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Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) is Interviewed about QAnon and Pompeo's Speech at RNC; Cuts to Mass Transit; Conway Leaving White House. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired August 24, 2020 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: A little bit of a conversation I had with the vice president on Friday.

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MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I just -- I don't know anything about that. I've heard about it. We -- we dismiss conspiracy theories around here out of hand.

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BERMAN: I heard it again this morning from former Congressman Duffy, I don't know anything about that. I don't even know what QAnon is.

What's that about? How can so many Republicans not know what QAnon is?

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): I think that was except -- I mean I think that was understandable a few weeks ago because, you know, I had been studying -- I'm always into the conspiracy theories. So I think conspiracy theories are going to be the thing that like destroys this country in the long term because it undermines faith in government.

But I think when it made mainstream people, people at least generally know what it is. And I think the easy answer is, do you believe it? And I think nobody that's really saying quite honestly in government believes these conspiracy theories. So then just say they're wrong.

And this is the problem is, it's essential of members of their own party to denounce conspiracy theories within their party. The Democrats can point fingers at QAnon. That's not going to change anything. We can point fingers at, you know, things in the left and that's not going to change anything. It has to happen within your own party. You have to fight for that -- the purity of your party.

And QAnon, the insidiousness of it is everything this person or people or Russian intelligence agency has ever predicted has been wrong, OK.

BERMAN: Right.

KINZINGER: But it's always this thing that's going to happen in the near future, and keeps people hooked, but it undermines people's faith in government because if there is an underground conspiracy of Satanist pedophiles that are running the government, your vote doesn't count. And in the long term, that will destroy a country of for and by the people.

BERMAN: Is it acceptable at this point to come on TV or to go out in front of people and say, I don't even know what that is, I haven't heard about it?

KINZINGER: If you still don't know what it is, do a quick research. Especially look at the first Q drop, I tweeted it, Q drop, predicting that Hillary Clinton would have been in jail by the 15th, and it had an exact day in 2017. It's fake. Condemn it, please, guys.

BERMAN: You're on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House and we have learned -- we've looked at the convention schedule this week. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be addressing the Republican National Convention from Jerusalem. The location actually in this case doesn't necessarily matter, but this is something that hasn't been done. This is something that is not done.

I spoke to Scott Jennings, who worked in the Bush White House, and they said secretary of state, secretary of defense, national security officials, they were walled off from politics all together. Secretaries of state don't speak at conventions. It is a norm. It may not be illegal, but it is a norm that you don't have because you want to give the sense that they're doing the nation's business, not political business.

So how appropriate is it for the secretary of state to be addressing the Republican National Convention?

KINZINGER: I don't know, I just started hearing about this yesterday. I think to the extent you break precedent -- I think it's really important to kind of keep precedent in the long term, but I think it's going to matter what the nature of his speech is. Look, I can be doing -- you know, I can be in D.C. doing my job and still be able to do a political event or make a political speech with rules. But I, you know, I don't think this is a huge deal, quite honestly. It probably depends on what the speech is. But -- but, you know, as President Trump lays out his agenda going forward, I think foreign policy's a huge part of it, especially when you look at the Middle East, Russia, China, things along that line.

So, we'll see what the nature of it. For me, I just -- I'm not losing sleep over this quite -- quite yet.

BERMAN: You know once you break norms like this, they never get unbroken.

KINZINGER: Exactly. Yes.

BERMAN: I mean once a secretary of state speaks at a convention, it's now going to be a thing. You're going to have secretaries of state out on the campaign trail. It's going to happen. I mean there's a reason it hasn't happened until now. KINZINGER: Yes. I mean I think that it's one question, is it illegal?

We're on the second question is, again, like you said, once you break a norm, it never comes back. I mean even, you know, the whole going into D.C. on Saturday in August, you know, we're going to be having emergency returns to D.C. every time in August now, which, you know, who cares, but it's just that idea that -- that there is -- there is some purpose to kind of precedent and rules.

BERMAN: Adam Kinzinger, Congressman from Illinois, thanks for being with us this morning. Really appreciate your time.

KINZINGER: Yes, you bet. Thanks.

BERMAN: All right, breaking news this morning, protests in Wisconsin after police repeatedly shot a black man just steps away from his children. We have details and the troubling video, next.

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[08:38:09]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, protests erupting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after a police shooting of a black man. Hundreds of people marched on police headquarters. Some set vehicles on fire. Cell phone video shows the man walking from the passenger side of an SUV to the driver's side and police following him with their guns drawn. As the man tries to enter his vehicle, with his children inside, an officer opens fire. This is graphic video.

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(INAUDIBLE)

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CAMEROTA: Shocking, shocking video. That man has been identified as Jacob Blake. He's now fighting for his life in the hospital.

The White House says Attorney General Bill Barr will brief President Trump on this later today.

Now to northern California. It is being ravaged by the second and third largest wildfires in the state's history. The fires have destroyed more than a million acres and hundreds of homes.

CNN's Dan Simon is live in Sonoma County with a new threat this morning.

What's happening, Dan?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, hi, Alisyn.

As bad as things are, there's a potential that things could get even worse today. This area is under a red flag warning. There could be more strong winds and more lightning strikes, which could produce even more fires. Let me explain where I am. We are in the town of Healdsburg. You can

see this burned out home behind me. You see the chimney. It looks like somebody tried to use a garden hose to save it. About a thousand structures have been torched throughout the region, and some of these numbers are just staggering. We're talking about 12,000 lightning strikes, which have produced some 600 fires, about two dozen of them considered to be major.

I want to -- I want you to listen to some sound from a firefighter who explained what the treacherous conditions look like.

[08:40:03]

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF GOLIGHTLY, FIRE CHIEF FROM ASTORIA, OREGON: Being out on the line, it's some of the most extreme fire behavior I've seen in my 25- plus years of doing this. The terrain being so steep and just overall how dry it is. And, you know, we're seeing fire that, you know, we cold trailed and been good and turn around and five, ten minutes later it's flaring up and across the line somewhere. It just -- you never know where it's going to pop up. It's just extremely sporadic this year.

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SIMON: Well, these two dozen fires have been distilled down to three different complexes, two of them considered to be the second and third largest fires in California history. This fire known as the LMU Fire, crews made decent progress over the weekend getting containment up to about 20 percent. The question is, with this red flag warning, could they build on that progress, firefighters, or could they see things go in the other direction?

John, we'll send it back to you.

BERMAN: All right, Dan Simon, please keep us posted there. Appreciate it.

We have some new fears this morning for the public transit system in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Concern that the service could be slashed permanently as ridership habits change. The effect on front line workers who depend on subways and buses could be catastrophic.

CNN's Pete Muntean live in Silver Spring, Maryland, with the latest on this.

Pete.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, public transit systems here and across the country tell me they're driving toward a financial cliff. Today, the D.C. metro system here says it's ramping up services to levels not seen since before the pandemic, but it's worried it cannot stay that way for long. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MUNTEAN (voice over): Devin McCall (ph) takes the D.C. Metro five days a week to his job at a suburban hospital. He is still working but fears public transit will not be for much longer.

DEVIN MCCALL, RIDES WASHINGTON'S METRO: I won't be able to go to work. And I need to go to work.

MUNTEAN: Public transit systems nationwide say they are struggling in the pandemic. At its start, Congress kept systems running for essential workers with $25 billion federal stimulus dollars.

PAUL WIEDEFELD, GENERAL MANAGER AND CEO, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY: But they are dwindling down very quickly.

MUNTEAN: Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld says it is still short more than 80 percent of its normal riders. Empty trains mean burning $2 million in cash each day. Wiedefeld says Congress must step up once more.

WIEDEFELD: The only other alternative we have is to cut. We've got to cut service. You know, we'd have to do furloughs. We'd have to do layoffs. All those nasty things that no one wants to deal with.

MUNTEAN: This week, New York's subway will detail how deep its cuts could be.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are in a moment when every dollar counts.

MUNTEAN: MTA says it will face a fiscal tsunami without $4 billion just to get it through this year alone. Public transit advocates say service slashed by the pandemic could be permanent, making returning to normal even tougher.

SE. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): Congress needs to get its act together.

MUNTEAN: Senate Democrat Chris Van Hollen of Maryland wants a new $3.2 billion stimulus for mass transit. With talks stalled between Congress and the White House, he says time is running out. Transit advocates estimate almost 3 million essential workers take public transit, and two-thirds are people of color.

HOLLEN: There's no doubt that if you, you know, pull the plug on transit systems or allow them to wither away that you're jeopardizing entire communities but you will have a disproportionately harmful impact on communities of color.

MUNTEAN: The impact could be even bigger on smaller cities. In Flagstaff, Arizona, many city bus riders are what's called transit- dependent, those without cars, to get to work or school. Heather Damolin says her system needs $7 million more or it too could cut services to neighborhoods that need it most.

HEATHER DAMOLIN, CEO AND GENERAL MANAGER, MOUNTAIN LINE OF FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA: We feel very hopeful that there will be a way that we find more funding so that our community doesn't face service cuts.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MUNTEAN: Those cuts could have a disproportionate impact, especially on people of color. Here in D.C., they make up 82 percent of the metro system's bus riders.

John.

BERMAN: Yes, it's the pulse of the city, the public transit system here, which is why the future of it is such a major concern.

Pete Muntean, terrific report. Thanks so much for being with us.

Kellyanne Conway has announced she is leaving the White House on the eve of the Republican Convention. So how will this affect the campaign for the next 71 days? We'll get "The Bottom Line," next.

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[08:48:31]

CAMEROTA: Developing overnight, Kellyanne Conway, one of the president's longest serving advisers, announces that she is leaving the White House next week to focus on her family, she says. In a statement Conway says, this is completely my choice and my voice. In time I will announce future plans. For now and for my beloved children, it will be less drama, more mama.

Joining us now, CNN White House correspondent John Harwood and CNN political analyst Margaret Talev. She's the politics and White House editor at "Axios."

Margaret, it can't -- it could not have been easy these years for Kellyanne Conway for a host of reasons. She's away from her four children. Some of them are now teenagers. That's hard in every family, of course. And then the public sparring with her husband, George Conway, who also now says, I'll read you his statement, that he, too, is taking a break from his project basically to unseat Donald Trump. George Conway says, so I'm withdrawing from Project Lincoln to devote more time to family matters and I'll be taking a Twitter hiatus. Needless to say, I continue to support the Lincoln Project and its mission passionately.

Look, I mean, all of our jobs affect all of our kids, but it has been very strange and interesting to watch how they have tried to navigate this for the past three years.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, Alisyn, this is what should be a private family drama that has unfolded nationally. And, you know, I have a 16-year-old daughter, so I've been getting regular updates on Claudia Conway's TikTok status, which is, of course, what kind of finally took this to a level where Kellyanne Conway and her husband decided that they needed to act.

[08:50:00] But it has been, you know, their daughter is able to do what George Conway was not able to do, which was press Kellyanne Conway finally to at least take a step back publicly from this administration. And, as I said, this would normally be a private event but it had just reached the level where it no longer could be.

And I think, in addition to less drama, more mama for the family, it had become a matter of drama for the Trump administration and the re- election campaign as well. If Kellyanne Conway wants to provide private guidance and counsel to the campaign or to the White House, certainly she has the ability to do that. But I think as a matter of her being a public figure, it had become, you know, too much for her family and for the White House. And it -- it's -- it just goes to show I think how polarizing and difficult the choice to remain in the public eye for the administration can be for some people.

BERMAN: I'm curious to see how absent both George and Kellyanne Conway are from the public discourse over the next 71 days, given how much they have both been in it for the last three and a half years.

John Harwood, it is the morning of the first day of the Republican National Convention. Striking that the night before President Trump makes this grand announcement about convalescent plasma, which Dr. Anthony Fauci and other federal doctors say hasn't been proven to the extent that they would like to see proven to be effective yet, but it does show to me at least the Trump administration and the president trying to inoculate himself to coronavirus concerns during the convention.

How much of a shadow do you think it will cast over the next four days?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think it's just one piece in the mix, John.

Look, the president is pressing every single layer -- lever of federal authority that he can reach, to try to get out of this desperate situation politically that he's in. Democrats had a very successful convention. Joe Biden had a successful speech last week. He went into the convention with a substantial lead over the president nationally and in battleground states. He only helped his position in that convention. And so the president's trying to figure out something to do. You know he's -- they're improvising this convention. We expect to hear from the president in the 10:00 hour. Don't know at what length every night, but we expect to hear from him. And he has been trying, through talking down mail-in balloting, through putting pressure on the census, through pressuring the FDA and Stephen Hahn, his FDA commissioner, to try to move things in his direction in a Republican direction, and it's a very difficult situation.

And just to add to what Margaret said about the Conways, there's nothing more important than family. A lot of us have been looking from the outside and wondering what sort of stress that family is under because of where Kellyanne Conway is coming from, where George Conway is coming from, where the daughter is coming from and I think we can only wish them the best as they try to get that situation in a happier place for them. There are plenty of people, mainly Donald Trump, who could speak up for Donald Trump and there are plenty of people speaking out against him. I think they have made a decision to -- that's a very human decision that everybody could understand.

CAMEROTA: For sure.

Margaret, it seems as though President Trump wants to be able to announce a cure for coronavirus at the RNC and so he's concocting one. I mean before, you know, the medical experts say it's safe or necessarily effective. And, I mean, "Axios" has the reporting that he is pressuring the FDA and the HHS secretary that, you know, Peter Navarro wants it to be on Trump time. It's supposed to happen right now, before they do the studies that are normally done before anybody uses any kind of mass treatment.

TALEV: Yes, you know, the plasma treatment, there are some reasons to believe that this could be useful therapeutic, but the president's rhetoric and timing has gotten far ahead of the actual evidence on this. And I think the person to watch now is going to be the head of the FDA, Stephen Hahn. He's facing enormous pressure, not just from the president, but, as you mentioned, from Peter Navarro, the president's trade adviser, who has been pushing behind the scenes, calling the FDA the deep state and saying they need to get on Trump time, according to our reporting.

Stephen Hahn is a doctor. He's a cancer doctor, an oncologist, now thrust into a highly political situation. And it's certainly no coincidence that the president was pushing to be able to announce expanded use of therapeutics on the eve of the start to the convention. So this is a very difficult position for a doctor to be in when science has to be the guiding principle for regulatory policies and expanded powers, but even that doctor cannot control what the president says on that public podium.

[08:55:17]

BERMAN: Margaret Talev, John Harwood, we --

HARWOOD: And it shows you guys how out of --

BERMAN: Go ahead, John.

HARWOOD: It shows you how isolated and out of ammunition the administration is that they've got an economic adviser who's ostensible specialty is trade, urging the FDA commissioner to get an Trump time. It is completely out of the ordinary. It's not -- doesn't comport with any kind of good governance that anyone's understood up to now and it shows you the desperate situation that they're in.

BERMAN: John, Margaret, thank you both very much.

We have new information on the two tropical storms taking aim at the Gulf Coast. Our coverage continues next.

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