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Historic #MeToo Moment; CNN Reality Check: Politics Infects The Supreme Court; Four Key Undecided Senators Meet Before Kavanaugh Vote; Hillary Clinton Makes Surprise Cameo In "Murphy Brown" Revival. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired September 28, 2018 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00] TOM KANE, HIGH SCHOOL CLASSMATE OF JUDGE BRETT KAVANAUGH: -- away from Columbia Country Club. And it wasn't a single-family home; it was a townhouse.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Tom Kane, we do appreciate you being with us. We saw how difficult this was for Brett Kavanaugh. We saw the obvious pain he was in and we know this must be hard for you and all his friends as well, so we appreciate you coming on and talking to us.

KANE: Thanks, John.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Well, during Christine Blasey Ford's testimony yesterday, women across the country shared their own stories. Will that historic moment in the hearing room change the #MeToo movement, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Well, it was a historic day on Capitol Hill with testimony from Christine Blasey Ford and then from the man that she is accusing of sexual assault, Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

While the Senate speeds towards a vote, women are taking to social media to share their stories in this #MeToo moment.

Joining us now to talk about all of this, we have CNN political analyst and "USA Today" columnist, Kirsten Powers; CNN political commentator, Ana Navarro; and, CNN political commentator and host of PBS's "FIRING LINE," Margaret Hoover.

I'm so glad to have all of you to have this important conversation that was sparked yesterday by Christine Blasey.

[07:35:06] What happened was -- I have to get to this statistic because the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (called RAINN) said that they saw a 147 percent increase in calls, OK? So that's how many people around the country felt that they needed to call a hotline and reach out after what they heard yesterday.

So, Ana, let me start with you. What did yesterday's testimony mean for sexual assault victims? What was the message to women, in general? ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Alisyn, I don't know what it's going to mean vis-a-vis Kavanaugh. I don't know that if he gets to the Supreme Court, a good chunk of this country is going to think that somebody who got away with sexual assault is sitting on the Supreme Court.

But what, unequivocally, it meant for women is that you're free to speak out. It broke the dam on -- you know, on young rape and young assault cases in the way that Harvey Weinstein did in the professional front.

What you saw was a flood of people trying to get it out of their system, needing to vent, needing to share it. Not feeling shamed anymore.

Not being silent. Wanting to tell their story, knowing that they would be believed. Wanting to get it out of their hearts.

Look, I think that when people -- I think there were so many victims of sexual assault yesterday who heard themselves and saw themselves in Christine Ford. That it was -- you know, it was life-changing for the country.

CAMEROTA: There was a caller, Kirsten, into C-SPAN that has gotten a lot of attention. It wasn't just young women, obviously. It was all sorts of people who were so moved and who say that some of their own old wounds were reopened.

So here is a 76-year-old woman who called into C-SPAN. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a 76-year-old woman who was sexually molested in the second grade. This brings back so much pain. I thought I was over it, but it's not.

You will never forget it. You get confused and you don't understand it, but you never forget what happened to you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Kirsten, your thoughts about what we heard yesterday?

KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, COLUMNIST, USA TODAY: Well, and I have to say -- and I assume other people have the same experience -- I was hearing all day from friends who had experienced sexual assault and they were having a very hard time all day long. So I think -- yes, I think my experience has been exactly the same.

I think what was also very triggering to a lot of women -- you know -- I mean, I guess Ana's right that women feel like they can come forward and people listened to her story.

But then you look at what happened after she told her story and what you saw was a bunch of men raging -- truly raging -- and making accusations about a political plot and all these other things that we don't have time to go into how it doesn't even make sense how the Democrats could've gone back to 2012 and had her telling her therapist about it and the plot really doesn't add up.

But, the reaction really, I think, is what was very triggering to a lot of women. And then, the fact that it looks like he's probably going to get on the Supreme Court. So in the end, does it really matter?

She came forward and told her story but what I've been saying from the very beginning is just having two different people tell their stories isn't going to get us any closer to the truth. What gets us closer to the truth is an FBI investigation.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

POWERS: And that may not, in the end, give people what they want. It could easily -- it could have exonerated Judge Kavanaugh to put a marked judge under oath saying things --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

POWERS: -- and being questioned. But at least we would have known that there was a serious investigation done by independent investigators; not by a Senate Republican committee who is obviously invested in seeing him on the court.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Margaret.

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, HOST, PBS "FIRING LINE": Yes, it's just -- I find it very interesting because the politics between 1991 and now certainly have improved. Politics are politics and I have plenty of criticism for Republicans and how they've handled this.

But I do think -- and maybe I'm glass-half-full -- there has been a real cultural shift in how women are believed in this country and that women can come prove (ph) if you can think about Anita Hill's testimony was received in the early 1990s and how Christine Blasey Ford's testimony was received yesterday, universally.

Even amongst conservative commentary, conservative cable news, you were very, very, very, very -- you have to go very far to hear somebody say that she wasn't believable, that she didn't have a truly horrific experience that happened to her.

[07:40:00] There was -- there was no victim shaming on a broad level yesterday and I do think that that reflects a shift in our culture about how women are believed. And that is for as awful as this moment is, I think, in our politics in a new low, a silver lining that we have seen a modicum of progress --

CAMEROTA: Well --

HOOVER: -- to how women are treated. POWERS: But she's not believed, though. I mean, that's the problem. To say that someone did it to her isn't actually to believe her. I mean, that's how she's saying --

HOOVER: I think, Kirsten -- I think she's not --

POWERS: Wait, let me just finish. She's not saying that someone else did it to her. She's saying that Brett Kavanaugh did it to her. And so, Republicans keep saying we believe something happened to her, but that's not her allegation.

HOOVER: I'm trying to remove it from the political process. Overwhelmingly, Americans believe her. That's what all the public polling says.

And so, separate from the political process --

NAVARRO: A person's --

HOOVER: -- and that's where it gets difficult. And we can talk about --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

HOOVER: -- the politics of it if you want to go there.

CAMEROTA: But I -- but I am interested in this -- in this paradox. You believe her. They kept saying they believe her, yet they are going -- so that means they would confirm somebody who perpetrated a --

NAVARRO: They need a fig leaf.

CAMEROTA: -- sexual assault as a 17-year-old?

Ana, how do you square these things?

NAVARRO: Look, the only way they can square it is by this crazy theory that they've cooked up where they believe her but she's confused. She's not remembering correctly. It's somebody else.

Look, these two people -- these two men came up saying it could have been them. I mean, they -- you know, you have to find some sort of theory where you can skin this cat. Where you can't -- they realize they can't say we don't believe this woman who sounded incredibly heart-wrenching and believable yesterday.

That's why they have to have Mitchell doing the questioning because as bad as Ms. Mitchell may have been, can you imagine Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham bearing down on this woman? What five minutes apiece in 5-minute intervals what have been like? It would have been excruciating, painful, and even a worse look than they had.

So there's a reason why this is happening in two hours. Why this vote is happening in two hours because every day that passes more information can come out like it did today about that July first calendar entry.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

NAVARRO: You know, more things like the "Catholic Journal" retracting their endorsement.

More things like the ABA, the American Bar Association, saying hold it --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

NAVARRO: -- let's have an FBI investigation.

And one more day closer to the elections.

Believe me, they are -- the folks on this -- on this committee are painfully aware of the politics and the fact that we have an election in 43 days.

CAMEROTA: So, Kirsten, in our final seconds of this segment, has there been a sea change in terms of what sexual assault victims can say in public, and their credibility, and if they're believed, and what this means for women?

POWERS: I think there's been a sea change in the broader culture. I don't think it's happening in the Republican Party because her coming forward and saying this and having people say -- claim they believe her but then saying that they believe something completely different than what she said is actually not believing her.

And I -- and I -- and look, they don't have to believe her. I think that you can say I think she's credible but -- I mean, if you think she's credible then you should at least want an FBI investigation to absolutely have an independent investigation into this and get to the bottom of it. I don't think you have to say she's credible and therefore, it's over.

But I just don't think it's a serious thing until there's an FBI investigation.

CAMEROTA: Margaret, Kirsten, Ana, thank you very much for the conversation. We'll continue to have them.

POWERS: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: John --

BERMAN: Great conversation.

One thing people from both parties seem to agree on after yesterday's hearing, politics in America, many people say, have reached a new low. A CNN "Reality Check," next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:47:39] BERMAN: All right. A lot of people saw what happened yesterday and said it's ugly. How ugly, though?

CAMEROTA: I don't know. How ugly was it?

BERMAN: Well, let's compare it to the ugliness we've seen passed on through the generations in our politics.

Our senior political analyst John Avlon sums it all up in a "Reality Check."

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Thanks, guys.

You know, yesterday's hearing was much more than simply high-stakes political drama. It was emotionally raw, bitter, and bruising.

Here's what our own David Gergen wrote. Quote, "Today was a sad day for democracy. What started out as a search for truth became a partisan brawl. The afternoon's finger-pointing showed our divisions are only becoming deeper. These are dark, dangerous times."

So to paraphrase "The Talking Heads," how did we get here?

Let's look at how polarization has infected the Supreme Court, a place that's supposed to be above partisan politics.

One indication is how often the court rules by single-vote majorities. That number has been steadily going up and is now more than 20 percent, according to "The Atlantic." But it wasn't always this way. From 1801 to 1940, it was less than two percent.

At the same time and for the same reason, we've seen decreased confidence in the court, according to Gallup. Take a look at these dips here and here. All right, they occur after Anita Hill and reflect the impact of the court ruling in favor of Bush over Gore along party lines in 2000.

And here's another measure. From the Nixon and the Reagan years, successful nominees were often supported by more than 90 votes in the Senate, but the margin of victory has steadily decreased to the point where the Senate has lowered the bar to 50 votes in the Trump era. This division deepened as the Senate became more polarized.

As Dave Wasserman of the "The Cook Political Report" points out, quote, "A majority of the Senate now represents 18 percent of the population and answers to a subset of voters that are considerably whiter, redder, and more rural than the nation as a whole."

And that's a recipe for partisan outrage and the politics of resentment, and we certainly saw that yesterday. Here's Lindsey Graham.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC), MEMBER, SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold his seat open, and hope you win in 2020. Boy, you all want power. God, I hope you never get it. You want this seat and I hope you never get it. (END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Of course, none of this happens in a vacuum. Each new fight raises the stakes for the next, which is why Kavanaugh's personal anger was partisan as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRETT KAVANAUGH, SUPREME COURT NOMINEE ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT: This whole 2-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, revenge on behalf of the Clintons. And as we all know in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:50:18] AVLON: This revealed the dissent of our politics into ideological blood sport while raising real questions about judicial temperament and independence.

Of course, the most recent insult to the nomination process was the unprecedented blocking of Obama-nominee Merrick Garland. Lindsey Graham's righteous fury it undercut by the role he gamely played in that travesty, which he freely admitted back then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAHAM: I'm not going to put you through a hearing and beat you up knowing you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting confirmed. I'm not saying that I would beat him up. So it was an honest discussion.

It really -- he's a good man.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR, "AT THIS HOUR WITH KATE BOLDUAN": You really think it is a snowball's chance in hell at this point? You think those are the chances that he has of getting a hearing?

GRAHAM: No, it's less than that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: There's no appetite for healing on Capitol Hill or anything resembling a willingness to treat the political opposition as you'd like to be treated. Instead, we're facing a tsunami of situational ethics.

Senator Graham summed it all up with a statement that could have applied to Merrick Garland as much as Kavanaugh.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAHAM: If you're looking for a fair process you came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: And that's your "Reality Check."

BERMAN: A tsunami of situational ethics. I think those are words that perfectly encapsulate what we've been seeing.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, John.

AVLON: Crazy days.

CAMEROTA: Indeed.

Republican Susan Collins could hold the key to Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation. What will she decide to do? Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:55:30] BERMAN: Four key swing-vote senators likely to decide the fate of Brett Kavanaugh.

Republicans Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Jeff Flake, along with red-state Democrat Joe Manchin -- they met privately last night after all watching the testimony from the nominee and Christine Blasey Ford. So far, no real hint on how they plan to vote.

Our Kaylee Hartung is live in Portland, Maine, outside the state office of Sen. Susan Collins. Kaylee, what are you hearing?

KAYLEE HARTUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, for all the decisions that Susan Collins has made in her more than 20 years in the Senate, one of her constituents tells us he believes this decision could be her biggest.

Now, she's no stranger to the spotlight that being a swing vote can put on a senator and so many of her constituents tell us they feel that gives their voice unique power.

But following that meeting of the four undecided yesterday, Joe Manchin said we're still talking. No decision has been made on anything.

These four undecideds remaining very tightlipped publicly. But their constituents -- many of them are doing the exact opposite. They are making their opinions known to those who they put in office to make the tough decisions.

We've seen protests here in Maine and similar scenes throughout the week outside Susan Collins' office in D.C.

Inside those offices, phones have been ringing off the hook. One voter we talked to yesterday said her mother has called Susan Collins' office every day for the last five weeks to discuss the issue. Some staffers say phone calls they answer are threatening; some even profane, more so than any other issue that they've ever had to discuss with their constituents. And beyond talking and protests, there's even one liberal activist group who is crowdfunding to raise money to support an opponent to Susan Collins should she run for reelection.

Along the streets of Portland, we have encountered various attitudes and tones. One man saying while he believes Kavanaugh and Ford are credible, he believes that if Susan Collins votes yes it will be the end of her political career.

CAMEROTA: Wow, OK, Kaylee. Thank you very much for all of that. Obviously, we are watching to see what she will do.

All right, something lighter now. There was a surprise cameo on the premiere of "MURPHY BROWN's" reboot last night. Hillary Clinton guest starred as a candidate for a secretarial position for Candice Bergen's fictional T.V. host. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hello. I'm here to interview for the secretarial position.

CANDICE BERGEN, ACTRESS, CBS "MURPHY BROWN": Hillary?

CLINTON: Yes, Hillary -- Hillary Clinton.

BERGEN: Well, my God, you look just like --

CLINTON: I know, Hillary Clinton. I get that a lot. But my name is spelled with one "L".

BERGEN: Oh, OK, Hillary with one "L", please sit down. I guess you've heard this is a pretty demanding job.

CLINTON: I have. Your reputation precedes you but I want you to know I am not afraid of hard work. I'm qualified and ready on day one.

BERGEN: And, I also assume you've had previous secretarial experience?

CLINTON: Absolutely. For four years, I was the secretary -- I was the secretary of a very large organization.

BERGEN: And you have all the requisite skills -- computer, e-mail?

CLINTON: E-mails, yes. I do have some experience with e-mails.

BERGEN: How are you at teamwork? You know, putting on a news program is a huge operation.

CLINTON: Oh, I get that, completely. Everyone works together. It takes a village.

BERGEN: Well, you are very impressive -- maybe a little overqualified. How about I take some time to think it over and give you a call?

CLINTON: Well, it was a pleasure meeting you. I'll be expecting your call and -- here, let me give you my card. Thank you.

BERGEN: Thank you. Hillary@youcouldhavehadme.com.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: The cameo revives a running gag on "MURPHY BROWN's" revolving door of secretaries. Her original series had more than 90 secretaries in its 10-year run.

I have to admit I have lost the thread somewhere in that sketch of what's reality.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I don't know -- we're so through the looking glass, I can't tell when I'm watching anymore a sitcom or a reality show or life.

BERMAN: I will let you know what I think. I don't think she was really applying for a new job.

CAMEROTA: No?

BERMAN: I don't think there's only one "L" in her last name.

CAMEROTA: No?

BERMAN: They almost lost me at that because I didn't think that was funny. But they dug themselves out of the ditch with the secretary of a large organization.

At least she can laugh. At least she can laugh.

CAMEROTA: I guess. Was she laughing or was that a really great performance? I don't know anymore.

BERMAN: We'll talk about it.

We're following a lot of other news, needless to say, so let's get to it.