Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Trump Refuses to Commit to Peaceful Transfer for Power if He Loses; No Police Officers Charged with Murder in Killing of Breonna Taylor; Trump Claims He Could Override FDA on Stricter Vaccine Standards. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired September 24, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

And we begin with a chilling and historic moment. The president of the United States, President Trump, just refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election in November.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power after the election?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Well, we have to see what happens. You know that. I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster.

REPORTER: I understand that, but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power?

TRUMP: We want to have -- get rid of the ballots and we'll have a very peaceful -- there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Sometimes you have to believe people when they talk. And President Trump just seemed open to violence if he didn't get his way.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Yes. And to be clear, look, I have been in countries, I have been in Baghdad when there have been wars, people killed over the transfer of power there. It is not a joke, it's very real. It is of paramount importance and it's what separates America -- or separated America from the rest of the world. So we'll have much more on that, coming up.

This morning, Breonna Taylor is dead and no charges are being issued in any way against the officers connected to her death. We have new information this morning in the decision not to charge the officers who killed her. The only charge that was issued involved shooting into a nearby apartment.

There were protests across the country overnight about that decision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shots fired. Shots fired.

Officer down, right there. Officer down?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Overnight, two police officers in Louisville were shot during the protests. They're both in stable condition this morning. A suspect is in custody. We're also getting reports of vehicles driving into protesters in Buffalo and Denver.

We want to begin though with the president's refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power. Joining us now, CNN Political Correspondent, Abby Phillip, and Barton Gellman, he's the Staff Writer at The Atlantic, who, just this week, like hours before the president said what he said, Barton published a story that said the election that could break America.

Look, I think it's worth playing one more time what the president said. And I will preface this again by saying, the peaceful transfer of power is central to our republic. It is one of the defining aspects of our republic. The president is asked directly about that and this is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power after the election?

TRUMP: Well, we have to see what happens. You know that. I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.

REPORTER: I understand that, but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power?

TRUMP: We want to have -- get rid of the ballots and we'll have a very peaceful -- there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, to be clear, the refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer in and of itself is an implicit threat of violence.

So, Barton Gellman, there are people who are like, oh, no, this is just the president using words. He would never actually act in any way that might slow down the transfer. Well, you wrote a whole article and you have the receipts about actions that are there are already being taken that might impede the peaceful transfer. What do you see here?

BARTON GELLMAN, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Well, the whole premise of the president's campaign is that Donald Trump will never concede defeat in the election, no matter what. The most important parts to me of what the president just said yesterday was that there won't be a transfer, frankly. He is not going to concede defeat under any circumstances.

And they have, therefore, built a campaign around the idea that he may not be able to win if all the votes are counted. And therefore, they need to have a very powerful legal apparatus to challenge the votes, to try to suppress the votes, and to stop the count early.

And they have talked about contingency plans, in which they would bypass the vote entirely in certain states, and seek to have electors favorable to Trump appointed directly by state legislatures, which is a power they have under the Constitution.

[07:05:14]

It's just not something we're used to having in modern American history. We're accustomed to the idea that we vote and the electors are appointed to correspond to our votes, that whoever wins the most votes in Pennsylvania gets the Pennsylvania electorates.

Trump, his people are talking to state legislatures about the idea that the legislator itself can appoint electors loyal to Trump, no matter what the vote is, on the ground that the vote is rigged, or fraudulent, or incomplete.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Just to put a finer point on that, because that's a bombshell. When the president said yesterday, get rid of the ballots and you'll have very peaceful -- well, there won't be a transfer, frankly, there will be a continuation. He is telegraphing what your reporting is, because you have actually spoken, Barton, to the head of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania. They're already talking about how state legislatures would circumvent the popular vote.

GELLMAN: The last time that this happened was 1876, and it very, very nearly led to civil war. You had two people claiming to be president- elect until two days before the inauguration and the threat of martial law. This is very serious stuff.

BERMAN: Abby Phillip, you were in the room or you've been in that press briefing room when the president has answered questions before, so you know how he behaves. What was said yesterday was next-level stuff. This is not just, oh, the president has been talking about rigged elections for years. This was a question about the peaceful transfer of power. So what did you hear?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: The president has been engaged for many, many months in a systemic effort to undermine faith in ballots that are not counted for him. Frankly, I mean, this whole idea that mail-in ballots are fraudulent is all about trying to discount ballots that are likely to vote go for his opponent, Biden. And we know that because poll after poll, internal Democratic polls, public polls show a majority of Democrats say that they are planning to vote at a time that is not on the day of Election Day, either early or by mail-in ballot absentee.

So the president has been doing that for months and this is the next step in that, which is to say that if I can get rid of those ballots, if I can force them to not be counted, we won't have to transfer power because I'm going to be re-elected.

And then the third part of this is the Supreme Court. The other thing that president Trump said yesterday was that he needed to make sure that there was a ninth justice on the court to replace Justice Ginsburg, because he knew that after the election, he -- the legal strategy is in part to push all of these voting cases to the Supreme Court. The president believes that the court would then rule in his favor because of a conservative tilt.

So I think you have to take all of those things together and you see what is happening here, which is the president is trying to create a world in which mail-in ballots are not counted or is viewed as fraudulent, he doesn't concede, and then it gets settled perhaps in the court or it gets settled the way that Barton outlines in his excellent piece in The Atlantic this week.

CAMEROTA: Barton, this is happening in real-time. The president likes chaos so much and I think that on some level our central nervous symptoms have adapted where we have to sweep it away each day. But there comes a moment in time where you have to mark your calendar and you have to note it and you have to say, today, something different happened.

And yesterday was that day. Yesterday was the day where the old adage about the frog sort of boiling slowly in hot water, the heat was turned up yesterday. The president is open to violence. The president, in fact, sounds like wants violence unless his conditions are met.

GELLMAN: I think what you have is someone who is planning all contingencies in ways that use the full range of his powers, use the range of his powers well beyond the norm that we've been accustomed to, and quite possibly, well beyond the law.

One of the things that we have to look out for on Election Day is that he takes traditional Republican voter suppression techniques to a new level.

[07:10:04]

This is the first presidential election in 40 years that will be run without a consent decree that gave judicial supervision to what the Republicans were doing at the polling stations, in what they call ballot security.

So you had people running around in uniforms and arm patches and guns and radios confronting voters, demanding proof of eligibility to vote, barging into poll workers, intimidating people so that they wouldn't vote. That is something that was done with off-duty police and sheriffs with and so forth.

This year, those restrictions no longer apply. But you also have a situation in which Trump has the executive power of the United States. He doesn't have to use off-duty cops. If he is claiming that foreign countries are sending in millions of fraudulent mail votes, he can order federal forces to seize the mail ballots at post offices as evidence in an ongoing national security investigation.

I mean, the limits are only his imagination.

BERMAN: So abby, there are what, 53 Republican senators right now? There are a couple of dozen Republican governors and, you know, more than 150 Republican House members. I think we've heard from exactly one of them, one of them this morning, condemning what the president said, and that's Mitt Romney. Let me read you what he wrote overnight.

Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power. Without that, there is Belarus. Any suggestion that the president might not respect the constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable.

Mitt Romney very specifically brought up Belarus in its point, because yesterday, the state department said that we're not going to recognize the president of Belarus because he's not committed to the peaceful transfer of power. So you almost expect a statement from the state department saying they're not going to recognize the president because he's not committed to a peaceful transfer of power. The irony is rich there in the danger highway (ph).

PHILLIP: Yes. Mitt Romney, once again, is alone in speaking out about something that should be pretty straight forward for Republicans to speak out about. We'll see how many of them are asked about this today on Capitol Hill and wherever they are. They're going to, I'm sure, say that they didn't see it or they didn't hear it, they didn't read about it because they've been under a rock or something. But I think that you can expect to not hear a whole lot of condemnation about this.

And also to hear what you indicated earlier, which is that a lot of republicans are going to say that the president doesn't mean it, that he doesn't actually plan to do any of these things. And, frankly, we don't know. I think that that's the undercurrent of this conversation is that we don't know what he is going to do. But by the time we find out, it will be too late.

And the one thing that has been different about this president is that, unlike all of the other times, with very, very few expectations, the idea that you would not concede has really never been something that candidates and presidents have talked about and mused about. It's just not done. But this president is doing it.

And one more point on Barton's point about the president making all of these claims about foreign ballots, et cetera. The one thing we should also look out for is the attorney general, Bill Barr, who has doubled down on these false narratives about mail-in voting, implying with absolutely no evidence that foreign countries might seek to print ballots, that mail-in ballots are rife with fraud. There is no evidence of that.

But the attorney general of the United States has backed the president up on that. And I think that that is a real significant thing that should not be overlooked.

BERMAN: On the importance of the question of whether or not the president would do it, what makes Barton's reporting so remarkable is the evidence that Barton found that he is doing it already. The campaign is already doing it.

Abby Phillip, thank you. Barton Gellman, terrific reporting, everyone should go read your piece in The Atlantic as soon as we go to commercial.

We have other major news this morning. A Kentucky grand jury finds that two police officers were justified in opening fire in their use of force in Breonna Taylor's apartment. Breonna Taylor was killed by bullets fired by police officers and there were no charges brought against the officers who fired those shots. There were charges issued against an officer who fired shots into a nearby apartment that had nothing to do with Breonna Taylor or her death.

Joining us now is Kentucky State Representative Charles Booker. Representative, thank you so much for being with us.

You wrote overnight that justice failed us, in this case. In your mind, what would justice have looked like?

STATE REP. CHARLES BOOKER (D-KY): Well, good morning, and thank you for having me.

[07:15:00]

I did say the words and s peak the truth that justice has failed us, as it has, especially in my community, for generations.

And what it would look like immediately is accountability for the fact that a woman, a black woman was killed in her home by the agency she paid for to protect and serve her. Now, the indictments regarding wanton endangerment, accounts for shots that went into neighboring apartment buildings, showing a sense of recklessness. What about the shots that went into that young lady that wanted to be servant in our community, to be her best? That failed us.

And we're crying out now because we know that our lives do matter and justice should account for our humanity and we need change.

BERMAN: I want to play you what the attorney general of Kentucky, Daniel Cameron, says. Basically, this was a tragedy. Breonna Taylor shouldn't be dead, but nothing was done that was against the law. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANIEL CAMERON, KENTUCKY ATTORNEY GENERAL: This is a tragedy. And sometimes the law, the criminal law is not adequate to respond to a tragedy. And I fully acknowledge that. And I know many that are watching today and those that are listening recognize that as well.

But the response is that the grand jury was given all of the evidence, presented all of the information and ultimately made the determination that Detective Hankinson was the one to be indicted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I want to break this down into parts. First part, his idea that the failure might be within the law, is this a failure of the law itself or an application, in your mind, of the law?

BOOKER: Well, it's both. But on one part, we're not fully clear as it relates to the attorney general and his recommendations. What exactly did he report? What was the evidence that he relied on and presented to the grand jury? We haven't had transparency throughout this entire process. And so it's fair to come to the conclusion that there were failures on that set (ph) for lack of clarity.

BERMAN: What's missing? What's missing? What questions do you have still that you do want answered, that you feel must be answered here?

BOOKER: Well, the whole time we've all, around the country, certainly here in leadership, we've been talking about the aspect of no-knock warrants. And in the announcement yesterday, the attorney general praised evidence that he believed justified the conclusion that there was a knock and an announcement, and this was news to everyone.

What was the evidence of that? Where's the credibility in that? Can we get that transparency? And even in terms of saying that was justified, that killing this black woman was justified and that these two officers, the other officers, were essentially protecting themselves in self-defense. Did he even recommend that the grand jury evaluate the charges and the potential (INAUDIBLE) at all? We don't know those things. And the community deserves those answers.

BERMAN: Charles Booker, we appreciate your time this morning. I know you were up late last night. You were on the streets. You were with people protesting this decision. We appreciate you getting up early again to talk to us about your feelings. Thank you.

BOOKER: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right. President Trump not only threatening to go around the peaceful transfer of power, but now threatening to intervene in the coronavirus vaccine approval process, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

CAMEROTA: Developing overnight, President Trump threatening to overall rule the FDA if they try to impose stricter vaccine standards.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: To me, it sounded extremely political. Why would they do this when we come back with these great results? And I think we will have those great results. Why would we be delaying it? But we're going to look at it, we're going to take a look at it, and, ultimately, the White House has to approve it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Okay. CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, joins us now.

So you heard him there say, ultimately, the White House, meaning him, has to approve it. And so it sounds like, Sanjay, we should be prepared for the president to make some sort of grand announcement about a vaccine before Election Day, whether or not that vaccine is safe and fully tested and available.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: This is ridiculous and inappropriate, as I think everybody, every public health official, so many of whom called me last night agrees.

Let me give you a little bit of a background here, because I think what's happened here is critically important. The FDA basically is expecting data from these vaccine manufacturers about their vaccines. Two things they're looking at, how effective is it, and the FDA has already weighed in on that, and they say it's got to be at least 50 percent effective.

We have expected all along that they'd weigh in and say, well, how do we -- how are we going to show that it's safe. And what the FDA came back and said, what they're going to release is that they have to have two months worth of data -- they're going to wait two months after the volunteers have received the shots to make sure they're not developing side effects. And it's that two-month window that was really at the point of this discussion yesterday.

Those guidelines that the FDA puts forth do, as we learned, I had to learn some of this last night, do, generally speaking, go to the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, for a review process, okay? They have to be approved by OMB and to basically say, yes, two months makes sense. It's at that point that I think the president seems to be talking about, again, I think, highly inappropriately, it's at that point that the president is basically saying, they could influence that review process by OMB, which is a part of the executive branch of government.

It's ridiculous.

[07:25:00]

Again, I want to say that every step of the way, but this is undue pressure, obviously, inappropriate pressure from the White House on the review process of this vaccine due to its safety. This is the sort of stuff that Steven Hahn, the commissioner of the FDA, back in September 1st, said he would resign over if there was this sort of pressure coming from the White House.

So this is a clearly an effort for the president, because he said, and the executive branch of government to overrule the FDA's very reasonable and quick, you know, approval process in terms of safety. That's a lot I just threw at you, but that's what's happening right now. This is the sort of stuff that we look at, as you talked about last hour, happening in Russia and say, no way that would happen here. But over the past several months, I can't remember the number of times I have said that. That is now happening here.

We are the worst country in the world with regard to this pandemic and now we're talking about stuff like this.

BERMAN: Yes. You used the words, ridiculous, others have used the words frightening and scary. The bigger picture here is there's just one more piece of this being about politics and not science.

I mean, Sanjay, we were together yesterday. We were wondering, given these FDA guidelines, given the idea that the FDA wanted to input these new guidelines, which might make the vaccine approval process a little bit longer for safety reasons, we were wondering whether the president would intervene. And this, the president just told us, is that moment. He is going to intervene if he wants to, it seems, for political reasons, not scientific.

GUPTA: Yes. And I think it's worth keeping in mind is that this is already a very accelerated process, this vaccine development. And, look, everybody wants a quick vaccine. But just to even wait two months for safety data was already very quick. And that came about because -- and I spoke to Moncef Slaoui about this, they said most side effects occur within two months, but there could be side effects that occur after that. Typically, it takes years to get these vaccines approved.

Let me remind you of that patient in the U.K. in the AstraZeneca trial. Just give you an idea the sort of side effects that they are looking for. She's 37 years old, previously healthy, she gets the vaccine and then has trouble walking, has weakness and pain in her arms, reduced sensation in her torso, headaches, inability or reduced ability rather to use her hands. I mean, these are the sorts of side effects that they've got to keep an eye out for her, okay?

Now, she recovered. She was previously healthy. My understanding is that she's okay. But can you imagine, even if you have something that's occurring 0.1 percent of the time, okay, really rare, if you give that to 100 million people, then 100,000 people could start to develop those sorts of side effects.

So not only do they need to wait that window, they've really got to observe these patients very, very carefully, I should say, these participants very, very carefully. And that's what that safety data is about.

Many came to me and said, two months doesn't seem like enough. We should be waiting longer. So the fact that it's even two months, and that may be abbreviated, is really concerning.

BERMAN: Sanjay, thank you very much very much for being with us this morning. Thank you for explaining what is going on here and why it is of such concern.

CAMEROTA: I invite everybody to stick around until the end of the program, because I have a voter panel in which I ask them if they're comfortable with vaccines. And you're going to hear what all of this confusion --

BERMAN: That's a tease? I want to know. I want to know.

CAMEROTA: -- to that.

BERMAN: All right. We're getting new information this morning about what was missing in this decision not to charge any of the three police officers in any way with the death of Breonna Taylor. That's coming up.

CAMEROTA: Then, as I mentioned, voters who are struggling financially in this pandemic sound off on who they blame.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For us to drop the ball in our own country, I think it really screams that there is a lack of leadership.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we've lost 200,000 Americans and it's awful. And I blame it on the pandemic. I don't blame it on the response.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Okay. The pulse of the people is coming up in our next hour and wait until you hear what they say about vaccines, as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:00]