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FMR. FBI Director Comey To Testify Next Thursday; Fact Checking The Climate Speech; Trump Pulls U.S. From Paris Climate Accord; Interview with Rep. Chris Collins. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 2, 2017 - 07:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It is time to exit the Paris Accord.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This agreement was truly about putting America second.

TRUMP: At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?

JOHN KERRY, FMR SECRETARY OF STATE: Donald Trump is not telling the truth to the American people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a strategic mistake and something that really sets us back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible) make our planet great again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: James Comey testifies next Thursday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We want to know, did the president attempt to curtail the Russia investigation?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Putin says patriotically-minded private Russian hackers could have been involved in the hacking during the 2016 election.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Russian propaganda.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In Russia, there are armies of hackers, trained and employed by the state.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is New Day with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, welcome to your New Day.

President Trump defying world leaders by pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. He says this is a political win for him and for America. European leaders reacting with disappointment, warning the president the deal will not be renegotiated. ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Meanwhile, fired FBI director James

Comey is set to testify before a senate hearing next week. What will he say about his private conversations with President Trump? All of this as the White House turns to the Supreme Court to try to get the Presidents halted travel ban reinstated. We have all the angles covered for you, so let's begin with CNN's Joe Johns, he is live at the White House. Good morning, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. Withdrawing from the Paris Accord was a big promise the president made to his base, to his most loyal supporters. In fulfilling it he had to face off with the condemnation of the entire world. And now going forward, US leadership on the global stage could have an enormous impact.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.

(Voice over)

JOHNS: President Trump making good on his campaign promise to withdraw from the landmark 195 nation agreement, but leaving the door open for a potential new door.

TRUMP: We're getting out but we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we make a deal that's fair, and if we can, that's great.

JOHNS: Trump's rose garden speech focusing not on climate change, but Trump claiming instead the accord is hurting American jobs.

TRUMP: The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists, that have long soared to gain wealth at our countries expense.

JOHNS: Touting the decision puts America first.

TRUMP: Our withdraw from the agreement represents a reassertion of America's sovereignty. We don't want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won't be.

JOHNS: Sources tell CNN the president was dead set on this decision, with the nationalist wing of his administration prevailing, while is daughter Ivanka and son in law Jared Kushner, who were absent from the announcement, pushed for him to stay in the deal, along with Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

TRUMP: As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States. I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.

JOHNS: The mayor of Pittsburgh hitting back after Trump invoked the name of his city. BILL PEDUTO, MAYOR OF PITTSBURG: --and the values that we have in this city follow right along the lines of what the Paris Agreement stated.

JOHNS: After the announcement, White House officials struggling on whether the president still believe climate change is a hoax.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to actually have to ask him -

JOHNS: Former President Obama, who signed the agreement responding in a rare statement saying the deal was meant to protect the world we leave to our children, adding the nations that remain will reap the benefits in jobs and industries created.

JOHN KERRY, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Donald Trump is not telling the truth to the American people when he says we have this huge burden that's been imposed on us by other nations. It's voluntary, and the President Of The United States could have simply changed that without having to walk away from the whole agreement.

JOHNS: Backlash also growing among American business leaders who fiercely lobbied President Trump to stay in the deal, Tesla and Spacex CEO, Elon Musk, and Disney's Bob Igor quitting the president's economic council. General Electric CEO, Jeff Immelt tweeting industry must now lead and not depend on government.

Cities and states are also vowing to step up, dozens of governors and mayors across the country collectively pledging to uphold the commitments of the Paris Agreement.

JOHNS: Today, the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer is expected to give one of his increasingly rare on camera briefings, and he's expected to be accompanied by one of the men of the moment, that would be the EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, Alisyn.

[07:04:56] CAMEROTA: Okay, that will be interesting, Joe. Thank you very much. World leaders expressing disappointment and outrage at President Trump's withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, leaders from Germany, Italy, and France issuing a joint statement, making it clear that renegotiating is off the table. CNN's Clarissa Ward is live in London with more. What happened in the reaction Clarissa?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well I think Alisyn that a lot of countries, by the time President Trump made his announcement had already come to the grim realization that President Trump was choosing to consign himself to the ranks of President Bashar Al-Asssad of Syria and then Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, but none the less there has been a kind of outpouring if you will, across the globe of reaction from global leaders, and there's a consistent theme here.

The Australian Prime Minister called it disappointing but not at all surprising. Canada's Prime Minister called it very disappointing. British Prime Minister Teresa May also told President Trump, on the phone that she was very disappointed. Italy, Germany, and France, as you mentioned issued a joint statement in which they expressed their regret, and more to the point, Alisyn, they doubled down on this idea that there will be no renegotiation of the Paris Agreement, just because the US doesn't want to be a part of it.

We also heard from the newly elected French President, Emmanuel Macron, who had a kind of funny riff on one of President Trump's favorite slogans, take a listen.

EMMANUEL MACRON, PRESIDENT OF FRANCE (voice over): We all share the same responsibility, make our planet great again.

WARD: Finally, I just wanted to show you the cover of a German weekly news magazine, it's called Der Spiegel. You can see it there, also playing on one of Trump's favorite slogans, America first, it says simply Earth Last, Chris and Alisyn.

CUOMO: All right, stay with us. Let's bring in CNN Politics reporter and editor at large, Chris Cillizza, and congressional reporter from the Washington Post, Karoun Demirijian, so it's good to have everybody here. Cillizza, America first, this seems to be the most dramatic manifestation of that principle by the president to date, fair statement.

CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Look I think this goes beyond - while the climate focus, Chris, I think is hugely important. I actually think that what this tells us is even bigger than that. This is Donald Trump essentially making good on what he said he would do. You said a lot of world leaders were surprised; I'm not sure why they should be unless they didn't watch the campaign. Throughout the campaign, not just in terms of the Paris Climate Accord, but more broadly his argument was you know what, the world is too dependent on us, we are supporting a world financially and otherwise and why should we, you know what do we get from them?

This is a more cynical world view. It is a more America first, certainly, America go it alone, we're going to look out for ourselves first second and third, then we're going to think about the rest of the world. It's important to note, because it's not a break from what democratic presidents have done in the past, though that's certainly true. It's also a break from what republican presidents have done in the past. Look, George W. Bush, and certain George H.W. Bush believed fundamentally in the sort of US Europe alliance, saw a certain role for the United States as sort of a leader morally and otherwise, in the world. That is not the case here with Donald Trump.

Trumpism is we're going to look at - we're going to look out for ourselves. We're not going to worry about - you heard them, they're laughing at us. They're not going to worry about what the leaders in global salons; I think that was his word, what they think of us. Too long we've done that. Now we're going to worry about us first. This is Steve Bannon, this is nationalism, this is Trumpism. If you need to understand it, this is what it is.

CAMEROTA: Look no further. So that's the world view, the global response to this, but Tyrone, domestically there's also been a huge response. There's been a state of CEOs from even some unlikely places, Exon, Chevron who have spoken out against this. They want the US to stay in the Paris Accord. And there's been a slew of governors who say okay, now we'll have to go it alone. And of course for conservatives or people I guess like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, that's good news. They don't want the federal government to have to shoulder all of this. Let states go it alone.

KAROUN DEMIRIJIAN, REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: If that's the trajectory that this follows and people do end up, and companies do end up working to try to improve emission standards and everything else, independent of the government, then in a way that's almost a nod to the success of the last time period where we were trying to instill those sorts of values and that sort of corporate responsibility. It's not that surprising that you see companies like that, frankly that we think of being carbon - well they are oil and gas companies to an extent but they've tried to diversify in the last several years, because this is the way the world markets are going.

[07:09:58] There are economic opportunities in these renewable fields, in other areas, as kind of across the board energy strategy. It's something that global companies have tried to invest in because they know they have to compete with standards in different countries, and if they decide to just not buy in to that - not to get in to that part of the energy portfolio they're going to suffer, in comparison to competitors around the world. So I mean the fact that everybody is kind of in lock step on this is actually just a sign of the - it's a reflection of the rest of the globe being in lock step on this, and then you have the Trump administration that's saying no, we're going to pursue a separate path.

CUOMO: Well there's a word for why you have such continuity of believe on this and it's called science. Under the category of news is what the powerful want to keep hidden, Clarissa. They won't even answer questions about what the president believes about global warming when discussing why he removed himself from the most extensive climate based accord. They literally won't answer the question. I just had one of the supporters on, I got choked for time in the segment, so we couldn't beat it down to it's conclusion, but literally we just had one of his supporters say well just because it's a consensus doesn't mean it might not be wrong. And we don't want the American worker to pay if all of these predictions about global warming are warm.

So that's part of this too, isn't it, that Donald Trump is saying the rest of the world leaders are wrong because they believe in global warming, and he obviously does not.

WARD: And I think Chris you're hitting the nail on the head here. First of all let's look at the other countries that are not going to be a part of the Paris Accord, one of them is Nicaragua, which by the way is not going to be part of the accord because they don't think it goes far enough. The other is Syria which is ruled by the brutal dictator Bashar Al-Assad, so we are not in good company here, let's be clear about that. Secondly, the idea for most European leaders, that you have the head of the free world, essentially prevaricating or refusing to be drawn on whether or not global warming climate change are a reality is so shocking and alarming frankly to the rest of the world, that there is now a growing sense of realization. When you talk to European leaders specifically, they will tell you listen, we have seen quite clearly now that this is no longer going to be the way it was, that this alliance of many decades, across the Atlantic, with the US essentially leading the free world, there has to be a pivot, there has to be a shift, the US is now unreliable. We cannot simply depend on them for all the sort of security and cooperation and shared alliances that we traditionally have.

So in some ways it goes even beyond the issue of climate change and becomes this sort of seminal moment of okay, you know what, it's really clear now this is over, there's a new sheriff in town, and we need to look to other people for leadership. And who is the EU looking to today? Well they're signing, Chris, a big deal with China today, talking about a climate agreement. They've never done something like this before with China, China spending hundreds of billions on green energy jobs, and I think you're going to continue to see a pivot in different directions away from America.

CAMEROTA: Nature abhors a vacuum as they say, including a vacuum of leadership. Chris Cillizza, let's talk politics. Your wheelhouse, does this mean, can you draw the conclusion that Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump, and Rex Tillerson, the people who in the White House were reported to favor staying in the Paris Climate Accord, that they're - they just don't have that much currency with the president, and they're not as significant in terms of decision making as some people had thought.

CILLIZZA: Okay, so the lesson I've learned, Alisyn, with Donald Trump is today is not predictive of tomorrow, and yesterday doesn't tell us that much about today, which means what I think we can say is Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Rex Tillerson, their view did not win out. They were not able to convince a president who was both sort of wants to - there were two things driving Trump, one he promised on the campaign trail, and at least he wants to make sure that his base knows he's keeping his promises, and then two, this fits again more broadly - Clarissa makes this point more broadly we're served the Trumpian world view, which is we're giving too much to world leaders. I don't care about their approval, I care about doing things for this country.

So I think it was always going to be a hard thing to move him off of that point. But I don't know - yes, Steve Bannon had a good day yesterday because his view won out. Ivanka, Jared, and Rex Tillerson had a less good day. But Donald trump is so material in terms of who he listens to, what his opinion is on things. He changes his opinion on things quite often.

But I'm not sure that we can sort of predict the broader influence here. It was a month ago, maybe less, I'm trying to remember where I know we were talking about whether Steve Bannon could survive the week in the Trump White House because of his clashes with Jared Kushner.

[07:15:03] So these moons wax and wane in the Trump White house. And it happens overnight not over a long period of time.

CAMEROTA: Thank you for the lunar cycle report there. I appreciate it. Karoun, very quickly, in the waning seconds that we have, how is Congress responding?

DEMIRIJIAN: Well, the Congress is watching this from afar this week because they are not in D.C. But you have a lot of people who have already kind of stated where they stand. As much as the President is not stating where he stands on climate change, you kind of know where members of Congress do, for the most part. And those that think it's a hoax, so to speak, are supporting him, and everybody else is being fairly critical or very, very mum, because they don't want to get into the fray.

But you have -- interestingly, you also have people, I believe the President retweeted Lindsey Graham saying it's better that he supports the impetus to try to go get a better deal. The question is, though, how much of this is political positioning and working in those parameters, and how much is this actually what they would have done themselves if they were equipped to make this decision as the President was. I think probably, there's a lot of daylight there.

CAMEROTA: All right, panel, thank you very much. Great to talk to all of you.

So, for the other top story, former FBI Director James Comey is set to testify next Thursday before a Senate panel. This will be Comey's first public comments since President Trump fired him. What will he say about the conversations that he had with the President?

CNN National Correspondent Dianne Gallagher is live in Washington with the latest. Hi, Dianne.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey Alisyn. For all the anticipation here in Washington, D.C., and really around the world, the real question is, just how much will James Comey say? Are we actually going to learn anything from his new public testimony? And the answer is, we don't really know. Sources tell CNN that Comey did consult with Special Counsel Robert Mueller before he decided if he was going to testify to kind of figure out what he should and should not say legally in public.

Expect plenty of tough, leading questions though. Much of them centered around Comey's reported memos that recorded tense confrontations with President Trump, including whether Trump asked him to go easy on former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.

And speaking of Russia, for the first time, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed to actually concede that the election hacks may have come from inside his country. Saying quote, hackers are free people just like artists. They would wake up, read about something going on in interstate relations, and if they feel patriotic, they may try to contribute to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia.

Also, we should point out, though, it's interesting hypothesis. Putin denied any sort of Russian government backing of the hacks. Chris --

CUOMO: Well, two interesting points there for us, Dianne. One, that's a different story than Putin used to tell where he said there's no way to say it was Russians at all. And, the irony, he's gone further in implicating Russia than the President of the United States has in the Russian interference. Appreciate the reporting. Thank you very much.

So, when we come back, let's do a little fact checking of what President Trump's claims were, motivating his leaving the Paris accord. Some of the jobs case. That's what the President says this is about. We're going to check it next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:22:08] CUOMO: All right. So, President Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate change accord was in part, really in large part, almost exclusively, to make good on a campaign promise. He says this is about jobs. To get America out of what he calls a job killer. The president claimed the energy restrictions on the U.S. could cost as many as 2.7 million jobs by 2025, including more than 400,000 lost in manufacturing.

All right, now, is he 100 percent right on the figures? No. He cherry picked from a range of scenarios. He picked the worst possible scenario in looking at job losses. So the best case shows a big job loss still of of 2.3 million. About a 400,000 job difference with only a 12,000 hit to manufacturing jobs. But, the main point would still be true, right? Which is about losing jobs because of this accord.

He also talked about building jobs in the coal industry as a reason to exit the deal. But fossil fuel jobs have been on the decline for the last 20 years. This is a very important point, especially to those communities that are banking on change. We have been losing coal jobs since the '70s for a lot of reasons. The accord is not at the top of that list.

So, what's the alternative? Green energy jobs. We're seeing a lot of growth there. There are 160,000 coal workers today compared with more than 360,000 natural gas workers, 370,000 in solar power, 100,000 in wind. So that's about five times as many jobs in clean energy as in coal.

Lastly, President Trump said the minds are opening up. And he's right. The Acosta coal mine is opening in Pennsylvania a week from today, but it's expected to only create between 70 and 100 jobs. So, is this really what it should be about? They're true, we're going to lose jobs. But it seems misleading at best.

So let's discuss the implications now with one of the supporters, Republican Congressman Chris Collins of New York. Always a pleasure, Congressman. Thank you for joining us on NEW DAY.

REP. CHRIS COLLINS (R), NEW YORK: Yes. Good to be with you, Chris.

CUOMO: I'm happy to get into the economic stuff all day long with you. But I do think we have to start with what this accord was really about, right. This is about environmental stewardship in an international recognition of everybody except Syria and Nicarugua, and now us in consensus about the science on global warming. Why won't any of the White House advisers or the President say whether or not he believes that greenhouse gasses are a problem and that global warming is real?

[07:24:45] COLLINS: Well first of all, Chris, this was not agreement about the science behind global warming. This was a bad deal for the United States. We had a hard pledge to reduce our CO2 emissions by 26 percent or 28 percent by the year 2025. That is in eight years, where China, Pakistan, and India made a pledge of sorts that they would do their best to see what might happen. This was a one-sided bad deal for the United States which was going to cost ust a lot of jobs.

CUOMO: Right, but Congressman --

COLLINS: The other countries, there was no teeth in the agreement. This agreement reminds me of the Iran agreement, the Syrian agreement, and also the Trans-Pacific Partnership. President Obama flunked negotiation 101. This was just another really bad agreement from the U.S. This was not about global warming. This was not about the science behind it. This was just a job killing bad deal.

CUOMO: All right. So let's take that one at a time. One, we'll see if you guys get better deals, right. That's going to be the measure on Iran which you guys haven't touched --

COLLINS: Oh, we don't need another deal.

CUOMO: -- even though he said he would, he hasn't touched it. We'll see if you get a better deal here. He says he wants to renegotiate. France and Germany say that's not on the table, but we'll see. However --

COLLINS: No, we're out of this. There is nothing to renegotiate.

CUOMO: He just said he would yesterday. So you can talk to the President about getting on the same page with message. The President just said he wanted to renegotiate.

But let me ask you this. The premise -- this wasn't about global warming. How can you even say those words, Congressman? It was all about the consensus of science. That is what motivated. Read the accord. Look at the agreements that went into it.

COLLINS: Oh, I've looked at the accord, and the accord --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: It's all about a recognition of science. That's why I'm asking you how odd it is that the President won't even say what he believes, and that his advisers are twisting themselves in knots to avoid answering the question, defaulting to, you'll have you to ask him. I'll ask you, do you think that President Trump believes that global warming is a hoax?

COLLINS: Oh, I have not talked to the President directly about it.

CUOMO: You've never discussed this with him? You were deciding to support him, it never came up? You don't care what he thinks?

COLLINS: No, frankly, when it comes to global warming, what we care about is having clean water, clean air. We need jobs in the economy. We need economic growth. This was such an awful deal with our hard pledge to reduce our CO2 emissions 26 percent to 28 percent. There was no equal pledge coming from China, India, Pakistan. The countries most polluting the atmosphere and the water. They made no pledge of a hard nature whatsoever. It was, well we'll see what we can do.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: I understand what you don't like about the deal. And he could have changed. Member, as you keep saying, it had no teeth. It was non binding. It's not a treaty. It didn't even go to the Senate. This is all --

COLLINS: I know. It was all but a joke.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: It's not a joke to everybody else in the world, right, because it's only Syria, Nicaragua, and us. So it's not a joke internationally. There's tons of --

COLLINS: No, the other countries were laughing at us. They were laughing at another bad Obama deal.

CUOMO: Well, I don't know how you can say that. How can you say that --

COLLINS: We made a hard pledge and other countries didn't. We made the hard pledge. The other countries did not. They were saying boy, we got Obama again.

CUOMO: And what is your proof that they were saying that we got Obama again? Who said that?

COLLINS: Just read the agreement. We made the hard pledge to reduce 26 percent to 28 percent --

CUOMO: It doesn't say that in the accord. Right, and other people made their own pledges. They made pledges that they thought they could accomplish in that period.

COLLINS: And look at their own pledges. They were a joke. There were no teeth in it. They were saying, let's see what happens. We think -- China goes, we think that we'll peak in the year 2030. This was a bad deal, Chris. This was just bad.

CUOMO: But he could have changed. He could have changed his parameters. I'm just saying, he didn't have to leave. I get why he left. He left because it was a promise that he made, and you guys were selling a portion of the American people on the proposition that you're going to bring back coal jobs. And a lot of people are going to be waiting.

COLLINS: We need jobs --

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: We don't want to have an argument of how many jobs we're going to lose. We need this country to grow jobs. We need to grow our GDP three percent.

CUOMO: You think you're going to be able to bring back those coal jobs to people? You think you're going to have a big boom in fossil fuels and even in coal?

COLLINS: I think we're going to see a boom in natural gas with hydro fracking. I would tend to agree, we're not going to see a boom in coal. But coal is a base load of about 30 percent of our energy. We need to keep it there. We can't have a base load based on wind and solar.

Take away the tax credits, wind and solar are still not competitive in the country. The future really is in natural gas. And we need to have a future in nuclear.

CUOMO: Well, that's highly debatable. But every country's going to determine its own future path. We'll see what the President decides for us with you in Congress. But the last point is again the first point. On global warming. That's what this was about. An international recognition of a recognized problem by all. OK. That we have problems with greenhouse gasses, and we all need to address that. Do you accept that premise?

[07:30:03] COLLINS: Well, I do accept it. In fact, I traveled to the arctic circle a week ago to meet with the scientists. We discussed this in great depth.