President Trump's Mood Sours Post-Election; California Wildfires Death Toll Jumps To 58; European Union Council President Confirms Brexit Summit
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The president's mood taking a turn for the worse after midterms losses and a public rebuke from his wife.</s>DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Democrats pick up two more House seats, but Nancy Pelosi's path to reclaim the speaker's gavel faces new challenges.</s>ROMANS: Election recount numbers due today in Florida. Which major county could miss the deadline and what it means for major races.</s>BRIGGS: And get ready for an ugly day along the east coast. A mix of floods, ice, and snow from the Deep South up to New England. Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Dave Briggs.</s>ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. Nice to see you all this morning at exactly 30 minutes past the hour. We begin at the White House where's "he's pissed at damn near everyone." Those are the words of one White House official describing President Trump after a series of setbacks. An election night drubbing, infighting among aides, and the first lady's public demand to fire a national security official. Aides tell CNN the president is isolated and becoming angrier by the hour.</s>BRIGGS: A week after declaring almost complete victory in the midterms, the president's friends tell us he is bitter about election losses and worried by the intensifying Mueller investigation. He's now openly musing about replacing more top aides, and the first one to go, that national security official Melania Trump wanted gone. The White House says Mira Ricardel has been transferred out of the National Security Council to another administration job.</s>ROMANS: All right, let's bring in Daniel Lippman, "Politico" reporter and co-author of the "Politico Playbook" newsletter. Good morning.</s>DANIEL LIPPMAN, REPORTER AND CO-AUTHOR, PLAYBOOK, POLITICO: Good morning.</s>ROMANS: Nice to see you.</s>BRIGGS: Good to see you.</s>ROMANS: So we're hearing so much about how the president's in a pretty dower mood here. And it's interesting that as each day goes by we are still in the midst of an election, right? It's not settled. And we see these numbers continue to favor the Democrats more by the day. Did we miss how blue the blue wave was?</s>LIPPMAN: I think we did and the media played up a number of Democrats who they thought were going to win in the Senate, which they didn't.</s>ROMANS: Beto O'Rourke, for example, got an awful lot of attention.</s>LIPPMAN: Yes, there was so many profiles of him in places like GQ and "The New York Times" magazine. And so I think with the results we had on Tuesday -- or last Tuesday -- people are expecting that Democrats would continue to pick up some of these seats. And that is just hurting Trump because he sees these on his T.V. screen and says well, what happened to the red wave? And then he sees the first lady's office attack the West Wing, which is just extraordinary. You know, you didn't see that in previous presidencies.</s>ROMANS: That was really extraordinary. And that's one of the reasons -- you know, our sources are telling us the president is just so darn angry.</s>BRIGGS: Angry, yes. Hard to imagine why. Things certainly look a lot differently eight days later. I want to switch to Nancy Pelosi and her future as House Speaker. The numbers are piling up. There certainly are the numbers to prevent her from returning as speaker but no one has really stepped up to really challenge Pelosi's leadership on the left. Where do you see that headed, and is there a danger of returning to Pelosi's leadership given what happened in the midterms? So many ran against her returning.</s>LIPPMANN: That's true. We should remember that she said in an "L.A. Times" interview a few weeks ago that if she was returned to the speaker job it would be a transitional position. And so, she's not going to stay in there for eight years. I think the betting is maybe one term -- one congressional -- you know, two years. And so, I think -- but there's really no one else to -- that has a stature to really step up.</s>BRIGGS: Yes.</s>LIPPMAN: Marcia Fudge has been making some noise about that. But I don't think the Democrats want to vote for basically someone who does not have a public profile like Pelosi, who is a great fundraiser as well. That's one of the reasons she has gotten the trust and loyalty of many Democrats that she --</s>BRIGGS: Yes.</s>LIPPMAN: -- very helpful with cash.</s>BRIGGS: Fudge and Tim Ryan now ruling out running for leadership. But to your point, she raised nearly a billion dollars or helped raise nearly a billion dollars, a record for House Democrats in this election cycle.</s>ROMANS: Daniel, let me ask you about a whiff of bipartisanship in Washington. Yesterday, you saw this proposal that would unwind some of the real -- like the tough on crime --</s>LIPPMAN: Yes.</s>ROMANS: -- rules of past administrations in past decades. Will that translate, do you think, into more bipartisanship? Could you see the president, as irritated and irritable as he is right now, reaching across the aisle to try to get maybe infrastructure of something else done?</s>LIPPMAN: Yes. I was at a Miller Center event yesterday and with Trump officials and others and they talked about how the infrastructure drug pricing is a potential way to work with Democrats -- and opioids.</s>ROMANS: Yes.</s>LIPPMAN: And so there are a number of things that -- because Democrats need to show that they are not just investigating Trump and so they need to rack up some wins, too. And so that's where they have a common interest with the president.</s>BRIGGS: I'm not holding my breath for further bipartisan work but hopefully, there is some more of it. I've got to ask you, though, about our favorite morning reading this morning -- other than the "Politico Playbook" -- which is the full transcript of the president's interview with "The Daily Caller" yesterday in which, among other things --</s>ROMANS: Required reading.</s>BRIGGS: -- he says, you know, you need a voter I.D. to buy a box of cereal. He says sometimes voters go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. He also claimed there are thousands of people that were bussed from Massachusetts to vote in New Hampshire. That did not happen. What's behind all of this? All of this is just utter nonsense. I don't have time to get into the fact that "The Daily Caller's" follow-up question was, "Do you think they should call Florida right now, sir?" Nice journalism there. But what's behind all of this nonsense?</s>LIPPMANN: You know, I think Trump is clearly angry. So sometimes when he wants to vent, he'll bring in an outlet like "The Daily Caller" which has had some -- which does both positive and negative coverage of the president. But I think he has lost touch with parts of reality. I wrote stories during the campaign where I'd watch hours of Trump rallies and press conferences for a whole week and would catalog this misstatements and lies. And there was once every three minutes during September-October of 2016. And now, once he's in as president it's really gone up. And so --</s>ROMANS: Yes.</s>LIPPMANN: The cereal thing kind of reminds me of George H.W. Bush not knowing what a price scanner was at the grocery store.</s>ROMANS: I know.</s>BRIGGS: I got cereal on the way in. No voter I.D. required. But I got me some Raisin Bran Crunch.</s>ROMANS: I mean, I thought maybe he meant --</s>LIPPMAN: Too bad you're in</s>D.C. ROMANS: -- Sudafed or -- you know, I mean -- you know, you do need an I.D. to buy some things at the convenience store but, I mean, come on.</s>LIPPMANN: He clearly has not been to a grocery store for --</s>ROMANS: I don't think so -- all right.</s>BRIGGS: No -- no bodegas. Thank you, buddy.</s>ROMANS: Daniel Lippmann, thank you.</s>LIPPMANN: Thank you.</s>ROMANS: Retired Republican Sen. Jeff Flake threatened to do what he can to block Trump's judicial nominees unless bipartisan legislation protecting special counsel Robert Mueller receives a floor vote. Flake's threat not to vote for Trump's nominees came after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a floor vote on the special counsel bill Flake and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons are pushing.</s>BRIGGS: Flake and a handful of other Republican senators say the legislation is necessary after the president fired Jeff Sessions and named Matt Whitaker acting attorney general. Whitaker has been openly critical of the Mueller probe.</s>SEN. JEFF FLAKE (R), ARIZONA: With the firing of the attorney general and, in my view, the improper installation of an acting attorney general who has not been subject to confirmation by this body, the president now has this investigation in his sights and we all know it.</s>BRIGGS: McConnell and other Senate Republicans say the measure is not needed because the president is not about to fire Mueller.</s>ROMANS: All right. The death toll in California now stands at 58 as catastrophic wildfires ravage the state. At this hour, 56 people known to have died in the Camp Fire in Northern California, making it by far the deadliest wildfire in state history. One hundred thirty people are unaccounted for.</s>BRIGGS: The Camp Fire, now estimated to have burned 138,000 acres, is just 35 percent contained. The National Guard going from house-to- house looking for victims.</s>ROMANS: The utility company PG&E could be in deep financial trouble if it is found liable for the Camp Fire. The utility disclosed Tuesday it experienced an outage just 15 minutes before the Camp Fire started. In the face of tragedy people are stepping up, though. A California couple took in a 93-year-old veteran after he fled the fire Paradise.</s>BRIGGS: Donations of things like food, clothes, and blankets also piling up at this parking lot in Chico, California. Some donations even being brought by sea. One man filled his 150-foot yacht with supplies which were brought to shore by volunteers to be delivered where they're needed. Pretty cool.</s>ROMANS: All right. Five government ministers resigning in rapid succession overnight. The new Brexit deal not popular. Theresa May addressing Parliament right now. We're going to go live to the U.K.