360-D-01
Loss of Citizenship or Jail for Flag-Burners; Trump Targets CNN
Reporter; Tracing Trump's False Claim On Illegal Voters; Carrier,
Trump Team Reach Deal To Keep About 1,000 Jobs In Indiana; Officials:
Tennessee Wildfires "Human-Caused". Aired 8-9p ET - Part 2>
MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: May I offer an alternative view?
COOPER: Sure.
HOOVER: Maybe there's no game theory here, right? Maybe this is not a big strategic sort of gotcha. Maybe he was watching a cable news channel that had a segment about Hampshire on this morning and their flag burning, and maybe he tweeted about it three or four minutes afterwards.
(CROSSTALK)
HOOVER: But that actually happened -- let's be clear, that did happen. That happened. I didn't just create a scenario. That actually happened this morning.
And so, what happened was, Donald Trump, as we know, gets on the Twitter, isn't restrained, has gotten his Twitter feedback, clearly, because it's unlikely that any senior advisors would have --
COOPER: There was a FOX News report shortly before he had tweeted out, we don't know if there was a linkage there, but I mean, he certainly watches the shows as we're going to talk about in a little bit. I mean, he was tweeting about this show last night minutes after one of the reports.
HOOVER: Because he's at dinner with Mitt Romney.
ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: One of the things to keep in mind also, he put out a tweet on this and we're talking about this 12 hours later. Whereas he put out several press releases today on key appointments and those aren't getting quite as much attention.
With regard to the flag burning issue, it's important to keep in mind, we all -- majority of Americans agree that it's despicable and disrespectful to burn the flag, but what he's proposing, Hillary Clinton did the exact same thing in 2005 with the Flag Burning Act, which would require a year in prison as well as $100,000 fine for people burning the flag. So, what he's proposing is not unusual.
And what I think with regard to the key appointments today, why would he want to distract from that? Him appointing Tom Price in that position, singlehandedly would -- the beginning of the end of Obamacare. And --
COOPER: It may not be unusual, but it still doesn't make it constitutionally appropriate.
ANGELA RYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENATOR: That's exactly right. And I think that we have to start talking about this as this is our incoming commander-in-chief. This man should understand constitutional law. It's fine for him to say the Supreme Court ruled in Texas versus Johnson and I don't agree with that.
But I think it is curious. It's not what's in that 140 characters. It is the mindset behind what's in the 140 characters on Twitter.
[20:30:04] The reason we talk about this, Alice, over and over again is because it actually is legitimately scary to many of us who feel like we -- I know, Anderson, feelings, I'm sorry, but we feel like we potentially elected a dictator. Someone who thinks he does not have to be accountable to constitutional law, he doesn't have to be accountable to the legislative branch. He thinks he could just come in and do some crazy stuff. That's crazy.
COOPER: But, Kristine, it is -- I mean, we are in uncharted waters with a president-elect who is continuing to tweet just as he did, maybe a little less but as he did during the campaign.
POWERS: Right. COOPER: I mean, when I first heard that he was tweeting about something that was on this broadcast a number of tweets, again, factually incorrect tweets last night, I kept thinking doesn't he have like a briefing book on ISIS to be reading last night at 10:00 or 9:00 of 8:00?
POWERS: Yeah.
BEGALA: And he is turning away those briefers, you know that. There's been reports that he's not ...
COOPER: But, I mean, again, there is a huge amount of information that for him to be absorbing now and thinking about and the fact that he's watching shows. I appreciate he's watching the show.
POWERS: Yeah.
COOPER: He doesn't have a Nielsen box. It doesn't really help.
POWERS: Yeah.
COOPER: But what is he doing?
POWERS: Yeah, but I -- but that was true during the campaign. I mean, he may ...
COOPER: But I get a version of his campaign.
POWERS: OK, well, I guess, I would still say even then he should have probably been boning up on what's going on. And so I think it is concerning that he continues to do this. But in terms of the substance of what he said I think the revoking the citizenship part is very concerning. I believe that people should -- I believe in the constitutional right of free speech so I have a problem with banning flag, flag burning.
Yes, but I think that what he said, to Alice's point, to be fair to him, Democrats have supported this, that and even though it is constitutionally protected there have been repeated attempts to have constitutional amendments. So if he supports that that's -- I don't support it. I disagree with it. But it's actually not really out of the mainstream. It's the revoking the citizenship that is problem.
BEGALA: It's a question of why. And I want to believe that there's a strategy and now you guys are convincing me that there's not. And he's going to have the nuclear codes in a few weeks, guys.
COOPER: We're going to have more with our panel. Also this, as we mentioned, another target of the president-elect's tweets and retweets, CNN Senior Washington Jeff Zeleny, for a report he did on the show last night. Trump retweeted multiple attacks on him after he reported on Trump's claim, unfounded claim that millions have voted illegally. That is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COOPER: If you're following along the president-elect's controversial tweets the latest was a suggestion that people who burn the flag, as we've talking about, should have their citizenship revoked or be thrown in jail. We're talking about that before the break. But just last night there was another target, CNN Senior Washington Correspondent Jeff Zeleny.
[20:35:03] This was after Jeff reported on this program last nights, correctly, I should add, that Trump's tweets alleging that millions of people voted illegally had no actual basis in fact. And the president-elect in fact has not offered any evidence. Exactly, six minutes after Jeff's report, Trump retweeted a bunch of attacks including "Jeff Zeleny, just another generic CNN part-time want to be journalist! CNN still doesn't get it. They will never learn!"
And the president-elect retweeted this one from a 16-year-old boy in California. "Jeff Zeleny, pathetic, you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud. Shame!" Then Trump added, "Bad reporter." Jeff Zeleny responded to Trump on Twitter, "Good evening! Have you looked for examples of voter fraud? Please send our way. Full-time journalist here. Still working." That he is. He joins me now.
So, did President-elect Trump respond to your tweet, Jeff?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: No, Anderson, Mr. Trump did not respond to that tweet but thousands of his followers did. And they believed him when he says that there was a lot of voter fraud, you know, that happened in the election. But, you know, this is not about us. This is about looking for this evidence of widespread voter fraud. And we're talking widespread. He said millions of people voted illegally. If not for them he would have won the popular vote.
And it seems to me that's what this is all about here. And through day by day the popular vote, the tally is increasing slightly. Hillary Clinton is up by just over 2 million. And that is agitating, I'm told, by people who have spoken to transition officials and the president elect. And that is one of the things behind this.
But I think it gets to a larger point here as well. The context of this is interesting. We've seen a pattern now throughout Mr. Trump's successful campaign. He tries to, you know, sort of demonize and distract. And this is one of the latest things here. But so far, he or his aides have not provided any evidence that millions of people voted illegally.
COOPER: Those tweets have also gotten some criticism, I know, from a politically allies of his, right?
ZELENY: Oh, they have. In fact, several Republicans we talked to today on Capitol Hill simply didn't want to talk about this at all. The flag-burning thing in particular was something that, you know, no Republican wanted to talk about. But Newt Gingrich has been a die- hard support over Donald Trump. And he did an interview with Susan Page of "USA Today" this evening or this afternoon and he said something I thought that was very interesting. He said, "The president of the United States should not be randomly tweeting without having someone else checking it out. You wonder what else he is doing."
So, Gingrich called it his biggest mistake so far in the three weeks since he's been elected. But one other friend I talked to explained it like this. They said it's been 22 days since Donald Trump has had a campaign rally so he misses that applause and enthusiasm that really kept him alive here. So he is getting some of that, at least, electronically here by looking through some of his supporters' messages but of course he'll be going back out on the road on Thursday for a big rally in Cincinnati, that I'm sure will pump him back up.
COOPER: Jeff Zeleny, thanks very much. Given that there's no evidence that the claims Trump made on Twitter, no actual facts there, where did he get the idea that millions of people, millions of people voted illegally? Randi Kaye tonight following the digital trail.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This appears to be the original source of Donald Trump's so-called evidence for his claim that millions voted illegally. The Twitter feed belongs to Gregg Phillips whose Twitter handle is JumpVote. Back on November 11th Phillips tweeted, "Completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations. Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million consulting legal team. Two days later we have verified more than 3 million votes casts by non-citizens."
Phillips is the founder of VoteStand, a voter fraud reporting app. I reached out to him on Twitter asking him to provide me the source for his information and any relevant data but he responded, "No." "Why not? When do you plan to share it and how," I asked. His response, "As I've said from the beginning I will release the data, methods, analysis to the public, no media spin." He never said when that information would be released. When I asked Phillips for an interview he sent me this article from cnn.com calling Trump's claim about millions voting illegally false and writing, "CNN seems to have already made the decision."
How Gregg Phillips could possibly verify that millions voted illegally just three days after the election is anyone's guess. "The Washington Post" reported Phillips started making these claims even before data on voter history was available in most jurisdictions.
None of that has stopped websites like Infowars from picking up on Phillips' tweets. Infowars is the brainchild of radio host Alex Jones who "Rolling Stone" once called the most paranoid man in America. Jones has suggested that the 9/11 attacks and the Boston marathon bombing were inside jobs by the U.S. government. Jones also argued that those involved in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were really actors and that nobody was actually hurt. He even claimed the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked.
[20:40:29] If Donald Trump based his voter fraud claim on what he read on Infowars, it wouldn't be the first time. When Trump argued that thousands and thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attack he tweeted a link to Infowars. And Infowars helped fueled the rumor that President Obama is an ISIS supporter, something Trump later suggested too.
It remained to be seen whether the conspiracy-driven website remains a go-to for the president-elect.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down. You will be very, very impressed I hope. And I think we'll be speaking a lot.
KAYE: Randi Kaye, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: And back with the panel. Jeffrey Lord, I got to go to you. I mean as a die-hard Trump supporters this man is going to be president of the United States, going, you know, following Infowars, talking about ...
LORD: Right, I don't know anything ...
COOPER: ... it was an inside job.
LORD: Right, I don't know anything about Infowars. What I do know is this, in 2014, John Fund, whom many of us know here formerly with "The Wall Street Journal" and now with "National Review Online," wrote an article called "Non-citizens are voting," in which I'll just read one sentence. "In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 people called for jury duty from voter registration roles over a two-year period and one of the 94 current U.S. district courts were non-citizens." And he goes on at length here with other examples.
My point is, clearly, this is happening. Now, millions, I ...
COOPER: That doesn't say those people actually voted. That's just ...
LORD: Well, no, but they shouldn't be on registration roles, right?
COOPER: There's dead people on registration roles. We know registration roles have lots of problem.
LORD: Right, right, but they shouldn't be there, period.
COOPER: Again, there's no evidence 3 million people voted illegally.
LORD: I understand that and so the answer is we don't know, we don't know.
COOPER: Right.
LORD: Clearly, we don't know.
COOPER: But doesn't it scare you that the president-elect is listening to Infowars?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.
LORD: No, I think the answer he was -- all kinds of people all over the place here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come on, Jeffrey.
LORD: Look, Ronald Reagan got a pin for, you know, having friends who were members of the John Birch Society for heaven sakes.
COOPER: They believe the 9/11 was an inside job.
LORD: Right, right, of course.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And Sandy Hook were ...
COOPER: They believe all -- that Sandy Hook is all crisis actors. People I interviewed -- these -- they're followers ...
LORD: I am not ...
COOPER: ... the families of ...
LORD: I'm not here to vouch for Infowars. I don't listen to Infowars.
COOPER: Right, but the president-elect seems to.
LORD: Right, right, but what I'm saying, other presidents, I mean, our good friend, and I wish he were here to defend himself, our good friend Van Jones had his problem with the Obama White House because he was accused of just that, unfairly, perhaps, I think, knowing Van Jones. But, nonetheless, there he was in the Obama White House, right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are we really doing that?
POWERS: Well, it was unfair. I think Van said that he ...
LORD: Yes, I agree, but I'm just saying ...
POWERS: Trump is not -- Trump is talking to him right there and we just watched it. I mean, it's not the same thing, you can't compare it. I mean, it's real ...
COOPER: He's no longer a candidate. He's the president-elect of the United States. I mean, should his behavior, I mean, Alice, should his behavior change more? Do you think it sunk in that he is president- elect of the United States?
ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Clearly we've seen a dramatic slow down in the tweets without a doubt. And I think the tone has changed slightly. I think with regard to this voting tweets he's put out, he should put a little bit more attribution to what he's talking about if there is some. I have seen some reports. COOPER: Right, because his tweets last night about Jeff Zeleny seemed to imply that he can say whatever he wants and that it's up to reporters to disprove him. Again, he is the president -- he's going to be the president of the United States. Should the president of the United States be putting out false information or information which he doesn't even have any proof?
LORD: He watch your back as you can see.
STEWART: Or attacking individuals who ...
LORD: If you want your doctor you can keep him?
COOPER: Well, again, I mean ...
LORD: False information, right?
RYE: No that's an old ...
LORD: Well, the president of the ...
COOPER: You can argue that that was done for political purposes. But this is ...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But I keep my doctor.
COOPER: ... you know, with Donald Trump now and it doesn't worry you at all?
RYE: Isn't it different, Anderson? It's different. You have someone who is not just putting out information. He's actually attacking people. He attacks the cast of "Hamilton." He attacked Jeff Zeleny, a CNN colleague.
LORD: That's called free speech.
RYE: No, no ...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: All right, Margaret, you're on.
HOOVER: Look, here's the problem. A lot of Republicans are stuck in this position. Look, there's this hopeful moment that Republicans never thought that they would have, right? So even Republicans who didn't support Donald Trump feel that maybe there's an opportunity to get real policy ...
COOPER: Of course.
(OFF-MIC)
COOPER: Absolutely. It's a huge opportunity.
HOOVER: And then we have these totally dichotomous experiences of really -- yes, having real concern about some of the sentiments and ideas that he's expressing through Twitter, the propaganda and the lies and the falsehood that he's propagating. That is serious concern.
[20:45:12] COOPER: Actually, to me, it's not even the idea is necessarily, it's just the impulses to ...
HOOVER: And what it represent.
COOPER: ... continue in this way when, again, I just keep coming back is, again, I'm happy he's watching the show, but shouldn't he be reading a book, "The Looming Tower" by, you know, Lawrence Wright about the history of al-Qaeda, or ...
LORD: Anderson ...
RYE: Jeffrey, you said it's free speech but free speech doesn't mean it should be undisciplined, free speech doesn't mean it should attack a person, free speech doesn't mean it should lack the character ...
COOPER: Jeffrey, I want you to be able to comment.
LORD: And in fairness, every president does things their own way. Reagan specifically was accused of not reading his briefs. And you know what they did?
COOPER: Right.
LORD: They showed him movies about the ...
(CROSSTALK)
LORD: ... right? OK. So all I'm saying is Donald Trump is going to bring his own individual style here.
COOPER: OK.
LORD: Let's just give it a ...
COOPER: But I'm just not sure watching cable shows late at night and tweeting about them is the best use of the president's time.
STEWART: And also keep in mind ...
BEGALA: And he's lying about the results. He lost my over 2 million votes, the popular vote, over 2 million votes and he's lying.
STEWART: And he's met with over 60 foreign policy leaders and foreign leaders since he's been elected president-elect. So, he is getting information whether it's sitting down and reading a briefing book, he is talking with people and absorbing the information.
COOPER: And this deal with Carrier which we're going to talk about just ahead. We'll have more on that, our breaking news, the air- conditioning and heating company, Carrier, announcing they have reached a deal with the Trump team to keep jobs in Indiana. We'll talk about that ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: As we reported at the beginning of the program, looks like the president-elect has made progress in something he talks about a lot on the campaign trail, Carrier, an air-conditioning manufacturer was going to move jobs to Mexico. The company tweeted tonight, "We are pleased to reach a deal with President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Pence to keep close to a thousand jobs in Indy. More details soon."
Back now with the panel. Well, someone (ph) who worked hard to defeat Donald Trump and this is clearly something he talked about on the campaign trail and can rightly stand and say, look, I made a difference here tonight.
BEGALA: If true, it's great. It's terrific. Let's see the details. I do think we have a right to check the details because sometimes Mr. Trump sometimes gets a little over his ski tips. But if true, this would be an excellent example.
COOPER: I mean it's a tweet from Carrier themselves.
BEGALA: Yes. I'm not -- look, I'm trying to be as gracious as I can be. If true this is terrific and this is how the bully pulpit ought to be used. This is why Teddy Roosevelt called it the bully pulpit. I think that's great. If you're beaten up on a big corporation and you're the president that's kind of what people want to see. And I'd like to see more of that and a little less of beating up on reporters or college kids or the other things. But yes, if this is true I want to know the carrots and the sticks that you referred to earlier in the show. What giveaways did they get? What benefits, what gains? But, to hear the news, it's good news.
COOPER: Right now, Alice, we've been, you know, critical of Donald Trump in this program tonight.
STEWART: Right.
COOPER: I think it is important to point out, you know, this -- he can rightly crow about this and point to this and say look, I'm not even president yet and I'm already making a difference just by having conversations.
[20:50:05] STEWART: Sure. And he and Mike Pence are expected to go there and make big announcement this week, which I think is good. This goes to show that some of his economic policies, which would encourage businesses to keep their manufacturing plants here and the jobs here on American soil are working. And I do think this is a good sign and hopefully he'll be able to flesh this out and then incentivize other businesses to keep jobs and industry here in America. And I think this is a great first step. And I do think he deserves a lot of credit for it.
LORD: You know the term hasn't escaped Donald Trump's lips yet, but when you see something like this you think, at least I do, historically, Franklin Roosevelt in 100 days. I mean, I am guessing here that the first 100 days of the Trump administration are going to be filled with action, action, action.
HOOVER: And this is all -- this has Mike Pence written all over it, right? Obviously, this is Mike Pence's estate. He has relationships with his manufacturers, and working with them for a long time. He was clearly there working on the deal for his boss. But, you know, it does say something to the argument of Trump surrounding himself with able tacticians, politicians, but also people who can get deals done and then make him look good. So this is like one good category. And the other thing is, what we're going to see, and this is the beginning of a major shift in economic policy on the Republican side, so.
COOPER: But it's easy -- I mean, it's easy to point to Mike Pence but, I mean, I think he also, if in fact is true, and we don't know the details, you do got to give credit to Donald Trump. He's the one who's out on the campaign trail was talking about it.
HOOVER: And directed Mike Pence some ...
RYE: Let me just push back on this a little bit. Initially, the conversation was about 2,000 jobs. So this is about saving half the jobs and leaving them here on American soil. The other, I think, it's important ...
HOOVER: You're moving the bench, you're moving the focus.
RYE: No, I'm not. This is what they said. They say they ...
(CROSSTALK)
RYE: ... 2,000 jobs was the point. And it's not 2,000 jobs. The other part is, initially he talked about imposing tariffs. He talked about penalizing companies that wanted to do this. It's clear from the deal that they at least began to discuss. He's talking about, if I lower your tax bracket, if I lower your tax rate, rather, will you keep the jobs here?
COOPER: We don't know that. We don't know that. We don't know ...
RYE: Well that's what's being ...
COOPER: You could also say there was some comment last night that perhaps there was a threat of Carrier's other businesses being affected if they did this. So we don't know how this deal, whatever the deal was ...
POWERS: And we also don't know what Congress ends up doing. So, to Paul's point, that's the big point here. We don't know what's going to actually end up happening. They'll be ...
BEGALA: If we pinpoint (ph) back to Margaret though, for years, Democrats have been campaigning on this, Democrats have been calling for laws to punish corporations and shift jobs overseas, reward corporations to keep jobs here. Now, a Republican president-elect is doing something Democrats have called for a long time and the Democrats ...
POWERS: I don't see -- yeah, but in Trump's defense, what stopped, you know, President Barack Obama from making the phone call, right?
BEGALA: The phone call, you're right.
POWERS: Yeah.
BEGALA: Democrats tried to pass laws, but Republicans blocked it on the hill.
POWERS: OK, but that's -- I think for a lot of Americans like this is what they want to see.
COOPER: Right.
POWERS: They want to see somebody who just picks up the phone, sees a problem, and fixes it. And they find out how we fixed it but ...
STEWART: I don't people care if it's a carrot or a stick, the fact is they're keeping jobs here in America.
COOPER: I want to thank everybody in the panel.
Just ahead, more breaking news. The National Parks Service says people are to blame for the deadly wildfires raging eastern Tennessee. The death toll now stands at the three. Walls of flames, I mean, look at these images, thousands have fled their homes, for some barely in the nick of time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, shit. Why is every cabin on fire?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:55:46] COOPER: I want to get you to the latest breaking news about the wildfires raging in eastern Tennessee. At least three people now confirmed dead. The fires, which started yesterday, destroyed more than 250 billions of -- 250 buildings, forced thousands of people to flee their homes as walls of fire were closing in. This video captures just some of the terror.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything is burning around us, every cabin, everything. There you go. We're not going to make it across that road. Shit. Oh, (expletive deleted). Oh, shit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow. It's OK, run it. (Expletive deleted). Hit the gas. Hit the gas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Fires just all around that vehicle. And here's Brian Todd with the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: An orange glow fills the night sky as one of the many fires burns in and around the Tennessee resort towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Officials say severe drought and hurricane-forced wind gusts combined to fuel a "perfect storm."
GREG MILLER, GATLINBURG FIRE CHIEF: Those winds of that nature, it is common to pick up embers of fire and take them greater than a mile away. At the same time we were facing that challenge, those high winds were knocking down trees, those trees were hitting power lines, and they were falling on this very dry, extreme drought-like condition, and everything was catching on fire.
TODD: The fire is forcing mass evacuations, sending residents and tourists into nearby Red Cross shelters. Popular area attractions were under threat, including Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies, which houses 1,500 animals and marine life and the Dollywood theme park. At least 150 homes and businesses damaged or destroyed, including this 16-storey hotel complex in Gatlinburg. A guest shot this video before escaping.