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Exclusive Interview with Presidential Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin; Police Unions Pushing Back Against Beyonce After Controversial New Video and Her Super Bowl Performance. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired February 24, 2016 - 15:30   ET

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


[15:30:00] GIDEON RESNICK, REPORTER, THE DAILY REPORT: -- it seems like it's going to win, you know, ten states on Tuesday, which means that it doesn't seem like it's likely to close the gap any time soon in terms of the delegates in terms of how you catch this guy in national polls. You know, a lot of people talk about a ceiling with Trump being 35 or 40 percent nationally. It's unclear if that ceiling exists at this stage.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN HOST: And what's going to happen when we see more people pull out of the race?

RESNICK: Right. Exactly, yes. Where are those voters going to go? I think for Rubio a big distinction that his campaign hasn't made yet is that they have to cite an off voters from Trump in order to even those odds. They can't just take the people who are going to vote for Jeb and make it happen.

HARLOW: So even it becomes a (INAUDIBLE) used to say there, and I think the lesson learned from Mitt Romney's camp is you can't just win the white vote. You have to win a significant portion of the minority vote.

RESNICK: That's exactly right, yes. And we haven't necessarily seen how are they going to move into, you know, the next phase of this at the moment. You know, they continue to sort of say well we are doing fine but it's kind of hard to say how well they are doing if they are not getting states.

HARLOW: Look who got the Latino vote last night, by the way, in Nevada -- Donald Trump.

Thank you very much. Nice to see you again. Appreciate it.

RESNICK: You are welcome.

Coming up next, police unions pushing back against Beyonce after a controversial new video and her super bowl performance. Several police unions calling on their members not to work security detail for her upcoming concert tour. We will debate what's behind the backlash ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [15:35:50] HARLOW: One woman knows more about presidential history and politics than just about anyone else on the planet. And I am lucky enough to have her as my next guest. She spent decades studying political geniuses and political down falls.

Joining me is presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin, a woman who New York magazine has dubbed America's historian in chief.

Thank you so much for being with us.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: I'm so glad to be here.

HARLOW: You are writing yet another book a new book, all about leadership. And it's interesting, you are looking at experienced politician versus outsiders. Quite an apropos time to be looking at exactly that when we are looking at Donald Trump the front-runner on the Republican as sort of the ultimate outsider. What has history shown us about outsiders?

GOODWIN: The interesting thing is that experience is not simply the number of positions you have held. It's what kind of temperament have you shown, what kind of judgment have you shown, how have you communicated with people. Sometimes somebody likes James Buchanan who was the president before Lincoln, he had been everything. He had all sorts of experience. He had been a state assemblyman, a congressman, a senator, secretary of state, minister to Russia, and yet he was one of the worst presidents in our history. Abraham Lincoln comes in with only one term in Congress and a state assembly job and becomes the best president.

So it's underneath either outsider or experience that we have to look at what their temperaments are. And what worries me about the campaign, I don't think we are really doing that. We have gotten so caught up in the excitement of the campaign itself that what kinds of leadership traits any of these characters are is way, way under cover. And that's what we should be really thinking about.

HARLOW: Well, take me back to 1912 and the example you gave of Roosevelt versus Taft in the nation's first primary. It wasn't pretty then either.

GOODWIN: No. That's right. I mean, that was indeed the first presidential primary. And the incredible thing the debate between Teddy and Taft, Teddy wanting to take over his successor Taft's job ending up running a third party against Taft, was so brutal. They were so mean to each other calling each other fat heads, traitors, dictators that "the New York Times" said, my God, if this is the first presidential primary, we sincerely hope it is our last. This is a mob. This is not the way to run a country. And they wanted to go back to the convention system where the good old bosses chose who it was.

HARLOW: There is certain elements of that at play today. It is both. Interesting interview this morning with former CIA -- NSA director Michael Hayden. He was on "NEW DAY." He was asked about sort of Donald Trump's dominance. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN (RET.), FORMER NSA DIRECTOR: It looks like an awful lot of Republican electorate are so frustrated, so angry what they are really interested in is a primal scream. And they are certainly getting that primal scream. I understand that. But I'm really focused, concerned about what follows because you can't govern with a primal scream. So let's see what happens.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: So I want your take on his choice of words there, primal scream. And also the fact that you say Trump is benefiting by not being defensive.

GOODWIN: Yes, I think he is right when he says that there is a lot of anger and fear in the electorate. And it comes from two sources. One is - and the Republican electorate especially. One comes from the frustrations of everyday life that a lot of people are feeling on both sides, the economy, the squeezed middle class, the income gap between rich and poor. But then we have had a history in the last decade or so of tea parties who argued against government, argued against what's in current power, the Republican Party. So they are coming to roost now with hating anybody inside the government. You would have thought someone like Kasich who is a governor and a congressman would have been an ideal person or even a Jeb Bush in another time or another place.

But there is that anger, the primal scream against it. And the problem is when you govern you have to bring people together. You can't just deal with anger. You have to deal with compromise and cooperation. The gap between campaigning and governing I think is as big as I've seen it in my life time this year.

HARLOW: What about the argument that the political pundits, the political elite, the media as some of the candidates point out -- they say, you're not listening to the voice of the voters. And Doris, if you just look at last night and 46 percent going for Donald Trump, do you think that the voters' voices are being lost in all of this?

[15:40:12] GOODWIN: You know, it's a fair question because I think you would have to say if the point of campaigning is to win votes in primaries and caucuses, then Donald Trump has run a campaign that's been victorious. And he has to be given the credit for having done that. And it's not enough to just look at the voters and say why are they doing this crazy thing? What's the matter with them? They have feelings. They are expressing them. So I think the real question is how do you channel those feelings that are real out these and yet make sure that you have got a leader who can translate those feelings into real promises?

You know, one of the things Teddy Roosevelt said is that the mar of a good public servant is somebody who doesn't make promises that he can't keep. And you worry about some of the promises Trump has made, whether it is waterboarding or building the wall, or deporting 11 million people. How will that be possible in our country? And yet that's happening right now. I think social media has really changed the whole context.

HARLOW: Just to push back on that a bit, I hear you, right. But I also would take us back to 2009 right after President Obama took office and he said I will close Guantanamo Bay just as his predecessor George W. Bush had said. And then just yesterday, seven years later we get the plan to Congress. I mean, there are a lot of promises made on both sides.

GOODWIN: No question. And in fact, in 1960 JFK made a whole series of promises during the campaign and then he and his aides had to sit down for weeks to figure out how are we going to answer these promises. We are going to build this down here. We are going to help the farmers. And at one point, there was promised number 53 where he promised an executive order to end discrimination in federally supported housing and he looked to these two speech writers and said who wrote that, neither one spoke up. He said well, I guess nobody wrote it. But then he actually had to do it and he was forced to do it because of the pressure. I wonder whether we will still put pressure nowadays, whether we believe these promises or not.

HARLOW: Final question to you. If Donald Trump does get the nomination, if he does win the general election, how does that change your book on leadership right now?

GOODWIN: Well, you know, I guess we would have to figure out what the qualities are for a leader in a particular context in a particular time. They are different. Churchill was the kinds of leader we needed at the beginning of World War II. We might not have been the same leader in the '20s.

Is there an environment today that's producing this leader? But I'm not sure we know what kind of a leader he is going to be. We don't know enough about his past, as a business leader. I wish we knew more. We don't know how he is going to govern. We know that he is campaigning and he has done a good job in that with the social and the media. And he has to be given his credit for that. But hopefully we will learn more in the course of the actual election of what kind of leader he is going to be. That will be the responsibility of journalists to figure it out.

HARLOW: Absolutely. Incumbent on all of us.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, thank you so much for your time and congrats on the upcoming book.

GOODWIN: Thank you so much.

HARLOW: Of course.

Coming up next I will speak live with the head of a police union that telling its officers that they don't need to volunteer for security detail at Beyonce's upcoming concerts after her latest video and her performance at the super bowl. We are going to debate the controversy over this video next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:47:18] HARLOW: Beyonce's new hit song "Formation" you have likely heard it. And also you probably saw her super bowl performance as well. They are both still catching a lot of buzz. The song's music video incorporate imagery of hurricane Katrina, also protests over officer involved shootings. Look.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYING) HARLOW: Well, when Beyonce performed that song at the super bowl, her back up dancers were dressed as black panthers. That certainly sparked debate as has the video. And now some police officers are calling for a boycott of her upcoming concerts saying they will not provide security day.

Let's talk about it all. Sergeant Danny Hale is with me. He is president of the Nashville fraternal order of police. Also with me, 'Philadelphia Daily News" columnist, author and radio host Solomon Jones.

Gentlemen, thank you both for being here.

And sergeant, let's begin with you and this question. What is your criticism of Beyonce, that song, the video? There are no antipolice lyrics. We did see in that clip there is graffiti on one wall that says stop shooting and a young man dancing in fronts of a line of police there. There have been other artists, black and white, who views their lyrics, their music to criticized police. Walk me though your thinking in this one.

SGT. DANNY HALE, PRESIDENT, NASHVILLE FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE: Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

HARLOW: Sure.

HALE: Secondly. I never said anything about the video per se. It has pop every now and then. My only complaint is when I watched the halftime show -- actually I had to watch it later because I wasn't this the room at the time. But for them to put that -- the Black Panther movement up on some type of pedestal is the thing that bothered me the most.

As far as her video out of New Orleans, you know, she is an artist, that's the cool thing about being in America, she can do what she chooses to do. I just felt that we needed to take a stand because 15 police officers were killed across the United States by - during the Black Panther movement at that time all the way into the '80s. And two of those officers were right here in Nashville, Tennessee. And my whole thing, is I never said the word boycott. I have always said, you know, for our folks, said please, you know, don't volunteer to do this.

Ultimately the chief of police is going to have to mandate because we are not going to bring 60,000, 70,000 folks in the national Tennessee in an unsecured environment. I mean, there will be security all the way from the federal to the local level. It just so happens the local police have the crux of the security detail.

[15:50:19] HARLOW: So I'm clear, you're saying not advocating a boycott but what I am telling my officers is don't volunteer to do it if you were offended?

HALE: And that is correct. And that's my only complaint. I felt like we needed to take a stance. And you know, I'll be honest with you. I hate that it came about this way, but I appreciate the conversation. Actually, I have talked to different people and different lifestyles for the past week that I probably wouldn't talk to normally.

HARLOW: So, Solomon, I mean, let's weigh in on this. Not only are you a journalist, you were once a police dispatcher. Where do you fall on this?

SOLOMON JONES, COLUMNIST, PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS: I think it's ridiculous. I think it's ridiculous to demonize the black panthers. You know, let's look at why they were wearing Black Panther re gala. It's the 50th anniversary of the black panthers. The Black Panthers is actually an organization that started in response to police brutality in the black community 50 years ago. And many of the things they did had nothing to do with that sort of outward resistance to police. What they did was they started a breakfast program. They helped kids with literacy. They helped kids with their school work.

You know, you don't hear that in the story of the black panthers. What you do hear is the propaganda around them deciding that they wanted to defend themselves. As far as police volunteering, police do not volunteer to do security here in Philadelphia. They volunteer for overtime. And so that security is paid for. They are paid for their time. They are paid to do their job.

For example, here in Philadelphia, police do security in Apple stores and Apple pays for that overtime. So the whole notion that this is not some kind of boycott, I take exception to that because I ink it absolutely is. And I think that they just need to call it that so that we can address it for what it is.

HARLOW: I want you both to listen to Hillary Clinton last night addressing the issue of race during CNN's presidential town hall. Here's what she told one audience member about understanding the problem of systemic racism.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Recently I've started wearing my hair natural, and I've noticed a difference in the way some people address and look at me. In the wake of things like Ferguson and black lives matter and the recent black lash against Beyonce for her formation video, there have been a lot of racial tensions recently in our nation. So my question to you is what do you intend to do to help fix the broken racial relations in our nation?

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, Kyla, first of all, thank you for being so candid and brave to stand up and say this about yourself because I think it really helps to shine a spotlight on what are one of the many barriers that still stand in the way of people feeling like they can pursue their own dreams, they can be who they are, they can have the future that they want in our country. And I believe strongly we have to deal with systemic racism. We have serious challenges, and I think --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: There you have it. I want both of your reactions. Sergeant Hale, you first.

HALE: Well, to that issue, my opinion is, you know, I normally don't agree with Mrs. Clinton on anything. But for her to say -- for her to put out there that, yes, you have the right to do whatever you choose in America, absolutely, she's correct. Now, is there -- are there still racial issues? Why, certainly. I live in a day-to-day life in Davidson County, Nashville, Tennessee, and I know that there are problems.

To get back to Mr. Jones' issue that we are out here in a boycott situation and we get paid for this and get paid for that, that's absolutely correct. We work sideline jobs, but we don't have to volunteer to work sideline jobs. That's just -- that's our -- you know, for our economic health for our families.

And also you look at another thing, when these messages come out, everybody tends to forget that the men and women that are out here protecting society, that the men and women that are out here protecting the rights of citizens, yes, they do make mistakes, but also they have families. Their families are worried about them out there on a daily basis. So when you go into a hostile environment, which don't get me wrong we were trained and paid to do and we are going to do. The cool part about this whole narrative is Miss Knowles is going to come to Nashville on May the 5th. She's going to have a great show and she'll be dealt with in a professional manner.

[15:55:00] HARLOW: I have one minute left. Solomon, your thoughts.

JONES: Yes. You know, it's not a volunteer situation. They volunteer to do overtime. They volunteer to get paid. So I just want to make sure that that is clear. It's not a volunteer situation.

The other thing is that they are paid to uphold the law, to protect and serve. And if Beyonce dancing around is a hostile situation, well, that's a problem. Then we need to get some new police officers in to deal with real hostile situations. That's not a hostile situation. She is free as an American to express herself. She's done that. And I think that her 14 million followers on twitter and 61 million followers on Instagram are paying close attention to what happens with this situation.

HARLOW: Important discussion to have. Thank you both for having it with us and our viewers. Sergeant, thank you. Solomon, thank you. Back in a moment.

HALE: Thank you very much. JONES: You're welcome.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:00:04] JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: He now has the mojo and the math on his side.

"The LEAD" live from Houston, Texas starts right now.