Transcripts For CNNW Early Start With Christine Romans And Dave Briggs 20170310

4 00 a. M. In the east. If you had to be in a meeting for 27 hours as Congress Members did, how would you stay awake . Growing involvement by the white house in negotiations over the Obamacare Repeal bill met with growing resistance from republican factions and a major pivot, the white house is open to a big change in the House Republican bill. Rolling back obamacare Medicaid Expansion years sooner than the current proposal. Thats according to two senior officials and house aide. This comes after two signed off on the bill after marathon markup sessions. One ran 27 hours that dave briggs is talking about. With concerns growing about the content and pace pushed through the house, republican opponents are ramping up public criticism. There is no deadline. We need to get health care right and fast. There are republicans saying the same in private. Im saying the legislation as it is written, one, cannot pass the senate. Two, would not solve the problems of our health care system. Problems that obamacare made worse. Today, a push in the Sales Campaign for repeal as President Trump meets with key house chairman and conservative leaders. Lets get the latest from Phil Mattingly on capitol hill. Reporter dave and christine, not guaranteeing when it gets to the floor they will support it at all. It underscores more work to do. You talk to Republican Leadership aides and senate republicans, they say this is the vehicle moving forward. If they want to repeal obamacare, this is the moment to do it. Now the Biggest Issue by far is medicaid in the bill as it stands. The expansion that came with obamacare would be rolled back in 2020. What conservatives want is 2017. That is problematic going forward. The president telling conservative groups he is open to the idea, but consider trying to act on it. That would be problematic for the house and senate. A lot of moderate senators from the expansion states would not go along. This bill still moving forward. The process slow and certainly ugly. You talk to Senate Leaders and house leaders, they say they will get it done. Dave and christine. Slow and ugly. Thank you, phil. The Gop Health Care plan is revised for the rollback of the obamacare Medicaid Expansion. That could win over critics, but might doom the bill. Several moderate republicans backing the measure would be expected to pull support. This comes after the chief medical officer blasted the Republican Health care overhaul. Dr. Andre ovstrovski. Despite others, i align with the experts of the academy and Family Physicians and pediatrics and American Medical Association in opposition to the American Health care act. Insurers are concerned the bill will leave many lowincome americans unable to afford coverage. Two groups calling on lawmakers to revise the plan and provide more assistance. They are worried about millions potentially left uninsured once the medicaid expapansion is rod back. That is at the heart of the fight with republicans right now. This is an interesting debate. Do you please the conservatives or moderates . That House Freedom caucus is 29 in the house. You have to please them first. An investigation into the russian meddling in the election heating up. James comey meeting with the gang of eight lawmaker whose have access to the highly classified information. Members of both parties accusing the director of stonewalling them. We have more from cnns manu raju on capitol hill. Reporter james comey on capitol hill as part of the growing investigation into russia and russias attempts to influence the election. The questions that still remain about the alleged contacts that occurred between President Trump Campaign Associates and people tied to the crekremlin. Comey met behind closed doors with the top eight leaders in the house and senate who get the highly classified information. Two separate meetings conducted behind closed doors and growing tension with the members with the fbi and if the fbi is giving them enough information to conduct the reviews. After that briefing, we talked to the members who left. They would not comment. We are trying to learn details about what was discussed. We know as part of the larger effort to figure out what happened in russia yas attemp influence the election. Thank you, manu. The Senate Intelligence committee is getting access to the same intelligence reserved for the gang of eight. Senator warner sits on the intelligence committee. The top democrat investigating ties between the Trump Administration and kremlin. He wants testimony from all former and Current Trump associates who spoke to the russians. Four months after early reports of a computer server connection between the Trump Organization and russian bank were widely dismissed, an fbi investigation remains open. Sources close to the probe tell cnn it is in the hands of the counterintelligence team. The same one looking into the interference in the 2016 election. They find the server quote odd, but still more work for the fbi to do. Internet records show a server over by alpha bank looked up the Contact Number for a Trump Organization server and alpha server did so far more than any other companies. Almost 80 of all look ups to the trump server. So far, no evidence of the two servers communicated with each other or no evidence of wrongdoing. The white house did not respond to a request for comment. Odd. What is the russian bank in question saying about this . Cnns International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen is live in moscow. Fred, this is a tough story to dumb down. Is there any accusation that the Trump Administration did anything wrong . Reporter there certainly isnt this point in time. If you look at the comments by alpha bank, they say they dont believe there was any wrongdoing. They said in the past that the explanation they think they can deliver, they also are not sure what exactly was going on there. They say they believe some executive or some of the other employees may have stayed at trump hotels and in reaction to that, the server may have sent some spam mail or advertising mail to an alpha bank account. That mail setoff Cyber Security measures. In return, a u. S. Company they hired to protect their Cyber Systems would do whats called a dns look up. What you were saying there is sending out inquiry as to what the source of the mail list and if it is legit and if there is malware involved. Alpha bank investigated this. They are not clear why this happened. They say the investigation is now closed. The general statement still is the one they stand by. They say none of the executives or anyone else in the bank had ties to donald trump as a businessman. We contacted them this morning. They have not gotten back to us yet. The reports of more than 2,000 contacts from the server to the trump server. Thank you, fred. New epa chief scott pruitt insisting Carbon Dioxide is not a contributing factor to global warming. It is drawing fire from democrats and environmental groups. I think human activity on the climate is challenging to do and tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So, i would not agree that it is a primary contributor to the global warming. Tremendous disagreement . If you go to the epa web site. It states Carbon Dioxide is the primary Greenhouse Gas contributing to climate change. Pruitt slammed by the director. I cannot imagine the information he would want to understand this issue. Shocking there. International agreement. Three states joined the Washington State lawsuit against the newly revised travel ban. New york and massachusetts and washington joining the suit as the old one. White house officials admit their motivations are no different. The federal judge blocked the first ban after hawaii filed a motion separate from Washington State for a temporary restraining order to block the ban. Jobs day in america. Four things you need to know about the jobs report that comes out in four hours and 19 minutes. This is the first full jobs report under President Trump. The last report was 11 days of his presidency. This is the first full Progress Report for him. He promises to create 25 million new jobs over the next ten years. That averages 208,000 per month. The rate is expected to go down to 4. 7 . That is nearly full employment. A potential for a stronger number. You see the 192 on the left. It could be as high as 300,000. Some people are saying. The adp reported 298,000 private sector jobs alone in february. This report does not mirror each other. Adp was Strong Enough for raising estimates. The Federal Reserve may be cleared away to raise rights next week. The probability of a rate hike of 88 . Two weeks ago it was 22 . Some fed officials said the economy is ready. What i want to hear from the administration is if they get one of the best jobs reports in months, if not years, something above 300,000. Take a bow . Do you take the credit or say the numbers are fake . They have a chance here to own these numbers that will likely be going in their direction. President s have always taken credit for healthy job numbers. They have. They tried to not take the president saw the numbers yesterday. He gets a sneak peek with his economic advisor. He knows the number already. Protests overnight turn deadly in south korea after impeachment of the president is upheld. How does this effect the u. S. Alliance with seoul . We are live there next. Breaking overnight. From teprotests turning deadly south korea after the court upheld the decision to impeach the countrys President Park geunhye. The political shock waves stemming from the vote are likely to be felt across asia and here in the u. S. Cnns Paula Hancocks has details live in seoul. Good morning. Reporter hello, dave. The countrys first female president has now become the first president to be impeached. Historic day here in south korea. There has been differing opinions. There is bitter disappointment that she has been impeached. There were pockets of violence earlier. Police clashed with two people who lost their lives. It is a lot calmer now. As you can see, there are Little Pockets of violence that come and all of these Police Coming in. Riot police trying to calm the situation down. This shows how high emotions are running here. There is an absolute fury among these protesters that their president has been impeached. They dont believe it should have happened. You see how frustrated people are. It sparks quickly seemingly out of nothing. Tempers are frayed here on the streets of seoul. This is not indicative of the whole of south korea. Some people are happy that park geunhye has been impeached. Some people coming out on the streets saying they wanted her to go. There was cheering. Of course, here, there is big disappointment. Paula, thank you. A fascinating breaking story in south korea. Christine, there is a huge story. A corruption scandal. First female president and first ever impeached in south korea at the heart of the corruption charged that she forced corporations to give millions of dollars to foundations she runs. The allegations. Now this opens the door for criminal now she doesnt have the protection of the office. This favors dialogue with north korea. This could change tensions in the region. She has been an ally of the united states. A region that is stability there paramount. You have the rise of china and north korea instability and fear of north korea. This is an american ally that is undergoing some obviously a crisis here. And the protests you are seeing, the clashes with two dead. Pro and con. Colliding. There are some that are fur rfu. This story breaking at 4 20 eastern. Paula hancocks reporting for us. Thank you, paula. We will come back to you. 20 minutes past the hour. Julian assange says wikileaks wants to help. Is it smart for companies to take his help and would he admit there are holes to plug . We will go live to london next. Powerful youll think they are. Its time to see what power really looks like. New neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair with accelerated retinol sa. Clinically proven to reduce wrinkles in just one week. Wrinkles . Your time is up rapid wrinkle repair. And for dark spots. Rapid tone repair. Neutrogena® see whats possible. Welcome back this friday morning. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is offering to help fix gaps in companies security. A lot of unpublished information about tools it claims it allowed the cia to use peoples phones and tvs to spy on them. The big question for the Tech Companies is if they should cooperate with the fugitive to fix holes in products or is assange too toxic or maybe poking fun . Lets bring in samuel burke live in london. Wasnt that nice of Julian Assange . He wants to help fix their products . Reporter good morning, christine. Just because something has been released. Classified information unveiled. Does not mean it is uncloassifid information. It puts Tech Companies in muddy legal waters and bad publicity waters. A lot of people viewed assange as a pawn of the russians and look at what senator ben sasse has said about Julian Assange after the press conference from the El Salvadoran embassy. He should spend the rest of his life wearing a orange jumpsuit. He is an ally of vladimir putin. Certainly Julian Assange would disagree with that characterization. Good news, christine. We have talked with the Tech Companies and people close to the companies. We hear a lot of information they have seen in the documents. They already know. That is good for them. Thats good for their shareholders and thats good for us, aka, most of the world who uses the tech products. Samuel, u. S. Intelligence agencies have the obligation to inform the Tech Companies . Reporter that gets back to the heart of the matter. The cia may have been developing these tools allegedly that take advantage of the flaws in the products. It doesnt appear that they have any type of legal obligation to tell them. A lot of times in the obama administration, we learned they would go to a committee in the white house and according to the former officials, 80 of the time they did alert the companies of the flaws. If we are talking about making America Great again, you want the companies to know about that. People feel these products do not respect privacy. They may not use them. That would make it hard for american business. Samuel burke this morning in london. Nice to see you. Talk to you soon. I love that guy. Very smart. He used to be in the new york bureau. He is one person we love to have on staff. Finest coifed scruff. And to lure more conservatives in the Health Care Bill . Does this amount to one step forward and two steps back . Werf. Its time to see what power really looks like. New neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair with accelerated retinol sa. Clinically proven to reduce wrinkles in just one week. Wrinkles . Your time is up rapid wrinkle repair. And for dark spots. Rapid tone repair. Neutrogena® see whats possible. Guests can earn a how cafree night when theypring book direct on choicehotels. Com and stay with us just two times . Spring time. Badda book. Badda boom. Or. Badda bloom. Seriously . Book now at choicehotels. Com [car[clicking of ignition]rt] uh wha woof eeh woof wuh [silence] [engine roars to life] [dog howls] dramatic opera music swells from radio [howling continues] the white house is prepared to yield to conservatives and fast track the rollback of medicaid for millions of people. Will those efforts hurt broader efforts to pass the Health Care Bill with moderates . And with questions surfacing of links with the Trump Organization and russian bank. What did the fbi director say about meddling in the election when he met with top members of congress . Im dave briggs. Im christine romans. It is 4 30 a. M. In the east this friday morning. Growing involvement by the white house in negotiations of the Obamacare Repeal bill met with resistance. It looks to be a pivot. The white house is signaling it is open to a big change in the House Republican bill rolling back the Medicaid Expansion years sooner than the corrupt prop current proposal. The shift comes after two sign off on the bill after marathon markup session. With concerns growing of the measures content and pace pushed through the house, opponents, republican opponents are ramping up criticism. No deadline. We need to get healthcare reform right. We dont have to get it fast. A lot of republicans are saying the same things in private. Im saying in public what many republicans are voicing that the legislation as written, one, cannot pass the senate. Two, would not solve the problems of our health care system. Problems that obamacare made worse. Today a new push in the Sales Campaign for Obamacare Repeal as President Trump meets with chairman and Vice President sits down with conservative leaders. The latest from Phil Mattingly on capitol hill. Reporter conservatives wary about the proposal and not guaranteeing when it gets to the floor they support it. This under scores a lot of work left to do. When you talk to House Republican leadership aides, they say this is the vehicle moving forward. If they want to repeal obamacare, that issue that they campaigned on cycle after cycle, this is the moment to do it. Now the Biggest Issue by far is medicaid in the bill as it stands. The Medicaid Expansion with obamacare would be rolled back in 2020. What conservatives want is 2017. That is problematic going forward. Still, they have an ear at the white house. The president telling conservative groups he is open to the idea, but consider trying to act on it. That would be problematic for the house and senate. A lot of moderate senators from the Medicaid Expansion states would not go along. The bill still moving forward. The process is a little slow and certainly ugly. You talk to Senate Leaders and house leaders say they will get it done. Dave and christine. Slow and ugly. Welcome to washington. If the gop plan is revised to include a faster rollback of the obamacare Medicaid Expansion, it may help critics, but may doom the bill. Several backing the current measure would be expected to pull support. All of this after the Medicaid Program blasted the overhaul. Dr. Ovstrosky. Despite political messages from others at hhs, i align with the experts from the American Association of pediatrics and medical association. Writing for the washington post, he says, the Affordable Care act was a one size fits all. In contrast, this moves Decision Making by providing funding and permitting states flexibility in how to deal with costly preexisting conditions and trusting state insurance regulators to run markets. Even the significant medicaid reform needed to ensure the longterm sustainability carries enormous freedom for states to tailor their programs. Doug eakin has advised president ial candidates and president s. He is putting up the two world views colliding. The approach was the point of obamacare. Everything would be treek weake. Then this grassroots. When liberals hear grassroots, they hear cuts to poor people. And freedom and flexibility to the states. That is a republican core principle. He is the only one making that case. Investigation nos use russi meddling into the elections. James comey met with the members of eight. Members of both parties accusing the director of stonewalling them. We get more from manu raju. Reporter good morning. James comey on capitol hill as part of the growing investigation in russia and russian attempts to influence the elections. Also the questions that still remain about the alleged contacts that occurred with the Trump Campaign an soeshssociate people tied to the kremlin. Comey met behind closed doors with the top eight leaders in the house and senate who get that highly classified information. Two meetings conducted behind closed doors. Also at a time of growing tension with the members and fbi and whether the fbi is giving them enough information for them to conduct their own reviews. After that briefing, we talked to the members who left. They would not comment. We are still trying to learn more details about what was discussed. We do know part of the larger effort to figure out what happened in the attempts to influence the elections. Manu, thank you. Four months after early reports of a computer server connection with the Trump Organization and russian bank widely dismissed. Did you know an fbi investigation remains open . Sources close to the probe tell cnn it is in the hands of the fbi counterintelligence team. The same team looking into the russian interference in the 2016 election. One official says the connection is quote odd, but the official said there is still more work to be done. Internet records show the server owned by alpha bank looked up Contact Number for a Trump Organization server. The alpha server did 80 more. So far, there is no evidence the two servers communicated with one another. No allegation of wrongdoing yet. The fbi declined to comment. The white house did not respond to requests for comment. What is the russian bank in question saying about all this . We have senior International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen live in moscow. This alpha bank is a big known bank in russia. Why is the server pinging the servers of the Trump Organization . Reporter christine, it is a big bank in russia. Alpha bank is trying to get to the bottom of what happened. The working high poth issue is some executives or employees may have stayed at trump hotels in the past. As a result, left email addresses there and then they were sent spam mail or Something Like commercial mail from that trump server. Now they say that on possibly those servers may have triggered Cyber Security. And Cyber Security may have started a dns look up. That mention that the alpha bank server checked to see where the mail was coming from. Alpha bank hired a u. S. Cyber Security Firm to conduct that investigation. They say that investigation is now closed. They have not said that they know where these things were coming from and why these communications did happen. Alpha bank put out a statement saying none of the executives had contact with President Trump. They had no business dealing with trump and there was no other dealing with the bank and any sort of donald trump enterprise. We contacted alpha bank this morning. They said they are aware of the cnn reporting. They are looking into the matter and will get back to us if they have anything new. Any statement about whether they had done banking with donald trump . We have not seen his tax returns. We dont know if he has loan was the foreign banks. Reporter yeah. Totally unclear. They say they listed the top two executives. They say donald trump has never had communications with them or never had business dealings or financial dealings. Fred pleitgen in moscow. Thank you. The Government Ethics Office slamming critics for not disciplines kellyanne conway. Ethics director expressing grave concern over the decision to forego punishment for the conway free commercial saying it risks undermining the ethics program. The administrations repeated claim that many of the ethics rules do not apply for white house employees. It is jobs day in america. Friday, for most of us. Jobs day in the markets. This is a big one. Here are four things you need to know. The full jobs report for President Trump. The last jobs report was strong. Only covered 11 days of his presidency. This promises to create 25 million jobs over the next ten years. He needs to average 208,000 per month. What to expect . The jobless rate is expected to go down, dave, to 4. 7 . 192,000 new jobs added. There is potential for a stronger number. Heres why. This week, adp, private payroll processor, reported 298,000 new private sector jobs alone created in february. This could be the strongest job creation in months. That adp report and jobs report sometimes dont mirror each other. That adp number was Strong Enough. Finally, the fed solid jobs report would clear the way for raising rates next week. Investors are putting the probability at 88 . Two weeks ago it was a fraction of that. The jump came after several fed officials that the economy is ready. I personally, mr. President , will be watching carefully whether to see if you accept the numbers. The numbers used to measure if the 25 million number is possible. Accepting is one thing. Taking credit is another. Interesting. South koreas president removed from power leading to deadly protests on the streets. How does this effect the u. S. Relationship with seoul . We are live there next. Welcome back. Breaking overnight. A deadly protest in south korea after the countrys Constitutional Court upheld the decision to impeach the embattled president. You are looking at images from this morning. Cnns Paula Hancocks is live in seoul where the crowds are still boisterous around you. Good morning. Reporter good morning, christine. Yes, there are some frayed tempers here on the streets of seoul. These are some of the remaining propark protesters. These are the people who did not want park geunhye to be impeached. They believe the allegations of her involved in corruption and bribery have been made up and they believe the country has made a mistake in impeaching her. We have seen small pockets of violence and tear gas with police. We know would people lost their lives because of the protests. A huge amount of emotion and passion on the streets of seoul. This is a small part of it. On the other hand, millions of people pleased that park geunhye has been impeached. Every single saturday for months now in the bitter freezing cold korean winter, they have been coming on streets in hundreds of thousands to call for impeachment. The acting president is calling for calm. He knows this decision is not pleasing everyone. It is important there is closure and there is unity. You can see some people here it is an incredibly difficult thing to take. Of course, some people here are not only propark geunhye, but antipark geunhye. The potential next president ial favorite at this point who would like to talk to north korea and doesnt want the u. S. Nuclear device here. The thaad missile here. These people are concerned about what this means. The relationship with the united states. Christine. Certainly an important angle. Domestic politics. South korea is important. Ally to the u. S. It is evening there. We will let you get back to reporting. Come back to warrants. Fascinating with the engagement with north korea. The first female president open to criminal prosecution without protection of the presidency. Fascinating. 51 minutes past the hour. Jobs day. All of the investors waiting for the jobs report coming outs in hours. We will look at cnn money stream next. This is one gorgeous truck. Special edition. Oh, did i say theres only one special edition . Because, actually theres five. Ooohh aaaahh uh hooooly mackerel. Wow. Nice. Strength and style. Its truck month. Get 0 financing for 60 months plus find your tag and get 5500 on select Chevy Silverado pickups when you finance with gm financial. Find new roads at your local chevy dealer. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is offering to share cia ho hacking tools to help companies. He says wikileaks has a lot of information that claims the cia to use peoples phones to spy on them. The question is do you cooperate with a fugitive to fix products or is assange too toxic . Lets bring in samuel burke live in london. Good morning, samuel. Very helpful Julian Assange. Reporter good morning, dave. What is interesting is just because theres been unauthorized release of classified information does not make the information declassified. That puts the Tech Companies in legally murky water. There is a pr issue. Do Companies Want to be associated with the Julian Assange . Take a look at one republican senator has been saying about Julian Assange. Ben sasse from nebraska. Assange should spend the rest of his life wearing an orange jump suit. He is an enemy of the American People and ally to poovladimir putin. He has dedicated his life to endangering innocent lives. I like the issue of microsoft putting out a statement yesterday. They put their email address in there and said we hope if anybody has information to help us, the cia or wikileaks, they would just email us here. Maybe they can get that information and make these products safe for us and shareholders. Of course, they have an obligation to them to try to keep their products as best as possible on the market. Samuel, thank you. Lets check are cnn money stream. Investors feeling good this morning ahead of the jobs report. Stocks in europe this friday are up. Asia closing higher. The bull market has been running for eight years. Another streak going on. 100 trading days since the dow or s p suffered a loss of more than 1 . That dates back to early october. 155 days. 185 is the record for the s p. It started as optimism that Hillary Clinton would win the election. Then turned into the trump rally with inn vefvestors cheering. Donald trump vowing to spend 1 billion on badly needed infrastructure. A new report show it s it may t five times that. The American Society of Civil Engineers says it will take 4. 6 trillion to fix it. It gives a grade of d plus to the infrastructure. Americas Public Transit systems received the worst grade. I would agree. Airports got a d. The nations bridges improved from recent year. The highest grade was a b for the rail amount. This is a report from engineers. Gue if you just take a drive across country or take a flight on an airplane. You know what were talking about. I dont think you suggest 1 trillion would figure our infrastructure problems. It is needed. Early start continues right now. The white house ready for an earlier rollback of medicaid for millions. This to win over conservatives, but will that cost them votes they need to pass the new Health Care Bill with moderates . The fbi director behind closed doors with top members of congress. What did he say about russian meddling in the election as questions surface with the Trump Organization and russian bank. Thanks for getting an early start with us. Im dave briggs. Im christine romans. It is friday. It is official. We are watching. A messy day in the northeast here. In politics, fascinating day. Another one. This morning, growing involvement by the white house. Negotiations over the Obamacare Repeal bill met with resistance from republican factions. The white house is open to a big change in the House Republican bill. Rolling back obamacares Medicaid Expansion years sooner than the current proposal. Thats according to two senior officials and senior house conservative aide. The shift comes after two house committees signed off on the bill following marathon markup sessions. One ran 2