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Police Enter UCLA Encampment; Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA) is Interviewed about Protests; Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired May 02, 2024 - 06:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[06:30:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Unfold live. Our Nick Watt is somewhere very close to that. So, we're going to get back to him in just a second.

But, Elliot, Jonah was talking about the sort of legacy of Martin Luther King and how that form of civil disobedience involved accepting consequences once laws were broken. They, obviously, UCLA, has gotten to the point where, you know, as Andy McCabe was outlining, this encampment was surrounded by wooden pallets and plywood and all these physical barriers that these officers are now having to remove. There have been all sorts of questions about, you know, the campus jurisdiction, campus police, what kind of punishments these people should face. I mean, legally speaking, how do you view how the universities have handled this in terms of, you know, punishments they can throw at these people, and how do you think we proceed from here on that front?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: All right, well, let's start with the universities. I think they have almost a - they have a different authority than actual police, right, because their standards tend to be a little bit fuzzier. Like we were talking about the other day on the program, Columbia University, their whole speech plan lays out all the things you can and can't say. But we're not here to get in the way of people's ability to say uncomfortable things. We are merely trying to set rules around harassment or whatever. They're fuzzy standards. It's not clear.

HUNT: Right. And we should be clear, in the UCLA case, we have seen violence break out, right?

WILLIAMS: Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, I'm getting to that.

HUNT: OK.

WILLIAMS: So - so, it's - so when it comes to speech on campus, fine.

When it comes to breaking windows are destroying property, there you're not just talking about university rules, that - you're breaking the law. And this is - to Jonah's point just a few moments ago, you know, one ought to be able to face the consequences of their actions when they break a window, or set something on fire or something else. You don't have the same fuzzy, open-ended conceptual roles that you have when it comes to destroying property or things like that. HUNT: Yes. All right, I think our Nick Watt is with us again.

Nick, we've been watching these pictures unfold, you know, trying to get a sense of what's happening. You are on scene. What have you seen in the last few minutes?

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, just to pick up on a point that I think Elliot was making there, once we get inside you will see what we have seen pictures of, which is the front of Royce Hall, that beautiful brick and stone facade, graffitied very, very badly.

Now, what I'm seeing, Kasie, if you -- Tom, if you pan over there, can you see there are young students with their hands behind their backs, zip-tied. One of them is wearing a helmet. One of them is wearing a keffiyeh (ph). From inside the camp, I am seeing umbrellas. I'm seeing smoke rising. I'm seeing flash bangs. I'm seeing the tents, the easy up being picked up by the officers and moved. I'm seeing the barricades shaking.

Just a minute or two ago, though, I did still see a Palestinian flag waving in the darkness as this - as this mission continues. I'm seeing more of those pallets being thrown. And, you know, you guys were talking earlier about all of these huge bits of plywood that were allowed to be brought onto campus. I mean just this afternoon I watched as LAPD and highway patrol stood around while inside the camp, just a few feet from them, those protesters were fortifying that barricade. They were - we - we could - we could hear the power drills as they were fortifying, suspecting that something like this was going to happen, and they were just allowed to do that. That was happening.

As we've been discussing, UCLA tried to keep a hands off approach. This was allowed to become what it became. And it has now come to this. This is a scene that the university did not want, but this is what they have ended up with by having this week of -

HUNT: You can see those, quote, Bruins (ph) - yes, no, for sure. The - very just -

WATT: Yes, a week of - of - yes.

HUNT: Nick, can I ask you what your reporting has been on scene at Columbia? We know the administration, after they cleared out the building, said that there were some outside agitator involved. What is your reporting on how UCLA looks at this encampment? Do they believe that there are outsiders involved?

WATT: There are. And, I mean, I can tell you, I know there are because I've seen people who I recognized who were over at the UCL - t he USC protest earlier. I've seen - I've recognized people from other protests who are here. And you can - you know, there are students in there, absolutely, for sure, but there for also outsiders.

And, you know, we saw that last night when those pro-Israeli counter protesters came onto campus.

[06:35:00]

Clearly some of them, most of them, if not all of them, were also not students. They were outside agitators. They are drawn to these campuses because the campuses have become the focal point. Now some of them will have sincerely held beliefs on either side. Some of them are here for a fight.

HUNT: Yes. And, Elliot Williams, I mean, what is the difference between outsiders and students in a situation like this?

WILLIAMS: Well, none from the eyes of law enforcement. If a police officer witnesses or gets evidenced that something - a crime has been committed, of course they can go after student or protester alike.

Now, the university is limited in what it can do to an outside protester because folks from the outside aren't subject to university ethics rules or dining hall rules or anything like that. But, no, in the eyes of law enforcement, everyone's the same, particularly where there's a volatile situation where lots of people are committing the same acts in concert. So, no real difference.

HUNT: Yes.

Jonah Goldberg, we were talking a little bit about the president and what he should or could do to condemn this or go further than he has if that were to be the tact that he wanted to take. I mean what do you think is the pressure on the president right now? What should he be doing?

JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He should be - you know, look, he had this opportunity in - when he got elected in 2020 to be basically an Eisenhower type avuncular grandpa guy who could come out into American politics every now and then and say, you kids keep that down. Don't make me come in there. And then go back in and do his work, right? He didn't need to be this transformative guy, this new FDR guy. I think that is the tone of the new normalcy that people wanted from him. And I think - I don't think he should be the one to do this, but this is the kind of - the kind of message that his surrogates should be doing is to say, hey, look, we love, I don't, but they, Democrats do, the culture and tradition of a protest and First Amendment this and all that kind of stuff. They can do that whole thing and then say, but keep in mind, it doesn't always work out for your side.

The protests at '68 at Columbia, which we are still in this fit of ludicrous nostalgia over, got - it got Richard Nixon and extended the Vietnam War for five more years, right? It was not - you still find people who think that the '68 protests on these campuses ended the Vietnam War. And I'm like, what parallel universe are you thinking of? If these are the images, the images of chaos, the chaos at the border, chaos on campuses, people - if middle class families who struggled to send their kids to college have their graduations canceled because of all of this and they blame Biden for it, Trump will be elected. And that is a message that Democrats need to get out to people, to their own activist, people who work on the street or close to the ground, grassroots, and say, look, cool this down, particularly before the Democratic convention, or we're screwed. That's the message and they need to get out.

HUNT: I mean, Molly, our pulling does underscore that this issue, while clearly an emotional one for the people who are out there protesting it, is not something that is top of mind for most voters who are concerned more about other things, like the economy, like protecting democracy, like crime, which Jonah alludes to.

MOLLY BALL, SENOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Absolutely. I don't think the public is on the side of these protesters. And to Jonah's point, you know, I think Joe Biden was elected to restore a sense of normalcy, a sense of order, a sense, you know, to stop the chaos that so many people felt Trump represented. And also to restore moral leadership, right? He talked about being moved to run because of Charlottesville, which was a protest that got out of hand where many people said things that were anti-Semitic in a way that was very disturbing. And he took a very strong stance on that. And he was its going to restore, you know, America's moral leadership in the world, restore a sense of right and wrong again in the aftermath of Trump. And I think, to a lot of people, maybe to some of these protesters as well in the other direction, he sort of forfeited that mantle and they don't see where he is in terms of saying, we have a sense of right and wrong here and we know where the lines are.

HUNT: Really interesting. OK.

We're going to keep our eyes on this unfolding situation. Our Nick Watt is on the scene.

We're going to take a quick break, though. And, up next, we are going to talk with Democratic Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan of Virginia.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:43:30]

HUNT: All right, welcome back.

We are in live coverage of UCLA as police officers have moved to dismantle an encampment that had been ordered to disband. Our Nick Watt has been on the scene for us as we have watched them toss aside barricades that had been erected around this encampment. And we have seen a handful of people being led away from the scene, seeming to be arrested. Our - we're going to continue our conversation here with Virginia Democratic Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan.

Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining us now.

JENNIFER MCCLELLAN (D-VA): Good morning.

HUNT: Your district includes VCU, which also has grappled with tense protests, law enforcement presence. This, obviously, is also something that has really split your Democratic Party. What do you think President Biden should be doing or saying about the scenes we're seeing unfolding on college campuses?

MCCLELLAN: Well, I think right now we need to make sure that we are remaining calm and de-escalating the situation as quickly as possible. It is difficult not being on the ground with that information in front of you beyond what we're seeing on TV to step in to do that. This is mostly a local law enforcement matter. But I do think making sure that we are encouraging law enforcement to strike that balance between allowing the exercise of free speech rights and the restoring of order and public safety, it's a delicate balance that I think needs calm, rational approach.

[06:45:11]

And I think that mostly needs to happen at the local level.

HUNT: In cases where there has been violence, like in the case of UCLA, we saw that violence break out. Do not see that - I mean do you see that there should be a different set of reactions compared to - I mean some of these protests are clearly not peaceful.

MCCLELLAN: Well, again, I said your exercise of your free speech rights. And under the law it's very clear that there's a difference between peaceful protests and violence. And responding to breaking laws by committing violence, by trespassing, vandalism, is different than cracking down on lawful free speech.

HUNT: So, there has been a pretty sharp divide also inside the Democratic caucus about this. You had several Jewish members of Congress go to Columbia University to walk with students there, while you also had other members, Ilhan Omar, for example, visiting her daughter in the student protests at Columbia.

How emotional is this issue, is this reality among your colleagues?

MCCLELLAN: It is - it is a very emotional issue. Anytime you are dealing with war, anytime you are dealing with life and death, anytime you are dealing with people who feel unsafe, it's emotional. And - but we've been here before as a country. I hope that people are learning the lessons from the protests in 2020, in the '60s, and are bringing a proportionate response. And I think making sure that we are striking that right balance, which some universities have been able to do, and others are struggling with.

HUNT: Do you think that universities, where anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head, should face losing their federal funding as some colleagues in the House - of your colleagues in the House have suggested?

MCCLELLAN: I think we need to be very careful to make sure we are not violating any First Amendment rights. And - and -

HUNT: Do you view anti-Semitic - I mean some of these signs, you know, there was one at my alma mater, George Washington University, that had "final solution" on it.

MCCLELLAN: I think the most - the more horrific the speech, the harder it is to protect free speech rights. And it's a balance. And it is not - it is - it is - it is not easy to strike that balance. But it's more important that you do it when the speech is not speech you agree with, when its speech that is abhorrent. But I may not agree with people say they have a right to say it.

HUNT: At what point, though, does some of that speech cross the line into harassment as some of these college presidents were pressed on at hearings on The Hill?

MCCLELLAN: I mean, I think when you are creating an unsafe space. University presidents also have the responsibility to create a safe space for students to receive an education. And if it crosses the line to making students feel unsafe, then you need to step in and address it.

HUNT: All right, Congresswoman McClellan, thank you very much for spending some time with us today. I hope you'll come back and we can talk about, you know, we had originally planned to discuss abortion rights. There have been some significant developments there. I'd love to have you back on that when you have time.

MCCLELLAN: Thank you. Thank you.

HUNT: Thank you very much for being here.

All right, we are continuing to cover these unfolding developments at UCLA as police are entering and arresting some of these protesters who were ordered to disband and did not disband. So, we are now, of course, watching as they are removing barricades. They've been - they've been seen throwing pallets, plywood, barricades, removing those from outside of this encampment. And we've been reporting live on the scene, our Nick Watt reported, that some of the people in these protests are outsiders to UCLA. He said, of course, some of them are students, but that is an element of what we are dealing with here.

Jonah Goldberg, can I just bring you in, in terms of responding to what the congresswoman had to say. I mean this is the question I keep coming back to in terms of the nature of these protests, you know, especially on college campuses where for years there was this issue where people didn't want conservatives to come and talk at all. They were afraid of having them talk because they said, well, this was aggressive. But then, on the other hand, it's now suddenly difficult to answer questions about whether some of the speech that seems to be directly violent and threatening towards Jewish students is acceptable or not, or harassment or not. I think that's kind of what I'm struggling with.

GOLDBERG: Yes, But, look, I mean this - and this is the - this is the core problem that these campuses have gotten themselves into. They've been - you know, there's an old saying that, you know, behind every double standard is an unconfessed single standard.

[06:50:05]

They didn't really think there was any conflict between social justice values and free speech values when all the speech on campus was speech that they agreed with and that the only people - and they got confused and conflict - you know, they got caught up in this idea that words can be violence, but violence can be words. That you can - that if you say mean or triggering things, whatever the right word is, that that should be treated as an - as aggressive. And then - but the problem is, they also got into this thing that said, Israel's bad because it's this - part of this -- according to this oppressor ideology, and so you could say things like gas the Jews and that - that's just free speech. And it's that double standard that has exposed -- like, got all those - those college presidents in trouble before Congress. It's gotten them into trouble here because they love the idea of protest but - and they teach it. I just went through the course catalog at Columbia for a piece I was writing. The number of courses they teach lionizing and glorifying protest as the vital part of like social justice is amazing. And then they get into this problem of not knowing how to discipline protests that they are ideologically sympathetic with.

HUNT: Molly, you - you raised your eyebrows at one point during what Jonah was saying there. What were you thinking?

BALL: No, I think it's absolutely true. And I think that a lot of this is downstream from a lot of these conflicts that have been unfolding on campuses over the last decade or more where, you know, the ideological monolith and the hypocrisy in many cases on issues of speech. And so I think in a lot of people's minds these campuses are sort of reaping what they've sown in the way that they have taught students to regard these issues, whether you're talking about Israel, Palestine, or - or just the general sort of radicalism that has permeated a lot of the politics of these campuses.

HUNT: Yes.

Let's go back to our Nick Watt, who is on the scene documenting this as its been unfolding.

Nick, over to you. What's the latest?

WATT: Well, we've just seen another phalanx of about a dozen police officers moving past us on to the encampment. We've also seen about half of that barricade has now been removed by law enforcement. We've seen a lot of those easy ups moving out.

And I just want to draw attention to one banner. Tom, if you pan right a little bit, that blue banner, you probably can't read it, but it says, "UCLA faculty and staff, we stand with our students." That's a banner we've been seeing - we've been seeing over the past week. I don't know who's holding it right now, but it's interesting that that is still being displayed, that sentiment is still being played.

Now, can you see that flashlight moving around? So, protesters were being given flashlights earlier. They are moving around, flashing them in the eyes of these officers coming in. We've now seen, I would say, tens, dozens of arrests. And Stephanie Becker, the producer who's been working with me on this story for the past 20 or so hours, she has determined that they are taking those arrested students and protesters to a bus - to those buses that we know were staged earlier in a federal parking lots just about a mile away from here. Those are now near the campus and these - the arrested people are being taken to those buses.

Flash bangs still going off. We've seen from - coming from inside the encampment what seems to be fire extinguishers being set off. I cannot be sure about that. But that's what it looks like from a distance. I can taste smoke in my mouth.

You know, we were talking earlier in the evening about whether there would be resistance. I mean it's difficult to tell from this distance. But with those flashlights still moving around, the Palestinian flags still waving, and the time it is taking to move through this encampment, there clearly is some resistance. But the people we have seen arrested coming out, they have not been showing resistance. There have been compliant. They are kneeling on the ground. One woman, as she was walking past, did say, I did not consent to a search. I did not consent to a search. That is about the only sort of defiance that we have heard from the people who have been arrested coming by.

Now, many of them wearing helmets, goggles, umbrellas against tear gas. But as I say, we have not seen - seen any of these people resisting arrest. But from the scenes that we can see inside the camp, it doesn't appear that it is totally compliant.

One of our security officers, Danny, was just walking past and he said that he saw the protesters loading what looked like doors and other debris. Still trying to reinforce the barricade around the encampment, even as this is going on.

[06:55:03]

Back to you, Kasie.

HUNT: Nick, those bangs that we're hearing behind you, can you just kind of bring us into what is - is that still fireworks that you were talking about earlier?

WATT: No, there was - there was - there were a couple of fireworks earlier, but those are flash bangs, those are being sent in by officers and there were also projectiles coming from inside the encampment that I cannot entirely tell what they are. We're now seeing a lot of smoke. Also the source of that, I cannot be sure what that is. But as I say, I can taste it in my mouth from a little bit away.

We're seeing a lot of tents being thrown up. I've seen traffic cones, buckets being thrown out. Unclear who is actually throwing them. But there is clearly a scene of some chaos going in and they're - going on in there at the moment.

I'm seeing one more Palestinian flag being defiantly waived as officers - more and more officers are moving into the encampment. But boy oh boy, this is a scene that UCLA did not want. This is ugly.

Listen, we saw Colombia last night in New York, 300 arrests. I don't know, this seems like a far uglier seen than we saw at Columbia yesterday. Back to you.

HUNT: It does look really difficult.

Nick, very grateful to have your excellent reporting throughout this hour on this live scene. Thank you very much.

Still having a conversation here with our panel.

Elliot Williams, based on what Nick was just saying, I just - throwing things at officers, if that's what's happening, and, again, he said he couldn't tell what the projectiles were, where they're coming from, but these projectiles coming out of the encampment as police are moving in here, that seems like a serious thing.

WILLIAMS: Oh, it's very serious. The problem is that, look, it's dark. And it's coming out of nowhere. How are you going to find someone, apprehend them and prosecute them or arrest them, whatever else, for those acts. There - there were plenty of people arrested over the course of the evening for - it seemed to be happening in plain view of officers. But the flying and hurling of things, it's one of those unfortunate consequences of law enforcement that, you know, may just end up going unaddressed.

HUNT: Yes.

Molly Ball, we've been talking a little bit about how this sort of impacts the politics that we are seeing. And, you know, I do think one thing that's - that's worth remembering in all of this is a big part of why these universities want these sites cleared is so that they can safely hold commencement ceremonies on their grounds. And this is the class of 2024 that had their high school graduations taken from them, many of them, back in 2020. And that's something that really potentially ripples across the country for many, many families. I was - we were speaking with one person who had - was a friend whose family was flying in from South Korea and they weren't sure if they could attend their child's commencement at Columbia.

BALL: Yes, well, and I think a lot of these universities are hoping that this all dies down if they're able to figure this out and then hold commencement ceremonies if they are, in fact, able to do that. And then it's the summertime and maybe kids aren't on campus.

But I think that really remains to be seen. I mean, look, outsiders or not, a lot of these protests are the results of organic passion on the part of a lot of young people. And they are very mad at the administration, they're very mad at Joe Biden. And I don't think that that is going to stop as long as there's still a conflict in the Middle East. And even if that is resolved, I don't think they're going to stop being angry.

So, we've already seen that, you know, the president and vice president can't go anywhere without protests. I think a lot of these commencements are themselves going to draw protests, especially if they have speakers that are political in any way. And we're just going to continue to see these scenes unfold. HUNT: You know, Jonah, I mean the president, President Biden, is

supposed to speak at Morehouse College.

GOLDBERG: Yes.

HUNT: Give a commencement.

GOLDBERG: I do think it's important to keep in mind, like, these are representative of a real problem within the Democratic coalition that Biden is going to deal with. But one of the reasons why it's a problem is that it divides his coalition while at the same time most people in this country don't go to college.

HUNT: Right.

GOLDBERG: And most people who go to college aren't participating in these things. And most colleges don't have these problems. And so when we see it blasted out here, and it's gotten massive coverage, its everything that people are talking about, everyone's writing about it, it is - it is putting a magnifying glass on a very elite phenomenon that is dividing a very elite segment of a coalition. And I think it is a - just an enormously thorny problem for Biden to figured out how to navigate.

HUNT: Yes, the president yet to weigh in himself directly on this. Even has his rival, the Republican - presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, spoke about it on the campaign trail in key swing states yesterday.

[07:00:06]

Again, you have been watching police move in to UCLA to arrest people in an encampment that was told that they needed to disband and that many have not disbanded. We have been live with our Nick Watt, who's been on scene all night. We are very grateful to him for being there for us as we watch something quite significant to both these students and to our politics unfold.

Thanks very much to our panel for joining us. Thanks to all of you for being here. I'm Kasie Hunt.

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