUNG: Well, drew swift, sharp rebukes from leading Republicans. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker tweeted, I never thought I'd see the day the White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

BRIGGS: Kentucky Senator Rand Paul wrote a series of tweets including this -- I'm pretty sure the statement is Saudi Arabia first, not America first. I'm also pretty sure national security adviser John Bolton wrote it.

Then there was this frank comment on the crown prince known as MBS from Senator Lindsey Graham.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[05:05:05] SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Saudi Arabia needs us more than we need them. It's not too much to ask an ally not to butcher a guy in a consulate. This is not World War II. So I'm not going to look away at what MBS did. I think he did it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: The Saudis at first denied any knowledge of Khashoggi's death then later pinned the murder on a group of rogue operatives.

HARTUNG: Well, new financial disclosures filed by Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker reveal more than $900,000 in payments from a conservative group he founded in 2014. The group known as FACT received almost all of its funding from a dark money organization which got at least some of its funding from major Republican donor Charles Koch.

BRIGGS: Most of Whitaker's income in the past few years came from FACT, although CNN paid him $15,000 as a legal commentator in 2017. The disclosures magnify concerns over whether the Senate would confirm Whitaker if the president nominated him as a permanent attorney general. Until yesterday, government watchdog groups had repeatedly raised concern about why the requests for the public documents had gone unfulfilled.

HARTUNG: Well, President Trump has submitted his written answers to questions from special counsel Robert Mueller. This follows months of negotiations between the special counsel's office and Trump legal team. A lawyer for the president says the questions dealt with Russia-related topics in the Mueller investigations and not obstruction of justice.

It's still not clear in that will be enough for Mueller to finish his investigation. There could be additional questions. And Mueller's team could still try to pursue an in-person interview. The president doesn't expect to do one, he said.

BRIGGS: After a year of apologizing for Facebook's missteps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is sounding a lot more defiant these days. Last week, a "New York Times" report claimed Facebook was not transparent enough about Russian interference in the 2016 election. That report also revealed the company hired a PR firm to dig up dirt on its competition.

In an exclusive interview with, Zuckerberg dismissed questions about his own performance and the leadership of COO Sheryl Sandberg.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEGALL: There are a lot of questions about Sheryl Sandberg's role in the latest controversy. Can you definitively say Sheryl will stay in her same role?

ZUCKERBERG: Yes. Look, Sheryl is a really important part of this company and is leading a lot of the efforts to address a lot of the biggest efforts that -- the biggest issues that we have. So when you look at a lot of the progress that we've made over the last 12 to 18 months on issues around elections or content or security, Sheryl is leading a lot of that work. And she's been an important partner for me for ten years. And, you know, I'm proud of the work we've done together. I hope that we work together for decades more to come. SEGALL: You are CEO and chairman of Facebook. That's an

extraordinary amount of power given that you rule a kingdom of 2 billion people digitally. Shouldn't your power be checked?

ZUCKERBERG: Yes. I think that ultimately the issues that we're working on here, you know, things like preventing interference in elections from other countries, finding the balance between giving people a voice and keeping people safe, these are not issues that any one company can address.

SEGALL: So, you are not stepping down as chairman?

ZUCKERBERG: That's not the plan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Terrific job by Laurie Segall there.

Zuckerberg says Facebook has a different world view than some of the people who cover the company.

Global markets and U.S. futures down sharply today, one day after the Dow lost more than 500 points, wiping out all gains for the year. It's not alone. The S&P 500 also down for the year. Investors are worried about the days of record profits nearing an end with tech stocks taking the biggest hit. Tech companies have long been the darlings of Wall Street, sending stocks to record highs.

But now, Apple faces slowing demand for iPhones, Facebook under scrutiny over data and privacy issues. And as those stocks fall, so, too, does the market. In fact, these five big-tech names have lost more than $800 billion in combined market value since August. But investors have a flurry of other concerns: higher interest rates, crashing oil prices, now at a 13-month low, the U.S.-China trade war.

Bottom line here, after years of big profit growth, investors expect a slowdown in 2019. Just shocking to read the lead story in the "Wall Street Journal," have multiple references to a recession. Though they say it's not imminent, it's just striking to hear that word.

HARTUNG: Yes. Headline in "The New York Times" today, the economy is purring, but stocks are growling.

BRIGGS: Yes.

HARTUNG: The number of people unaccounted for in the Camp Fire is taking another big jump. Now potentially damaging rain is moving in for thousands without a home for the holiday. We'll have more when EARLY START returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:13:45] BRIGGS: The number of people unaccounted for in California's Camp Fire jumping back up to 870, an increase of 171 from Monday according to Butte County officials. The death toll stands at 81, up from 79 Monday. The Camp Fire now 75 percent contained. Rain could become heavy in Northern California, lasting into Saturday.

That will help with the air quality but could trigger mudslides and debris flows.

HARTUNG: It's hard to describe how difficult the air is to breathe.

The estimated cost of fighting the Camp Fire and the Woolsey Fire, which has claimed three lives, stands at $130 million. Losses are still being tabulated, but for comparison's sake, last year's smaller Napa fire resulted in more than $13 billion in claims.

Here you're looking at new video from a fire department helicopter flying through thick smoke from the Woolsey Fire to rescue three people and two dogs in the hills above Malibu. The Woolsey Fire is nearly 100 percent contained after charring close to 97,000 acres.

BRIGGS: It's getaway day for millions of Thanksgiving holiday travelers. AAA projects more than 48 million Americans will get to where they're going by car this weekend, and a record 30.6 million passengers will travel on U.S. airlines during the Thanksgiving holiday, up from an estimated 29 million last year.

[05:15:06] According to an airline trade group, gas prices at $2.61 a gallon on average up slightly from $2.53 one year ago.

HARTUNG: If you were on the East Coast for the holiday, one suggestion -- you better bundle up. It is going to be the coldest- in New York in more than a century which could spell trouble for the Thanksgiving parade.

Meteorologist Ivan Cabrera has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN CABRERA, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Record cold temperatures, and along with that, the wind to contend it. It is going to feel brutal. Today will be in the 20s, as far as the wind chill. That's going to be balmy compared to what's coming. Thanksgiving morning, eight degrees is what it's going to feel like in New York, ten for Black Friday morning.

Then Boston, even in the single digits, as well. Look at Syracuse, going to feel like one degree, perhaps five below into Friday. So, brutal stuff. Sixteen possible record lows. In fact, in New York, if we hit 19 or below, that would make it the coldest Thanksgiving ever.

Here is the forecast for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. We are looking at temperatures in the low 20s. With the wind at 15 to 20, that's going to make it feel like single digits throughout the entire parade, so please bundle up.

This is not going to last that long. For Black Friday, still cold. But watch what happens. We'll get back to where we should be for this time of year. So again, just this timing.

Back into the 50s by the weekend, and into early next week. Happy cold Thanksgiving -- guys.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRIGGS: Ivan, thanks. We'll watch the parade on TV.

A major health warning that could affect millions of Thanksgiving menus. The Centers for Disease Control warning consumers not to eat romaine lettuce due to possible E. coli contamination. Thirty-two people in 11 states have been infected with the outbreak strain. In addition, 18 people in Canada have become sickened.

Officials say consumers should not eat any romaine lettuce product. That includes whole heads of romaine, hearts of romaine, and bags and boxes of precut lettuce and salad mixes. So far, the FDA has not been able to tie the outbreak to a specific grower.

But, fortunately, we were not planning on eating anything healthy or approaching that on Thursday.

HARTUNG: No. Green bean casserole is as close to green as I get on Thanksgiving.

BRIGGS: Yes.

HARTUNG: Well, men making choices about women's rights, a sad irony. That's what a Mississippi judge said as he ruled against a ban on abortions at 15 weeks. More ahead as EARLY START continues.

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[05:21:54] HARTUNG: Strong words from a federal judge in Mississippi who blocked a state law that outlaws most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The only facility in the state that provides abortion services sued after Governor Phil Bryant signed the measure in March. Judge Carlton Reeves calling it a, quote, sad irony that men are making decisions about a woman's reproductive rights.

BRIGGS: In his ruling, he writes, the state chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades' long campaign fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. The judge also called the Mississippi legislature's professed concerns about women's health pure gaslighting.

HARTUNG: Former Michigan State University President Lou Anna Simon has been charged with lying to police in the Larry Nassar case. She's accused of misleading investigators about how much she knew about sex abuse allegations against Nassar, the doctor convicted of abusing young women while employed by the university and USA Gymnastics.

Simon resigned in January after 13 years but has still been on the university's payroll. Simon faces up to 12 years in prison. Her lawyer calls the charges political and untrue.

BRIGGS: All right. Let's talk a little sports now. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson set to square off in a match on Friday in Vegas. Boy, the side bet action is heating up. HARTUNG: Love it.

Andy Scholes has more in this morning's "Bleacher Report."

BRIGGS: All right, buddy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, guys.

You know, this is a match-up the sports world has been waiting for for decades. And it's being treated like the heavyweight match that it is. Tiger and Phil holding a press conference yesterday. At the end of it, they did a Floyd Mayweather-like stare-down. Couldn't hold it long. Both cracking a smile there.

Now, Friday, $9 million on the line. Winners take all. But there will be plenty of side bets along the way including a $200,000 bet on whether Phil birdies the first hole.

CNN's Hines Ward sat down with the two to talk about the action.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HINES WARD, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: I love how you set the tone with the guarantee and little side bet on the first hole. Does that kind of --

PHIL MICKELSON, MASTERS CHAMPION: The tough thing was getting him to bite. Not only did he take it, he doubled it. Awesome. I can't believe it, how well that turned out.

TIGER WOODS, MASTERS CHAMPION: The challenges are going to be escalating as we go along. Eventually we're trying to outdo and one up one another and try and get in each other's heads. And so, yes, this is the start of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Tiger, a 2-1 favorite to win that match. You can see it on "Bleacher Report" live and pay per view. Again, that's Friday at 3:00 p.m.

And it was a big day for Hines. Not only did he interview Tiger and Phil, he was named one of the finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The list for 2019 down from 103 to 25. They'll narrow it to 15 in January.

Michael Jordan back in his hometown of Wilmington yesterday, giving back to those affected by hurricane Florence. Jordan was giving out Thanksgiving meals to people at Lowe's.

[05:25:01] Then, he made a stop at the boys and girls club that he grew up playing at to give away some Jordans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL JORDAN, BASKETBALL HALL OF FAMER: I understand it's going to be a long battle. But, you know, anything I can do to help my fellow Wilmingtonians, I'm willing to do. It hit me deeply home, and, you know, so it didn't take much for me to get started.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Jordan's also donated $2 million to the relief efforts in the Carolinas.

Guys, I was wondering, all the kids getting the shoes there him, do you think they have any clue who he is? Just some guy who owns a shoe company?

HARTUNG: Absolutely. Come on!

BRIGGS: It's --

HARTUNG: North Carolina kids --

BRIGGS: I think it's a fair question. I think we're getting to the point that it's a fair question.

SCHOLES: I wish it was LeBron.

BRIGGS: Is LeBron here?

SCHOLES: Yes.

HARTUNG: I think it is. Fair enough.

BRIGGS: I think the brand logo still probably carries with it --

HARTUNG: And it's North Carolina. Come on. All those kids are Chapel Hill fans. You got to believe they remember him.

BRIGGS: Appreciate it, man.

SCHOLES: All right.

HARTUNG: Imagine "lock her up" in the White House. In a gross abuse of power, President Trump tried to get DOJ officials to prosecute Hillary Clinton. More when we return right here on EARLY START.

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