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Don Lemon Tonight

Dr. Fauci On COVID-19 To Unvaccinated Kids; CDC, Delta Variant Now Accounts For One In Four U.S. Cases; Champlain Tower's Deadly Collapse; Condo Board Letter Warned Residents Of Building Deterioration; NYC Board Of Elections Throws Mayoral Primary Into Chaos By Counting Test Ballots; Obama Says Rise Of Misinformation 'Worries Me' And Should Worry Everyone; More Than 230 Deaths Reported In British Columbia Province Amid Historic Heat Wave. Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired June 29, 2021 - 23:00   ET

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

[23:00:00]

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES (on camera): No actually it is possible that you will see people who are infected get breakthrough infections despite the fact that they're vaccinated. In general when you have a break through infection with a vaccinated person, the level of virus in the nasal pharynx is lower than if you have an asymptomatic infection and with someone who's not vaccinated.

We haven't formally proven yet how much diminution there is in the likelihood of transmitting it to someone else including children. And that's one of the reasons why you've got to be careful when you're dealing with something like the Delta variant, you want to make sure that you get vaccinated. If your children are not old enough to get vaccinated, when they're out there in the community, they should be wearing a mask if they are too young to get vaccinated.

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: So even if they are vaccinated they might be able to pass it onto their children?

FAUCI: That is -- I have to say, Don that that's possible. We don't know that. I mean, I would be just, you know, giving wishful thinking here. I believe that what we're going to see is that vaccinated people who get a break through infection, namely they get infected, but they don't have any symptoms, that the level of virus will be low enough in their nasal pharynx that it is unlikely that they will pass it onto someone else. But we haven't proven that yet, so I can't say that definitively.

LEMON: What is your reaction to schools and camps that are lifting mask mandates for children given the risk that they face in the spreading -- and the spreading of the Delta variant?

FAUCI: Well, you know, you've got to be careful because it depends on where you are, Don. It gets back to what we were saying before. If you are in an area where the viral dynamics are really high, you've got to be careful about pulling back the mask mandates. You've really got to be careful. If you're in an area where many of the people are vaccinated and the level of virus are very low, you can be much more flexible in having children not wear masks.

LEMON: You know, the U.S., the president had wanted 70 percent of people to have some degree of vaccination, right, or second dose. So my question is the U.S., we're going to fall short of what President Biden's goal of vaccinating 70 percent of adults with at least one dose by July fourth.

Largely because of states like Alabama, Arkansas, my home state Louisiana, Mississippi, Wyoming, they have less than 35 percent of the population fully vaccinated. A former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb is concerned that there'll be very dense outbreaks in these areas. What do you think, Dr. Fauci?

FAUCI: Yes. I agree with Dr. Gottlieb. That is something that we are very concerned about. When you have such a low level of vaccination super-imposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions, either states, cities or counties you're going to see these individual types of blips. It's almost like it's going to be two Americas. You're going to have areas where the vaccine is high where there is more than 70 percent of the population has received at least one dose.

When you compare that with areas where you may have 35 percent of the people vaccinated, you clearly have a high risk of seeing these spikes in those selected areas. The thing that's so frustrating about this, Don, is that this is entirely avoidable, entirely preventable. If you are vaccinated you diminish dramatically your risk of getting infected and even more dramatically your risk of getting seriously ill. If you are not vaccinated, you are at considerable risk.

LEMON: Dr. Anthony Fauci, thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

FAUCI: Good to be with you, Don. Thank you for having me.

LEMON: And I want to turn now to our top story. Officials in Florida confirming the death toll from the catastrophic building collapse in Surfside has risen to 12 now, 149 remain unaccounted for. Six days after that collapsed, full search and rescue operations continuing at this hour.

We're also learning there were many warning signs about the building's physical condition. Let's bring in now CNN's Boris Sanchez, he is covering this story for us down in Surfside, Florida. Boris, good evening to you. Rescue teams still desperately searching for survivors. Another body has been pulled from the rubble. Now we're learning just how first responders reacted to the shocking scenes immediately after that collapse. What can you tell us, Boris?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Yeah, Don, so for the first time this evening we have gotten to listen to dispatch audio. So the conversations that rescue workers were having as they first arrived here on the scene and realized the extent of the devastation from this collapse, and you can hear it in their voices and in the details that they provide when they're communicating about the extent of this collapse.

[23:05:05]

And in their request essentially for backup, for an all hands on deck effort. At one point one rescue worker compared it to the Twin Towers collapsing on September 11th. It's painful to hear, and you notice the recognition in their voice that it is an ugly scene and a difficult scene to process. Here's some of that dispatch audio now.

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UNKNOWN: We have a 13-story building with most of the building gone. This is going to be a high priority. We're going to need TRT. We are going to need a full assignment on this, everybody. Some people evacuating. They sound like they heard a bomb. A quarter of the building was left, we still have people standing up stairs that need to be evacuated. I see many people on the balcony. The building is gone. There's no elevators. This is nothing. I mean, it almost resembles the trade center.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: This is nothing, yeah. It's also important to keep in mind that as those words were being uttered these rescue workers have had almost no pause in their work since that moment and it's now been more than six days, Don.

LEMON: Yeah, it's true. That's what I wanted to ask you. We're almost what -- into day seven. You've said it's been six days since this condominium building collapsed. When you talk to the families, Boris, the rescuers, the officials, fatigue is starting to set in? Yes or no?

SANCHEZ: I think publicly at least among the officials and the rescue workers, they are not giving up this fight. They are committed to this. You heard the mayor of Miami-Dade County, Danielle Levine Cava, over and over say that this is still a search and rescue operation. I think perhaps privately they are feeling the effects of such an effort to try to save lives and then make a miracle happen.

And when there haven't been very many signs of life and when we've seen this process move excruciatingly slowly as it has to, they're essentially uncovering a set of remains every day or one or two per day. So that's very hard on them. And so you imagine that privately they're having a very difficult time processing this.

As far as the families go, I think we're starting to see a recognition that the odds of a miracle are starting to dwindle. It's been a very long time and there's the recognition that the survivability of something like this, this specific type of collapse, a pancake collapse, it just doesn't provide a lot of hope.

And again, there have been no signs of life. The instruments have not picked up on any sounds of breathing at this point. The dogs haven't alerted rescue workers to perhaps someone in a crevice or in an air pocket. So I think at some point this will become a recovery effort, and we're getting closer to that, but it is daunting no matter how you look at it, Don. LEMON: It certainly is. Boris Sanchez, thank you so much. I appreciate

it. You know, with each passing day it's becoming clear that there were plenty of warning signs about the building's physical condition. More tonight from CNN's senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin.

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DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): As more lawsuits are being filed across south Florida in the deadly collapse of the Champlain Tower South Condominium there is more evidence residents, engineers and the condo board knew their building was deteriorating. A letter emailed on April 9th, just three months ago, from the condominium association board president warned the observable damage such as in the garage has gotten significantly worse since the initial inspection.

That initial inspection in 2018 just three years ago had determined failed waterproofing was causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below the pool deck and entrance drive. It led to a major assessment, $15 million to repair years of damage.

ERICK DE MOURA, CHAMPLAIN TOWERS SOUTH RESIDENT: There were leaks in the garage. There was cracks on the balconies. So, yes, you need the money to fix it, you know. But unfortunately it was late.

GRIFFIN: Eric de Moura told CNN he received a letter in April outlining how the concrete deterioration is accelerating. The roof situation got much worse. So extensive roof repairs had to be incorporated. The letter was helping home owners to understand their share of the assessment anywhere from $80,000 for a one bedroom condo up to $336,000 for the penthouse unit. The bigger question remains why the maintenance on the building had been deferred for so long and how and why no one foresaw the potential for collapse almost unheard of in a modern U.S. building.

JOEL FIGUEROA VALLINES, STRUCTURAL ENGINEER, SEP ENGINEERS: It's extremely rare for a structure that's been standing for 40 years to all of a sudden collapse in this way, but I'm sure that forensically we structural engineers will figure out what happened, and we'll get to the bottom of it.

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GRIFFIN: Records show a Surfside building official had reviewed the 2018 report detailing major structural damage yet told residents that it appears the building is in very good shape. The records made public show no sense of urgency to launch repairs as the home owners association took three years to review inspections, hire engineers and begin assessments to start work. An attorney for the condo board cautions patience.

DONNA DIMAGGIO BERGER, ATTORNEY, CHAMPLIAN TOWER SOUTH CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION: There's other buildings out there with engineering reports as they near their 40-year certification that reveal more drastic spalling and pitting, dilapidation, rebar corrosion. We need to figure out what were all the factors that went into making this building fall.

GRIFFIN: Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Thanks to Drew Griffin. Now I want to bring in Alberto Aguero. He was vacationing with his wife and two children at his parent's condo inside the tower when it collapse, miraculously they got out safely. Albert, thank you so much. I'm glad that you're OK. I'm sure that you know, this is tough time for you even that you're OK. But when did you first realize something was wrong, and how did you manage to escape safely?

ALBERTO AGUERO, ESCAPED THE CHAMPLAIN TOWER COLLAPSE (on camera): Thank you, Don. So I was asleep when the third and largest sound occurred. What happened at the time it was just this thunderous sound. It felt like something was sucking us down but it was like a loud clap of thunder or an earthquake. I woke up immediately to the wall shaking, and my wife jumped out of bed to check on our two kids that were in the living room watching TV and made sure that they were OK.

At that point she called me out and said this is big, we're going to have to get out of here. So that's really the kind of way it went down. While we figured what the next steps were, the fire department was excellent. They were there probably within two minutes. And I saw their lights coming, and I went out onto the balcony, which in hindsight I don't know was the smartest decision. But I called down to them and asked them if we needed to evacuate.

And they said that to get out of there as soon as possible. So we grabbed minimal items that we could, our phones, our wallets, chargers, a couple bottles of water and we began to exit the apartment. And when we did that's when we realized that it was actually our building, in fact, that had suffered a tragedy, that it was really decimated. If I looked to the left half of an apartment was gone and you could see the night sky. You look forward where the elevators were and you just saw two holes.

LEMON: So it was your building, but you weren't in obviously, you weren't in the part that pancaked, that fell on top of it. You were in the part that is still standing, that we're looking at on our screen now. And you could look over your balcony over the part that had collapsed, correct?

AGUERO: That is correct. Because we were vacationing. We weren't necessarily sure were the exit route was or the staircase. So that's why we initially looked left because that was the larger portion of the building. I thought that the staircase could be in that direction.

LEMON: Yeah. There's an elderly neighbor that you helped carry to get to safety.

AGUERO: Yeah, so once we got into the staircase we went from the 11th floor to about the third floor where we ran into an elderly woman who needed assistance. She was struggling with a younger girl who was trying to help her. She asked my son and I, if we could carry her down the stairs. So we proceeded to walk her down to the first floor.

When we got to the first floor we realized that that had probably collapsed about three feet, and we were -- and it was beginning to flood, so we had to climb up some of the fallen concrete with her and work our way through, looking at the pictures now, it looks like a gate that caved in between two spots and go through some bushes with my entire family and making sure that she was OK.

LEMON: So, you know, this was your parent's condo. They saw this April letter warning damage to the building had gotten significantly worse since the 2018 inspection. It talked about concrete deterioration accelerating. How does your family understand the extent of the damage? Did they talk to you about it at all?

AGUERO: So my parents said that outside of that letter there was never anything really communicated. We lived here in New Jersey. My parents do as well, so it was a vacation home until they could retire down there.

[23:15:00]

What happened was they couldn't go to the meeting so they really did not get a full sense of what was discussed in those meetings. They received a letter. They knew that they had an assessment to go through. The understanding at the time at least for our family was that the assessment was mostly aesthetic.

It wasn't so much about the repairs that were needed by the building but rather keeping up with the new construction that had happened next door and some of the newer buildings in the area and making sure that the property value did not lag, Don.

LEMON: And now this. Alberto Aguero, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm glad your family is safe. Regards to your entire family as well. Thank you so much.

AGUERO: Thank you, Don, and regards to all those families that are still hoping for a miracle.

LEMON: Amen. So, we've got a lot more to come on this. It was apparently no secret HANKS: the building was deteriorating and there are other buildings with these same problems.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALAN COMINSKY, MIAMI-DADE FIRE CHIEF: We see when that building collapsed almost in the footprint of where that building stood, talking about 12 stories (inaudible). All within that same footprint. So I'm just trying to emphasize the magnitude of what we're encountering, what we're seeing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[23:20:00] LEMON: Investigators pouring over evidence that may help them learn

what contributed to the condo collapse in Surfside. A letter to residents just two months before the disaster shedding new light on the deteriorating condition of that building. The condo board's president writing in a letter that some damage that was discovered in a 2018 report had gotten significantly worse.

So let's talk now with Kobi Karp an architect who specializes in high rise residential buildings, and he's based in Miami. Kobi, thank you. We appreciate you joining us. Thanks in advance for your expertise. Let's talk about this letter from April talking about the concrete deterioration accelerating, damage to the garage, getting significantly worse in the 2018 report which described major structural damage. When you look at all of this in totality is there anything that stands out to you?

KOBI KARP, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL KOBI KARP ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN (on camera): Number one, thank you very much for having me here tonight. There is something that is quite interesting. And even though I was not involved in the design of this building and I was not involved in any of the construction, this building is rather young.

And when you look at the report, what stands out is really the comments made by the engineer specifically where he is stating that the condition of the waterproofing in the garage. He's also stating where else in the building can this waterproofing issue be.

I took that as a highlight as potentially where there are additional issues in the building and where it is that potentially there could be a failure of where the horizontal slab can leave the vertical (inaudible) or the vertical column. The homeowners association, they received this report.

They are just -- I don't -- all of home owners association really are going to be revamped these days because you need to have an engineer in-House and an engineer on the team that will make you aware of the potential ramifications and issues if you do not maintain and take care of these liabilities.

LEMON: Kobi, CNN got access to the Champlain Towers north condo identical to the south tower but finished one year later. There was no signs of cracking, no expose rebar, no standing water. They were focused on maintenance. With two identical buildings so close together but one with, you know, way more structural problems, does it make it more clear what happened here?

KARP: That's a very good point. I think at the end of the day these buildings are just like us. If we take care of them they will be sustainable and resilient. If we do not take care of them, the exponential deterioration that occurs in these buildings especially on the ocean front with the opportunity for the salt to penetrate the waterproofing and into the concrete and onto the steel is what makes all the difference in the world. And I do see it as a major issue that the continued lack of deferred maintenance in this situation really made the difference between the two buildings. LEMON: So, listen, I had a guest on. The guest talked to me about the

condo board and this is his estimation, what he is saying, here his perspective that, you know, that they weren't organize, and he said there was often fighting and you know, the management turnover -- or the board would turn over a lot. You said that these condo boards don't typically have architects or engineers on them. Does that need to change, or does there need to be, you know, more state oversight with that?

KARP: I think you are correct. I think it has to be changed. I think that you need to have state oversight with qualified third party engineers who do work for the HOA who have fiduciary relationship and they're able to work in an open manner for the home owners association.

And really if you will take away what you just mentioned which is the in-fighting or the negotiations that we should spend the money or not spend the money to repair these items in their report. Because whenever you start the restoration of a building as such you find a lot of hidden conditions, and it is always more than what originally described.

[23:25:11]

It just continuously, it opens up the cancer within the building. But what I'm seeing now from the mayor, from the people involved in the inspection in the building departments and also in engineers, I see them looking into a new way as we did when we first turned the page after hurricane Andrew. We completely revamped the code of the South Florida building code where we became the forefront -- we became on the cutting edge.

I do believe that this sort of an inspection where we do have the technology today whether it's infrared or x-ray or core drilling and getting the salinity in the concrete, we are able to see behind the wall, behind the concrete and into the ground as well. We're able to see into the soil and see the condition of our piles.

LEMON: Kobi Karp, thank you. I appreciate you, sir.

KARP: Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you.

LEMON: Thank you. New York City's board of elections rescinding their latest mayoral results. Yep. What's going on? Next.

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[23:30:00]

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LEMON: OK, this is something else. The New York City Board of Elections throwing the mayoral primary into chaos tonight. Follow me -- follow along with me. So earlier today, the board released new numbers that suggested that Eric Adams' lead over Kathryn Garcia had narrowed, but then everything blew up. First, the board took the results down and tweeted that there was a discrepancy in that report and just within the last hour explaining it has been determined that ballot images used for testing were not clear from the election management system.

When the cast vote records were extracted from the first poll of rank choice voting results, it included both test and election night results producing approximately 135 additional records.

So, just what is going on? How the heck could this happen, CNN political commentator and host of the podcast "You Decide" Errol Louis? OK, Errol, you decide, but we're not sure what the people decided in New York City tonight because of this error. OK, so this is a twist. What is going on here? Can you explain to us, and how could this sort of incompetence happen with the Board of Elections?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: In the simplest terms, rank choice voting, which is also called instant runoff balloting where you list not just the candidate that you want but you pick in order your top five choices, this one, that one, one, two, three, four, five, we've never had that before.

No jurisdiction in America of the size of New York City has ever done this. The state of Maine does it, San Francisco does it, and Oakland does it, really small places compared to the millions of registered voters in New York City.

So this was all kind of a bit of an experiment. The experiment went a little bit sideways today. What happened was they were supposed to release what they thought were about 800,000 or so of the early voting ballots as well as those who actually voted on primary day.

We're still waiting on absentee ballots, but they want to give us an early look at it. And they put the numbers out, and we spent hours on the air analyzing the numbers and looking at it and deciding that there was a closing of the gap between the leading candidate and the next leading candidate.

And then somebody pointed out -- in fact, it was Eric Adams himself. He said, well -- his campaign pointed out that there were 135,000 extra votes there, that there were just more numbers that were being kicked around than we had been told about.

It took a couple of hours, but the board of elections acknowledged the very mistake that you just described, that they'd had some test ballots in their system, they've forgotten to clear them out, and so, you know, several hours of my life that I'll never get back --

(LAUGHTER)

LOUIS: We spent analyzing fake numbers, and we're going to have to do it all over again with the real data tomorrow.

LEMON: OK. Then I think you answered the next. But just to be plain here, where does the race stand now? Are we back to the square one entirely? What do we have? They've done like 11 different -- 11 different results. You know, rank choice one, rank choice two, and rank choice three. It gotten all the way to 11, I believe. So where do we --

LOUIS: Yes, 11 rounds.

LEMON: Where do we stand now?

LOUIS: We go through it all over again. It's a software process. It's relatively easy to do once you have the right data but, as they say, garbage in, garbage out. They gave us results that had some garbage in it. They're going to have to take the garbage out. We'll do it again.

And keep in mind it is not just from mayor. I mean, all of the municipal offices in New York City are turning over and most of them were done according to the system. So, there are races for controller, there are races for our Borough presidents, there are races for our 51-member city council.

(LAUGHTER)

LOUIS: All of that data has got to be sort of calculated using real data, not the junk that we were given today.

LEMON: This is a "you know what" show wrapped in a conundrum, wrapped in a -- I'm channelling my colleague Dana Bash here.

[23:35:00]

LEMON: So, OK, Eric Adams is out with this statement now, Errol, calling it unfortunate. Maya Wiley blasting this as a result of generations of failure that have gone unaddressed. Of course, this is coming at a time when confidence in the integrity of the vote, as you know, we have been -- you've been reporting on it, constantly under assault. Does this further hurt that confidence?

LOUIS: It never helps to have these kinds of screw ups. There is no malice here. There is no attempt to steal an election. No responsible person would allege that based on these facts.

This was -- you know, it doesn't even count as an attempt to distort the outcome because the state was so blatant and so obvious and so quickly corrected.

If anything, I would say, Don, one small sliver of hope in all of this mess is that by releasing preliminary results because they were not legally required to do this. But by releasing preliminary results, we all got to look at it and it was in the course of doing it.

I was doing it on live television on Spectrum News New York One. Candidates were direct messaging me. Their campaign managers were saying, wait a minute, you're getting some of this wrong, and we had a top election attorney on with us looking at all of the stuff.

And it was really through that openness and the transparency that we brought the public brought to the Board of Elections attention the fact that they had screwed up. So, you know, we are only humans. If we had computers running our election systems, I'm sure everything would go a lot more smoothly. But there are humans involved here and human screw up. I think that is what happened here.

LEMON: I'm only human. We need a little levity. I mean, jeez, here we go again. We can't catch a break, Errol. All right, well, we will know sooner or later. Errol will be reporting it. Errol, thank you. Good to see you.

LOUIS: You got it.

LEMON (on camera): Thanks a lot. A warning coming from former President Barack Obama. Find out why he is saying this, next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That worries me, and I think we should all be worried.

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[23:40:00]

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LEMON (on camera): So former President Barack Obama worried about the speed of misinformation spreading across the U.S. He says lies like the ones told by Republicans in the lead up to January 6 should worry everyone. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: But to see not only a riot in the Capitol around what historically had been a routine process of certifying an election, but to know that one of our two major political parties, a strong majority of people in those parties actually believed that -- in a falsehood about those election results, the degree to which misinformation is now disseminated at warp speed in coordinated ways that we haven't seen before, and that the guardrails I thought were in place around many of our democratic institutions, really depend on the two parties agreeing to those ground rules and those guardrails and that one of them right now doesn't seem as committed to them as in previous generations, that worries me, and I think we should all be worried.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON (on camera): Does he have a point? Let's discuss now with senior editor from The Atlantic, Adam Serwer. His new book is "The Cruelty is the Point, the Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America." The book is out now.

Adam, I'm so glad you're here. Good to see you. So the former president's concerns are totally valid, but at this point, how do you get a handle on misinformation and stop another big lie because it looks to be metastasizing?

ADAM SERWER, SENIOR EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC: Look, I think on some level, the responsibility here lies with the elites in the Republican Party and the conservative media. There's no way -- you know, they're simply not going to believe The New York Times or Barack Obama when he says the election was fair.

And we have a case study for this. I mean, it's not as though there weren't some liberals in 2016 arguing the Electoral College should refuse to vote for Donald Trump or trying to figure out various ways to prevent him from taking office because they felt he was illegitimately elected as a result of, you know, Russian interference in the election.

But the leaders at the top of the Democratic Party refused to engage in that. They refused to do it. As a result, the transition happened peacefully. Barack Obama was there. Donald Trump, of course, was not even present for the hand-off of power this time around, which is probably for the best given that he incited an attack on the Capitol itself.

But this is honestly -- it is the responsibility of the Republican elites to ensure that, you know, they adhere to the rules of democracy, which means when you lose an election, you allow the other party to take power.

And unfortunately, they've convinced themselves both as a matter of political -- both as a party and within the conservative media, they've convinced themselves that it's not really possible for the Democratic Party to win power legitimacy.

And so even if they did get more votes, those votes come from people who aren't really American anyway, and so the victory shouldn't actually count.

[23:45:02]

LEMON: Mm-hmm. Your book is called "The Cruelty is the Point." It takes a hard look at the former president's policy. But you say that cruelty politics predates Trump. What do you mean? Give me some examples of them.

SERWER: You can look at the aftermath of reconstruction when the Democratic Party is trying to forge a white majority so that it can disenfranchise Black men who got to vote during reconstruction.

You can look at the nativist politics of the early 20th century when nativists were trying very hard to exclude not only Africans and Asians from coming to the United States but also eastern and southern Europeans, particularly Jews and Italians.

You know, the book is -- obviously, cruelty is an individual problem, but it's a part of human nature. But the book is focused on cruelty as a part of politics, specifically the way that it is used to demonize particular groups so that you can justify denying people their basic rights under the Constitution or exclude them from the political process. I think that's part of what we're seeing here. I mean, in 2020, Donald Trump said, you know, we can't allow Detroit and Philadelphia to decide an election.

Now, he wasn't able to implement that idea, but that's very similar to what, you know, the former confederates were saying in the south during reconstruction, which is that Black people could not legitimately participate in policy and so they shouldn't be allowed to participate because they are -- it is an attack on democracy for them to have a say in the way that our government works.

LEMON: Well, it's interesting. I think it's good that your book teaches a history of this country, especially as it relates to reconstruction and what happened after reconstruction when Black people specifically started to gain political and economic power and how that was taken away from them or they tried to take it away from them through laws that they established. In many ways, what they're doing now, similar to then. Now, they're codifying the racism.

Thank you, sir. I can't wait to read the book, Adam. I appreciate you joining us.

SERWER: Thank you for having me.

LEMON: The book again is called "The Cruelty is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America" and it's by Adam Serwer. It sounds very interesting. I can't wait to read it. You should all go out and buy it and read it as well.

You know, the historic and dangerous heat wave in the Pacific Northwest having a devastating impact on Canada's British Columbia province just to the north. The province officials say that more than 230 people died in a four-day period beginning Friday when temperatures began soaring through yesterday.

Now, the chief coroner says that the province normally records about 130 deaths in a four-day period, and she expects the heat wave to be a major contributing factor to this spike in deaths when all the data is in.

So, up next, two Black people fatally gunned down in a sleepily suburb, and now investigators are trying -- or questioning really if the killing was racially-motivated. Stay with us.

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[23:50:00]

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LEMON (on camera): Tonight, law enforcement officials in Massachusetts grappling with a double shooting they're investigating as a hate crime. They say the victims were executed. The shooter is walking by several people who were not Black but killing a Black retired state trooper and a Black military veteran. CNN's Brynn Gingras has the story. (BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tonight, a possibly racially-motivated rampage in a Boston suburb is still puzzling police. Authorities want to know what led 28-year-old Nathan Allen to gun down two Black people after stealing a box truck over the weekend and crashing it into a house and car.

UNKNOWN: There are living people who interacted with this individual, who are alive to live another day, and none of those people were Black.

GINGRAS (voice-over): Many people came to Allen's aid after the crash.

UNKNOWN: He could have killed us. We're right here.

GINGRAS (voice-over): But the district attorney says Allen got out of the truck armed with two guns, avoided the white bystanders, and then -- quote -- "executed two Black people," shooting David Green four times in the head, three times in the torso, and Ramona Cooper three times in the back.

UNKNOWN: I am confident saying that there was hate in this man's heart.

GINGRAS (voice-over): The investigation is also uncovering disturbing personal writings in which Allen describes white people as --quote -- "apex predators" and he drew swastikas, according to the district attorney.

UNKNOWN: This person had some very disturbing beliefs, white supremacist beliefs, regarding the Jewish -- members of our Jewish population as well as Black individuals.

GINGRAS (voice-over): The findings run counter to what authorities have learned about Allen's background.

Recent social media posts show him shooting fake guns in a video game and a real gun at a firing range last year. But authorities say he has no criminal history. The guns he used in the crime were obtained legally. Allen was a college graduate who earned his PhD, had a job, and recently got married.

A column in The Boston Globe last year featured Allen and his soon-to- be bride's romantic love story. His victims are both members of service. Sixty-year-old Cooper was an Air Force veteran and a grandmother.

[23:54:59]

GINGRAS (voice-over): Her son telling CNN he's stunned this level of hate still exists.

GARY COOPER, JR., RAMONA COOPER'S SON: It's just sad people still think like that today.

GINGRAS (voice-over): Green recently retired from a 36-year career in law enforcement, most recently serving with the Massachusetts State Police.

ARIA GREEN, BROTHER OF DAVID GREEN: He heard there was an accident. He went to investigate and see if he can help, which is something he would readily do.

GINGRAS (on camera): Allen was killed in a shootout with police. We reached out to Allen's family but we didn't hear back. The town is now launching a multilayer approach to calm the fears of the community, including going door to door to offer counselling services and holding a vigil for those two victims later this week. Don?

(END VIDEO TAPE)

LEMON (on camera): Brynn, thank you so much. And thank you for watching, everyone. Our coverage continues.

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