Trump Officials Send Mixed Signals On Syria; U.S. Markets Set To Open Slightly Higher
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: It was a really broad range of discussion. You should go online to check it out.</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK. Time for CNN NEWSROOM with Poppy Harlow. Good morning.</s>POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Do you know how many hours I was asleep before "Saturday Night Live" even went on, on Saturday?</s>CAMEROTA: Me, too.</s>CUOMO: You've got the baby, you've got the new gig. But on the up side, at least you finally got rid of that sidekick guy. It's good to have you alone there.</s>HARLOW: Yes. Where did John Berman go? I guess he's taken the day off.</s>CUOMO: Who?</s>HARLOW: My goodness. Who? What? Where?</s>CUOMO: Never. He'll be on four other shows today.</s>HARLOW: Right. It's my little girl's first birthday, so happy birthday.</s>CUOMO: Hey.</s>HARLOW: Happy birthday, Baby Sienna.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes, happy birthday to her.</s>HARLOW: Have a great day, guys. Let's get started. Good Monday, morning. This morning at the Supreme Court, history takes shape as Neil Gorsuch takes his seat as the junior most justice. At this very moment, he is behind closed doors taking a private oath of office in the first of what will be two ceremonies today. And President Donald Trump, peacemaker? The President forcing his top adviser, Steve Bannon, and Jared Kushner to broker a truce. But is the West Wing big enough for both of these men? And fractures in foreign policy. Just days after launching a military strike on Syria, the President's top diplomats offer very different views of the path forward. So which is it? Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow. John Berman has the day off. We are now just a couple hours away of the Supreme Court being back to the full strength of a nine-person bench for the first time in 14 months. Right now, the widow of Justice Antonin Scalia is on hand for the private swearing in of the man who will replace her husband on the bench of the nation's highest court. Our Ariane de Vogue looks at how this morning is unfolding. Jeffrey Toobin is here with us as well. The preeminent scholars on the high court. It is nice to have you both here. Thank you for being with us. Just walk us through, Ariane, what's going to happen today.</s>ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN SUPREME COURT REPORTER: Well, Poppy, you know, it's been more than a year since Scalia's death. And Neil Gorsuch will take two oaths, right? The first one is the constitutional oath that he'll take. He's probably starting it about now behind me at the Supreme Court. It will be administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. Gorsuch's family will be there. The Justices and their spouses have been invited to attend, and that includes Maureen Scalia. And then the whole party will move down to the White House, and there he will take the judicial oath. That's really for judges and justices, but what's interesting is Gorsuch asked for Anthony Kennedy to deliver that oath. And that's because Gorsuch is a former clerk of Kennedy, and what's a little bit symbolic here is this will be the first time that we have a former clerk serving at the same time as his boss. So, Poppy, a little bit of symbolism today.</s>HARLOW: Indeed. Jeffrey Toobin, just talk about how important the cases are that he's going to hear. Right away, you're talking about Second Amendment cases, separation of church and state, voting rights. This is big.</s>JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: You know, Poppy, sometimes those of us on cable news, we're accused of over hyping events. You know, sometimes --</s>HARLOW: Never you.</s>TOOBIN: Sometimes we say breaking news when it's not exactly breaking news.</s>HARLOW: It never happens on this show.</s>TOOBIN: Never happens. This is a very big deal, by any standard. You know, there have only been 112 people who served on the Supreme Court in the history of the country. When you look at how long Neil Gorsuch is likely to serve on this court, 2040 perhaps, it's just the magnitude of the issues that he will confront, we can't imagine them all of them right now. But right away, a lot of church/state issues, a lot of how much the government can support religious institutions, how much religious individuals or companies can get out of obligations that other people have. Those are big issues. You know, gay rights, abortion rights, affirmative action -- all of these hot button issues will be before the court sooner rather than later.</s>HARLOW: He, on the Tenth Circuit, ruled, when it came to sort of the Hobby Lobby line of cases --</s>TOOBIN: Right.</s>HARLOW: -- what does what he wrote there tell us about what he may do here?</s>TOOBIN: Well, you know, his decision in Hobby Lobby -- and it was a vote, you know. He votes in the three-judge panel there. And then the whole Tenth Circuit heard that case. It was upheld in a very narrow decision in Hobby Lobby. And that was one of those cases where religious people said we do not feel we can abide by what the government requires of us because it would violate our religious obligations. In that case, it was a company, actually very big company, Hobby Lobby, which said that we don't want to pay for birth control as the Affordable Care Act requires because certain forms of birth control, we feel, are tantamount to abortion, that they were allowed to get out of their obligation under the Affordable Care Act. That whole line of cases about religious people asking to be excused from government-imposed obligations, those cases are definitely going to be before the court.</s>HARLOW: Right. Another case likely to be before him is the President's travel ban, 1.0 now 2.0. This is going to be before him, Ariane.</s>DE VOGUE: Right. Well, it will come. It is still percolating, right, at the Federal Appeals Court level, and it could come up soon on an emergency basis here. But that will be interesting, right, because President Trump is the man who put him on the bench, and one thing that he might look at pretty quickly is something that's very important to President Trump, Poppy.</s>HARLOW: And, Jeffrey, I mean, this is why a Supreme Court pick is why many reluctant Republicans voted for Trump anyways because they saw the pig picture. You have a fascinating new piece, a long piece, in "The New Yorker" just saying, you know, so many more Democrats issued calls against Attorney General Jeff Sessions than against Gorsuch, but this is a much bigger deal than who the Attorney General is for a much shorter period of time.</s>TOOBIN: You know, it is interesting that one of the things the Republican Party has done much more successfully than the Democratic Party is focus on judicial appointments. You know, it is true that Democrats were very pleased, very happy that President Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, but the focus on judicial appointments in the Republican Party is so serious. And, you know, as you point out, you heard it all the time during the fall where, you know, Donald Trump was a very unknown quantity and disliked by a lot of people in the Republican Party. But one of the things he did is he reached out to conservatives through the federal society, through Leonard Leo, who I write about in the current issue of "The New Yorker" and said, look, I am going to appoint these people to the Supreme Court. And Donald Trump did something that no presidential candidate had done before, he released the list. First 10 people, then another 10 people, of his likely appointments to the Supreme Court. By the way, we have three pretty elderly justices on the court, so that list is very likely to be returned to again in terms of who Trump may nominate if there are other vacancies.</s>HARLOW: And remember, his rollout of the nomination of Gorsuch, even if a few don't support the Justice, it was praised by how the White House rolled it all out.</s>TOOBIN: Well, this has been, as you may have heard, a pretty rocky 81 days for President Trump. The nomination of Neil Gorsuch has been an unqualified success for this White House and for the Republicans in the majority in the Senate. There are not a lot of other big successes, but this is certainly one.</s>HARLOW: So far. Jeffrey Toobin, thank you so much.</s>TOOBIN: All right.</s>HARLOW: You should read his piece. It was my early morning reading today. It's fascinating. Ariane, at the high court, thank you so much. We now turn to a show of force against North Korea. President Trump deployed a Navy strike group to the Korean Peninsula to tamp down North Korea's nuclear threats or at least try to, right? Certainly a show of force. It is on its way as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives next hour for the G7 meeting in Italy. He is expected to deliver more tough words on Russia and, of course, on Syria's chemical weapons attack. We have got live coverage this morning. Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon. Will Ripley is the only American journalist inside of North Korea. Let's begin with Barbara at the Pentagon. Just the significance of this move, Barbara, because it's not like a carrier hasn't moved to that region before.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, carriers do operate there pretty routinely, Poppy, but here's one of the big signals about why this is a message sending exercise, at least in large part. And that's because the Pentagon is talking about it. They issued a press release over the weekend detailing all of this. And when they don't want to talk about it, the answer you'll get from the Pentagon is we don't talk about where our ships are. This time talking about it, completely out in the open, very much sending the signal to Kim Jong-un that they are off shore. That if he engages in provocations, look at what happened in Syria. This could be a President who will responds. But does this carrier group really have that kind of response capability? The carrier actually, the "USS Carl Vincent," huge asset, ships on board -- pardon me, aircraft on board, but not terribly useful against the North Korean threat. Those aircraft aren't likely to go anywhere. There are missile ships along with the carrier out there. These are ships that have missiles onboard. They can shoot down North Korean missile launches, potentially. But if it gets to that point, there's pretty serious trouble. This is sending that message to Kim being very open about it. The national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, talked about some of the reasoning over the weekend.</s>LT. GEN. H.R. MCMASTER, UNITED STATES NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: North Korea has been engaged in a pattern of provocative behavior. This is a rogue regime that is now a nuclear capable regime, and President Xi and President Trump agreed that that is unacceptable, that what must happen is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. So the President has asked us to be prepared to give him a full range of options to remove that threat to the American people and to our allies and partners in the region.</s>STARR: Very tough words from the White House. We'll see how the North Korean regime feels about it all, Poppy.</s>HARLOW: Barbara Starr, at the Pentagon, thank you so much. Let's go to will Ripley who is, again, the only American journalist inside of North Korea now. Will, for anyone not following your Instagram account, really real time with what you're seeing and hearing, tell us what it's like to be there and what reaction there is to this U.S. carrier clearly moving as a signal to Pyongyang.</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the North Korean government officials we're speaking with here, Poppy, say they are certainly receiving the message the United States and the Trump administration is sending. However, their response may not be what the U.S. is anticipating. They say, far from backing down, the deployment of the carrier strike group, I should say the redeployment because it was here in the region a few weeks ago for joint military exercises, only motivates them want to work harder to develop their nuclear weapons faster, because we know that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's ultimate goal is to have a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the mainland U.S. This country tells its citizens that they live under the threat of an imminent invasion by the U.S. And so, while a lot of news from around the world is kept hidden from the North Koreans, the state media here is reporting extensively about Carl Vincent carrier strike group threatening this country, they say, off the waters of the Korean Peninsula. They're reporting also about the missile strike in Syria, calling it basically a thinly veiled threat to the North Korea people. But they say the key difference between North Korea and Syria is, if the United States were to take similar action in this country, they promise to retaliate. So it makes it a much more tricky situation. We are talking about military action on the Korean Peninsula, given the fact, Poppy, that even if North Korea doesn't have a viable nuclear weapon just yet, they do have conventional weapons that can kill a lot of people and do a lot of damage in the highly populated area of Seoul, just 30 miles from the demilitarized zone, that border between North and South Korea. One other note, this is a big week for Kim Jong-un, a large political gathering tomorrow, the Supreme People's Assembly; Saturday, their most important holiday, the Day of the Sun. It's around these major political events and holidays in the past we have seen North Korea try to show force with very provocative actions. And U.S. officials, and South Koreans as well, believe they could push the button at any moment on their sixth nuclear test. What a way to send a message of defiance to their enemies in the U.S., Poppy.</s>HARLOW: Absolutely, no question about it. We do, though, have reporting this morning about China and South Korea being willing to take these increased steps, these increased sanctions, trying to get on board a bit more with what the U.S. has been calling for. Will Ripley inside of North Korea for us. Thank you so much for that. We have a lot ahead this hour. The Trump administration sending mixed signals as foreign policy techs mount. So what message does that send? Also, can the United States police the world when the President is trying to police his own White House staff? The latest on those clashes ahead. Also, the Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal. A scathing independent investigation just concluding this morning. It is taking the former CEO to task, clawing back millions in pay. A live report on that straight ahead.