Return to Transcripts main page
Cuomo Prime Time
Trump Contradicts Staff, Says He Wasn't Joking About Slowing Testing; Trump Hosts Rally In Phoenix, Masks Not Required; Toppling Of Statues Prompts Reckoning Over Nation's History. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired June 23, 2020 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:00]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, ANDERSON COOPER 360: --felony murder. The other officer involved has been charged with aggravated assault.
The news continues. Want to hand things over to Chris for CUOMO PRIME TIME. Chris?
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST, CUOMO PRIME TIME: All right, thank you, Anderson. And thank you for helping us remember the right things the right way.
I am Chris Cuomo. Welcome to PRIME TIME.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Look, we have to be on the same page about reality. The pandemic will be with us for a while. Period! Every place that ignores that reality and the recommended masks and measures will suffer. We see it time and again.
We have to hear and accept this, and act on it, because you and I, we are the key. You have to take care of yourself. And by doing that, I thank you, because it helps, protect me and my family.
Forget Trump. He does not want what the rest of us must want right now with this pandemic. Believe who he has shown you he is for the umpteenth time. Of course he lies about testing, and invites people to gather at their own peril.
He values praise over your protection, even in Arizona, where cases are popping. He didn't even talk about it.
Look, of course Trump continues to call COVID-19 the Kung flu. He is a demagogue who plays to bigotry. He wants you to blame the Chinese and see them as an "Other." That's what and who he is. Take it from someone who's known him most of my adult life. That's who he's always been.
If any of you want this country to come close to its promise, forget about me needing to call out the obvious, you must reject the bigotry. You must demand that a President get this poison of "Us versus them" out of his mendacity-ridden maw.
There is no debate. He is a demagogue. That's not an argument. It is a fact. Deny, lie, defy. This is what he does, once and always. His plan is simple. Divide us and conquer a second term.
If you do not like him, or that, don't vote for him. That's your choice. But know this. If you do support him, you own all of what he says and does.
He put more effort into a wall that was grossly oversold as a fix for immigration, and refused to do the things he could have, early on, and said all the worst things he could, to expose more of us to this virus. You own that.
There is no question he could have done more, and better, and chose not to, and we are all paying the price. Period! It is not an opinion.
And if you need the reality of who he is, proven to you, once again, that he is all about the "Me" and forget about the "We," here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people, you're going to find more cases. So, I said to my people, "Slow the testing down, please."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: No one who gives a rat's ass about anyone else asks for less testing in a pandemic. OK? The only reason, to do something, as stupid as that, is to minimize what you and I know about the spread.
And then, Miss "I'll never lie to you" said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It was a comment that he made in jest. It's a comment that he made in passing.
He was joking about the media and their failure to understand the fact that when you test more, you also find more cases.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: If this were Abbott and Costello, one of them would do this. What is she even saying? Look, this is what happens. McEnany and Co. can lie about me. But I will always tell the truth about them.
I told Kayleigh McEnany, on this show, "If you refuse to accept the reality that this President lies to the American people, you will never have credibility from the media or the masses," and that is exactly where she finds herself today.
But Trump did what he does best, threw her right under the bus. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I don't kid. Let me just tell you.
Testing is a double-edged sword. In one way, it tells you, you have cases. In another way, you find out where the cases are.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[21:05:00]
CUOMO: That doesn't even make sense either. What he meant to say was it tells you how many cases there are. That's good, right? Tells you where they are. That's good, right? So, what's the other edge?
It's that it's bad for him because it shows there are more cases and he wants you to believe that COVID's no big thing.
So, who's lying? Both of them. He never said that to anyone about reducing the testing, but he wasn't joking. He wasn't sarcastic. He was being cynical. He believes that he can win by making you angry and by being an agent for your outrage.
Look, he is the President of the United States. His words and actions demand exposure, if only out of respect for the Office. But he is not about getting us to a better place on this pandemic. You have to know that by now.
Thank God some on his team are. That's why he wants the glow of Fauci to illuminate his lackluster efforts and toxic talk. You saw his tweet. It's been all over the place, right? First he wasn't sure about Fauci.
Put up the tweet.
First, he put out he wasn't sure about Fauci, right? Remember that? There was a little bit of trash talk about Tony Fauci. "Maybe he's on the outs." Remember that?
And then, what did the Trumpers do? They responded by threatening the man, going after his family. Because that's what Trumpers want to do when stoked to anger by Trump.
But now, Tony Fauci, and rightly so, who has been straight with you, who has been honest, who has been cautious, he's got high ratings. So, the President says, "Well, then I should, too. Be nice to me."
No. No, you don't get what Tony Fauci gets. Why? Because you don't say what Tony Fauci says.
You make things up. You say stupid things about what you should drink, and what can end this, and the magic. And you put them on the spot, and you embarrass them, and then you hide them because you don't like what they say.
Seen Tony Fauci on this show anytime recently?
You think it's a coincidence that you don't see Dr. Birx, that you don't see the Heads of the agencies, that this is the only time, in recent American history, where the people who are in charge of dealing with something that affects all of us are kept from all of us?
The CDC Director says this virus has brought our nation to its knees. Have you heard Trump say that? That's why you don't see so much of the CDC Director.
So now that we know the reality, now that there can be no hiding from it, what do we do about it? That's the right question for us to start on. And we have a great person to help answer it, Dr. Thomas Frieden. He was the Head of the CDC. He understands this.
Thank you very much for being on the show, Doc, as always. The idea, I'm not going to burden you with the "Are you sure it's bad? Are people really still getting sick?" We don't play stupid here. People know that we have a problem.
The question is, are we able to put this behind us any time soon, as a country? Yes or no? And, if yes, how so?
DR. TOM FRIEDEN, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR, CEO, RESOLVE TO SAVE LIVES, AN INITIATIVE OF VITAL STRATEGIES: Well, Chris, the virus is still out there. We may be sick and tired of staying home. But the virus is not tired of making us sick. You really have to compare the U.S. with other countries around the world.
In my organization, we work all around the world. And the U.S. response is just lagging. We're not doing what we need to do to keep physically distant. We're not, across the country, scaling up contact tracing, as effectively as needed, so we can prevent cases from exploding into clusters and outbreaks.
And Chris, I'll give you just a couple of numbers to think about. 30. 30 cases in Seoul, South Korea yesterday. And that made them really concerned. They're focusing on it. They're going to stop them, so they can keep economic growth going and society going.
30,000, that's the number of cases we had in the U.S. And some people are trying to say "Not a big deal." Seven--
CUOMO: No, it's not what Trump's saying, Doc.
FRIEDEN: But--
CUOMO: You know what he's saying?
"Kung flu, baby! They designed this thing in a lab to come get us. That's why they're not being hurt as much." I know you said South Korea, and I'm referring to China, "Same thing, same thing," in terms of the toxic politics of it.
What's your response? FRIEDEN: Well I'll just, you know, facts don't lie. There are 120,000 dead Americans from this virus. There are, at last count, 270 people who've died from it in South Korea.
[21:10:00]
If you look on a population basis, if you had moved to South Korea on January 20th, when each of our countries had its first case, you would have been 70 times less likely to be killed by this virus.
CUOMO: But he blames them for that. He says that the Asians, that's why he calls it "Kung flu" right, "The Chinese did this to us. That's why we're dying more. They may have some like other answer there. But this was done to us. Blame them," not him.
FRIEDEN: What we need in this country is an organized response, led Federally, implemented at States.
And you see States doing a good job, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, really making progress, driving down infections, so you can go out again. On the other hand, you see Texas, Arizona, Florida, cases exploding, and they're going to continue to increase there.
And, as a doctor, as an epidemiologist and scientist, I want to be very clear. The increasing cases we're seeing in those States is not from more testing. It's from more disease.
CUOMO: All right, so hold on, Doctor.
FRIEDEN: It's because the disease is spreading.
CUOMO: This is an important point. In the next block, I was going to get into some of the politics of this. But why? It's like adding fuel to the fire. It's like sneezing on a virus.
Do me a favor. Let me hold you over the break. Let's keep talking about why some of these States are struggling whether it's just in - you know, what are the two options?
The one is "Well this was always going to happen. It was always going to cascade through the country" versus "No, we're not seeing the same kinds of measures in different places." Only one of those things can be more true than the other.
I want you to take us through it, but right after this break. Can you stay?
FRIEDEN: Sure.
CUOMO: Doctor, thank you very much.
Stay with us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME. (END VIDEO CLIP)
[21:15:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: LET'S GET AFTER IT.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: All right. We're joined by Dr. Tom Frieden. He used to run the CDC.
And Doc, the question is that we're seeing cases start to move around the country. And there are two possibilities at play.
One is "Well this is nothing. This was always going to happen. It doesn't show that what you do matters. It was inevitable" versus "No, the reason New York and New Jersey and Connecticut are backing off is because of what they did, not just time." And the measures we're seeing are not the same in other parts of the country, as you're referring to, Texas, Arizona, for examples.
Explain.
FRIEDEN: Well, first off, with positivity rates increasing, you know that that increase is real. What you need here is an adaptive response. You need to track the virus, and like a dimmer dial, move it up or down, in terms of the physical distancing.
Remember the three "Ws." Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Watch your distance. You do those three things we can keep the virus at bay.
And communities around the country, and around the world, do a better job with testing, isolation, contact tracing, quarantine do better, less death, less disease, and less economic devastation.
CUOMO: Why better?
FRIEDEN: Better because you can keep the virus at bay.
CUOMO: No.
FRIEDEN: This isn't about helping--
CUOMO: But why are they better than us?
FRIEDEN: Well, first off, they're testing strategically. That means you test patients when they're admitted to hospitals.
You test people in nursing homes, so you don't have big explosive outbreaks. You test the contacts of patients with active disease. You figure out who's got disease. You trace those webs and you stop them.
You prevent cases from becomes clusters, clusters from becoming outbreaks, and outbreaks from sending us back into our homes.
CUOMO: What do we do?
FRIEDEN: And you do that, you protect health and livelihood. Right here, there is a lot of mask wearing, in some places, and very little in other places.
Where you really worry about that is when you have a lot of people indoors. Then you can have explosive spread. May take a while, may take a few weeks, or even a few months, to see it, if you don't have a lot of cases, but it will spread.
And if you keep doing what you've done, you'll keep getting the results you're getting. That means more spread, and eventually, more hospitalizations and more deaths.
CUOMO: The first "W" that you put out there, "Wear a mask," lot of people want to turn the "W" upside-down and make the "W" an "M" and say "Maybe. Maybe a mask, it's optional."
How do you feel about it as an option?
FRIEDEN: Well I think rather than saying "Yes," "No," on masks, it's really about where and when.
Any time you're within six feet of someone else, in the community where there's COVID spreading, you need to wear a mask, particularly if you're indoors. That's important.
If all of us wear a mask, all of us are safer. This is "Us against them." It's people against microbes that that's the only "Them" here, the human beings against microbe.
There was a great Nobel Prize winner, Josh Lederberg. He used to say that "It's the microbes outnumber us. It's our brains against their numbers, and we have to be smart." And that means doing things that protect ourselves.
If the choice is between wearing a mask, and shutting down the economy, it's a no-brainer. The more we wear masks, the safer we are. And that's one of the things we can do, to fight this virus, so we can get our economy back, and save lives.
CUOMO: The idea of how effective a prophylactic it is, when you look at it as compared to a seat belt, or a helmet, if you're going to be on a motorcycle, do you see it as a similar level of effectiveness?
FRIEDEN: Little different. Because when I wear a mask, I'm protecting you. When you wear a mask, you're protecting me. And when all of us wear a mask, all of us are safer. So, this is about getting together to block the virus. This is about protecting our community.
And even if you're young and healthy, you think you'll do fine with this virus, you could get it, not know you have it, spread it to someone, who dies from it, a little girl with leukemia, your sister- in-law who's on treatment for breast cancer-- CUOMO: That's right, yes.
FRIEDEN: --someone who's older, who will die. This is a deadly virus for some people. It's mild for others. But for us, as a society, it can be devastating.
CUOMO: Dr. Frieden, thank you very much for taking us through the realities of what to do and the reality of what's going to happen if we don't do it. God bless and be well.
FRIEDEN: Thanks, Chris.
CUOMO: All right, now, you may have heard. Rayshard Brooks was laid to rest today.
His situation is about him, it's about his family, but it is also about a pattern of behavior that so many in this country have had enough of. Is that enough? This case, and how it's handled, is going to be watched by this country, and by the world.
[21:20:00]
Now, the officers are talking about the cases against him - against them, and saying politics are involved. Politicians are saying that this prosecution is about politics, not proof.
What does the top Prosecutor, who made the call, say? We are lucky to have him tonight, next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: LET'S GET AFTER IT.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: No doubt about it. When President Trump holds a rally, people want to come. Take a look at the crowd tonight. The President spoke to young supporters in Phoenix. Mask requirements largely ignored.
Now, here's the President again, at a Roundtable, on border issues in Yuma, Arizona. Again, no masks in sight.
[21:25:00]
You just heard the former Head of the CDC, you've heard the current head of the CDC, you've heard the most credible person in this country, Dr. Fauci, on this issue, all saying the same thing. "You have to wear a mask, if you want to make things better." So what's happened with masks? It's become a political issue. New
Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations are surging in Arizona, but the politics overwhelm it.
The Mayor of Yuma, Arizona is Douglas Nicholls. He was at the Roundtable with the President today, and he joins us now on PRIME TIME.
Thanks for being with us, Mr. Mayor.
MAYOR DOUG NICHOLLS, (R) YUMA, ARIZONA: Thanks for having me.
CUOMO: In terms of your community, we have the cases for people. Arizona has been hit hard. More in the bigger population centers.
Yuma is starting to feel it a little bit more acutely. You've got about a 185 cases today, up from 152 cases yesterday. Four new people have lost their lives over the past few days.
How great is your concern?
NICHOLLS: Our concern is great. And we just did pass a mandate to wear masks.
And, at the meeting you were talking about, we did wear a mask, until we were all socially distant, and then when we're sitting, so when people stopped moving around is when my mask came off.
CUOMO: Oh, I didn't see it in the footage, but I appreciate you giving the clarification. You say that you guys just passed the measure. You were against it, the measure to not have - to mandate masks, were you not?
NICHOLLS: I did vote against it. But I do fully support wearing of masks. What my concern what was - wasn't wearing the masks. It was mandating it by government that people really need to take ownership of the issue.
We're not - government should not be telling us absolutely everything we need to do. We need to understand what the experts are telling us, and then take that personal responsibility to make that happen.
CUOMO: Are you against the Arizona helmet law?
NICHOLLS: No, Sir.
CUOMO: Are you against the seat belt law?
NICHOLLS: No, Sir.
CUOMO: So, why would you be against masks, if not for naked political play?
NICHOLLS: Well, it's not naked political play because I'm not doing anything on a national scale. I was voting in a local action, I'm sorry, in a local action, and if I
was against it, I did not need my Council to vote. I could have put the document out that said "We didn't need to mandate masks."
But instead, I went through the democratic process. We had our Council convene. We voted on it. And, right after that meeting, I crafted the language, and issued that document to make masks mandated in the City of Yuma, per the direction of our Elected Council.
CUOMO: Why am I wrong to suggest that you're trying to have it both ways, that you did the right thing by the community, which is make sure that masks are mandatory, so you can save some lives and, at the same time, as a Republican, checked a box that you say what Trump wants you to say, by voting against it?
NICHOLLS: Well - well, I don't know about what the President wanted me to say today, or I'm sorry, last Friday. I'm not sure what he wanted me to say.
These are things, as the Mayor, and in a proclamation of emergency status, that we've been in the last few months, I'm very concerned about overreach. I'm very concerned about the government having to be the "End-all-be-all" for everything.
We're a nation of people, not a nation of a government. And so, the people need to own this action, not - not the government.
So, as the person that had to enact this, and has that responsibility, I wanted to be clear that it's not something that I'm looking to lord over people, that this comes down to the individual, not to--
CUOMO: But that's - but Mr. Mayor, that's exactly what it is, is something that you have to lord over them because it's like a seat belt, it's like a helmet, except, by doing this, you not only help keep yourself safe, but other residents, and their families, and vulnerable loved ones, as well.
Look, they can come after you for how long you close the schools, for how long you keep businesses closed, for what you do with State services, and functions. That's the government, making decisions about when it's going to provide or not provide services.
But when you know that the only thing that we have going for us, that you can control, is what you do with distance, and what with - you do in terms of controlling your own face space, why would you see that as a liberty issue, and not a necessary emergency measure?
NICHOLLS: Well, I see it as it is a necessary measure, and it's the necessary measure that each one of us has to take.
We all have to eat. We all have to do those things that keep us healthy. We all have to take the medicine. There are no laws that make those happen. Those just happen because we're taking--
CUOMO: But you can't make me sick by how you decide to eat, you know. I'm not - you're not three Big Macs for making me fat, right? This is something different.
This is what - and look, you - you know this, Mr. Mayor, because you made sure that the Council was allowed to vote, and did the right thing. Why would you vote against something that you engineered to happen in the first place? Doesn't make any sense!
[21:30:00]
NICHOLLS: I did not engineer it. It is something that I put before the will of the people.
CUOMO: Right.
NICHOLLS: We opened up in - the outreach to the people the day before, so we could get as much input as we could get into that decision. And up until just right before the vote, I was debating either way to go on this issue. So, it wasn't a pre-engineered, pre-defined vote.
CUOMO: Right. Except you said--
NICHOLLS: It was--
CUOMO: --you didn't need to do this.
NICHOLLS: (OFF-MIKE).
CUOMO: You said you could have done it yourself. You did it in the democratic process because you wanted the Council to vote. You know they were going to vote in favor of it. So, they voted in favor of it. You voted against it.
NICHOLLS: No.
CUOMO: All I'm saying is, Mr. Mayor, you did the right thing. You're keeping people safe in your community.
NICHOLLS: No--
CUOMO: I just don't understand why you'd want to send a mixed message. Last word to you.
NICHOLLS: I did not - did not know how the Council was going to vote. That was debated right there in the meeting. And Arizona has very strict Open Meeting Laws. I'm not allowed to poll my Council beforehand. It happened there. It happened there live, real-time, in front of the people of Yuma.
CUOMO: What was the vote?
NICHOLLS: So, this idea that I'm somehow trying to play both sides just isn't the - just isn't true.
CUOMO: I take your argument. I'm just saying that, you know, you're happy that it happened, but you voted against it. That's why I say it's a suggestion of a hedge. What was the vote on the Council?
NICHOLLS: It was 5-2.
CUOMO: Mr. Mayor, thank you very much for joining us, for making the case, and for expressing the concern in your community. God bless you, and I hope things get better soon.
NICHOLLS: Thank you. Appreciate it. Stay safe.
CUOMO: Thank you, Sir.
The Prosecutor whose case will decide if the former officer who killed Rayshard Brooks will spend life in prison is here. People are coming after him for how he's handling this case.
What is his response to the critics? Next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[21:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: LET'S GET AFTER IT.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Rayshard Brooks' death matters, period, to his family, to his community, that State, the country and beyond.
And you got to see a little bit of that today with the people whose pain filled Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. That was the funeral, but this cast appall all over this country.
The criminal case against the officers is going to matter. It has to be done right. It has to ensure justice, which is fairness under law. So, it's going to be scrutinized heavily, and it's going to be looked at also through the lens of politics. That's just the reality in this country.
That scrutiny puts attention on the District Attorney handling the murder prosecution, who is an elected official, and is now in a tricky run-off, and that is Fulton County D.A., Paul Howard.
Sir, thank you for joining us. I will respect the parameters of staying away from too many arguments in the case because I know you have a case to make in court. But thank you for joining us, Sir.
PAUL HOWARD, FULTON COUNTY, GA DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Thank you for having us on, Chris.
CUOMO: One, Sir, is the politics. Doug Collins, the - a Congressman from Georgia, Republican, had this to say about you and your handling of the case.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. DOUG COLLINS (R-GA): You cannot prosecute cases until the investigation is over. You don't do it for politics. Your job is to find justice for everyone, not race, not class, not anything else.
(CROWD CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: So, that's Collins, plus the GBI saying, "Boy, we were surprised charges came down here. We weren't even done investigating," and the suggestion from that becomes "Howard is in a tough campaign. He's playing politics with this prosecution."
Your response, Sir?
HOWARD: Well, first of all, Chris, as you know, Doug Collins is the 9th Congressional Representative, not the Representative from Fulton County. I'm thinking - I think you're also aware that his opponents have spent a lot of time talking about his weak law and order record.
And I guess what Congressman Collins believes is by coming to Atlanta, and attacking me, and showing his support for the Atlanta Police Union, I think he believes it wipes out his record as a criminal defense attorney, representing child molesters and defendants involved with domestic violence cases.
I think his remarks were just way off the bean, and I think that they were clearly political because, as you know, Congressman Collins is running for the U.S. Senate.
CUOMO: But does your campaign have anything to do, in your mind, or your heart, with how you're doing your job?
HOWARD: No. I think if you look at the record, you'll see that that is absolutely erroneous. This remarked the 40th case that we have prosecuted involving police officers. This is the ninth case that involves a homicide.
Also, Chris, this is the fourth case that we have asked for an arrest warrant prior to the time of an indictment. So, it doesn't have anything to do with politics. What it has to do with is doing my job, and achieving justice, for Rayshard Brooks.
CUOMO: Will you answer just one question? I don't think it violates your ethical parameter in terms of keeping it for the actual case.
People are going to be watching this. There's going to be two critical moments for the laypeople who are watching this.
One is going to be whether or not the TASER, in a court of law, is considered a deadly weapon. Now, you have been theoretically applying a civil law standard to what they call a TASER. The Officer's Counsel say "Yes, but under criminal law, soon as he
took the TASER, which was a felony, and he pointed it as an untrained person, at the police officer, now it's a deadly weapon."
Do you accept that argument? And how compelling do you think it will be?
[21:40:00]
HOWARD: I think it's nonsense. I think it's simply a diversion from the real facts. This case has very little to do with a TASER, Chris. And I think some of the earlier presentations brought a TASER into the whole equation, and I don't think the TASER fits in.
When Mr. Brooks was shot, he was running away. His back was turned. In fact, Mr. Brooks was some 18 feet 3 inches away from the police officer at the time the shot was fired. He did not fire the shot at the time that Mr. Brooks used the TASER.
I think this whole argument about the TASERs is way off the track, and I'm hoping that people will really get to the really substance of this case and really what I think people should be talking about is why is it in this country that African-Americans continue to get killed by police officers?
CUOMO: Understood. One other question, and then I'll let you go. And I appreciate the indulgence.
The most painful thing that I've heard you put forward about this case was that you believe that you can prove that Officer Rolfe kicked Rayshard Brooks on the ground.
Defense Counsel for the other officer involved, Brosnan, says he's reviewed the tapes. There is no such visible action. If anything, there might have been a gesture of checking to see if Brooks was down.
What do you make of that? And can you prove otherwise?
HOWARD: Well, if people can watch a videotape, and see it, then we can prove it.
I think that it will become obvious for the Grand Jurors, and hopefully for the Petit Jurors, who will get a chance to see it, and hopefully, it will be clear to the people in this country when they are examining this case.
I think that not only did the kicking involve Officer Rolfe, but with respect to the other officer, it is clear that, on two occasions, he stood on Mr. Brooks' shoulder, and then after that, he stood on his arm.
And I think those acts were truly despicable, to stand on this man, and kick him after he had been shot twice, laying on the pavement, struggling for life.
CUOMO: Horrible allegations! Mr. Prosecutor, thank you very much, Paul Howard, for joining us. You have a difficult case in front of you. The whole world will be watching. We will as well. Thank you, Sir. Good luck going forward.
HOWARD: And again, thank you for having us, Chris.
CUOMO: You're always welcome to make the case to the people. You always have an invitation. It is open.
HOWARD: Thank you.
CUOMO: Be well.
All right, why good luck? Because you need justice to be done. If he's got the better case, he should win.
If it's not strong enough for the Petit Jury, the Petit Jury, which is different from a Grand Jury, right, that's just a regular jury, it's just a legal term, then he should lose. That's fairness under law. That's what we must all demand. That's the beginning and the end of it.
To eradicate racism, however, that's very different. And that becomes about language, and it becomes about symbols, specifically of a Confederate past. Now, should Confederate statues go down? Seems that there is a consensus that says "Yes."
But is the Movement - Movement going too far? Let's ask a true expert on culture and history, Ken Burns, iconic Documentary Filmmaker, next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[21:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: LET'S GET AFTER IT.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Question, are Confederate statues coming down enough?
In New York, a Teddy Roosevelt statue is said to be removed from the front steps of the Museum of Natural History.
In Washington D.C., Boston, activists are calling for the removal of the Emancipation memorials depicting Abraham Lincoln standing over a Black man.
In recent days, statues of the Founding Fathers, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were toppled in Oregon. In San Francisco, protesters tore down a statue of former President Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union Army during the Civil War.
How far is enough? Is there a too far? Is this all more helpful than hurtful in building a more perfect Union?
Tough questions! Great guest! Legendary Documentarian Ken Burns is here.
It's good to see you.
KEN BURNS, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER: Good to see you, Chris.
CUOMO: Do you have answers?
BURNS: I think we're in the middle of an enormous reckoning, right now, in which the anxieties, and the pains, and the torments, of centuries of injustice are bubbling up to the surface.
It's very important for people like me, of my complexion, to be as quiet as possible, and to listen. What I know, from my reading of history, is that the Confederate monuments have to go.
They were put up in the 1880s and 1890s when White Supremacy was being brutally re-imposed over the Old Confederacy, again, in the late teens, and 20s, when the Ku Klux Klan was ascendant, again, after the Brown versus Board of Education decision in 1954.
And so, we see that these are not monuments to history and heritage. But they're an attempt to rewrite history, and to essentially celebrate a false narrative about what happened during the Civil War, and to send the wink-winks, and the dog-whistles, as we are fond of saying today, across the generations, about what the Civil War was about.
[21:50:00]
It's so interesting that we're even having this argument because the people that we memorialize, the nation's forts that are named after Civil War Generals, these are people who fought to perpetuate slavery--
CUOMO: Right.
BURNS: --which must be an anathema to every American.
CUOMO: Well it should - it should be.
BURNS: And they're also people responsible for the deaths of - yes. These are people responsible for the deaths of loyal American citizens.
CUOMO: Well they make a play to heritage, Ken.
BURNS: And that's a travesty.
CUOMO: They make a play to heritage that I think is a--
BURNS: It's--
CUOMO: --losing argument with the Confederacy. But when you extend it, to the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, well at least not in a Memorial, where he is seen as above a Black man.
Thomas Jefferson, Washington, Grant, is there a danger in going too far, in your opinion?
BURNS: Of course, there's a danger in going too far. It's the passions of the moment. And let's just think about it, for a second.
Let's just hold off and reserve judgment, Chris, for one second, and consider that more than a quarter of the Presidents of the United States of America, founded on the idea that all men are created equal, the guy who wrote that, owned more 300 human beings in his lifetime, by the way, more than a quarter of the United States Presidents owned other human beings.
This is a huge thing that we cannot just dismiss. But I would say the Confederate monument, for me, is an easy decision.
CUOMO: Right.
BURNS: We have to get rid of them. They're not about heritage. This is a species argument. This is about the re-imposition of White Supremacy in the South at various periods. There's nothing about that.
Names of the - the bases and the forts should be changed. You know, we've taken down the statues. It's a good thing to do.
And we now need to continue this reckoning by looking, as carefully as we can. Monuments are hugely important. They're acts of fact, but they're also acts of mythology. They are acts of symbols.
Your father told me in our film on the Statue of Liberty, "Symbols are important." But it works both ways in this regard. And so, we have to now look at each individual case beyond, I think, the Confederate monuments and begin to look.
Listen, the descendants of Theodore Roosevelt want the statue taken away from the Museum of Natural History.
Theodore Roosevelt who was actually good, in many respects, on race, invited Booker T. Washington to the White House, took a lot of grief, and then never invited another Black person there again, nonetheless has a statue flanked, and much lower, by a Native American.
CUOMO: Right, on one side.
BURNS: And an African-American.
CUOMO: And a Black guy on the other side.
BURNS: It's just-- CUOMO: Absolutely. We all know the statue well.
BURNS: It looks like Whites - it looks like White Supremacy.
CUOMO: Right.
BURNS: And so, I'm very happy to see that we are, on a case-by-case judgment, moving through these questions. The most important thing is the reckoning.
The most important thing is for us to not get distracted by the arguments because the arguments have too far are being happened on both sides. The issue is that for far too long, in our country, citizens of African dissent did not enjoy equal justice under the law.
CUOMO: Still don't.
BURNS: They were held as slaves for centuries and still do not even (ph). This is why, in this most extraordinary of American times, the COVID puts us itself as one of the four great crises in American history with the Civil War, The Depression and World War II. We are now--
CUOMO: And they're hurt much worse by that also.
BURNS: We are in the midst of this extraordinary reckoning about our racial past.
And we have to stop first, and listen to those people, who have borne the brunt. You and I don't have the facilities to actually receive this information, and to be able to transmit it to everyone else. We have to do a lot of listening.
And we have to permit mistakes to be made, and people to overshoot the mark, and rhetoric to be too inflammatory, because for too long, people have had a knee at their neck.
And these statues, I mean Robert E. Lee himself said, in 1869, after the Civil War, "Make no monuments to the Confederacy. It will only keep open the sores, the wounds, of this thing."
CUOMO: I want to ask you one quick thing though before I let you go, Ken.
BURNS: They should be obligatory, consigned to oblivion.
CUOMO: There's an aspect of this that's going to be about when the moment of when things were done also. And that will be part of our retrospective design here.
You mentioned my Pop earlier. I remember watching one of your earlier efforts on the Civil War.
[21:55:00]
People have looked at that now, and said, "You know, that series was a little too nice about the Confederacy, a little too glorifying of them. Should have said more about the slavery, should have been a harsher indictment."
When you look back at that work, do you think about it that way now differently than you did then?
BURNS: Yes. I certainly do, I think. In many ways, we would probably be making a different kind of film now.
But let us remember that the very first chapter was a chapter called "All Night Forever" about the realities of slavery.
And one of the last moments, of the film, the African-American Historian, Barbara Fields said that the Civil War is still going on. It's still being fought, and regrettably, it can still be lost.
This is an interview done in 1988.
CUOMO: And just as true today.
BURNS: For a film that appeared in 1990.
CUOMO: Yes.
BURNS: And it is just is true today. And this is the great lesson of history. History gives us the perspective to make all of their stories evergreen. And we have to listen and learn from them.
We can't throw everybody out, because if we erase the history, then we don't know where we've been. And if we don't know where we've been, we can't possibly know where we are, and where we might be going. This requires study. This moment requires reckoning.
CUOMO: Ken Burns, let's keep the dialog going. You'll be invited back early, and often, to talk about what moments matter in the present, and what they'll mean going forward, and how we draw on our past. Thank you, Sir, always a pleasure.
BURNS: Thank you.
CUOMO: We'll be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
