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New Day

Georgia Lawmaker Arrested as Governor Signs Law Limiting Voting Rights; Biden Prioritizes Pandemic and Economy at His First News Conference; New Coronavirus Cases on the Rise in 20 States, Deaths Up in 17 States. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired March 26, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

And critics might call it the Seinfeld of all voting laws, a law about nothing, nothing in a sense that it purport to correct something that simply did not exist, significant voter fraud in the state of Georgia. It did not happen there in 2020 election, and that's according to Republican officials there.

Still there is now a law, a new voting law there with new restrictions, and it's spawned a new controversy as a black lawmaker was arrested for knocking on the governor's door during the signing of the bill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The governor is signing a bill that affects all Georgians. Why is he doing it in private, and why is he trying to keep elected officials who representing us out of the process?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You said you give her one more time like you're going to do something.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you serious?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, you are not --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, no, she's now under arrest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For what? Under arrest for what? For trying to see something that our governor is doing? Our governor is signing a bill that affects all Georgians, and you're going to arrest an elected representative.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: To be clear that's Georgia's State Rep. Park Cannon being forcibly removed from the capitol in handcuffs last night while Governor Kemp signed a bill that severely restricts voting access based on a false premise that there was mass voting fraud though there was not. Representative Cannon now faces two felony counts for wanting to witness the signing ceremony.

In his first press conference since being sworn in, President Biden blasted those Republican efforts limit voting rights, calling them, quote, un-American and sick.

BERMAN: All right. Joining me now is Georgia State Representative Donna McLeod. Representative, thank you so much for being with us. Why was your colleague, Park Cannon, arrested?

Can you hear me, Representative? Representative? It's John Berman. Can you hear me?

CAMEROTA: None of us can hear you.

BERMAN: All right. You can't hear me?

CAMEROTA: No, I can't.

BERMAN: All right. Well, there we go. Apparently --

CAMEROTA: I don't hear anything yet.

BERMAN: -- the representative cannot hear me.

Let's put up on the screen so people can see what is in this law, this new law. It adds stricter voter I.D. requirements for absentee ballots. It actually creates voter I.D. requirements. Before, it just was a signature match. Now, you need either a driver's license, a social security number or other kind of I.D. WE'RE told that some 200,000 Georgia voters do not have access to that type of I.D. So in that way, it could be restricted there.

You can see some of the other limitations there.

CAMEROTA: Well, this is the one that you pointed out, that it prohibits the mailing of unsolicited absentee ballot applications. And that's a big one, because, as you know, President Trump, this was the one that really got stuck in his craw. He didn't like that. And --

BERMAN: Ballot drop boxes moves them inside early voting locations.

Now, the purpose of a drop box in many states is to have it be somewhere you can go by 24 hours a day outside, leave it there when it's convenient for you. Now, you can only go inside an early voting location.

All right, here is what we're going to do --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The governor is signing a bill that affects all Georgians. Why is he doing it in private and why is he trying to keep elected officials who are representing us out of the process?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You said you give her one more time like you're going to do something. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you serious?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, you are not --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, no, she's now under arrest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For what? Under arrest for what? For trying to see something that our governor is doing? Our governor is signing a bill that affects all Georgians --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Now, by the grace of God, we are joined by Georgia State Representative Donna McLeod. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your patience. I hope you can hear me right now. We've now played that video twice of your colleague, Representative Park Cannon, being arrested. Why? Why did that happen?

DONNA MCLEOD (D), GEORGIA STATE REPRESENTATIVE: So this has been -- thank you, John, and thank you everyone watching. This has been a very, very difficult session. And the reason why it happened was from sheer disgust about the fact that literally we're going backwards in time rather than forward in time, and my colleague and I -- you know, we've just been so frustrated, and I -- I think Representative Cannon was getting in some good trouble, like the former Congressman Lewis said, get in some good trouble. We have nothing to lose if we lose the right -- our rights to vote and we fought so hard for this right to vote.

And this is the time. If we're going to stand up, this is the time, this is the moment in time that we're given, and we're going to stand up and fight for what we think is right.

[07:05:02]

BERMAN: I don't know if you've seen the picture of what I believe was happening on the other side of the door from Representative Cannon. It was Governor Kemp signing this bill into law surrounded by six white guys. What does this picture represent to you?

MCLEOD: White supremacy. These are bunch of men that are fearful of change. Right now, you're speaking to me from Gwinnett County. It's the most diverse county in the state of Georgia. It's probably the second most diverse county in the U.S. And fear has seeped in and this is all manifested on a lie, a lie trumped up by Trump.

And I think this Jim Crow 2.0 is represented in that picture. You see those men. There's no color in them. There's just pure white males trying to basically hold onto power with their life.

BERMAN: We put up on the screen before, and I'll do it again, some of the things that are now part of this law, creating new voter I.D. requirements, limit ballot drop boxes. It actually creates partisan oversight of county election boards and then prohibits people from distributing food and water to election lines.

You call the signing of this law white supremacy. How does this law impinge on African-American and minority voting rights in your mind?

MCLEOD: So I've lived Gwinnett County. And over the years that we've been growing, Gwinnett County doubled its population. We're almost probably over a million people, still waiting for the census. But we've endured lines every single election. This is just going to create more lines because you're not giving people more options to vote. And with longer lines, that means that you're going to have people that will probably not want to vote anymore.

We've got the place where we at least got people to believe in the system, believe in our public, our represented democracy, our constitutional democracy. And, for me, as a person who became a citizen in this country in 2012, and I had to take the test and pay for it, for me, this is an abomination. This is despicable and disgusting and it creates more barriers to our voters so that they're not having access to the ballot box like they should.

And to actually say to people you can't give somebody food or water, that's just cruel and inhumane.

BERMAN: The bill wasn't as restrictive as it could have been. Other versions of it included cutting back on early voting altogether, making absentee voting -- no-excuse absentee voting, doing away with it all together, and also eliminating Sunday voting, that didn't happen.

So I wonder, how -- what that teach you? How did you keep that from happening and what does the fact that that wasn't part of the bill tell you?

MCLEOD: Well, let me tell you something. This has been a hard fought battle. We have not let up, elected officials and advocates. They have shown up to the capitol. We have got made sure that we kept our focus on what was going on. This particular bill was a two-page document when it crossed over. It is now a 95-page document. And that shows you -- the span of time when I first heard about it was from my colleague, Representative Rhonda Burnogh. And she called me and said, they are stuffing HB531 and SB251 into SB202 last Thursday.

This Thursday, it was signed into law one week. So we've had to scramble. We've had to try to read things quickly. And, by the way, the transparency was horrible because we did not have this put on the website until Wednesday of this week that actually the public could see it.

BERMAN: What's the impact of what will be sort of this legislative, perhaps partisan oversight over the county election boards?

MCLEOD: It's devastating because what Trump had called the secretary of state to do was to basically overturn the election by finding X amount voting. If you can go to the county level and basically, you know, circumvent them, you can do that very quickly, right? You can get your votes much faster and you won't have to call the secretary of state anymore. You can do it county by county.

So this is dangerous. It's dangerous. This does not represent a representative of democracy.

BERMAN: I want to ask you finally. President Biden yesterday said it's un-American what's being done. What do you want to see from him?

[07:00:00]

MCLEOD: It's un-American, it's unpatriotic, and for those of us who have fought to be citizens of this country, it's despicable. What we're asking for is to really get rid of that filibuster and pass H.R.1 and Congressman Lewis Voting Rights Act. That's what we want from Congress now. And we need it now. We need to make sure that we are protecting the vote. it's the most precious right.

Yes, knowledge is the most powerful thing we give to yourself, but the vote is the most powerful thing we give to each other.

BERMAN: Representative Donna McLeod, we appreciate your time, we appreciate you sticking with us. Thank you very much.

MCLEOD: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Okay. John, now to this developing story, at least five people killed in an outbreak of tornadoes ripping through southern states. CNN's Amara Walker live in Noonan, Georgia, where a tornado struck overnight. What does it look like there?

AMARA WALKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, yes, Alisyn, a lot of people were probably sleeping when this tornado touched down here in Noonan, Georgia just about 40 miles southwest of Atlanta after midnight this morning. And right now, I'm talking to firefighters are on the ground, and they're still going door to door making sure people have been accounted for. They've already rescued several people from their homes. They told that there were several people trapped inside when trees fell on top of their homes.

But look at the damage here. We're still getting the full extent of the damage. But just walking around the neighborhood, this is what we're seeing over and over, snapped power lines, roofs of homes being blown off. And just everywhere you look, the tops of the trees have been sheared off, there's mangled metal everywhere. It's quite a mess. This mangled metal, I'm not sure where it's from if it's from part of a roof or from a carport.

But around this area, again, we're not too far from the downtown area of Noonan, and we're seeing lots of damage like this. And it's an ongoing scene at this time. We are waiting for local authorities to give us an update.

But we do have a CNN meteorologist, Brandon Miller, who actually lives here in Noonan and he's been walking the scene for the last couple of hours. And he says that he was struck just by the trail of damage, just how wide the storm was.

And they do estimate -- I mean, the National Weather Service is supposed to be here sometime this morning to tell us exactly what the force of the storm was. But they're saying -- our meteorologist said this may have been at least an EF-3, which means the wind gusts were probably 136 miles per hour or more. Alisyn, John, back to you.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, it looks devastating. Amara, thank you very much for the reporting on the ground.

So, President Biden trying to keep the focus on the pandemic and the economic relief, but reporters had other priorities at his first press conference. So what exactly is at the top of his agenda and what does that mean for getting it through Congress?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

CAMEROTA: President Biden in his first formal press conference sticking to his own agenda and his own pace.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT: Here is the deal. I think my Republican colleagues are going to have to determine whether or not we want to work together or they're to decide at the way in which they want to proceed is to - it is to -- just to decide to divide the country, continue the politics of division.

But I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to move forward and take these things as they come.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now our CNN Political Maggie Hagerman, she's a Washington Correspondent for The New York Times. Also with, CNN Contributor Evan Osnos, he's the author, Joe Biden, the Life, the Run and What Matters Now.

So, Evan, let's start there. What was your biggest takeaway from the press conference?

EVAN OSNOS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think you used the right word, pace. I mean, this is on what's on his mind right now, timing. One Joe Biden's favorite expressions is that for everything, there is a season, and he applies that to politics, meaning that you have to constantly juggle the things you plan for, the agenda items you're trying to achieve, but also deal with the immediate crises that are coming down the pipe.

From his perspective, there are issues that he wants to see kind of ripen (ph) on the vine. Somebody asked him yesterday why aren't they pressing the immigration bill that he's introduced. And he said, I want to let my Republican counterparts posture a little bit, get it out of their system, which is the kind of perception that he has into how politicians think. Because, after all, he's been doing it, to use his words yesterday, he said, 120 years.

So he's thinking about what are the ways in which you can allow an issue to build in the mind of the public, like the filibuster, some of these other issues that he wants to achieve with critical mass and public pressure, which he will then make the politics easier.

BERMAN: You know, Maggie, one of the things that's been said in the last 24 hours or so is that the president tried to keep focus on coronavirus and the economy. That's where the American people are focused. It's not just that that's where the president wanted to focus. If you look at the latest polls and when people rank the issues that are most important, coronavirus is number one, political divisions, which is something he actually also talked about right there, number two, and the economy is number three here.

So, is it surprising or shouldn't it be that that's where the president try to turn things?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No, not at all. I mean, look, I think that this administration has made it very clear from the outset, that dealing with the coronavirus was the number one priority, particularly after contrasting with what we saw from former President Trump over the course of the last year, dealing with the virus.

They have talked about shots in arms. They have upped their goal for the number of vaccinations that they're going to do over the next however many days. They have talked about the stimulus. None of this is a surprise that, A, this is what they see as major accomplishments and, B, that they see is something that is where the public's mind is focused. It is largely what Joe Biden got elected on.

I will say, John, that it was striking that there was no question on the coronavirus yesterday from the press in the room and I think obviously a lot of people didn't get called on, but I do think that there's a clear divide between where sort of the mind of Washington is and where the mind of the Biden White House is, which is not on what the Washington group think is.

CAMEROTA: I mean, that said, Evan, if that poll were taken today, immigration or border security might be higher.

[07:20:]

That poll was March 3rd through the 8th.

BERMAN: But it didn't even register at 3 percent.

CAMEROTA: I get it.

BERMAN: I mean, it would have a long way to grow and it had already been on certain cable stations 24 hours a day for weeks at that point.

CAMEROTA: Sometimes public policy follows what is featured on news, and it has now risen on the four more. But did you understand in terms of border security where he is on it? Did he explain what the policy is, what he plans to do at the border?

OSNSON: Well, what you heard him saying was, as he described it, look, he's not happy obviously. He's very unhappy with the situation. He called them God-awful facilities at one point. And he worked on this when he was in the vice presidency. He kind of knows how hard the problem this is to work. He's now delegated it to his vice president partly because, as it's often the case, and you'll see this pattern more of the years ahead, when he did things as vice president, he sees that as a job that he can hand to Vice President Harris and think of it as a worthwhile endeavor.

But, look, the reality is you saw him start the day, as Maggie said, he wanted to focus on the coronavirus. He thinks that's where the American public is, and what he's trying not to do is to bungle the issues that he has not planned for. Look, said to me once that the hardest thing to do as a leader is the thing that prevents the worst consequence because the public won't really ever give you credit for it. They won't pay attention to it. And that's what he's trying to do, is prevent the worst consequence in all of these issues, all of it, of course, happening at the same time.

BERMAN: I mean, on immigration, in almost the same sentence in the news conference, Maggie, he promised transparency but then said, we're not giving you transparency just yet. We'll let you come see the border shelters when I'm ready to let you see them, which is a lot different than opening the door so the American people can see what's happening.

HABERMAN: Look, I don't that's sustainably position, John, and I think that it's true, that it was notable when he said it. It was certainly in contrast with full transparency. I don't think that they're going to push it down the road forever in part because I just don't think that that is going to be something that they can sustain. And I think there's going to be a lot of pressure, there is already pressure on them, not just to take different actions but allow the public through the media to see it. So this will change.

But, look, this is an issue. They took a while to realize they needed to. They clearly knew where it was on policy during the transition. But what they didn't seem to realize they were going to need to do was actually articulate that to the public and make clear what was real, what was an issue that was being demagogued, what was something that was within their control, what was not in their control over the driving factors. And so that has been an issue that they have been late on.

I do think it will take a while. Whether it ends up being something that the public focuses on say the same way it did when former President Trump was there remains to be seen, but it is something they are still sort of struggling to get their arms around.

CAMEROTA: Maggie, one more question for you, because yesterday, you told us that you were going to be looking stylistically at his approach during this first press conference. So what did you see?

HABERMAN: Look, I think he clearly prepared. One of the reasons that he had delayed in holding a press conference, according to people who I spoke to, was not just that they didn't have time to prep him with everything going on until yesterday, with the fact that they didn't then want to spend days dealing with a possible gaffe. He took a lot of time, he prepared for it, he was ready, he kept his tone pretty measured, he was not defensive, he had a quick answer when he got asked question by Kaitlan Collins about 2024, when he got asked another question by somebody else about why haven't you formed a campaign committee yet, which was something that former President Trump did extremely early and it was unusual. And he said he needed to, essentially saying he himself is not.

I think that he stayed as measured as he could have, and I think that it does set a tone for his relationship with the press. Does that last? Is that permanent? It remains to be seen. But, certainly, for the first outing, I think from the White House's perspective, it went as well as it could have.

BERMAN: Evan, the stylistic contrast between, say, what we saw yesterday from President Biden and previous presidents, specifically the most recent previous president.

OSNOS: Yes, I mean, it's not accidental. He, in so many ways, as he said yesterday, was hired to solve problems, as he put it, not create divisions, with one big exception. I think it's notable that he was emphatic, he was angry about questions around voter rights, around voter suppression. And you heard him put a stake in the ground, saying it is sick, as he put it, to pass laws of the kind you're seeing in Georgia and elsewhere moving through legislatures to try to prevent people from getting food or water while they're in their line to vote. That issue was one that bothers him.

He used the word, abuse of the filibuster. That's a theme that runs through his career. It drives him crazy when he sees what he describes as abuses of power. And I think you're going to see that that's an issue that he is going to be -- he's not going to be afraid to raise the temperature on that one.

BERMAN: Evan Osnos and Maggie Haberman, thank you very much.

[07:25:00]

An issue he could have been asked about but was not, coronavirus case and deaths on the rise in several states this morning. So what's fueling that surge? Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: So, new concerning trends in the coronavirus pandemic here in the United States. 20 states, every state you see there in orange or red, reporting increases in new cases in the last week. 17 states have increases -- all the states there in red -- in new deaths.

Joining us now, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, it's not hard to see why people might be concerned there, a rise in case. Well, one of the things we will be looking at is will new cases lead to hospitalizations and new deaths.

A rise in deaths at this point, what does that tell you? DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, it tells us a few things. I mean, if you look overall at the trends in certain states, look at Michigan, for example, obviously, there's been a significant downward trend since sort of early/mid-January. But the numbers have been going up a little bit.