[Unknown:] I believe in second chances. He has the highest motivation to ensure that his legacy is not defined by a picture in his yearbook.
[Uknown:] And there it is. The dynasty continues.
[Rob Gronkowski, Partiots Football Player:] The hard work we put in this year was just paid off this year.
[Unknown:] It was unreal. I mean, it was like a home game. This is New Day with Alisyn Camerota and Tom Berman.
[John Berman, Cnn Anchor:] All right, good morning and welcome to your new day. Alisyn is off, Poppy Harlow is with me, regretting it already.
[Poppy Harlow, Cnn Anchor:] And Berman cannot stop smiling. Let me tell you.
[Berman:] It's hard. All right, six and counting. Oh, you're going to hate me even more for saying that. The New England Patriots won their sixth Super Bowl, a 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams. It was the lowest scoring Super Bowl ever and it felt like it. Patriots receiver, Julian Edelman, he was the game MVP. We're going to have much more, much more on this big historic game in just a moment. But first, the State of Union address, it's tomorrow. A new CNN poll just released shows where the president stands with the American people. President Trump's approval rating is now at 40 percent. It's up slightly from last month, but still not good and Americans are not confident the president can avoid another shutdown. Only 34 percent believe President Trump and Congress will be able to reach a funding deal by next Friday's deadline. And, when it comes to the president declaring a national emergency to build a wall, two out of three Americans say he should not do it.
[Harlow:] Also this morning, in battled Virginia Governor, Ralph Northam, will meet with his Cabinet in about two hours as calls for him to resign grow louder and louder over that racist yearbook photo. Well, last night, he held an urgent meeting with several senior staff members of color and a source tells CNN no one in that meeting urged him to stay and fight.
[Berman:] All right, joining me now is the former Republican Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. He's a long-time friend of the presidents and an author of a new book, "Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey and the power of In-Your-Face Politics." Governor, thank you so much for being with us. You brought a copy of your book. I left my ear marked copy down in my office, but it's terrific to see you and congratulations on your Super Bowl.
[Chris Christie, Former Governor Of New Jersey:] Thanks for having me guys, appreciate it.
[Berman:] So, I want to start with Ralph Northam, the Governor of Virginia. You faced your own scandals and issues when you were governor, vastly different.
[Christie:] Yes.
[Berman:] But, what does it feel like to be in this type of moment where everyone is looking at you?
[Christie:] Well, I think it's hard, no matter what. You're human and nobody likes to be going through stuff like this. Now, the difference here is that he has no sense, it seems to me, of what the truth is. I mean, we've heard two or three different versions of the truth so far from him. That maybe it was him, now maybe it wasn't him and I think that the biggest challenge in a situation like this is, if you don't know what the truth is you've got to go find it out and then you've got to present it to people immediately if you want to try def credibility with people you represent. And I think the biggest problem for the governor right now, beside the incident itself, is his reaction to the incident, which is to be all over the place and I don't I quite frankly don't think he's going to be able to survive this for two reasons. One, because of his own conduct and two, because the Democratic Party, I don't think as a whole, can deal with going into a presidential year having to answer this question over and over and over again.
[Berman:] I want to get to that second point, but just go back to the first one, the issue here is for people who haven't attention to this Friday, is there is a racist photo on his medical school yearbook page. At first he apologized for it, then the day later he said it wasn't him in it. Does it matter, at this point, if it's him in it?
[Christie:] Well, it does matter if it's him in it, but I think because of his varying answers, you're right, it almost doesn't matter. Here's the think people can't believe. People can't believe it's on his yearbook page and he doesn't know whether it's him or not. Now, if he had said right from the beginning, it's not me, I used the picture, it was awful judgment and I'm sorry, or it is me and here's why I did it. Either one of those could be answers that he could try to deal with potentially. Here's the problem though, you can't say you don't know you put the picture on your yearbook page, how do you not know.
[Berman:] It's possible he's saying there were a lot of mix-ups with photos in the yearbook, but still, the question of how do you not know if that's you in a picture no matter how many years later. It's hard to believe that.
[Christie:] Well, just how about this though for a second? If it were me...
[Berman:] Yes.
[Christie:] ... and all of a sudden there's a mix-up and that photo shows up on my yearbook page, I'd be screaming from the mountaintops, hold on, that's disgusting, I'm not going to do that. That does that's not me, so.
[Berman:] You brought up the Democrats, the Democrats not being able to handle this or wanting this as they head into 2020. Is there a different standard though, in the Democratic Party, when it deals with members of it's party that have scandals, issues, of race or sexism or harassment? Al Franken was forced out of the Senate, yet Donald Trump, with the "Access Hollywood" tape stayed in the campaign and he's now President of the United States. Steve King is still in Congress. Do Democrats have a zero tolerance policy and Republicans have a somewhat not zero tolerance policy?
[Christie:] I don't think that's it. I think it's more the circumstances of each one of those cases. I think if you spoke to Senator Franken today, he would say to you, he wishes he hadn't resigned. That he acted precipitously. And I think he would react differently than the way he did before. I think the difference here is that the Democrats have been very, very aggressively, rhetorically, against the president on issues of race going all the way back to Charlottesville. I think that was appropriate. I spoke out at the time of Charlottesville and said that I thought that the president's remarks were not acceptable. But when you do that, people in your business are going to be looking for hypocrisy and so they're worried about and appropriately so, and so I think Democrats, now, having down what they have done and I don't think they regret what they've done, but now they're going to have to apply the same standard to the Governor of Virginia and I think that's I don't think he can survive this.
[Berman:] New polling out today from CNN and in advance to the State of the Union address tomorrow night, the president's approval rating is at 40 percent, but there's some other numbers here that jump out as well. Forty-three percent of the people in this poll say it's the worst run government ever, like in their lifetime, 43 percent say the worst run government ever, 47 percent strongly disapprove the president. Those are very high, strong, don't like numbers.
[Christie:] Sure, and here's the thing, let's divide let's split them up. On the 47 that don't approve, strongly disapprove of his presidency, that's not surprising to me. The fact is, this has been a very divided country. It was divided during the election and the run up to the election and nothing that's happened since then, in the last two years, has brought the country any closer together.
[Berman:] Nothing that's happened, nothing that he's done, is that fair to say?
[Christie:] Well, I think he's the president, so nothing that he's done or quite frankly nothing that the Congress has done on either side of the aisle, Republican or Democrat. Now, on the other issue though, I think on the worst run, that's what we address in the book. The fact is that, it could have been different for the president and it could have been better, but people around him, Steven Bannon, Rick Dearborn, Jared Kushner, throughout a transition plan that 140 people worked on for six months, put me out of it, 140 people worked on for six months and they decided to run a transition from the back of an envelop for 71 days. This was an awful disservice to the president and an awful disservice to the country and it's indicated by the way it's been run and the president has been trying to recover from that ever since then.
[Berman:] Your write about it extensively in your book, but that's all in the past tense, let's talk about the present tense. Because Maggie Haberman and others or all reporters are saying that Jared Kushner is acting as a defacto Chief of Staff, that his power has never been greater inside this White House. You're very critical of him in the book. Do you think that's a dangerous situation for the president?
[Christie:] Listen, I think that the president, it's always difficult and that's why it very rarely happen when you family in official positions. Families have always been informal advisors to presidents and really since Bobby Kennedy, we haven't had this situation where a family member has had such an important position as both Jared and Ivanka hold in the White House. The problem is, if they do something wrong it's hard to fire people that you've got to have Thanksgiving dinner with, right? And on the other hand too, people inside the White House, also, are going to be deferring to them because they know they know that they get the last word. They're the one in the residence, they're the ones going to Mar-A-Lago on the weekends or to Bedminster, New Jersey, and so these are difficult things that I think the president has to has looked at this. He's got to understand how that's affecting the ability to get good advice from other people.
[Berman:] If he is the one running things right now, is he doing a good job? If he was running things during the shutdown, is Kushner doing a good job?
[Christie:] Well listen, the shutdown was a failure and there's not other way to put it. When the government is shutdown that's a failure and that's why I don't think I saw the number about whether the government will be shutdown again. I just don't believe the Republicans or the Democrats can afford to shutdown the government again, and this time the Democrats are going to own more of it than they did the last time. The president said he wanted to own it the last time. Once that happened it gives the Democrats a free pass to do whatever they wanted to. Now, the Democrats, if this gets closed again, both sides are going to take a hit on this. So, I think there's going to be one of two alternatives, either they're going to come to a deal by Friday, or if they don't they're going to have a funding deal that's going to continue to move forward, of some length of time, and the president is probably going to go for a national emergency to build the wall.
[Berman:] Do you think suggesting the shutdown is still on the table? You said, the shutdown was a terrible idea and you blamed him for it...
[Christie:] Right.
[Berman:] ... or for saying that he was going to own it before hand. Do you think telling Margaret Brennan over the weekend that, yes, I still might shutdown again is a good strategy?
[Christie:] Well, I think you have to do that to keep that on the table as part of your negotiations, but I think everybody realistically knows in the back of their mind that it's not going to happen. And I don't that Republicans in the Senate would permit it to happen, even if the president wanted to. The president would then have to defy Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the House. I just don't think he's going to do that, because I don't think it's practical and I don't think it will get him what he wants ultimately. Now, the national emergency thing, you know, is a real jump ball in terms of the legal strategy and whether or not a court will endorse his ability to do that. But, the fact of the matter is, the Democrats, I think, are playing this one, in the second phase, wrong if they don't give the president something. I worked with the Democratic legislature for eight years, what I learned was, in a tough negotiation, everyone's got to win. If everybody doesn't win something, then it damages the relationship going forward and you're never getting anything done.
[Berman:] The Conference Committee is meeting. We don't know what they're going to come up with right now.
[Christie:] Yes.
[Berman:] Maybe they will come up with something. Axios has a heck of a report that they put this weekend, where someone leaked the president's schedules for months and months and months. There are several aspects of this that they're worth diving into, but one thing is, the sheer amount of executive time, 297 hours of executive time compared to 77 hours of meetings, 51 hours of travel, this is from November 7 to February 1, 2019. Two hundred and ninety seven hours of executive time, is that too much?
[Christie:] It depends on what he's doing in executive time, okay? So, if he's watching you guys.
[Berman:] Which he is. You know he's doing that a lot.
[Christie:] Well, I know he's doing some of that. If he's watching you guys exclusively, that's too much time and I would tell him to turn off the TV and not no offence, but not watch you guys that much. I think he's also spending a lot of time on the phone consulting with people during that time. I know that I speak to him often during that executive time, period. He's talking to lots of different people, gathering opinions and ideas, and he's most comfortable doing that without exposing on his calendar exactly who he's speaking to. That's certainly his right to do it. So, it depend on what he's doing in that executive time and I think if he's making it productive for him, to be able make decisions, we're not asking presidents to punch a time clock.
[Berman:] No.
[Christie:] They're on duty all the time, no matter what. And I think it depends on what the president's using the time for.
[Berman:] Yes or no, is he working hard enough and putting in the hours that he needs to, to understand the issues?
[Christie:] Oh yes, yes. Listen, there's no one who, I think, who knows him is ever going to accurse President Trump of now working hard enough. He's a hard worker.
[Berman:] All right, Governor Chris Christie is going to stick around to talk a little bit more. Some of the questions I have, are what does it say to you that someone leaked these schedules? Hold onto that answer. And also, I have some new questions for you about the timeline of the revelations about the president's relationship with Russia and I want to go back to some of those moments in the presidential campaign. So, stick around. More of Chris Christie in just a moment.
[Harlow:] Yes, fascinating interview so far, but this is the only thing we would interrupt if for, of course, and that is a big win for the Patriots, and of course J.B., who can't stop smiling this morning. The Patriots winning their, record, sixth Super Bowl. Coy Wire live in Atlanta with more. Kind of a snoozer for a lot of folks, but not this guy.
[Coy Wire, Cnn Sports Correspondent:] I like what you said before, the snoozer bowl, a lot of people saying that. And Poppy, I played against Tom Brady and the Patriots twice a year, every year for six years of my NFL career. So, despite Brady not throwing a single touchdown pass and they still find a way win, not a surprise. Now the game did not start off well for the Patriots or with Tom Brady. On his very first pass attempt it would be an interception, a tipped pass and that would kind of set the tone for the game. Great defense, not a lot of scoring. It was just three to three in the fourth quarter for the first time in Super Bowl century and here's the play of the game. Tom Brady sees Gronk in man-to-man coverage, I'll take it he says, gave the Pats a spark. That set up Sony Michel, who lost the college national championship on this very same field just a year ago, scoring the only touchdown in the Super Bowl, putting the Pats up 10 to 3. Just about four minutes to go though, young Jared Goff has a chance to tie it up. Great pass to Brandin Cooks, but look at the defense, Cook can't haul it in. One more chance for young Goff to prove he can beat Tom Brady too and bring his team back. But no, Stephon Gilmore with the interception, he's no Tom Brady, 13 to 3 is your final. Julian Edelman is your MVP. Tom Brady wins his sixth Super Bowl. That's a record. I caught up with big Gronk afterwards and asked him about crunch time and about his possible retirement.
[Gronkowski:] Unreal man. This is surreal.
[Wire:] Your third time.
[Gronkowski:] Third time. This is crazy man, crazy. This is the hard work we put in this year, was this paid off for sure.
[Wire:] All right, John, I did ask him about it. He said, just think about a week or two. I know you're hoping Gronk comes back, because he's a heck of a player for them and the heartbeat and soul of that team. Congrats to you, John Berman, on yet another victory for your team.
[Berman:] I just Rob Gronkowski to be happy, which is, about 130 percent of the time.
[Wire:] He always is happy.
[Berman:] So, whatever he does he's going to be happy. Coy Wire, great to have you down in Atlanta. Thanks so much. We're going to much more with former New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie next.