On Friday’s edition of New Day, hosts Alisyn Camerota and John Berman spent most of the three-hour program discussing former Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his willingness to turn on President Trump. During the third hour of the program, the two hosts invited president of the Eurasia Group, Ian Bremmer, to add his take to the nauseating amount of coverage of this topic.
Camerota asked Bremmer about how this issue affected the big picture of U.S. politics. Bremmer responded, “you really want the big picture? This has been a good week for Trump.”
Surprised by this statement, Camerota asked for an explanation. Bremmer’s reply make the segment take an interesting turn:
I mean look; we get out of CNN land for just a second. And--4% growth in the United States, the Europeans backed down on trade, he now looks like a winner on that front. The north Koreans, more progress with remains coming back and stuff about Michael Cohen, I mean is he credible? He was trump's lawyer. If you are a Trump supporter this is just blah-blah-blah. Now, the Helsinki stuff was really bad for Trump and he had to walk it back and the Republicans were hitting him pretty hard for a day, and now he's basically said, okay, I'm not going to do the summit this year after all, I'm not going to recognize Crimea as a part of Russia. Nothing actually happened. We don't know what was in the two-hour conversation, it's really weird. We’ll talk about that a lot but nobody else is going to. I mean seriously, this has been a good week for Trump.
The hosts continued to be stuck in “CNN land” and push the Trump-Russia narrative, specifically about the Helsinki summit. Once again, Bremmer brought reason and clarity to the situation:
Everyone got so worked up that Trump was so embarrassing to American national interest during the press conference that he held in Helsinki. It was really weird. And yet, if you look at concrete policy deliverables coming out of it, the US is still spending a lot more on defense under Trump. They're not suspending any military exercises in NATO countries under Trump. Advance forces rotating in and out of the Baltic States, they're in Poland. The United States isn't pulling out of Syria. They're not recognizing Crimea, and I suspect we're going to see more sanctions against Russians from Congress this year. Really hard for Putin to want come over to the United States and run another hey, you're my buddy-buddy. So the fact that Trump said we’re going to wait until, he said after the witch hunt is over, which may imply there aren't any more meetings that happen between Trump and Putin. I suspect he'll change his mind on that. But the fact is, for as angry as everyone including main stream Republicans were on the back of this Helsinki meeting, very little concrete that we know of has actually come out of it.
The coverage on New Day clearly shows that in magical world of “CNN land” alleged Trump-Russia collusion is the only story worth covering. Just from today’s coverage, New Day spent 74 minutes and 27 seconds on the Michael Cohen news. The truth is that to most Americans, these Russia collusion stories are a bunch of “blah-blah-blah,” as Bremmer put it so eloquently.
Compared to issues that people care about like their pocket books and the recently announced 4.1% economic growth, these issues will remain minor in the absence of Robert Mueller’s final report or hard evidence which Cohen does not have.
CNN’s obsession with this issue further degrades the crumbling reputation of the “most trusted name in news.”
A transcript of this segment is below.
CNN's New Day with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman
7/27/18
08:13:38 AM – 8:22:18 AM
ALISYN CAMEROTA: We need the big picture of this, okay? So every-- it seems to me that since the Helsinki summit a lot has changed, a lot has come out. There's been breaking news on our watch every single morning. Can you imagine if you were Michael Cohen, okay, the president's long time devoted servant and you watched that Helsinki summit where Donald Trump seemed to defend or support Vladimir Putin more than he ever has since Michael Cohen got in trouble and now Michael Cohen is speaking -- yeah, he's speaking publicly through his --
JOHN BERMAN: Somebody ---
CAMEROTA: Through somebody
IAN BREMMER: *Inaudable* -- You asked me about the big picture. You really want the big picture? This has been a good week for Trump.
CAMEROTA: How?
BREMMER: I mean look; we get out of CNN land for just a second. And--4% growth in the United States, the Europeans backed down on trade, he now looks like a winner on that front. The north Koreans, more progress with remains coming back and stuff about Michael Cohen, I mean is he credible? He was trump's lawyer. If you are a Trump supporter this is just blah-blah-blah. Now, the Helsinki stuff was really bad for Trump and he had to walk it back and the Republicans were hitting him pretty hard for a day, and now he's basically said, okay, I'm not going to do the summit this year after all, I'm not going to recognize Crimea as a part of Russia. Nothing actually happened. We don't know what was in the two-hour conversation, it's really weird. We’ll talk about that a lot but nobody else is going to. I mean seriously, this has been a good week for Trump.
BERMAN: Lets continue this train of thought for a bit because I think it's fascinating is one of the things you do so people knows you assess risk. What is the biggest risk here from the last two weeks.
BREMMER: Um, I guess the biggest risk is continually what comes out eventually around Russia. Why is it that Trump has such a personal fixation on treating Putin well when even all of the members of his own administration, present and former that have left are saying privately we don't know why he does this. Like why wouldn't he include them in the meetings? I do think especially with the mid-terms coming up and now we're getting the first public information about active hacking of the mid-term elections, that's going to be a problem. People are going to talk about them being rigged, the Russian issue is going to become bigger. But again, if we're talking about just breaking news this week, if I were talking to FOX instead of CNN right now, they would be telling me to run a victory lap for the guy.
CAMEROTA: Oh they are. Yes in fact, at the moment. And so if--The fact is it's been a very good week for President Trump, nati — domestically or internationally? Internationally since Helsinki how is he playing?
BREMMER: Um, I would say pretty weak still because American traditional allies really don't like the guy. Now, the German foreign minister came out this morning and said, look, our relationship with the U.S. Is going to stay strong. We are bigger than just dealing with the White House. He's going to be gone eventually, and that is a -- that is the more mature response that we're seeing from a bunch of leaders. But we're also seeing when Trump decides that he wants to go hard against you, you've got to throw him something. And so on trade, even though these leaders don’t like him, it’s not just the EU. It's been the South Koreans, it’s been the Brazilians, it’s been the Argentines. Those are a lot of individual countries that have lined up and said okay let's try to find a better trade deal for this guy. And even with NAFTA, the new president who won big in Mexico, Lopez-Obrador, the initial back and forth with the Americans has been pretty positive. We want to make sure we get through the (inaudible)
BERMAN: It's interesting because they come in and seem to say let's figure out a way so that Donald Trump can claim victory even though it's not clear exactly what's achieved. You talked about Europe you talked about the EU meeting. It’s unclear to me what exactly came out of that meeting other than they decided not to make it work right away.
BREMMER: Well, a couple of things. One is they’ve said they were going to buy more soybeans from the United States. That's significant. L and G. We don't have the details on it yet, but if the EU, if they make a commitment like that, really hard for them to back away from it. And they’re saying they're going to resist the escalation against the United States for what we’ve already done, as are the Japanese. The Japanese are unhappy. They haven't gotten an exemption. But they didn’t hit the American’s back. Other countries like Canada, Mexico did hit the American’s back. China, China's the one to watch. Right, because the bad news that Trump got on the international front is that the Chinese killed the qualcomm deal, which is going to cost them an awful lot of money, and implies on the technology front, the United States and China are two trains that are heading directly at each other. But if we look at Trump’s first year and a half, everything he's done in policy has been focused toward let's not hurt the economy short-term. We can blow out the budget and really hurt the American economy long-term --
CAMEROTA: And that's what is happening in your assessment?
BREMMER: On trade he kind of moved right up to the line and as soon as it felt like the markets were pushing him back then it's was much more about rhetoric and not actually follow through.
BERMAN: Do you think he's backed off, do you think he backed off on trade in the last week?
BREMMER: I think he's backed off China and on Europe a little bit. I think that if he felt like he could do more escalation without any damage to the U.S. economy, I suspect that conversation with the EU might have gone another round or two. I think with the Chinese he might be talking about already wanting to implement specifics around that additional $200 billion or $500 billion on goods which is the entirety of the US-China import relationship from China to the US. He hasn't done that yet. So yeah I think-- there's a lot more bombast around how bad this could get. But that also implies someone who want to push these folks into a better place. In a number of instances, we have to recognize that's been effective.
CAMEROTA: We've had several Republican congressmen and senators on this week who are quite worried about the tariffs and how they affect their states, Iowa, Pennsylvania, et cetera. And, as you know President Trump has proposed this bailout, $12 billion for farmers. So how’s this all gonna play out?
BREMMER: Long-term the way you benefit the U.S. Economy isn't by raising tariffs and then throwing cash to your domestic constituents. But short-term you keep them happy, interest rates comparatively low, who cares where the money is coming from. If you look at the way Trump has run his businesses historically, the beginning of the Trump organization was about owning things and building a real business. After the bankruptcies it was about licensing deals, quick money for Trump with second, third, fourth tiered people in weird parts of the world like Panama City, Baku and Batumi, Georgia. There is a fear, certainly, that Trump as President is gonna run the country like Trump as CEO of Trump Organization. When things get tough he moves from the real assets to vaporware, and I think long-term you have to worry that some of the decisions Trump is taking will be damaging to the economy.
BERMAN: Lets talk about the summit that’s not happening in the fall between President Trump and Vladimir Putin. The President invited Vladimir Putin to come to the United States in the fall, and a lot of people look thin say, hey, wait a second here, after what happened at Helsinki, you shouldn't be offering this invitation at all. And then the President backed off and said well it's not going to happen now until maybe after the first of the year. What do you see going on there?
BREMMER: Well maybe they’ll do it by soccer ball since there’s a chip in that ball.
CAMEROTA: The transmitter chip in the soccer ball!
BREMMER: The fact is they weren't able to accomplish anything substantive in terms of policy. Everyone got so worked up that Trump was so embarrassing to American national interest during the press conference that he held in Helsinki. It was really weird. And yet, if you look at concrete policy deliverables coming out of it, the US is still spending a lot more on defense under Trump. They're not suspending any military exercises in NATO countries under Trump. Advance forces rotating in and out of the Baltic States, they're in Poland. The United States isn't pulling out of Syria. They're not recognizing Crimea, and I suspect we're going to see more sanctions against Russians from Congress this year. Really hard for Putin to want come over to the United States and run another hey, you're my buddy-buddy. So the fact that Trump said we’re going to wait until, he said after the witch hunt is over, which may imply there aren't any more meetings that happen between Trump and Putin. I suspect he'll change his mind on that. But the fact is, for as angry as everyone including main stream Republicans were on the back of this Helsinki meeting, very little concrete that we know of has actually come out of it.
BERMAN: Of course there is the “that we know of” part of it. We don't know what was discussed. We don’t know what really went on --
BREMMER: But we do know U.S. Policy is, and we haven't seen a move on U.S. policy.
BERMAN: Ian Bremmer, great to have you here with us.
