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EARLY START

President Trump's State Of The Union Speech Calls For Unity And Attacks; Federal Prosecutors Want To Talk To Trump Organization Executives; Medical School Classmates Defend Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam; Pope Francis Admits Sexual Abuse Of Nuns By Priests. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired February 6, 2019 - 05:30   ET

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


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[05:31:07] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is going to be peace and legislation. There cannot be war and investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The president's calls for unity in a speech laced with partisan notes. Highlights and reaction to the State of the Union right now.

Good morning, everyone. If you weren't up past 9:00, we've got it all for you. I'm Christine Romans here with EARLY START this morning.

DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: No need to go back and watch on the DVR.

I'm Dave Briggs, 5:31 Eastern time.

The optics were fascinating with all the women in white. We'll get to those moments in a minute.

We start with the president, though, holding firm on demands for increased border security in a combative State of the Union address the straddled the line between calls for unity and attacks on Democrats.

The president, with Nancy Pelosi over his shoulder, opened with an appeal for bipartisanship.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: But the call for harmony did not carry very far. He didn't call it a hoax, but the president did make this elusion to the Russia probe and congressional investigations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: In Afghanistan, an economic miracle is taking place in the United States and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics or ridiculous partisan investigations.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesn't work that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: The president gave no sign he's interested in compromise on border security, another government shutdown or possibly, a national emergency declaration looms next week. But the president dug in on what he called the very dangerous border with Mexico.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: No issue better illustrates the divide between America's working class and America's political class than illegal immigration. Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls, and gates, and guards.

My administration has sent to Congress a common-sense proposal to end the crisis on the southern border. It includes humanitarian assistance, more law enforcement, drug detection at our ports, closing loopholes that enable child smuggling, and plans for a new physical barrier or wall to secure the vast areas between our ports of entry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shushed Democrats who started booing when President Trump warned of new migrant caravans.

Some policies the president mentioned were received warmly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Both parties should be able to unite for a great rebuilding of American's crumbling infrastructure, to lower the cost of health care and prescription drugs, and to protect patients with preexisting conditions. To eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years.

Many childhood cancers have not seen new therapies in decades. My budget will ask Congress for $500 million over the next 10 years to fund this critical lifesaving research.

[05:35:08] I am also proud to be the first president to include in my budget a plan for nationwide paid family leave so that every new parent has the chance to bond with their newborn child.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BRIGGS: He got some applause on other subjects, including late-term abortion. Lawmakers' reactions were decidedly mixed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I am asking Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late- term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother's womb.

As we work with our allies to destroy the remnants of ISIS, it is time to give our brave warriors in Syria a warm welcome home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: At no point did the president mention guns, climate change or the Supreme Court, among other topics.

BRIGGS: There were several memorable moments in last night's address. One came when President Trump touted economic numbers for women -- job gains. It got an interesting response from women in Congress, many dressed in white -- a tribute to the suffrage movement of a century ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: No one has benefitted more from a thriving economy than women who have filled 58 percent of the newly-created jobs last year.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: You weren't supposed to do that.

We also have more women serving in Congress than at any time before.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: So that was the president saying thank you and Nancy Pelosi saying no, thank you because 106 of the 127 women -- 83 percent -- they are Democrats -- many of them because of President Trump's policies. That's why they were applauding and high-fiving.

Outside the Capitol, President Trump earned a positive response from six in 10 viewers in a CNN instant poll. One caveat, though, this viewership skewed largely Republican.

ROMANS: The Democratic response to the president, given by Stacey Abrams, a rising star in the party. She lost her bid for governor of Georgia.

She blasted the Trump administration for the government shutdown.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STACEY ABRAMS (D), FORMER GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, GEORGIA: Making livelihoods of our federal workers a pawn for political games is a disgrace. The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the President of the United States -- one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people but our values.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Now, she did say she does not want this president to fail, an important note there.

Joining us now, Princeton professor and historian Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst. Good to see you, sir.

ROMANS: Good morning, again.

JULIAN ZELIZER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, HISTORIAN AND PROFESSOR, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, AUTHOR, "FAULT LINES: A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1974": Good morning.

BRIGGS: You go back to 1975 when President Ford said that the state of the union is not good.

Was the speech good, and what do we make of teleprompter Trump?

ZELIZER: Right. Look, back then, President Ford was being very blunt and honest about what was going on in the country.

I don't think President Trump was last night. He gave a speech that had a few points of unity, but he is a president who has divided the country and will continue to divide the country. There's a big disconnect between that part of the speech last night calling for bipartisanship and what his administration is about.

ROMANS: The editorial boards of America's biggest newspapers this morning saying -- "The Washington Post" -- "Same old polarizing demagoguery -- at great length." "The New York Times" -- "A Message of Unity From an Agent of Discord." "The Wall Street Journal" -- "Trump's Bipartisan Pitch." "USA Today" -- "Address Punts on Real National Crises."

He did not mention the shutdown or climate change or guns or education or Brett Kavanaugh -- or many of these things that have really animated the American electorate in the recent months.

ZELIZER: That's exactly right. If he really wanted to do something bold in terms of making a statement that he's going to go out of his partisan box, dealing with something like climate change or gun control, that would have been a big move. But that's not really on the table.

The last thing he wants to do last night was to anger Republicans because he needs them and he remembers the person sitting behind him last night, Speaker Pelosi, has a close eye on this administration.

BRIGGS: She optically was fascinating all night, whether it was shuffling through her copy of the speech or that trolling S-clap to the face of President Trump. But he said if there's going to be peace and legislation, there cannot

be war and investigation. Is that the Nixon 1974 "one year of Watergate is enough," and can we have legislation and investigations simultaneously?

[05:40:08] ZELIZER: Sure. Presidents being investigated always say you need to stop the investigations or we can't govern. That's convenient because you don't want the investigations to go on.

It's not actually true. Congress can do many things at once. It can investigate, it can legislate, and so can presidents. Even President Clinton, in the 1980s, was doing a lot as the impeachment --

ROMANS: Sure.

ZELIZER: -- stuff was going on. So that's just -- that's just a claim -- a defensive claim by the president.

ROMANS: So, paid family leave, infrastructure, drug pricing, childhood cancer, HIV/AIDS. There are things here that I think Democrats and Republicans can agree on.

He also mentioned preexisting conditions. They want to protect America's health care and preexisting conditions, which is interesting because they've had a lot of chances to do that and have done the opposite --

ZELIZER: Right.

ROMANS: -- haven't they?

ZELIZER: Yes. I think you have to take that part with a grain of salt because the administration and the GOP has moved against the Obamacare program that protect that. So there's no evidence the GOP would do anything to protect Americans.

On AIDS, though, there is a bipartisan precedent. George W. Bush was very aggressive in fighting against AIDS overseas, one of the biggest initiatives --

ROMANS: Yes.

ZELIZER: -- in American -- recent American history.

So there is room there from the GOP to actually move forward on an issue that Democrats would support.

BRIGGS: Among the questions to the administration this morning would be what did he mean when he said legal immigrants could come in in the largest numbers ever? No one has any idea what policy matches --

ROMANS: That was --

BRIGGS: -- that rhetoric. That was an interesting line.

ROMANS: That was unscripted, right? BRIGGS: It appeared to be.

ROMANS: Right.

BRIGGS: It -- we didn't look at the prompter.

But does the debate over the wall ultimately divide us on everything going forward? Will that tell us what's to come in the next two years?

ZELIZER: Absolutely because look, now we're looking at another government shutdown. The issue is immigration --

ROMANS: Yes.

ZELIZER: -- the issue is the wall. And with all the flourishing of bipartisanship and unity, the centerpiece of that speech was a full- throated attack on immigration. A demand for the wall, which is the issue that in the next few weeks he will be battling on. So there was no indication on the key question that he's backing away.

ROMANS: All right, Julian Zelizer. So nice to see you this morning. Thank you.

ZELIZER: Thank you.

ROMANS: Walking through history with a historian is always helpful on the day after the State of the Union. All right.

The president taking credit for a jobs boom.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We have created 5.3 million new jobs and importantly, added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs, something which almost everyone said was impossible to do. But the fact is we are just getting started.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Fact-check. The economy has added 4.87 million jobs since President Trump took office. The president's quote of 5.3 million jobs includes jobs created before his inauguration.

And, context here. Jobs have been added now for 100 straight months.

Take a look at this chart. Last year, 2.6 million jobs created, but you can see there were times during the Obama administration when jobs were created more briskly than they are today.

The president also overstated the number of manufacturing jobs created during his presidency. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 454,000 were added since the beginning of 2017.

Still, there's no question manufacturing job creation has improved over the past two years. The reason there, a number of factors including falling oil prices, strong jobs numbers nationwide, and the president's deregulation, Dave.

BRIGGS: OK. Ahead, a startling admission from the Pope. For the first time, he acknowledged priests have sexually abused nuns and actions have been taken.

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[05:47:53] ROMANS: Another blow for Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "The Washington Post" obtained a registration card for the state bar of Texas filled out back in 1986. Warren listed her race as American Indian, a previously unknown instance of Warren claiming to be Native American.

DNA testing to confirm her extremely limited Native American ancestry last year was fiercely criticized. An aide says the presidential candidate is sorry she was not more mindful about her claims early in her career.

BRIGGS: The field of 2020 Democrats may expand this weekend.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota ready to announce her plans Sunday at a park in downtown Minneapolis. She's also scheduled to visit Iowa in two weeks.

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio tells CNN he'll likely decide in March whether to run.

And, former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke told Oprah Winfrey he will decide whether to run before the end of this month.

ROMANS: CNN has learned federal prosecutors in New York want to interview top executives in the Trump Organization. The specific subject not clear, but it's another sign President Trump and people close to him could face legal threats outside of the Mueller probe.

The Trump administration has not responded to CNN's request for comment.

New York prosecutors are conducting at least two Trump-related inquiries. The first, possible campaign finance violations in the effort to reimburse Michael Cohen for hush money payments to silence women in 2016. And second, possible financial abuses by the Trump inaugural committee, which raised more than $100 million and was subpoenaed Monday.

BRIGGS: Former medical school classmates are coming to the defense of embattled Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. A group of them saying they fully believe Northam is not one of the individuals in that racist photo in his yearbook page. They add they do not believe the governor ever condoned racism.

Meanwhile, the woman accusing Virginia's lieutenant governor of sexual assault 15 years ago is meeting with lawyers in Washington to figure out her next move. A source tells CNN Vanessa Tyson felt she had to take action when she saw the news about Northam's yearbook photo and worried Fairfax could become governor. Fairfax called the allegation totally fabricated.

[05:50:00] ROMANS: A D.C. appellate court nominee, Neomi Rao, facing tough questioning for a commentary she wrote as a Yale University student suggesting women should change their behavior to avoid date rape.

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who recently publicly disclosed she had been a victim of sexual assault in college, said Rao's columns gave her pause.

Rao now says that she cringes at some of the language she used.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEOMI RAO, ATTORNEY, ADMINISTRATOR, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS: And I don't think I would express myself in the same way. These are horrible crimes and I wouldn't write anything that might be implied to blame a victim or make it less likely for a victim to come forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Rao currently serves as Trump's czar overseeing regulatory rollbacks.

BRIGGS: For the first time, Pope Francis acknowledging the sexual abuse of nuns by priests and bishops. He calls it a problem in the Catholic Church that's been worked on for some time. He even suggested the abuse may still be going on.

Speaking on his way back to Rome from the UAE, the Pope said the church has suspended some clerics already. He says something more should be done and the church has the will to do it.

ROMANS: All right, let's take a look at stock markets.

Global stock markets mixed after the president's State of the Union address last night. You can see Asian stock markets closed up just slightly with the biggest gain in Shanghai. European markets have opened slightly lower.

And on Wall Street right now, a down morning it looks for futures there. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 172 points yesterday. Wall Street really continuing to recover from that awful sell-off in late 2018.

The S&P 500 gained half a percent. That's five days higher in a row. The Nasdaq climbed slightly as well. All three major averages now finished at their highest levels since early December.

There's a good chance hackers already know your favorite passwords. Now, Google has a new tool to let you known when your log-in for information is exposed. Google Chrome users can download this password check-up extension which will monitor log-ins on various Web sites. When some logs in with the user name and password that Google knows has been compromised, it triggers a warning that prompts the user to change the password. Passwords and user names will be encrypted so Google won't actually be able to see it for itself.

All right. Disney's earnings fell sharply compared to a year ago. It still did better than investors expected.

But what happened here? No "Star Wars." The film unit's revenue fell 27 percent in the most recent quarter. Missing from theaters last holiday season was a "Star Wars" movie. It turns out "Star Wars" makes a lot of money.

Disney has released a film from the franchise every December since 2015. Instead, Disney released "Mary Poppins Returns" which made more than $325 million globally. In comparison, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" made $1.3 billion worldwide in 2017.

This year could be one of Disney's biggest years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS EVANS, ACTOR, "AVENGERS: END GAME": We lost, all of us. We lost friends.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: The powerhouse lineup of films including "Avengers: End Game", "Star Wars: Episode IX", and the largest expansion at its theme parks, called "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge."

And when you look at Chris Evans in that "Avengers" clip at the very beginning, he looks like you, Dave. He's got this beard --

BRIGGS: Yes.

ROMANS: -- that looks like a Dave Briggsesque beard. Chris Evans, Dave Briggs -- who wore it better?

BRIGGS: The similarity stops at the facial hair but I appreciate --

ROMANS: OK.

BRIGGS: -- the compliment.

There's also "Toy Story 4" and "The Lion King" --

ROMANS: Yes.

BRIGGS: -- live action.

All right. While you were sleeping, Jimmy Fallon had some fun with the State of the Union.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JIMMY FALLON, HOST, NBC "THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON": President Trump's State of the Union was broadcast on every major network, but a lot of other networks didn't air it at all. Actually, some of the channels that didn't air the speech released statements explaining their decision.

For example, HGTV released a statement saying we didn't air the president's address because we already know how to build walls.

Up next, Bravo. They said they didn't air the address because even the Real Housewives think that's too much drama.

The History Channel said we didn't air it because we aired something more factual -- ancient aliens.

And, Nickelodeon said we didn't air the president's address because we oppose his position on immigration. We stand with Dora.

And this went viral. Check out the photo of Nancy Pelosi clapping at Trump. Look at it. Pelosi was like you're never getting your wall.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: That was quite the moment -- Pelosi, the clap. I think she was saying no -- no, thank you, Mr. President.

ROMANS: I thought the imagery optics last night said it all.

All right, thanks for joining us, everybody. I'm Christine Romans. Have a great day.

BRIGGS: I'm Dave Briggs. Here's "NEW DAY."

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[05:59:10] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: An economic miracle is taking place and the only thing that can stop it, ridiculous partisan investigations.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: He is rivaling under the Democratic majority. We're not going to turn and look the other way.

ABRAMS: The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the President of the United States.

TRUMP: Where walls go up, illegal crossings go way, way down. I will get it built.

GOV. JOHN KASICH (R), OHIO: There was a lot of signals to the base. The question is, what is his definition of compromise?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman. JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States

and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, February sixth, 6:00 in Washington, D.C., where we are for the aftermath --

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

BERMAN: -- of the State of the Union address.

Alisyn is off. Poppy Harlow joins me this morning.

HARLOW: Good morning.

BERMAN: Great to see you --

HARLOW: A big night.

BERMAN: -- down here in Washington.

So, the speech itself lasted 82 minutes. The question this morning, will the tone or the message last even that long?

END