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The Most Powerful Democrat In Congress Said The President Of The United States Was Engaged In A Cover-Up; Alarming Crime Update From The FBI; More Dangerous Storms Are Moving Through The Midwest. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired May 23, 2019 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: You are watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being here. We begin with this, first, the most powerful Democrat in Congress said the President of the United States was engaged in a cover-up and now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says President Trump is in need of a family intervention and quote, "not up to the task when it comes to making tough choices for the country."

Speaker Pelosi taking direct aim at President Trump on two things that matter most, his money and his manhood, as a feud between them enter day two. Here now is the Speaker in her own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): He says it's because of a cover-up and I know that that strikes a chord with him. He knew the one court decision was getting into territory that he did not want touched and they did not allow the Mueller investigation go into President's personal finances.

The President has a bag of tricks in the White House, he has a bag of tricks that they save for certain occasions. They don't necessarily apply to the occasion. But they're a distraction, which is -- he is a master of distraction.

He tried to say, it's because I said "cover-up," we've been saying cover-up for a while.

The President again stormed out. I think what -- first, pound the table, walk out the door, what?

Next time, have the TV cameras in there while I have my say. That didn't work for him either. And now this time, another temper tantrum.

Again, I pray for the President of the United States. I wish that his family, or his administration, or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And that's just what she said in front of the cameras. CNN has learned that in a meeting with Democratic leadership, Speaker Pelosi described Trump's actions as her words, villainous to the Constitution of the United States. But despite all of that, Speaker Pelosi says the Democrats are again her words, "not on a path to impeachment." Something she claims the President hopes will happen.

So let's talk about all of this. CNN political analysts, Lisa Lerer is a national political reporter for "The New York Times" and Douglas Brinkley is a CNN presidential historian and a history professor at Rice University.

So welcome to both of you. And Lisa, you're first. I mean, listening to Speaker Pelosi, you know, she she's still downplaying or dismissing any notion of impeachment. But she's doubling down on this idea that Trump is engaged in a cover-up and is questioning his mental state.

So is she -- how do I ask this? Is she using her words to keep all parts of her caucus happy and in line?

LISA LERER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think the President in many ways handed the Speaker gift this week by storming out of the meeting and by saying that he was not going to work on anything with Democrats in Congress in terms of getting things done, you know, for the country, until they stop the investigations. That has really given the Speaker a platform to kind of calm the internal tension.

She of course, has a divide among Democrats in the House. There are those who generally represent more progressive areas of the country, who are very eager to move forward with impeachment. Then there's the other part of the party. Really the part that helped Democrats take control of the House during the midterms, which represent more moderate, more suburban districts that are saying, "Yes, we should investigate the President but let's move a little bit slower. Let's have hearings, and then see if we want to move towards impeachment."

That's a little bit of a reflection of the fact that no one quite knows where the politics are for the country. We have seen some drop in the number of Democrats in surveys who say they want to move forward with impeachment very quickly. But it still remains sort of a moving, very dynamic political issue. But I do think having Pelosi --

BALDWIN: Do you think, Lisa, that she's trying to appease those louder, and not the majority of the party, but those louder voices who are saying -- impeach, impeach, impeach. So she is turning around and saying some stronger words that we certainly have heard her say ...

LERER: Yes.

BALDWIN: ... or she's doing that just to placate?

LERER: I think there's two purposes. In part, as you pointed out, she is doing that to calm down the part of her -- the part of the Democratic base that really wants to move forward with this and try to keep them on her team. I also think she knows that it makes the President -- it really riles him up.

We know that she is a political figure who gets under his skin. Just look, she doesn't even have a nickname. Who in Washington does not have a nickname from President Donald Trump?

BALDWIN: So true.

[14:05:06] LERER: She might be the only one and I think that's a reflection of how seriously the President takes her. So I think this is something she can kind of put out there that accomplishes both those goals for her.

BALDWIN: Okay. I want to come back to that point just a second, but Doug Brinkley to you -- so we've heard the President saying essentially, you can't go down these two different tracks. Either, you can investigate me or we can't work together, right. It can't be one or the other. But it actually -- when you look at history, when you look at the impeachment of President Clinton or the impeachment of President Nixon, you can have both.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Absolutely. There was all sorts of congressional legislation that happened in post-Watergate period in 1973 and '74. But it's a big distraction. I think that the point that Donald Trump made a mistake on and all this is in its -- it harks back to that word cover-up with Nixon, too.

BALDWIN: Yes.

BRINKLEY: Of course, he's a cover-up artist. I mean, what is Stormy Daniels but a cover-up and the public knows that. So by him, saying it over and over again, I'm not -- I don't do cover-ups like he did with collusion. I think he's making a mistake.

He's putting that term cover-up out there all the time and fueling Pelosi's ability to kind of needle away at him and get him dislodged from the main game of promoting the economy as what he should be doing.

BALDWIN: She's so able to needle it him. I mean, to Lisa's point, like who else in D.C. doesn't have a nickname, but speaker Nancy Pelosi. And I'm wondering, Lisa, why do you think that she so gets under his skin?

LERER: Well, I'm certainly not going to get in the business of getting inside President Trump's head. I feel like that's a little bit of a losing thing to do. But I do think he knows that she has political power, that she's been able to keep her Democratic caucus fairly unified in the House, and that she controls this body of Congress that can effectively halt anything that he may want to get done. So I think that definitely has to infuriate him.

BALDWIN: But she also, Doug -- we were chatting a second ago. I mean, of all times to say the word cover-up it was one hour before she had set to go the White House to meet with the President of the United States. You know, she and some of these, you know, phrases she's been using, she's getting in the mud a little bit. It's not sticking to her.

BRINKLEY: Absolutely. But President Trump has the bully pulpit and he could have pivoted to the Rose Garden, and then said, I'm not going to talk about all this. I want to talk about infrastructure even if the Democrats don't want to and start talking about our collapsing bridges, and our highways, and are our nuclear power plants safe, and, you know, all the things that people wanted to hear about, but instead he overreacted to her.

BALDWIN: But do you think she knew he would?

BRINKLEY: She knew he would.

BALDWIN: That's what I'm saying.

BRINKLEY: Because she's a master at reading people. You don't become the Speaker of the House if you're not able to understanding human nature of all of the people on Capitol Hill and she's been here for a long time. She's now a historic Speaker and this may be seen as the Pelosi age in the Democratic Party. She's still the leadership void, that Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden kind of disappeared for a while and she's kind of stepped to the forefront.

But the one thing that Nancy Pelosi has to be careful of is impeachment because that word divides the Democrats like the Iraq war did. Are you for the Iraq war or against the Iraq war? What does Joe Biden do with that? Is he for impeachment or against impeachment? And if it gets simplified too much, you could have a Civil War within the Democratic Party.

BALDWIN: Which is the last thing they want.

BRINKLEY: Last thing they want. So she is the glue, keeping the whole Washington scene together.

BALDWIN: Yes, it's great point. Doug Brinkley, thank you very much. Lisa Lerer, thanks to you. And now to an alarming crime update from the FBI, a senior counterterrorism official says across the United States, the agency has seen a significant rise in the number of white supremacist domestic terrorism cases.

So, let's go to CNN senior justice correspondent, Evan Perez with more reporting on this story. And so, what exactly is the FBI disclosing?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Brooke, we've all seen, you know, sort of the signs of all of this rise in white supremacist type of activity. And so, the FBI is trying to quantify some of that. And what they told us today in a briefing with reporters, is that there's been a significant rise especially since October.

It's not clear exactly what is triggering this. At least the FBI doesn't put its finger on exactly what it is. But certainly we all see it. We all feel it. We see it on social media. And so one of the things the FBI is wrapping to do is how to deal with that, while at the same time protecting the country from international terrorism.

Obviously, ISIS is still very much an issue, despite the loss of the physical caliphate in Syria. But just for some numbers, in 2017, there were 150 domestic terrorism arrests, 2018, a hundred and twenty. [14:10:05] PEREZ: The FBI says that they're on course right now to

equal or exceed those numbers of 2019. There's a lot of activity that they're picking up. Every single attack seems to generate more chatter, and more interest in carrying out similar attacks.

BALDWIN: Evan Perez, not numbers you want to report on as this has just gone up and up and up. Thank you very much for the update in Washington.

Right now, more dangerous storms are moving through the Midwest, just as some people in Missouri are realizing the full scope of what they managed to survive. We talk to two people who were in bed when that tornado hit.

Plus, we have just learned there have actually been six migrant children who have died in U.S. custody in the last couple of months. And now, new questions about what can be done to save lives along the border in those detention facilities.

And what is it like to be released from prison after 45 years locked up -- serving time for a murder you did not commit. We will talk to Richard Philips about his newfound freedom and what he makes of the $1.5 million he is now receiving. You are watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:16:02] BALDWIN: People in Missouri state capital went to bed last night and had barely settled in when an incredibly violent tornado toppled this city. They are now trying to recover what was not destroyed. This is the scene right now in Jefferson City. Daylight opening a window into the unimaginable widespread damage. Tornadoes across the state killed three people and injured dozens more.

The National Weather Service says that the storm that hit Jefferson City was a quote, "wedge tornado," which means it was low but wide. This one spanned three miles and debris flew as high as 13,000 feet into the air. One person interviewed said, it felt like an earthquake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAYLEIGH DE ROSA, TORNADO SURVIVOR (voice over): So this is where we used to have a balcony. It is now on my mom's car and Rance's. They are completely totaled. This was our next door neighbor's.

As you can see over here, my bedroom window and everything is completely blown through, bricks everywhere, it's bad guys.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Kayleigh De Rosa, that was her voice we just heard. She survived the storm. She and her boyfriend, Rance White joining me from Jefferson City. And I see the mess behind you guys. First of all, how are you? And what the heck was that like living through that? DE ROSA: We're alive. It was crazy. It sounded exactly how you

pictured it is. It's kind of like a train. But you don't expect it, like it just came within seconds. We barely made it to the bathroom.

BALDWIN: That's where you went, did you huddle in the bathroom?

DE ROSA: No, we were in our room. We were just chilling, just talking, and our window was open. We started hearing this crazy whooshing sound and we're like -- that's getting louder and louder, that's not normal. I was like, this is it.

So like, we got up and we ran and as soon as we closed the door, like it sounded like a train hit our house, like direct, like our walls were shaking. It was horrible.

BALDWIN: Rance, what was it like for you?

RANCE WHITE, TORNADO SURVIVOR: All of our windows -- right. Kayleigh is right. We got tornado warnings then the power went out. We decided, you know, right now we probably should get up and get going. I closed the window. We ran in the bathroom.

Right as we closed that door, we could feel the glass blowing from the window that I just shut all the way into the hallway. We had every window burst out, all the doors -- all the roofs and the walls ripped off. The patio above smashed our cars.

DE ROSA: The whole balcony was ripped off and it's on top of our cars.

BALDWIN: The balcony of your home is on top of your cars?

DE ROSA: Yes.

WHITE: Yes.

DE ROSA: Yes, it's completely totaled on top.

WHITE: ... what was my car.

DE ROSA: Yes, that crashed.

BALDWIN: What was your car -- oh my goodness. I'm so glad you two are okay. Have you had a chance to go back? I mean, is it, you know, just totally gone? Can you stay there or not at all?

DE ROSA: No, it's like, our walls are ripped out. My mom's bedroom -- wall and her windows are like completely ripped out. There's like an AC unit, like kind of like, penetrated through our wall, like it was thrown into. And our neighbors next to us, it's like, everything is just -- like it's gone.

We haven't been able to look in the rumbles through our stuff yet. We tried to take as many, like, family pictures as we could and stuff but --

BALDWIN: Yes, what did you take? What do you take when you think you've got to get out?

DE ROSA: My cats, family pictures.

WHITE: Family pictures, family belongings and possessions. Make sure to grab all the military documents -- just anything that you can't live without.

DE ROSA: Just the important things -- family. I kept looking -- like, I just wanted to make sure my mom was okay because she was in her bathroom when we were in ours. So like, we had to get out and like, her room was just a wreck.

BALDWIN: Is she okay -- your mom?

DE ROSA: Yes, she's okay. She made it.

BALDWIN: She made it, just I'm sure shaken up. Just last, last question. Where do you go tonight? What are, you know, what do the next couple of days look like for you two?

DE ROSA: Right now, we're in my brother's garage with air mattress, just chilling. He took us in and he's doing great for us.

[14:20:08] BALDWIN: Rance, final words from you? What you've got ahead of you?

WHITE: I would just like to thank the whole Hawthorne community last night. It's incredible to see a whole community come together and support one another. I saw people that didn't even know each other, helping each other carry things, helping each other get down from stuck buildings.

The most important thing is really making your rounds around the neighborhood and checking to see if everyone is safe, no one is hurt. There was a little boy that did get hurt. He looks like he's going to be getting some stitches. I told him if he found me that I would buy him another shirt because I had to cut his shirt off so the EMTs could get to him.

BALDWIN: So maybe you owe him a shirt, but at least he's A-okay. A couple of stitches, we can live with that.

WHITE: Yes.

BALDWIN: It is incredible -- the generosity of people and in a natural disaster like this. I've been in homes, destroyed and people are trying to offer me bottles of water out of their refrigerators and it's just so overwhelming. Kayleigh and Rance, thank you all so much and good luck to you. We'll be thinking about you two.

WHITE: Thank you so much for having us.

DE ROSA: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Thank you guys. President Trump on the attack against his former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. What he has to say now about the man he once called one of, "the truly great business leaders of the world," to direct quote.

Plus, so what's the deal with infrastructure week? The President's Rose Garden attack on Congress, just the latest example of why it has become such a joke, infrastructure week, as Chris Cillizza has a look back at how we got to this point.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:21:07] BALDWIN: We're going to come up on live pictures here at an absolutely special place in this country, Arlington National Cemetery, where you see the President and the First Lady and several members of our U.S. military speaking there. This is this unannounced trip to the cemetery.

They're here ahead of course, Memorial Day weekend. We know on Memorial Day, there are those flags placed on every tombstone every year. And so, since the First Lady and the President are heading to Japan tomorrow, they're here a couple of days early.

Let's go to our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr. And Barbara, I know you are at the cemetery. Well we'll talk on Monday ahead of Memorial Day. But talk to me a little bit about what we're looking at.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, what you are seeing is the President and the First Lady, of course, paying their respects because they won't be able to be there on Memorial Day. And they are talking, I believe, to members of the Third Infantry Regiment, Washington's Old Guard unit, one of the ceremonial units here in Washington, D.C.

And these Army folks, every year, since 1948, had been out here before, every Memorial Day, in a ceremony they call "Flags In," placing a flag at the tombstone, at the grave site of every single final resting place. It looks like the President has a flag in his hand as well. And maybe placing -- yes indeed, placing the flag there himself.

This is no small effort on the part of the U.S. Army. There are over 400,000 veterans, active duty personnel, and their family members that have their final resting place. The First Lady also participating, of course -- final resting places here at Arlington. This is a place that is so busy. There's no other way to say it. There are nearly 30 funerals a day here at Arlington.

Of course, a lot attention paid to those who fell on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. But you know, we are seeing the passing of time. We are seeing the generations pass us by, the World War II generation, America's Greatest Generation now quite on in years.

The Korean War -- America's sometimes referred to as the "Forgotten War," not forgotten by the troops. Vietnam, and the battlefields of more recent years, everywhere from Fallujah in Iraq, to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

And this comes at a moment, as the First Lady continues, her effort to pay her respects obviously, which she is doing, placing flags at these graves. It's a really extraordinary moment today, because in a short while, when the President returns to the White House, he will be talking to acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan about the need to once again send American troops into the Middle East.

A lot of discussion about sending additional forces, as we heard from Shanahan earlier today here at the Pentagon, to provide deterrence to what the U.S. views as Iranian aggression.

But I think right now, with the President and the First Lady at Arlington and continuing to talk to these American troops who are out here placing flags at thousands and thousands of resting places, it's really important to take a moment and talk about Memorial Day.

I think we have seen so many fallen in these recent battlefields. But Brooke, you know, there are so many things that are causing America's young veterans to suffer these days and the older veterans as well.

The Marine Corps will tell you that suicide is at epidemic levels in their ranks. It's something that has them concerned. The opioid epidemic impacts America's veterans, joblessness, homelessness.

A lot of efforts across the country in so many towns and cities, by so many Americans to put that helping ...

[14:30:10]