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Don Lemon Tonight

Democrats End Sit-In Over Guns; Votes Being Counted in Brexit Referendum. Aired 11-11:15p ET

Aired June 23, 2016 - 23:00   ET

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


[23:00:00] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN "Breaking News."

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: To the "Breaking News." This is serious stuff here.

Votes being counted in the UK tonight, in a referendum that will determine whether Britain stays in the European Union or leaves. This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon.

Dow futures way down tonight on the prospect of Britain leaving the EU. And it looks like it might be pointing in that direction as we heard from our senior international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour.

I want to get to CNN's Nic Robertson now.

And Nic is covering this for us as well.

Nic, this Brexit vote astounding to watch. What do you know? What's the latest?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Well, Don, the latest is that one major British forecaster says there is an 80 percent certainty now this vote will be a vote for Britain to leave the European Union, a so-called Brexit vote. This is creating a huge amount of uncertainty.

Day is just -- dawn is just breaking here in London. This is a day that many people didn't expect to wake up and see. It is still too soon to call this finally.

There are 382 different polling centers around the country that will be putting out results. So far we've heard from just over 200 of them. But all the indications through the night have shown that the leave campaign has made gains across the country where they weren't expected to. And the remain campaign has done well in some cities, but the turnout hasn't been high enough. Those are the early indications.

So, all the market reactions we're seeing right now are coming based on the expectation that Britain will be voting to leave the European Union. It's not a done deal yet. It's looking that way.

LEMON: Let's discuss that a bit more, Nic Robertson. Because as I introduced you, I said Dow futures are way down on the prospect that Britain would leave the European Union.

So what will this -- how will this affect the global financial market?

ROBERTSON: Well, there's still -- pound sterling is already way down. The expectation, the governor of the Bank of England here just a few days ago said that if there was a vote to leave, then the value of the sterling could drop precipitously 10 percent to 15 percent. Others said it could drop to 20 percent.

And, obviously, that will have a knock on effect across the global economy. It will create a huge amount of concern and uncertainty about the way forward. Not just for Britain, but for the European Union. And it has political implications, in particular for the United States as well.

Don't forget that two months ago, almost to the day, President Barack Obama was here in Downing Street with David Cameron, telling the British people it would be better to vote to remain inside the European Union. So, the financial markets are being hit. The political ramifications, we're only just beginning to think about them, Don.

LEMON: And as we are here in the U.S., what does this mean for the U.S., Nic?

ROBERTSON: Well, the u.s. -- if this vote goes the way it looks like going, the United States will lose a very important and influential partner, namely Britain, at the European Union negotiating table.

So when the United States hopes and seeks to influence European Union in a certain direction, when it in the past will have been able to rely on the voice of Britain, loud and strong voice at that table, it will no longer be able to rely on it.

What does that mean? Well, the European Commission President Yonkers just in the past week went to St. Petersburg, where President Putin was gathering in various European leaders as he seeks to try to roll back the sanctions that have been put on Russia because of Russia's annexation of Crimea and the concerns about Russia and Russia's influence in Ukraine.

So what does that mean? When you have a situation like that, where you can see a drift at the European Union, potentially the thinking of rolling back those sanctions, the United States may want to be looking to its allies and friends to influence the European Union, to keep those sanctions on Russia when Britain pulls itself, if it does, out of the European Union.

That is one less voice that the United States can count on to change those kind of political dimensions. And, of course, this is ripped much, much larger than that, but that's a specific example that is current and under way, Don.

LEMON: I'm going to ask you a very similar question that I asked Christiane Amanpour just moments ago, Nic. Are the same political currents at work there in Europe as there are here in the United States? Is that the cause of this? Explain to our viewers the cause of this.

ROBERTSON: The cause is many, many layers. You could go back to when Britain voted to join the European Union -- when Britain voted to join the European Union, there were concerns and divisions within the conservative party, David Cameron's conservative party about whether or not they should do that.

[23:05:20] It's those divisions that have manifested themselves 40 years later that led David Cameron, the prime minister, to promise his party a referendum on in and out of the European Union. But why did that happen? Why was he pressured in that way at this time?

Part of it has to do with high levels of immigration that have been seen in Britain as a perception here that immigrants are coming to Britain in bigger numbers than they were before, particularly from the European Union that has impacted people's ability to get good health care. That's the perception. Affected their ability to put their kids into schools. They want to put them into, affected their education. That's been a perception here.

So that's part of the picture. But you also have this disconnect between the political establishment and many of the electorate across the country. That the electorate don't trust their politicians as much as they used to. They feel that there's sort of larger global corporations are doing well at their expense. That they're not looking out, if you will, for the little guy. But it is part of that disconnect between the electorate and the leadership.

The leadership have not been able to sell why it's better for Britain to stay in the European Union. There have been so many economic experts who have been explaining why it would be disastrous in the short term, at least, for Britain to leave the European Union.

Yet around the country when you talk to people here, they say we just don't know who to trust. We don't know who to believe. So, this disconnect is part of it. It's multilayered but that really seems to be a large effect. And that is obviously something traditional politicians, not connecting with the electorate, is something I think that we're seeing in the United States as well we're seeing here.

LEMON: Nic Robertson, thank you very much for that. Much appreciated.

I want to bring in now a man who has seen it all when it comes to politics. And that is former congressman Mike Rogers, host of CNN series "Declassified."

As we look at this Brexit vote, and you see the "leaves" are ahead now. And they're saying they are predicting it. There is polling that predicts that there's a very good chance, Mike Rogers, that Britain will leave the European Union. This is fascinating.

So, I have to start up by asking you, what's your take on what you see unfolding in the UK right now?

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: You know, I just don't think that they dealt with it very well, Don. So when you look at what's coming out of Brussels, it was causing chaffing for years, and especially in Great Britain. So they had to fight back on the level of benefit payments for migrants across Europe who showed up in Britain. And that caused problems.

They had some tax issues where Britain wanted to exclude certain things, medical and certain food items that Brussels disagreed with. And so, this mantra of 60 percent of the laws now that Britain lives under happen in Brussels, of which they have very little representation. Or at least that was the Brexit campaign talk.

And then when they are adjudicated, those judges are not British citizens. And so Brussels continued with their plan, thinking you're just going to have to live with it. And I think you're seeing the results of that in this "Leave" campaign.

I wasn't for leaving. I thought that this will bring some trouble to Great Britain, certainly some pain in the short term. They probably can get over it. But I think this is really Brussels fault for not dealing with this very, very well.

And just holding to their position, you have to live by where we're going and the rest of the European Union, Great Britain and tough. And I think that was a terrible way. And I think the results you see is because of that.

LEMON: If you look at what happened today with Supreme Court and immigration in this country, and then you heard Nic Robertson talking about migrant workers, immigrants, Christiane Amanpour as well. And it's sort of a parallel to what's happening here in the United States politically as well.

ROGERS: Yes, I mean, obviously, this is an issue. There is this huge-changing movement. So you have, in United States, you have 94 million, roughly, Americans, who have opted not to go into the workforce. We have the highest number of people on food stamps than we've ever had before.

So there's some people see it. So, you know, and I think this notion of the political elite versus the rest of the population. People who are struggling across most of the country are saying something -- I don't know what it is, but something is wrong.

I haven't had a raise in ten years. You know, it's harder for my family to make it. They see the refugee issue. They see -- and, by the way, the political conversation about these things are so polarizing that you run into this factor.

Who do I trust? I don't know who to trust. But I know that somebody is saying this is a problem. Maybe that's the problem. Voters are responding to that.

[23:10:04] So I think that's -- you know, I think some of the popularity of Donald Trump. I think it's some of the popularity of the Brexit vote here, where people are saying, you know what, I don't know what the answer is. But what I see, I don't like. And I'm going to try something different. That's what I think is happening.

It's, you know, shame on all of the folks who believe in something different, for not articulating a more positive approach to why staying in the EU was important for the average people in England and across Great Britain. I don't think they made that case.

LEMON: And speaking polarizing topics, you saw the protests on the floor of the House last night. It was amazing to watch.

I mean, as a former congressman, what did you make of it?

ROGERS: You know, I was a guy that really liked to actually sit down and work things out. I think sitting on the House floor almost looked childish to me.

This is pretty serious stuff. If we're going to have those discussions, you do that off the floor of the House, likely, to sit down with people you disagree with, and you look at them and then you try to forge some kind of a way forward.

I thought disrupting the regular order of the house looked ridiculous. And I think it made the Democrats look small. I think it actually hurt their case when you have Senator Susan Collins come out and say you've actually hurt my case for working a bipartisan issue in the Senate. I think that says a lot.

And when very liberal Alan Dershowitz says I thought the House looked child, I think they've got a problem. It just don't think it helps their cause very much.

LEMON: While I have you here, I want to talk about, you are the host of this great new show on CNN, it's called "Declassified." It airs Sunday nights, 10:00 pm.

And in a former life, you were actually the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on intelligence. So you had a front row seat to a lot of things that happened, these secretive missions. And we've talked about your show and how it became a show in the previous conversations that we've had. But this week, you are discussing Saddam Hussein?

ROGERS: Yes, the hunt for Saddam Hussein. And think of this, Don. You get to see the outcome. We know we caught him. But what went into that? What is all of the intrigue, the challenges, the good days and the bad days from the individuals who put that whole case together? And it's fascinating.

You're going to see army intelligence interrogators who got trained, and went there and figured out that their tactics weren't working very well. They needed to try something different. And they ended up piecing together small bits of information.

It came down to a chef and the favorite meal of Saddam Hussein, which was a very special fish. And so those little details and all the case work that they did about trying to take bad guys off the battlefield, doing those interrogations, catching more bad -- I think the people are going to be fascinated by the story of what actually went in to catching Saddam Hussein.

LEMON: Mike Rogers, thank you very much. "Declassified," Sunday nights at 10:00 right here on CNN.

We appreciate it.

When we come right back, the latest on our breaking news. Votes being counted in tonight's Brexit referendum. It's neck-and-neck right now. The whole world is watching. But "Leave" has the momentum, we are told. Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: "Breaking News" tonight. Votes being counted in the UK's Brexit referendum. It is neck-and-neck right now. And we're going to have the very latest throughout the night right here on CNN.

Our live coverage is going to continue now with Hala Gorani and Richard Quest in London.