(jazzy music)
- I'm Jenna Browder.
Coming up on Faith Nation.
Hundreds are missing afterthe deadliest wildfire
in California history.
Plus a temporary blow tothe Trump administration
after a federal lawsuit over media access
to the White House.
But first, our exclusiveinterview with the first woman
to join the GOP leadership in the Senate
in nearly a decade.
Senator Joni Ernst ofIowa spoke earlier today
with CBN News congressional correspondent,
Abigail Robertson.
(swiping)
That's right.
I spoke earlier with Senator Ernst
about the historic natureof her new Senate Republican
leadership role andshe seems very excited.
Take a look at what she said.
You were just selectedas the only woman to
Senate Republican leadership.
How does that feel and whydo you think it's important
to have a woman in oneof the leadership roles?
- Well, it is very important.
It's exciting first.
It is very excitingand I'm looking forward
to the opportunity to servethe conference and of course,
I'm from Iowa.
So, to take Iowans voicesonto the leadership team
is really important too.
But we have a lot to workon in communicating clearly
and that's why I thinkit's important that we do
have a woman serving in thiselected leadership position.
We need to be reflectiveof our constituencies
and having all maleson the leadership team
is not reflective of our societies.
So I'm excited to be thereand be a communication
messenger for our team and Ilook forward to the challenges.
- Senator Ernst is thefirst female elected
to serve on the SenateRepublican leadership team
since Senator Lisa Murkowski in 2009.
While Senate Democratshave pretty consistently
kept at least one woman intheir Senate leadership.
Now, majority leaderMitch McConnell has faced
many questions about not havinga woman represented recently
and his response to thatis that they have to run
and not just for leadership positions,
but also for office.
They have only six femaleRepublican senators
in office right nowcompared to 17 Democratic
female senators, but we definitely saw
more women on both sides of the aisle
step up to run this year in the mid-term.
- That is for sure.
Alright, thank you Abigail.
Great interview!
- Thanks.
- Great interview.
Well, David Brody, ourChief Political Analyst
joins us now.
David, Joni Ernst madesome pretty provocative
comments there, calling out that the GOP
and kind of challenging the status quo.
- Very much so.
I think that's gonna make some headlines,
Abigail, by the way.
Talking about basicallyall male leadership.
In essence, paraphrasingit, but that's a problem
for the republican party.
She's right.
Also, just talking about how women
just really haven't been represented
and they have to do a better job
of communicating the message.
She wasn't talking about democrats.
She was specifically talkingabout the republican party
and that's what I thought was very,
very interesting about it.
- Abigail, one thing thatI know you all touched on
were suburban women.
They played a huge rolein these elections.
- Yeah, I talked a lot aboutthat with Senator Ernst
and she told me that Republicans need to
improve their communication with women.
We also talked about PresidentTrump and his relationship
with Senate republicansright now and what she thinks
about Jeff Sessions resigation.
So have a look at moreof our conversation.
(swiping)
When you look at the results nationwide
and how a lot of independentsactually broke for democrats
and some of these close House races,
are you worried at allthat republicans are losing
the support of suburban women?
- Well, that was one of my great pushes
when I ran for leadershipas well is that we
do have to communicateclearly to our constituents
and suburban moms and women everywhere,
whether they're in suburbia,
whether they are in the rural areas.
They want to know thatwe have a strong economy.
They want to know that weare placing our education
priorities in the states andwith the local school boards
and administrators and parents.
They want to know those things.
We need to do a betterjob of communicating them.
So, that's why I'm excitedto have the opportunity
to be able to express to those moms,
to those wives, to those sisters
what is important tothem and why it matters
that they support republicans.
- How would you describeSenate republicans relationship
with President Trump in the White House?
- (laughs) Well, I get alongquite well with the President
and while I don't alwaysagree with the President,
I always respect our President.
He has a very difficult job and so,
I think that's the challengethat many republicans see
is that sometimes, he may differa little bit on the issues.
OK, that's alright.
How do we come together andwork on those priorities
for the President?
I think it's really importantthat we are supporting him
and his agenda to makesure he is fulfilling his
commitment to the American people.
He's been quite clear about that.
So, it's time for us to stepup and find a way forward.
Collaborate with thePresident and the White House.
Make sure that we're achieving his goals.
- What do you think ofJeff Sessions resignation
and the new acting AttorneyGeneral, Matt Whitaker?
- I have known Matt Whitakerfor many, many years.
He is a fellow Iowan.
He served as a DistrictAttorney in the state of Iowa
and I know him to be a man of integrity.
I know him to be a manthat will uphold the law.
So, it think that it was a great selection
to have Matt Whitaker asthe acting Attorney General.
I admire Jeff Sessions very much.
I admire him and Ithink he did a great job
for our President, but itis up now to the President
to make that decision on who should be
a permanent replacement for Jeff Sessions
and we will, as a Senateprovide advice and consent.
We'll do the best we can.
- What role do you thinkfaith plays in politics
and the lives of politicians?
- I think it plays avery, very important part
and those of us that truly are faith-based
understand that the decisions we make
need to be reflective of our value system
and my value system isthat of a Christian woman
serving in the United States Senate.
So, it helps us discern betweenwhat is the right direction
for the people we representand maybe what is not
a strong position to takefor the people we represent.
I think it plays a veryimportant part of our
every day lives and thatshould always translate then
into the work that we do in Congress.
- Senator Ernst and I alsodiscussed how this was
a historic election year for women.
There will be more than 100women serving in the House
and that's the highest number ever.
Arizona and Tennessee elected their first
female senators with South Dakota and Iowa
electing their first female governors.
So, more women than ever are stepping up
and ready to serve in public office.
- Abby, what are you hearing?
What's the latest with Nancy Pelosi?
- Well, Nancy Pelosi was the first female
Speaker of the House and shewants to go back for round two.
Now, there is oppositiongrowing in her party,
but so far, nobody hasstepped up to run against her.
There has been talksabout Marcia Fudge who was
the former chairman of theCongressional Black Caucus.
She's maybe considering a run.
But they don't vote until January,
so that gives plenty of timefor some others to come forward
and possibly announce bids against her.
- David, when it comes to President Trump
and the republicans, we hear you know,
a lot of problems with the suburban women,
but with evangelicalwomen, it's a little bit
of a different story.
How do you see this playing out
down the road and in 2020?
- Yeah, the polls show that77% of evangelical women
actually support this president.
Here's part of theproblem for the president.
That means, if I do the math,
23% of women somewhat approve of him
and somewhat disapprove of him.
Those folks are also in the suburbs.
They don't like the twitter feed,
they don't like the bombasticapproach that Trump has.
So, going forward to 2020,
he can't worry about so much of the 77%
of evangelical women.
That's fine.
It's the 23% he has to be concerned about.
So he really should change thetwitter feed and guess what,
that's not happening.
So, forget about that.
We'll see what happens in 2020.
- Democrats, David, havebeen pretty critical
of acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker.
Senator Ernst though,she sounded like she was
pretty much OK with him.
What were your thoughts onher comments about that?
- Yeah and they're good friends.
They're good friends sothat would make sense.
We'll see whether or notMatt Whitaker goes forward
not just as the acting Attorney General,
potentially as the Attorney General.
That'll be interesting ifthat even goes forward.
But it kind of leads me tothink about Robert Mueller.
There's some news comingout of that today as well
with Robert Mueller and that's coming from
the President himself who said
he's answered the questionsthat Mueller's team
and his lawyers havekinda got together on.
So, we'll see what happens.
Just because he's answered em though
and he wrote em down,now the lawyer's get em.
Now they go into proofcopied mode and that's much
different from what thepresident's gonna put on paper
and what the lawyers will eventually give
and send it to Mueller.
- We'll see what happens.
Alright, Abby and David, thank you.
Now to Florida whererepublicans are leading
in both the Senate and governor's races.
In the governor's race, RonDeSantis looks to have beaten
democrat Andrew Gillum aftera mandatory machine recount
in the state ended Thursday.
And in the Senate, GovernorRick Scott is leading
democrat Bill Nelson by some 13,000 votes.
With the margins that close,a hand recount is underway.
Abby, you were down in Floridacovering this Senate race.
Was it expected to be this close?
- Well, when I went downthere, I spoke with a
long-time Floridapolitical analyst who said,
she said in August that shethought for sure it would
come down to a one percentand she also predicted
that we might not know the results for
the day after the election day.
These were two very popularstatewide candidates.
You have Senator Bill Nelson who's been
a Florida Senator for a long time.
He's won his past elections very easily,
but this time, therepublicans put up their own
very formidable opponent,Governor Rick Scott,
a popular governor.
These are two people who'dwon multiple statewide races.
It was known as the clash of the titans.
So it's not surprisingthat it has come down
to what we're seeing right now.
And David, in Georgia, Stacy Abrams in the
gubernatorial race there,
it's looking like a longshot but she is not,
she's not backing down.
- No, she's not bakingdown and let me say,
12 to 24 of her lawyersare not backing down.
She's got a lot of them down in Georgia.
You know, we've gone from Florida.
We just move one state northand we have more issues there.
Brian Kemp, the person thatran against Stacy Abrams,
is expected to be the Governor of Georgia.
We should have those resultscertified by late on Friday.
Having said that, StacyAbrams has talked to
the associated press and others to say,
ya know what, just becausethey certify him as governor,
I may still take this all theway to the US Supreme Court
because they believe, StacyAbrams believes there's been
so many voting irregularitiesthat they think there is
some sort of potential legalchallenge along the way.
They're even putting upads in Florida right now
explaining all of theselegal or voting problems
down in Georgia.
So, to be continued.
As the world turns, as Georgiaturns, as Florida turns.
- Alright, thank you both.
(swiping)
Well today, a federal judgeissued a temporary ruling
in favor of CNN.
Ruling that the WhiteHouse must immediately
return press credentialsfor White House reporter,
Jim Acosta.
As Acosta made his wayback to the White House,
the Trump administrationwelcome the ruling,
saying in a statementthat the court made clear
that there is no absolutelyfirst amendment right
to access the White House.
Acosta gave a mini pressconference in front of
the courthouse after the ruling.
- I wanna thank the judge forthe decision he made today
and let's go back to work.
- David, what did you make of this ruling?
Not of this ruling, excuse me,
of the press conferenceand of the whole situation?
- Well, just found itinteresting to see Jim Acosta
now giving press conferences.
It's like Donald Trumpand now Jim Acosta's
giving press conferences.
What in this world, what's theworld turning into right now?
Here's the bottom line to all of this.
We have just begun this fight.
I don't mean ya know, us obviously,
but the White House versus CNN.
This is round one.
I had a chance to speak toMajor Garret about this,
CBS White House correspondent that sits
right next to Jim Acosta.
What a day to interview him.
We're talking about his new book.
But we did have a chance to discuss this
and it'd be interesting tohear some of his comments.
Have a look.
(swiping)
Jeff Zucker and DonaldTrump have a history.
- They do!
- So, I mean, this feelslike, this temporary
restraining order, whatever you wanna,
I mean, this just seemslike the first battle
in a longer war.
- There are deep equitiesinvolved and I'm not
trying to be glib.
The first amendment is important.
Due process is important.
The court is strugglingwith things that are not
clearly defined in this clash.
But I do think JeffZucker and Donald Trump
wanna have this fight
on behalf of not just theseserious and underlying
legal questions but on theirown reputational relationship
to one another.
I think there are absolutistpositions having been taken
in the legal papers filed on both sides.
The government says itcan revoke a hard pass
under any set of circumstances.
That's an absolutist position.
Whatever you say, we cantake it away from you by fiat
under any set of circumstances.
That's pretty intense.
That's inviting and investingin the government large
penalizing powers about access to a place,
in this case, the White House,
but it could be Congress,it could be the Pentagon.
Could be someplace else in the future.
- And the judge is concerned about that.
- And the judge was legitimatelyI think concerned about it.
The CNN position is also, toa certain degree, absolute.
There's no limits on thedecorum in the White House.
I don't believe that as a reporter.
- Ya know, it's interestinghere because Major basically,
let's remember, he's worked forCNN but he doesn't come down
straight up and say CNNis in the right here.
He says he sees both sides.
There clearly is absolutes on both sides
and what I thought wasinteresting and you can see
the whole clip online but itdoes specifically talk about
not just the decorum inthe White House but he says
that there is no first amendment right
for White House reportersto be on the grounds
of the White House.
That has nothing to dowith the first amendment.
More of that online.
- Interesting to get his take.
- Yeah, for sure.- Thanks David.
- Well it is an extraordinary White House
and David, today, you spokewith CBS's Major Garrett
about that and he has anew book out on it too.
- Yeah, there are a lotof new books coming out,
obviously, about President Trump.
Oh, I have one, by the way.
No, don't put up the full screen.
It's OK.
But no, he does and here it is.
Mr. Trump's wild ride,
the thrills, chills, screamsand occasional blackouts.
It's an extraordinary presidency.
Major talking about thiswith me and he wants to be
really the voice ofreason, a guy in the middle
that's not gonna say, he's notgonna be the pro Trump guy,
he's not gonna be the anti Trump guy.
He's gonna be the one down the middle.
Have a look at some of our conversation.
- This presidency sort ofcomes at us in a different way.
It's a little bit louder.
It's a little bit less predictable.
It generates a lot of headlines.
But I've covered three presidents before
and it felt to me as ifthe country was getting
the impression that becausethis is so different
and comes at us so differently,
maybe the typical powers of the presidency
don't still exist.
Well, they do.
Maybe things aren't getting done.
They are.
Things are changing.
Donald Trump, I coveredhis campaign for 16 months,
came as a disrupter.
He's disrupting in certain ways.
And what I wanna do ischronicle what that looks like.
How it happened, who arethe players involved,
and in a very small way,demonstrate through a book
what journalism lookslike in one dimension.
Everything in this book's on the record.
You're familiar with the book.
Everyone's quoted by name.
Everyone is quoted by theirtitle and by what they saw
and what they saw happening.- Purposeful.
- Purposeful and no one's complained.
No one has raised it andsaid that's inaccurate.
I'm outta context, no.
'Cause they know I'm a faithful chronicle
or what they said and what they observed
and what's happened.
I don't, as you wellknow, tell my audience
to like or dislike this presidency.
- Right.
- Your emotional reaction is yours.
You're entitled to it, go for it.
But that doesn't meanthings aren't going on.
A lot of books about thispresidency have sort of
been about what hasn't happened.
My book is about what has happened.
I have a good friend who said,
"Here's a metaphor, it mightbe useful to you, Major.
"So many of the booksabout the Trump presidency
"have been like restaurant reviews
"where they only talk abouthow often the chefs argue
"and how many times thebus boys slip on the floor.
"They don't tell you whatthe restaurant looks like,
"what's on the menu,if the food's any good
"or would you ever come back.
"That's what your book does."
- Alright, thank you David.
You can catch more of thatinterview on cbnnews.com.
Well, the President headsto California this weekend
to visit the communitiesravaged by the deadliest
wildfires in the state's history.
More than 60 people have been killed
and hundreds are missing.
- The community around Paradiseis still trying to take in
the devastation of losing so many people
as well as the trauma it's endured.
- Yesterday is the worst fire I've seen.
Paradise, unfortunately, likelywill not be the same city.
- [Heather] This woman was giving birth
as the fire approached.
In the chaos, she wasrushed from the hospital
and separated from hernewborn and husband.
- I realized that I'm not gonna make it
and I just told him on thephone that I was really sorry
and that I just loved him
and I wasn't gonna be there with our kids.
- [Heather] Paramedics battledflames to save her life
as thousands of otherslike Kristen Thames fled
with just the clothes on their backs.
- You don't think thatit's gonna happen to you.
But seriously, the next time,I don't care how far away
the fire is, when they sayevacuate, we're gettin' out.
- [Heather] More than50,000 people have no home.
Many are living in tentsin church parking lots,
Wal-Mart parking lots, anywhere.
- It's going well.
People are enjoying it.
They got free food.
It's been a great temporary solution but
I don't know if it cansustain for a long time.
- The fire is still only 40% contained
and there is no timelinefor when survivors
will be allowed to returnto their neighborhoods
and see what, if anything, is left.
Heather Sells, CBN News.
(swiping)
- Meantime, education secretary,
Betsy DeVos has releasedher long awaited rewrite
of the way college campuseshandle sexual assault.
Her proposal just out today is an overhaul
of guidelines created underthe Obama administration
and gives more rights to those accused.
DeVos and others believethe Obama era rules
sidelined due process.
Under this new proposal,fewer allegations would be
considered sexual harassmentand accused students
would also be entitled to lawyers
and cross examination.
When we come back, a federal lawsuit
over a little body of water, a pond,
and the man who fought back
against the government's overreach.
Imagine the federalgovernment bringing all of its
resources to bear against you,
threatening millions ofdollars in penalties a year
and in jail simply for building a pond
on your own property.
In an ongoing investigation series,
CBN News has reported onthe out of control system
of federal crimes andregulations that could literally
make US a nation of criminals.
Today, CBN's Paul Strand introduces us to
a Wyoming man who decided to fight back.
(swiping)
- [Paul] In 2011, Andy Johnsonobtained all the necessary
government paperwork beforebuilding this stock pond
on his eight acre ranch in Wyoming.
- He worked with the state.
The local government gotall the sign offs he needed
and created a pond in his front yard.
- [Andy] Since we've built the stock pond,
not only does ourlivestock benefit from it,
but we've had eagles,we've had blue heron.
- [Paul] Former federalregulator, Ray Kagel, Jr.,
insists the pondbenefited the environment.
- It had the added benefitof creating quite a bit
of nice habitat for fisheries,wildlife, waterfall,
and wetlands in general that were created
because of the pond.
- Johnson says it even filtered the water
from six mile creek that he was using
and made it cleaner.
But none of that was good enough
for the army corps of engineers
or the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA demanded thatJohnson dismantle the pond
in 30 days in the dead of Wyoming winter
or face serious fines because they said
he'd done serious wrong.
Jonathan Wood of thePacific Legal Foundation.
- He should've askedtheir permission first
and for having not done so,
they demanded he remove theenvironmentally beneficial pond
or pay up to $20 millionin potential fines.
- The EPA has came in andthreatened to take everything
that we've ever known.
- [Paul] More than hismoney was on the line.
- Almost every environmentalstatute includes
criminal provisions.
So you could go to jailand face criminal fines
for things that mostof us take for granted
on our own property like moving dirt
from one place to another.
- [Paul] The potential fineswere about $37,500 a day
and piled up into the millionsbecause Johnson ended up
in a long, hard fight against the feds.
- We suffered many sleepless nights.
We're still fighting the battle.
- [Paul] Johnson and hislawyers announced in 2015
they were suing thegovernment over its treatment
of the Johnson family.
- And seeing what the EPAis doing to this family,
it made me so angry.
- How much power do wewant to give unelected,
unaccountable bureaucrats?
- [Paul] Wyoming's twosenators wrote the EPA.
"The compliance order readslike a Draconian Edict
"of a heavy-handed bureaucracy."
- It's just devastating to think that
our government, thecountry that we live in,
that I work so hard and pay taxes to,
is now attacking us.
- I think the thingthat people connect with
in the Andy Johnson story is,
he's just like all of us.
He was doing something thatmost of us would probably
do on our own propertywithout even thinking about
and for doing that, thegovernment threatened to ruin
his life and his family's life.
- [Paul] The bureaucratsaccused Johnson of
violating the Clean WaterAct and potentially affecting
navigable waters theybelieved six mile creek fed.
- Someone went to thecomputer on their desk,
pulled up Google Maps,and based just on that,
accused this man of violating a law.
- [Paul] Wyoming AttorneyDan Frank points out
how they made mistakesin reading the maps.
- Had they ever goneout, they would've found
that it dead ends in a canaland it doesn't ever reach
a navigable water of the United States.
- [Paul] By just going bythe map, they also mistook
how the creek flowed.
- They assumed the waterwas flowing uphill.
If they had gone out andlooked at the property,
they would've found the water
is flowing the other direction.
The only thing that makessense from my experience
as a former federal regulatoris that the government
quite often, in my ownpersonal experience,
does things that don't make sense.
- [Paul] Given the mistakeshis team uncovered,
Johnson felt compelled tofight for as long as it took.
- I decided that I was not gonna tolerate
our government telling us exactly what we
can and can't do on our private property.
- [Paul] Ultimately, Johnsonand his legal team won.
The EPA backed down and gave up the fight.
Wyoming Senator John Barrasso wrote
after the government caved,
"This settlement is awelcome rebuke of an agency
"that has gone too far."
- The government hasincredible leverage over you.
They can ruin your life andruin your family's future
if you don't do whatever they say.
That's why it was extremely brave of him
to fight back and say no,you've exceeded your power.
I haven't done anything wrong.
- In the end, the EPAdidn't get even one dollar
from Johnson and the pond still exists,
still benefiting the environment,
which you think theEnvironmental Protection Agency
would appreciate.
Paul Strand, CBN News,reporting from outside
the EPA in Washington.
- Alright, well that is going to do it for
this edition of Faith Nation.
Have a great weekend and we'll see you
right back here on Monday.
