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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Trump Risks Showdown With China After Call With Taiwan; Chinese Officials Talk to WH after Trump's Taiwan Call; Clinton and Trump Staffers Face Off; Next Stops in Trump's "Thank You Tour"; A Nation Divided: How Do We Begin To Mend?; No Deal for This Indiana Plant; "Enlighten Us: The Rise and Fall Of James Arthur Ray". Aired 9-10p ET
Aired December 02, 2016 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:00] ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: -- according to administration official. Trump tweeted twice about this tonight. First there was, "The President of Taiwan called me today to wish me congratulations on winning the presidency. Thank you." And then, "Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment, but I should not accept a congratulatory call."
CNN Global Affairs Correspondent Elise Labott is in Washington with the latest.
What more do we know about how this all came about?
ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, we understand that an adviser to President-elect Trump's transition team, Steven Yates, he's a very pro-Taiwan, former official with the Reagan Administration, with the Bush Administration, with Vice President Cheney. He was in Taiwan and helped facilitate the call.
We understand that this wasn't done, as you said, Anderson, without any notification from the White House, or the State Department, which is the key thing in with what President-elect Trump has done. He hasn't contacted the State Department or the White House for any of these calls. And that's one of the concerns here, is that, you know, usually these kind of briefings are, you know, talk to the officials, talk to the President-elect, tell him a little bit about the sensitivities involved. And clearly, this is going to cause a diplomatic uproar with China.
And, you know, we really don't know whether this was kind of a message that he was sending to China, or just as he said in his tweets, you know, taking a congratulatory phone call. That's what he said in his readout. It was a congratulatory phone call. They talked about relations with Taiwan, the Taiwanese. So they talked about strengthening that relationship in the call. But it almost doesn't matter really what they talked about. The fact that they had this call really is the message here.
COOPER: And China is contacting now the White House in reaction to this call. Do we know much about that?
LABOTT: We don't know that much about that. I mean, you can imagine what they're saying. They're like, what is this about? Does this going to mean that President-elect Trump is going to up-end the One China policy which this is 1979 for four decades?
But the fact is they can't really say anything. I mean, the President Obama's Administration doesn't know about what President-elect Trump is going to do. There's been a lot of uncertainty created. He's sent some mixed messages. He's talked about being very tough on China, making them a currency manipulator. But he does have some very pro- China advisers who say that this is one of the most important relationships. And they're even advocating a grand bargain with China.
So, I don't think the administration is going to really have too many satisfying answers for the Chinese.
COOPER: And is the Trump transition team making formally use the State Department resources for these calls with foreign leaders?
LABOTT: Well, it's really interesting. President-elect Trump has made some 50 phone calls with world leaders, these congratulatory phone calls. They're supposed to be very perfunctory, getting to know you, looking forward to working with you. But the state department stands at the ready for a briefing for some of these calls. His team has not reached out at all.
I did hear tonight that Vice President-elect Pence who has also been taking some of these phone calls did reach out to the State Department. They did provide him with some briefing papers. So it's kind of an interesting dichotomy why President-elect Trump, some would say, are kind -- is kind of winging it, while Vice President-elect Pence is taking a more considered approach.
COOPER: All right, Elise Labott, appreciate the updates.
As we mentioned, China very quickly reacted to the call. Let's get the latest now from CNN White House Correspondent Michelle Kosinski.
What are you learning tonight, Michelle?
MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Anderson. Well, we know that almost immediately, as soon as the world got word of this very interesting phone call, Chinese officials reached out to the White House. That says a lot.
What isn't saying a lot right now is the White House itself. They don't want to comment on diplomatic conversations. But, well, let's just say that this was a discussion that happened, and China has questions. Well, there's really not a lot that the White House can convey at this point. They likely emphasized what the White House has said publicly about this. That the White House adheres to the One China policy, meaning, they believe Taiwan is a part of China, and they address diplomatic relations accordingly.
What they can't lend China is any real clarity on how relations and diplomacy will change. And this is the same problem that the President has had, as he's been on his recent foreign trips where world leaders want to know what's going to change and what's going to happen. And the White House doesn't have the answers to that. COOPER: Yeah, Michelle Kosinski, appreciate it tonight. Thank you.
Joining me now is former Ambassador Christopher Hill. He served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2005 to 2009.
Ambassador Hill, thanks for being with us. What is your reaction to this? And when you first heard about this phone call and the details about it, what did you make of it?
CHRISTOPHER HILL, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO SOUTH KOREA AND IRAQ: Well, my first reaction was this was kind of unintended. They had a phone call from the President of Taiwan and they thought as a courtesy they take the call.
One worries, however, certainly, listening to some of the people in the Trump transition side, that they feel this is the way to change a policy that's been around for 40 years. And, you know, Ronald Reagan adhered to this policy. George W. Bush adhered to it. Everyone adhered to it. And so, it's a little odd to try to change a policy with a phone call without any consultations with the Congress, the Senate, and of course, with the outgoing administration.
[21:05:13] So, I guess what I'm concerned about is I still think it's something in -- something that's kind of inadvertent. But I am a little concerned that the president-elect would want to double down on it, and suggest this is good policy. And by the way, this is time, we have a lot of things going on with the Chinese. We have South China Sea. We have North Korea. We have a huge trade problems. We have issues in the UN, sanctions, et cetera. This is no time to introduce a new crisis point in the U.S.-China relationship.
COOPER: We just heard some of the report and a man named Steven Yates, whom you know, a Trump transition advisors who support Taiwanese independence in the past. Formerly Vice President Cheney helped facilitate the call. To be clear, the president-elect said the Taiwanese leader called him. But what do you make of an apparent involvement by Mr. Yates?
HILL: It's hard to say. I mean when he was working for Vice President Cheney is he is sort of a portfolio was Taiwan and he's merrily went ahead on things with China, it was the Taiwan without too much regard for China. He was very much of an advocate for these arms sales to Taiwan. But those arms sales are going to laid out in the original Taiwan relations act which is one of the twin, you know, founding documents of the U.S.-China relationship group.
We have one China policy that is all official. Contacts must be with mainland China. But we do have something called the Taiwan Relations Act which includes the idea that we help Taiwan defend itself. And that's where these weapons sales come from. Chinese don't like them, but they've accepted them over the decades.
COOPER: And to those who were watching and hear this and favor out, maybe this isn't such a bad idea of putting China a little on edge about, you know, what the future holds, and maybe, you know, things will be different, and maybe they need to, you know, to be different in their relations with the U.S.
HILL: Well, I think it's the only thing, if you want to make news, you want to know that you're going to make news. And it shouldn't be inadvertent. I would argue if you're going to change your policy of 40 years, it's been subscribed to by Democrats and Republicans alike. You might want to give some thought through it. You might want to do some consultations with people. And you might want to decide whether this is maybe a time to change something.
But as far as we know, there's -- there wasn't any discussion whatsoever before this phone call. So it does have kind of a look of winging it. And I think it's a little ominous if this is the kind of modus operandi we're going to see. I mean these issues are complicated. It's been around for 40 years. We're talking about this because it's a complicated issue. And I think, our people need to understand that, you know, there are people who spend their lifetimes studying this, understanding it, and I don't think we can completely disintermediate all the experts of the State Department or the National Security council staff.
COOPER: Ambassador Hill, appreciate your time tonight. Thank you. Joining me on the phone is New York Times Columnist, Thomas Friedman, author of the recently published, "Thank You for Being Late. An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations".
Tom, you heard Ambassador Hill, how big of a deal do you think this is?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN, NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST: We'll, we're going to have to see, first of all, Anderson, how the Chinese react and not just with the phone call, but whether they take some substantive actions themselves. But I do agree with what Chris said, which is that, you know, there's a case for Trump having his own China policy. Maybe it will be a little tougher on trade, maybe it will be a little tougher geopolitically in the South China Sea.
But that policy, Anderson, should be achieved after he sits down with his Secretary of Commerce, to understand the economic implications, the Secretary of State to understand the diplomatic implications, and the Secretary of Defense to understand the security implications. Because there are enormous tradeoffs on all those fronts.
There's no sign that that was done at all. What this sounds like is a very aggressive member of his transition team, a very pro-Taiwanese. I love and admire the Taiwanese. I always enjoyed going to Taiwan, but they have their own agenda. And they are not above carrying influence for their agenda with various people in Washington, D.C., we need to have our own agenda as well and not get sucked into that.
We're talking about an island of 20 million people, and China of 1.3 billion. So there's a case for a different policy, but it should be done in a considered way. There's one issue that Chris raised, what it is on months, Anderson? We discover that North Korea has in fact developed the intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the west coast of the United States. And we really need China's cooperation and help in trying to deter that. But what if they say -- what if they don't take our phone call?
There's enormous tradeoffs here on multiple fronts. And what you don't get the sense of when the president-elect says, well he called me, I mean what is this, they just called the house, and his wife, said honey, are the president of Taiwan is on the phone?
[21:10:06] You know, this was obviously set up. And to set up, that has to be considered. And it doesn't really feel like it was considered because it does in effect a challenge, a very long policy. But you know what, it has kept the South China Sea, the U.S.-China- Taiwan relationship not only relatively stable now for four decades, but really prosperous and really benefiting all three countries.
COOPER: It certainly puts renewed focus on whom the president-elect is going to choose to be his secretary of state. I mean there's a lot of talk about how that person have a big portfolio to represent the U.S. around the world, but at the same time representing the, you know, the policy of Donald Trump.
FRIEDMAN: But I think the Secretary of State, who is he, whatever it is, will be very important. But what's most important are the impulses and instincts of the president-elect. And there's the -- they are multiple we see here because he is for -- I'm getting rid of the Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty, which, yes, was a free trade agreement or trade promotion agreement but it was also a de facto security agreement.
It was by all our key none China trading partners. And that on a trade agreement, and rules is that, it laid down both on trade and other issues, like human trafficking, the right to organize labor unions. It was a de facto security alliance. So when you get rid of that, when you just throw that out the window, you leave all those countries. Well, they're going to go closer to China, look for more protection with China and get more deeply integrated economically with China.
The point is, you know, what's worrying to me, and look, every president -- the president-elect, they're going to make some stumbles. I see this with every administration. I'm not going to jump down their throat from day one. I mean, but at the same time, there's a certain cavalier attitude about big systems. Well NATO, who needs it. Yeah, the EU, let it crack up. Taiwan-U.S.-China relations, you know, I can take a phone call.
These are big systems that have been put in place over a long period of time. They are imperfect. A lot of them could use some refreshing. A lot of them could use some repair, you know, some new invigorating ideas. But these systems have kept the world peaceful and prosperous. Our main western allies and relationships, up for a lot of years now, and you don't play around with big systems.
COOPER: Yeah, Tom Friedman, a lot to watch more. Thank you very much Tom, appreciate it.
Coming up, an incredibly heated debate between top Clinton and Trump campaign staff accusations, long ago, whistles causing up to white supremacist.
Plus Van Jones and Jeffrey Lord talk about how Democrats and Republicans move forward in the face of lingering vitriol.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:16:15] COOPER: After an election like no other past as she comments as no surprise at the conversation afterward would be contentious to say the least, top staff members from the Clinton and Trump campaigns faced off at a post-election event that showed the wounds of the election. We'll I'm sure those wounds have not quite scarred over yet. And that would been an understatement.
Randi Kaye tonight reports.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RANDI KAYE, CNN REPORTER: The two-hour panel discussion at Harvard University was supposed to cement the 2016 campaign in history. Instead, it added a new chapter. It got ugly fast, with Hillary Clinton's campaigns Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri accusing Trump's team of elevating a belief of white supremacists.
JENNIFER PALMIERI, CLINTON CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: The platform that they gave to white supremacists, white nationalists, and I think as, you know, his presidency goes forward, I'm going to be very glad to have been part of the campaign that tried to stop him. It did -- it did have -- actually ...
KELLYANNE CONWAY, AMERICAN REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Hey Jen, do you think he can -- do you think that I -- excuse me, do you think I ran a campaign where a white supremacist had a platform? You're going to look me in the face and tell me that?
PALMIERI: It did, Kellyanne did. I would rather lose than win the way you guys did.
KAYE: Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway insisted that wasn't true. Then turn up the heat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oops one (inaudible), you guys had just ...
(CROSSTALK)
CONWAY: Do you think you could just had a decent message for the white working class voters? You think this woman who has nothing in common with anybody ...
PALMIERI: I'm not that ...
(CROSSTALK)
CONWAY: ... how about it's Hillary Clinton. She doesn't connect with people? How about they have nothing in common with her?
KAYE: Listen to Clinton Adviser Mandy Grunwald weigh in. (CROSSTALK)
MANDY GRUNWALD, CLINTON ADVISER: I don't think you give yourself enough credit for the negative campaign you ran.
KAYE: She accused Trump's aides of turning out fake news stories about Clinton.
GRUNWALD: There is a world that many people were watching where Hillary Clinton was dying for months of Parkinson's. She's just got days to live. She's going to jail. She's going to jail any minute now.
KAYE: Conway shot back.
CONWAY: Do you think that's why we won over 200 counties that President Obama won? Is that how we turn this county?
GRUNWALD: Take the compliment Kellyanne, like I'm trying to ...
CONWAY: I would if it were one.
GRUNWALD: I give him credit. They -- we gave you the material to work with. Comey gave you the material to work with.
KAYE: Comey, as in FBI director James Comey, Clinton advisors, Thursday night suggested his interference in the e-mail scandal in the final weeks of the campaign cost her the election. Clinton's team was quick to point out she won the popular vote by a landslide.
JOEL BENENSON, CHIEF STRATEGIST FOR HILLARY CLINTON'S CAMPAIGN: The fact that the matter is, that more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. So let's put it in total contest.
CONWAY: And there was nothing that said the road to popular vote anywhere, it's road to 270.
BENENSON: Kellyanne, I'm not -- I ...
KAYE: Conway told Clinton's aides, their own message did them in.
CONWAY: Oh my god, you called him a sexist, a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobe daily and it blew back on you.
(CROSSTALK)
PALMIERI: Because it's not an aspiration or optimistic message. How in the world did we have a female candidate whose closing arguments were so negative? Where is the uplifting aspirational visionary message of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton? Guys, I can tell you are angry, but wow, I mean, hashtag, he's your president.
PALMIERI: You know.
KAYE: Randi Kaye, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: CNN's Jake Tapper was that event. He also moderated a separate conversation during campaign managers Robby Mook and Kellyanne Conway which will air in State of the Union this weekend. We're going to hear from Jake in a moment, but first here's part of that conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: You've referred to this as a post-factual election where facts don't matter. And you were taking issue with something that Donald Trump said. And there were other things, the so-called fake news disinformation out there, stories, there was a crazy story towards the end of the campaign and it with the NYPD was supposedly about to throw Hillary Clinton and her whole gang in jail because of stuff found on Anthony Weiner's computer that linked everybody to child sex trafficking, just a bizarre story that interestingly enough, General Flynn re-tweeted at one point.
How much of a problem was this post-factual election in your view?
ROBBY MOOK, CLINTON'S CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I think it was a huge problem. And I think -- look, Jake, I think there's a lot of things we need to examine coming out of this. You just named one of them, Congress has got to investigate what happened with Russia here.
[21:20:05] We cannot have foreign and foreign aggressors that would argue intervening in our elections. And we know that the Russians were promulgating fake news through Facebook and other outlets.
But look, we also have -- and this is with all due respect, you know, to Kellyanne and to her colleagues. This isn't personal. But, you know, Steve Bannon ran Breitbart News, which was notorious for peddling stories like this. And I'm not attacking him personally. But they peddled a lot of stories on that website that are just false. They're just not true. And that reinforced sexist, racist, anti- Semitic notions in people. You know, headlines that just make your -- that, you know, are shocking and insulting, and shouldn't be part of our public discourse.
TAPPER: Kellyanne.
CONWAY: I think the biggest piece of fake news in this election was that Donald Trump couldn't win. So there's that. And that was peddled probably for weeks and months before the campaign, definitely in the closing days.
If you look at major newspapers, and major cable stations networks, Jake it's unmistakable.
TAPPER: I didn't say he couldn't win. I said it was competitive race.
CONWAY: I didn't say you didn't.
TAPPER: Well, there's emotion. CONWAY: And you say you didn't. No, no, I'm saying about particularly a print stories. I mean we have colleagues, who with we all respect, some of you who were in the room, that represent outlets. Literally if you go back, because we have them, and you pull the whole front page ...
TAPPER: There's a lot of doings.
(CROSSTALK)
CONWAY: It's unbelievable.
TAPPER: Absolutely.
CONWAY: But that's fake because it's based on things that just aren't true. They have no path. They have no ground game. She's got more money. She has more personnel. She can't possibly lose. And then of course, ignoring that research I'm not going to -- the persistent chronic narratives, I'm not going to repeat here. But they essentially boiled down to Donald Trump takes the wings off of butterflies.
And that, you know, America said, there's a difference between what may offend me and what absolutely affects me. And I, as a voter, I'm going to go that way. And I'm going to go to claim what absolutely affects me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: And Jake Tapper joins me now with more about both events.
Jake, you moderated a discussion yesterday. There was also that very heated discussion between the two groups of campaign aide's yesterday evening. Were you surprised by just the tension, the accusations?
TAPPER: I was. Because normally, this event at Harvard, the institute of politics, is one where people look more clinically at what happened during the campaign. It's an attempt by the institute of politics, by the Kennedy School to do a first draft of history and get people's thoughts and memories while they're still fresh.
It's not a time to hash out emotional responses and anger. And so the bitterness that we saw by both Clinton campaign officials and Trump campaign officials was not in keeping with this event that's been going on for years.
COOPER: Did either side seem satisfied at the end? I mean regrets, disputes in political campaigns, losing campaigns especially, that can last a lifetime. But, you know, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, Mitt Romney, still talk about regrets. But, you know, did anything get settled?
TAPPER: No. There were points of agreement. They all hated us. They all hated the media. And they all thought polling was garbage, public polling, not their private internal polling. But that said, the Clinton people, their basic response and their basic posture is we won the popular vote by more than 2.5 million votes. And it's a fluke that Donald Trump won the electoral vote. How can you really argue we did anything wrong.
They're very focused on what the FBI Director James Comey did in that letter that he wrote just 10 days before the election. And also, on the fact that according to U.S. Intelligence, to the Russians, were involved in trying to influence this election, both through disinformation and also through those hacks and giving information allegedly to WikiLeaks.
So that's their posture. The Trump campaign posture is, we won. So whatever you think of us, we won and we beat back everybody. The media was its own pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC. So -- And there really was no acknowledgment of any mistakes on either side, even though plenty of us in the audience had long lists of things that all of them could have done differently one.
COOPER: And yet the Clinton people think the media was too favorable toward Donald Trump and too critical of Hillary Clinton, and too much focused on the e-mails.
TAPPER: Absolutely. I mean that's one of their talking points as they feel like in the last couple weeks of the election, last three weeks of the election, especially after the Comey letter, that the media was just picking her apart, story after story.
And in fact, they talked about how one of the things that they were thinking about doing was calling for a fourth debate, because they felt like putting Hillary Clinton next to Donald Trump up on stage was when they could really do well.
[21:24:58] But when Donald Trump was able to go off and do his own thing, and the media was attacking her, not him, which is obviously not what the Trump people thought nor is it necessarily what happened that that's when they didn't do as well.
And an interesting moment, the Clinton people said, I wish that we had called for the fourth debate and the Trump people said that they would have gone along with it. So the fourth debate, did never happened.
COOPER: Interesting, Jake Tapper. Jake, thanks.
TAPPER: Thanks, Anderson.
COOPER: Coming up, the Donald Trump's team is announcing they've gotten more stops in their so-called "Thank You Tour", where they're going, and a conversation with Van Jones about what he has been hearing from Trump supporters on the road over the last several days.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: President-Elect Trump's "Thank You Tour" will continue next week with stops in Fayetteville, North Carolina on Tuesday, and Des Moines, Iowa on Thursday. We've been talking about the deep wounds the election has left behind. As we've said, a panel discussion yesterday at Harvard is the latest example. Tough staff members from the Clinton and Trump's campaigns faced off. At times it got ugly.
Joining me now is CNN Political Commentator, former senior Obama Official Van Jones. He's been out of the field talking to Trump's supporters. His reports is going to air next week. Also CNN Political Commentator and Trump supporter, Jeffrey Lord.
[21:30:00] You know, hearing the dispute at Harvard between the Trump campaign and the Clinton campaign, you hear from some Democrats and it makes it sound as if all Trump supporters or members of the Alt-right or white supremacist, which is obviously just an unfair broad-brush characterization.
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah, look I mean, you now have two political parties that have big problems. And they won't admit it. And they talk past each other. So it is true that there was a white nationalist part of the Trump phenomenon. It is unfair, though, to the vast majority of Trump voters to say they are all that. All of them are part of that. It's also of course unfair to the rest of Americans to say that there was no white nationalist Neo-Nazi involvement.
COOPER: But I mean, the families you've been speaking to ...
JONES: Yeah.
COOPER: ... in some reports that you're going to have on the program next week, it's not about any of that. It's about the real pain that's out there.
JONES: Yeah. For -- I think that where liberals are having a lot of heart break is that for liberals, and I count myself as a very strong progressive, it's either you're racist or your anti-racist. It's either your sexist or anti-sexist, it's a binary choice. So if you vote for someone who said something racist, you're a racist yourself.
OK, that's just not true. For some people, those inflammatory comments were delightful. I would say those people are probably bigots. For a lot of people they were distasteful, but they weren't disqualifying. So if you ask somebody, you know, who voted for Trump, would you want your kids talking about people the way Trump did? No. Well, did you think that was a passive thing for the country? No, but I voted for him anyway for other reasons.
COOPER: You also make the distinction between constructive, what was your term?
JONES: Constructive disagreement versus destructive disagreement.
COOPER: Right?
JONES: I think some people now are saying, well, can we all just get along and not have any disagreements at all, well that's foolish too. You can have disagreements but there should be more constructive. Listen if you're all for markets and I'm all for government, we disagree and I don't have to change my mind and you don't, but guess what, if we talk about it constructively, we might come up with a public/private partnership that's better than your idea and my idea. That's how the markets suppose to work. We aren't even trying to find common ground anymore.
COOPER: And Jeff, it doesn't seem like, I mean, you know, there's this debate obviously going on among Democrats, isn't resistance that some are calling it? Isn't doing what they criticize they're Republicans for doing to President Obama when he first came in office, of just obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct? Or do you try to reach across and find common ground?
JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think that there's a happy ground -- happy medium there. I think that either political party's objective is to push their agenda forward and their principles forward. You don't have to be obstructing all the time. But you do, if you honestly feel that the president at the moment is taking the country in a wrong direction, there's nothing wrong with standing up and voting against him. It's the president's task whomever that maybe to find various of agreement to move the country and for and what he feels is the right direction. So I'm less critical of Democrats for thinking that they can be, "obstructionists", because there is a political price to pay. I mean, if they do this in the right way, they'll be rewarded, or if they do it in the wrong way, they'll lose.
COOPER: Right. I mean if things get done, then it actually benefits the -- not only the country obviously, but politically the president in power and his party?
JONES: Right.
LORD: That's right. That's absolutely right.
JONES: So now you have Democrats who say, listen, the same people who are telling us -- there's hypocrisy on both sides.
COOPER: Right.
JONES: The Republicans are being completely hypocritically, they say give him a chance, give him a chance, the same Republicans who didn't gave Obama a chance and said they wanted him to fail. And they said he was, you know, he didn't have the right birth certificate and all that. So they are being hypocritical not to understand why Democrats might want to block.
At the same time, the Democrats who before were saying, can't we all get along, kumbaya, put the country first are now saying never, never, never, never. I think what's going to have to happen is, where Democrats feel strongly about, say, the Muslim community being mistreated, or dreamers being drug out of colleges and deported, those kinds of issues it's going to have to be obstruction. But other issues, there may be common ground.
My frustration is this, though, I can tell you three times the Democrats supported dabyad (ph) on his wars, on education, and on immigration. I can't tell you one time Republicans supported President Obama.
COOPER: Jeff, can you?
LORD: Getting Osama bin Laden, I think there was a unanimous agreement that he did a great thing there. I certainly thought so. And Anderson ...
COOPER: But that wasn't a legislative initiative.
LORD: Right, right.
COOPER: Killing America's greatest enemy, you know?
LORD: Right.
COOPER: ... who was responsible for the slaughter of U.S. citizens and other citizens.
LORD: This goes to the point that I was trying to make earlier. If you believed as a lot of Republicans believed that the president's self-professed agenda of transforming America and taking it what -- in the view of many Republicans and conservatives was a socialist direction, then they're right to oppose that. They're right to stand up and say no.
[21:35:15] JONES: And they get us.
LORD: They get blowback from internally. I think that's one of the reasons John Boehner lost the speakership, et cetera. They get a lot of blowback for cooperating.
COOPER: Van, Jeff, thanks so much.
JONES: Thank you.
LORD: Thank you.
COOPER: Up next more breaking news tonight. Trump's phone call today with Taiwan, the move that could infuriate Beijing and hinder U.S.- China relations, and our team of international correspondents talk about how the world is viewing Donald Trump.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Again our breaking news tonight, a move by President-elect that could trigger a diplomatic showdown with China, all it took is one phone call, the one that Mr. Trump had today with the president of Taiwan.
Mr. Trump posted this tweet tonight. The president of Taiwan called me today to wish me congratulations on winning the presidency. Thank you.
This is a break from U.S. policy, something that actually hasn't happened in nearly 40 years. China regards Taiwan which broke away from the communist mainland as an outlaw province. This is one of many calls with foreign leaders. The president-elect has had since winning the election. To get insight on how the world sees President-elect Trump. I recently spoke to our Senior International Correspondents, Nick Paton Walsh, Clarissa Ward, and Arwa Damon, also Senior International Diplomatic Editor, Nic Robertson.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Do you hear it's among allies, do you hear excitement among in Europe?
CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENTS: You hear a lot of nervousness, Anderson but I don't think it's for the same reasons that people assume. It's not necessarily because of some of his more outlandish or controversial policy suggestions. It's because Donald Trump has essentially dispensed with the playbook. He is dispensing with diplomatic protocol. He is throwing away tradition. And nobody knows what is coming in its place. He is a disrupter.
Everyone is sort of frantically improvising to try to guess or anticipate what his next move will be. But he's not using protocol. He's not going through the existing chains of command. He's doing everything in his own unique way. And that is on the one hand I think to a lot of people kind of exciting and thrilling.
[21:40:04] COOPER: Right, I can mention Trump supporters right now hearing that, saying, you know, what good, great, it sounds good.
WARD: But as a leader, it's petrifying.
(CROSSTALK)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: I was going to say, there has been a sort of a comfortable mess in the relationship, the transatlantic relationship, NATO, the United States European countries that we could look across the Atlantic at each other and see each other mirror. And I think there's a time in Europe now, they're looking across the Atlantic and they're not sure if they're seeing themselves mirrored back.
I mean, maybe the UK feels and the Britain, UK Independent Party feels different. But I think that's a general feeling looking towards Trump. And then, of course, that uncertainty, but that brings a little uncomfortableness on top of that not knowing quite how he's going to behave and how he's going to deal with NATO, whether he's going to want to keep that alliance going.
COOPER: This rise in populism, we're seeing not just in the United Kingdom and obviously in the United States, it's happening all Europe?
ROBERTSON: Yeah, in a sense you get frustration from the sort of economic crash of 2008, people saying that the economist is not so good. They feel that their politicians are tone deaf to the issue, they see the rise of sort of global capitalism in a way, that it's not delivering for them. And then, add on top of that, at a time when the economists, half of people are feeling you're in a more precarious position. And you add in that big ingredient that we've seen through history of migration, of immigration, of the immigrants coming to floods that we're seen, coming in the Europe out of Syria or Afghanistan. And that's been a combustible mix.
So that's really resonated in Britain for the Brexit movement. And I think that really fueled their brand of populism. And that's why Britain voted to leave the European Union.
COOPER: And it's not just a fear of jobs from these migrants, it's a fear of the culture, a fear of them not assimilating as their religion.
ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And there's this massive, you know, fear of the other. They are different, at least in Europe. They view them as being different. I think that was one of the more striking things covering the refugee trail was how much fear there was amongst a certain segment of the population that is now getting a much louder and growing voice. Fear because there might be a suicide bomber or an ISIS sympathizer amongst, you know, these millions that people weren't able to get past the notion that one individual is not necessarily going to be reflective of everybody else. People are able to kind of reach in and find compassion with what it was because they were so overcome with the fear that they were going through.
COOPER: It is incredible, you know, we talk about allowing a few thousand or 10,000 Syrians refugees into the United States. In Germany, they've taken in 800,000 to 1 million.
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENTS: It's the place I think could change too, in Britain certainly. Look I mean, I've lived there for 15 years. I go back to London increasingly now. And it feels like society has done a lot of demographic change where I could be. But it's my parent's new friend, because live in a very different Britain now.
COOPER: Yeah.
WALSH: And I suppose maybe in our set of values here, in the liberal media, we perhaps need to ask ourselves that's how it should be is always has be. But for those outside of that, I think certain people I know, sort of look to this has gone very fast. We've had to endure an awful lot of things the things we took for granted not only competing that now.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: I guess, I hadn't been in London about two years.
WALSH: Yeah.
COOPER: ... and went back six months ago and I was stunned at to see the demographic changes you see on the streets.
ROBERTSON: And there's the political class -- sorry, the political class didn't really -- hasn't sold it to the British people over a space of generations. So this has built up over a period of time I think.
WARD: I think as well as all of these components that you're talking about, there's a genuine sense of excitement that people feel, oh, my goodness, we do have the power, we can do it. It started with Brexit. Then people all over the world they're watching what happened here in the United States, and they're saying, wow, disrupters have power. Disrupters have a role. Disrupters can affect change. And there's a genuine excitement and enthusiasm that comes with that such empowerment.
(CROSSTALK)
WALSH: And they want to smash it up and see what's currently that changed because established and hasn't been into many people in rural communities. It seems, you know, the urban elite have cheap labor. And they look fantastic, well in the globalized rules. But when it comes down to actually having something they want to see in its place.
COOPER: Right. It also not just Europe, but I mean we're seeing this I think about the Philippines. I mean, look at their new leader, you know, some even called him sort the "Donald Trump of the Philippines". I mean, he's very different. And he did held office, he was a mayor of a city.
You know I think the new mayor in Sao Paulo is a millionaire, had a television background. A lot of that the people leading these movements are very wealthy and yet they're able to portray themselves, and perhaps even be, you know, voices for the populous.
ROBERTSON: It's happening into a frustration. And we've also seen through Brexit, through the elections here, but you don't have to always say the truth to get elected. This is what's happening.
WARD: And they're charming often. They're charismatic. They have a sense of humor. They don't carry themselves with the same stiffness, with the rigorous enslavement to the idea of protocol and what is diplomatically feasible, and what you can say. They cut through the bull and they talk the language that people are desperately wanting to hear from ...
[21:45:06] COOPER: And certainly Donald Trump is the greatest example of that.
DAMON: The thing is, in this rise of nationalism that we're seeing, you're also seeing a rise in rejection of people that, you know, some individuals don't consider to be like them. You know, Britain today is very diverse. Countries are very diverse. You can't say, nationalism is going to be on the rise. But I'm going to reject this entire segment of society, because their origins, their roots are different than what mine are.
COOPER: Arwa, you obviously spent a lot of time in the Middle East. I mean, you were just in Iraq, incredible reporting from Mosul in the heat of the battle. What's the reaction been people you talked to Donald Trump being elected? DAMON: There's a lot of surprise obviously, as there was throughout. I think, you know, there's a lot of concern amongst the Syrian activists and rebel population, because they are worried about Trump's potential relationship with Putin and whether or not he will basically ally with Putin, Assad and completely give up on them. And that will lead eventually to their complete and total obliteration and.
COOPER: His tough talk, though, about destroying ISIS, bombing the hell out of them. Is that ...
DAMON: He did inform the hell out of ISIS in a city like Mosul.
COOPER: Yes, but I mean, to people, does that play well in Iraq?
DAMON: In the sense that, you know, they want a tough leader to a certain degree, they want -- they like the Republicans because they saw Bush as being a decisive individual, even though I guess the invasion completely, you know, through Iraq and to comply in total another shambles. But they don't had a lot of issues with the Obama administration, they believe that maybe a Republican, Trump even through he is his own entity might have a harsher hand and be more decisive in handling like ISIS. But they're also very realistic and concerned about the unpredictability of it all. Because everyone knows that you can't bomb ISIS into defeat. You can't bomb an ideology.
WALSH: You can an idea kind of the relationships he wants in the Middle East, one of the first phone calls he made was to Egyptian President Sisi, who is not exactly one of the leaders of the free world frankly around that, so for me, it's going to be seen as a strong man who reach out all the strong men to try in forward some sort of path.
COOPER: Thank you all. I appreciate it. I appreciate all your work.
DAMON: Thank you.
WALSH: Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Just ahead, the Indiana manufacturing plant that did not get a job-saving deal. It just down the street from Carrier, its workers are wondering, what about us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:51:00] COOPER: Today the Indiana manufacturing company Carrier confirmed it will still be sending 700 jobs to Mexico. The cuts will fall on workers at a different factory than the one covered by the deal President-elect Trump made with Carrier. That deal which Trump has been touting will save 800 jobs, fewer than the 1,100 he had initially said. It turns out he was including 300 jobs that weren't at risk getting shipped to Mexico. Still the deal is great news for the 800 workers whose jobs were saved. But at another manufacturing company in Indianapolis it's a much different story. Martin Savidge tonight reports.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As they celebrated saving hundreds of jobs inside the Carrier plant, I sat at Josh Shartzer's kitchen table. He's a long-time worker at a company down the street, called Rexnord.
Are you happy for them?
JOSH SHARTZER, REXNORD EMPLOYEE: Yeah, I'm totally psyched, you know, and I'm happy for my community, you know.
SAVIDGE: Shartzer just wishes someone would save his job too. Just because Rexnord are none six weeks ago it was leaving, relocating, it's Indianapolis operation to Mexico, taking 300 well-paying jobs with it.
At the local union hall, Josh Feltnor remembers when the bad news broke.
JOSH FELTNOR, REXNORD EMPLOYEE: And he says, we have a meeting at 2:30 on the back dock. I come to find out they actually split the plant, half the plant went up to the front dock, the other half went to the back dock. And they just come on said we're closing.
SAVIDGE: Rexnord has had a plant on the west side of Indianapolis since the 1950s. Don Fering worked there for 43 years.
DON FERING, REXNORD EMPLOYEE: It's not 300. It's at least three or four people per family, you're talking 12, 15, 1,800 people.
SAVIDGE: Ironically, Tim Mathis ended up at Rexnord after the last factory, he was at closed.
TIM MATHIS, REXNORD EMPLOYEE: It's the obvious tough. So yeah, I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to go through it again.
SAVIDGE: Carrier had planned to phase its shutdown over three years. Rexnord workers say they have six months. Now they watch President- elect Trump come to town and save Carrier. And they're happy.
MATHIS: We don't know the details yet.
SAVIDGE: But isn't there a part that says, what about me?
MATHIS: Sure, you bet there is. There's a part that says, what about me?
SAVIDGE: Shartzer is married with six kids. They've already started cutting back. And he thinks about all he missed working those 12-hour shifts to provide what he calls his nice middle-class home.
SHARTZER: It's not anything to brag about, but it's nice enough for us. SAVIDGE: He started a college fund for his daughters, put some money into retirement fund, and bought his wife their first new car.
How many you got?
SHARTZER: My the first payment was due the Friday they announced.
SAVIDGE: He's glad to hear about Carrier, especially because he never thought it could happen.
Like, did you hope?
SHARTZER: No. It's a different situation. It's ...
SAVIDGE: How so?
SHARTZER: It's comparing apples to oranges.
SAVIDGE: For starters Rexnord wasn't a campaign issue. It's not a household name like Carrier. And it doesn't have a parent company that does billions of dollars in defense contracts.
SHARTZER: We don't have a parent company that has 10 percent of their revenue in a federal contracts.
SAVIDGE: Do you think that matters?
SHARTZER: Oh, yeah, it matters. Yeah.
SAVIDGE: Do you think it mattered in this case?
SHARTZER: Oh, yeah, 100 percent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAVIDGE: In his speech at Carrier plant, Donald Trump said that the days that companies could pick up and move to site in Mexico, once he's president, are pretty much going to be over. There will be consequences. And for those many factory workers that are worried about their jobs, they've been delivered something they haven't had in a long time, hope. Anderson?
COOPER: Martin, thanks very much, we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:58:20] COOPER: This weekend CNN follows the rise and fall of James Arthur Ray. You may remember him. He's a self-help guru who shot to popularity more than a decade ago. Thousands of people paid to go to Ray's seminars and retreats which he packed with physical challenges to push participants past their comfort zones. That's what the selling point.
In 2009, three of Ray's followers died in a sweat lodge in Arizona. After spending two years in prison for negligence homicide he is now trying to make a comeback. Here's a preview of "Enlighten Us: The Rise and Fall of James Arthur Ray."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BEVERLY: It was so, so, so intense. You couldn't breathe. At the fourth round I said I had had enough and I crawled over and James was at the door. And he's like, Beverly, you know, you can do this, you can do this, you're stronger than this, you can get through this. You know, playful on.
JAMES ARTHUR RAY, SELF-HELP GURU: As a good mentor that they paid me to be I would say, come on, now, come on, you can do this. Can't you? Come on you can stick it out. You know, I would encourage them.
BEVERLY: I was like, yeah, OK, OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What am I doing here? Why am I putting myself through this? What is the point of me, you know, sitting here with all these other people? And is it worth it?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I had to leave. But then I was sitting there blaming myself. Like, Golly. Is there something wrong with me that I wasn't able to like, you know, stick it out?
RAY: Yes there were people that were having a hard time. But every year there were people having a hard time. You know, to me it was no different than running a marathon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well "Enlighten Us: The Rise and Fall of James Arthur Ray" premieres on CNN tomorrow night at 8:00 Eastern. That does it for us. Thanks for watching. Have a great weekend.
"CNN Tonight with Don Lemon" starts now.
[22:00:11] DON LEMON, CNN HOST: It is been more than 30 years as the president did what Donald Trump did today.
This is CNN Tonight --
