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Political Polarization in America; Seven-year-old Stuns Crowd. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired October 03, 2018 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:30:00] KIRSTEN POWERS, COLUMNIST, "USA TODAY": They will not be attacked by a man. Women are not afraid when they go into parking garages that a woman is going to attack them. They are afraid that a man is going to attack them. So if you have most women living a day- to-day life of always being conscious, you know, I have to make decisions to make sure I don't get attacked, please don't put that in the same category as some statistically insignificant number of men being falsely accused.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Kirsten Powers, Ana Navarro, always great to talk to both of you. Thanks very much for the candid, personal conversation.
POWERS: Thank you.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thank you.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, here's a question, where will this episode fit in our history? Where does it fit in the greater American story? We're going to ask someone who just documented the entirety of American history, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: This morning the partisan divide grows over Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the FBI investigation into the sexual assault allegations against him. It feels to some like the country is more polarized than ever before. We hear that phrase a lot when it comes to politics these days, ever before, but what does that mean when we're talking about the American story?
[08:35:02] Joining me now, historian and Harvard Professor Jill Lepore. Her new book "These Truths: A History of the United States," is on bookshelves now.
And I raise that question when we talk about "ever before" because this book, which I hold in my hands, and it takes two hands to hold it up, is an entire history of the United States from before, from the arrival of Christopher Columbus, to now.
Why did you decide to write this book?
JILL LEPORE, AUTHOR, "THESE TRUTHS: A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES": Well, I really wanted to read it. I felt that, you know, all of us, I think, experience the daily news as a bit like being inside of a pinball machine. We're just being bounced around and there's a lot of bright lights and a lot of noise and it's really hard to get any vantage on where we stand.
And as a professor of history for many decades, I'm constantly trying to help students get some bearing, to kind of leave the pinball machine and find their bearings with two feet on the ground, on the real earth. And I wish that there was a book that tried to put all those pieces together. And so I decided I would try to write it.
BERMAN: And when you put it altogether, like you did, you say you learned things. I've heard you talk about how you learned about the role of fundamentalism in our country. But something else that's very interesting, you've learned about the current discussions on immigration and where that fits into our history. It doesn't quite fit the way some depict (ph) it (ph).
LEPORE: Yes, I mean, again, I've been teaching this stuff for decades, but really trying to think about a way to present it to a reader who wants to try to pull all the pieces together, requires looking for patterns and identifying patterns over time.
One of the things that's really interesting about how we have no past, I say in the book, I think we're kind of locked in the prison of the present, that we see that so many of our political debates are based on historical arguments or the kind of remnant of a historical argument. But when you cast back and think about race or think about immigration or think about battles over equal rights for women, there's a much longer history that helps us to gain perspective on what's going on right now.
So immigration is -- of course is an issue in American history that we can track across the centuries. But it's important to remember that open borders, for instance, were an American ideal. The first federal law restricting immigration isn't passed until the 1880s. And the next really isn't until the 1920s. It's a -- and their -- it's a fairly recent element of the American past that we even have the idea of restricting immigration.
BERMAN: Yes, again, open borders were part of how the country became a country when you sit back and think about it.
You also look at this and note that so often in academia we've talked about women's history and we've talked about political history. You tried to change that. You tried to put women's history, and it's so relevant to the discussions that we're having today, as a central part, to tell part of the political history through those eyes. Explain.
LEPORE: Well, I think we have, unfortunately, a kind of segregated past, right? We have -- and to be -- to be fair, it really is something that CNN is part of, right? You bring on presidential historians to talk about politics and then you bring on other people to talk about social movements as if those aren't politics, and as if political history really is essentially the march of the president. So we have this kind of popular understanding of American history that goes from presidential administration to presidential administration.
But within the academy, historians have been working for the last half century recovering the experiences and understanding the expressions of power of women, of people of color. And somehow those two strands of understanding the past have never, in the popular mind, been fully integrated. So -- so that we get to something like this moment, the Me Too moment, it seems to sort of explode out of nowhere. Maybe we have a reference point with 1991, but we don't have a kind of organic sense of that as a centuries long struggle.
BERMAN: Every day on this show, and you're very critical, I should note, of the media, or at least you discuss the role of the media in more current, modern history in a very interesting way. But we always talk about things seem unprecedented. In the last 18 months, it's been one giant story after another after another after another. What do you think over the last 18 months or so, if you were to write this book 100 years from now, because when you're writing an entire history of the United States, things actually have to have a long-term significant cultural impact to make it in that book. What do you think has happened that would make it in to the 100-years from now version of this?
LEPORE: Historians are so bad at being prophets. We -- you can trace the record. Historians are terrible at predicting things.
I mean the Trump presidency involves a lot of unprecedented maneuvers. But they're not without origin. That's, I think, the piece that we -- we tend to miss. It is absolutely true that elements of the separation of powers, some of the checks and balances that are salvaged (ph) by the Constitution have been significantly compromised and I think that's a real and lasting story. It doesn't start in 2016 by any means.
[08:40:06] The heightened political polarization that we are experiencing right now, and have been experiencing for several years, really started around 1968. You can plot it on a graph. It's very powerful to look at the empirical evidence there.
How significant it will be 100 years from now kind of depends on where the graph goes. I mean if we've seen polarization rising since 1968, it's very high right now. If this ends up being a kind of peak and then it's on the decline, it looks different historically than if it continues.
I think the continuation means our party system will have been dismantled and something else will have taken its place. And that -- that big sort of shift in not just the realignment of the parties, but a sense that something elemental about -- that we have parties is under a lot of strain right now.
BERMAN: Very quickly, if I were to ask you the one person, the historical precedence for Donald Trump, who would you say?
LEPORE: Oh, Trump is indeed unprecedented.
BERMAN: All right. Professor Jill Lepore. The book is "These Truths." A 930 page single volume history of the United States. Appreciate you being with us. Thanks so much.
CAMEROTA: Fascinating.
LEPORE: Thanks so much.
CAMEROTA: Yes, John, that was great.
OK, listen to this story.
Remember the mystery of the missing Chinese actress? I have an update.
BERMAN: No.
CAMEROTA: Yes. Oh, I have an update for you. And it has a multimillion dollar twist.
BERMAN: Really?
CAMEROTA: Yes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: Four men with alleged ties to a militant white supremacist group based in California have been arrested and charged with rioting at last year's deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. They're accused of physically assaults counter protesters at that rally last August and also during that torch-lit march the night before where hundreds of them chanted white lives matter and Jews will not replace us. Each defendant faces up to 10 years in prison.
[08:45:17] BERMAN: Law enforcement officials examining a letter addressed to President Trump that contain a substance suspected to be the deadly poison ricin. It appears to be connected to two envelopes delivered to the Pentagon on Monday that tested positive for ricin. All mail received at the Pentagon mail facility Monday is now under quarantine, but there is no threat, we are told, to Pentagon personnel.
CAMEROTA: OK, now to a development on that missing Chinese actress. You'll remember this woman. Where was she? Well, China's state media reports that she is being investigated for tax evasion and has been ordered to pay nearly $130 million in back taxes and fines. And she has not been seen since June. She did post an apology letter on social media overnight saying that she plans to pay whatever she owes. It is not clear where she's been or if she's left of her own accord.
BERMAN: OK.
CAMEROTA: Wowe (ph).
BERMAN: All right, we're about to blow your mind. We are. I promise you that. We are going to bring you an entertainer who absolutely wowed some 25,000 people. We're going to increase that number like 100 fold. You're going to meet this viral sensation, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:50:31] CAMEROTA: Seven-year-old Malea Emma stunned the world with her stellar rendition of the national anthem at a major league soccer game. Here it is.
MALEA EMMA: O, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh. I have goose bumps again just listening to you.
And joining us now is Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja.
Great to have you here Malea.
How do you sing like that? How did you learn to do that?
MALEA EMMA TJANDRAWIDJAJA, 7-YEAR-OLD SINGER, MODEL AND ACTOR: Well, I was just singing when I was a baby, and then I told myself, maybe someday I can be a famous singer. And then when I was just singing, my dad saw me. And then when I was three, he put me in singing lessons.
CAMEROTA: Good thinking on your dad's part.
BERMAN: Now you're not a very big person, right? I have noticed that. That was a giant sound that you just made. That voice was so big. Where does it come from?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: From God and also I like to practice with my dad and I have singing lessons.
CAMEROTA: OK, you have singing lessons. But before you had singing lessons, when you were really little, how would you practice? Tell me about what you'd do in your room?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Well, I just never really practiced yet because if I do something wrong, then I wouldn't -- I wouldn't know what my dad was saying. So I just liked to sing to myself and not really anyone knew.
BERMAN: How long have you been singing?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Well, maybe like about seven years.
BERMAN: You're seven years old! So since you were born basically?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Yes.
BERMAN: Tell me about that.
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: It's really fun because like when I'm just alone, I don't have any friends yet, so like -- like singing is basically like my friend.
CAMEROTA: And who do you sing to since you don't have anybody -- if you don't have anybody in your room to sing to, then what do you use to sing to? TJANDRAWIDJAJA: I sing with a comb and then I also sing to a lamp.
CAMEROTA: You sing to a lamp?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Yes.
CAMEROTA: And why do you sing to the lamp?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Because the lamp is really big so it feels like it's a person.
BERMAN: You have 25,000 friends who were at that soccer game who saw you sing. They all desperately want to be your friend after hearing you like that. Were you -- do you ever get nervous? I know you sang at Carnage Hall last year, which is cool, but singing somewhere like that or singing in front of 25,000 people, do you get nervous?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Yes, I'm nervous. But I tell myself that I can't get anything wrong because it's a really special song for America. So I just keep on doing what I'm supposed to do and it just goes away.
BERMAN: I tell myself that every morning and I still screw up.
CAMEROTA: Yes, he manages to get it wrong.
BERMAN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: But -- so who is your favorite singer?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Christina Aguilar, Jennifer Holiday and Jennifer Hudson.
CAMEROTA: OK. Good choices. So Christina Agular. And have you ever seen her in concert?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: No.
BERMAN: But --
CAMEROTA: But are you maybe going to see her in concert?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Yes.
CAMEROTA: When?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Tonight.
BERMAN: How excited are you?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: I'm really, really excited because, like, today is a really good day. I get to do this interview, and then I'm going to the concert later. It's going to be really fun.
CAMEROTA: Which one do you think will be more fun, this interview with us or the Christina Aguilera concert?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Oh, this.
CAMEROTA: Oh, well done.
BERMAN: Great answer.
CAMEROTA: OK, can you sing anything like Christina Aguilera? Can you sing a song of hers?
Oh, you can, right now.
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: OK.
CAMEROTA: Oh, OK. Fantastic. Let's god this.
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: I am a fighter and I ain't gonna stop there is no turning back (INAUDIBLE). Oh, yeah oh, yeah thanks for making me a fighter. Thanks for making me a fighter.
[08:55:06] BERMAN: Wow!
CAMEROTA: Wow! Look out Christina Aguilera.
BERMAN: Wow!
CAMEROTA: That was fantastic.
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Thank you.
BERMAN: I don't understand -- again, I don't understand the physics of it. I don't understand how do you sing so big? That was amazing.
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: I like the guttural growl. When did you add that part, the uhh?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Well, I just -- I just do whatever I think is in my head and then I just do whatever and then my dad is like, oh, that's a growl. That's (INAUDIBLE). I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, what is that?
CAMEROTA: That is fantastic. All the power in your little seven-year- old body.
BERMAN: Can you tell us where you're going to be 20 years from now?
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: I -- I just want to go to "America's Got Talent" because I see "America's Got Talent" all the time and I'm like, that's got to be so fun because it's really creative. I never saw a show that had like golden buzzers and red buzzers, so --
CAMEROTA: OK. Paging "America's Got Talent," I think you have your next contestant here.
BERMAN: Malea's got talent.
CAMEROTA: I know.
BERMAN: I think that's where we are this morning.
CAMEROTA: I think that's going to happen.
Thanks so much for sharing your talent with us. It's so great to meet you. And have a wonderful time at the concert.
TJANDRAWIDJAJA: Thank you.
BERMAN: And thank you for making us feel so untalented ourselves.
CAMEROTA: That's right.
BERMAN: CNN "NEWSROOM" with Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:00:07] JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Poppy Harlow in New York. We're so glad you're with us.
And there is a lot of news this morning.
