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Israeli Rivals Strike Deal Which Could Oust Netanyahu; White House to Announce Global Vaccine Distribution Efforts; Seven EU Nations Issuing Digital Covid Travel Certificates; Officials: About 10,000 Volunteers Have Withdrawn for Olympic Games; Some State GOP Lawmakers Want to Replicate Arizona "Audit". Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired June 03, 2021 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: Live from CNN world headquarters in Atlanta, welcome to all of you watching us here in the United States, Canada and around the world, I'm Kim Brunhuber.

Ahead on CNN NEWSROOM, a deal that could dramatically change Israel's political future. Opposition leaders agree to form a coalition government paving the way for Benjamin Netanyahu's exit.

Plus, it's what much of the world has been waiting for, Joe Biden will announce his plan to share America's vaccine supply.

And the winningest coach in men's college basketball says he will soon end his legendary coaching career.

All right, we begin with a last minute deal that could pave the way for a new era in Israeli politics. With just 38 minutes before midnight deadline rival parties agreed on a unity government without Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Parliament still needs to approve it and Netanyahu is expected to try to scuttle the fragile coalition. But if it survives, his record setting 12-year run as Prime Minister would come to an end. Well, that job would fall first to religious nationalist Naftali Bennett, seen here on the left. After two years centrist Yair Lapid would -- on the right there -- he would take over.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NAFTALI BENNETT, YAMINA PARTY LEADER (through translator): Mr. President, we will do together whatever is good for Israel and we will see you at the swearing in ceremony. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: The potential government is a Rubik's cube of eight political parties with little common ground and a razor thin margin in the Knesset. For the first time in the country's history an Arab- Israeli party would be part of a coalition government.

All right let's go live to Jerusalem and journalist Elliott Gotkine. Elliott, obviously, this isn't over yet but take us through the reaction so far and then guide us through the next steps.

ELLIOTT GOTKINE, JOURNALIST: Well, the reactions on the left or in the center, if you like, or the anti-Netanyahu reaction, Kim, has been one of unbridled joy and celebration that this coalition government is one step closer to being formed and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is one step closer to being out of office for the first time in 12 years. That said of course there are those who support Netanyahu and those on the right who are distraught and really angry that what they see as other right wing parties are treacherously stabbing them in the back and going into government with parties that they deride as leftist.

Indeed we heard from the spokesman for the Likud Party, one Miki Zohar tweeting out this morning.

The left is celebrating, but this is a very sad day for the state of Israel. Saying that Bennett, Saar -- this is the leader of the right- wing New Hope Party -- and Shaked, Naftali Bennett's number two, Ayelet Shaked, should be ashamed.

I should also say, as you pointed out, that this is unprecedented not just because of the mind-boggling breadth of this coalition, this rainbow coalition that spans left, center, right but it also includes for the first time a party representing Arab citizens of Israel in the form of the Raam Party, and the leader of that party, Mansour Abbas, spoke shortly after putting pen to paper to join this coalition in waiting, explaining why he had done it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANSOUR ABBAS, UNITED ARAB LIST RAAM PARTY LEADER (through translator): We reached a critical massive agreements on issues that will serve the interests of Arab society and provide solutions to urgent problems Arab society faces in various fields.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOTKINE: As we know, Netanyahu is down but he is not out just yet there. There needs to be a vote of confidence in the Knesset or Parliament. Now earlier today, the coalition is waiting, let's call it, did send a letter to the speaker demanding a vote on replacing him with another speaker who could speed up the convening of the Knesset to vote on this new coalition.

Now originally they had 61 signatures, that's all the members of the coalition, but then one member of the right-wing Yamina Party from Naftali Bennett's party then revoked his signature. Which according to a spokesman of the Knesset means, we are in a gray area now, but it seems that they do not have the votes to change the speaker which means that this will go on for the maximum amount of time.

[04:05:00]

Possibly we will get a vote on the coalition around about June 14th, so in about 12 days' time. And everyone will be on tender hooks between now and then from the center and left kind of hoping this government can go forward. And from Netanyahu's camp doing its level best to pick off people to try to undermine this coalition before it even comes into being -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: All right, Elliott Gotkine in Jerusalem, thanks so much.

Joining me now from London, Daniel Levy is the president of the U.S. Middle East Project and from Tel Aviv, Barak Ravid, a contributor for Axios. Thanks so much both of you for joining us. I just want to start with a general caveat here for our discussion so I don't have to keep repeating it. This isn't official of course, it's not a done deal yet so I want to acknowledge that off the top. But this coalition, Daniel, is it workable? I mean, one wonders how long it could possibly last.

DANIEL LEVY, PRESIDENT, U.S. MIDDLE EAST PROJECT: Is that for me, Kim?

BRUNHUBER: Daniel, yes. Yes, for you.

LEVY: Well, it has to be sworn in -- you've already mentioned that caveat and we have parked that caveat. What holds the coalition together, it's a hybrid coalition, eight parties as you've acknowledged is keeping Netanyahu out of power. So in a bizarre way the longer Netanyahu retains his leadership of the Likud -- and that is something that will have to be put to the test once he is out of the Prime Minister's office -- the longer he retains that leadership the more that glue still exists to hold this hybrid coalition together.

If Netanyahu were to vacate that position, then the majority in the Parliament, which is a right-wing majority, which doesn't need the centrist, centrist-left parties, that majority is more likely to be realized and this coalition could fall apart. Having said that, Netanyahu will be a fierce leader of the opposition. This isn't Donald Trump who only potentially has another chance in four years. Netanyahu will be there leading the opposition, trying to bring down this government at every moment, playing in those cracks and fissures and tensions that exist in this coalition.

So in many respects it will be either the failure or success of Netanyahu. I don't think this will be a long lived government and you will see Bennett, who is a man of the hard right, he is more extreme than Netanyahu but less savvy and less politically experienced, he will have to learn very quickly on the job.

BRUNHUBER: Well, interesting. So given all of that then, Barack, how would this coalition actually govern with so many big issues to tackle like passing a budget, or is this just, you know, as we might suspect, a short-term caretaker government that won't achieve much?

BARAK RAVID, CONTRIBUTOR, AXIOS: Well, Kim, first, as you said at the beginning, I still don't see this coalition really being sworn in. I'm very, very cautious about talking about what the government will do because it will be very hard for them to actually swear this government in.

But let's say they did it. In the last two and a half years Israel has been in a political crisis, I think the deepest political crisis since its founding. The country is basically in paralysis for the last two and a half years. You spoke about the budget. We don't have a budget for three years. Can you imagine such a situation anywhere else in the world? So just passing a budget, OK, this will be the very basic thing will be sort of, you know, back to normalcy, OK?

I will give you another example. Many of the main government positions in this country are not occupied because Netanyahu refused to appoint people in those positions because of political considerations. For example, the state prosecutor, OK, because of Netanyahu's legal proceeding and his trial, and there are many other examples for it.

So basically if this government is formed and will basically just do the basic stuff that the government needs to do just to run the country on the day to day basis, this will already be a huge improvement to the total dysfunction this country went through in the last two and a half years.

BRUNHUBER: Can I just follow up with you there. You seem very skeptical that this will get sworn in. Why particularly are you so skeptical?

RAVID: Because I think that 12 days are eternity in Israeli politics, especially when you have Netanyahu trying in every way to sabotage this government.

[04:10:00]

We've seen that already this morning there's one member of Bennett's party that is actually thinking about defecting to the other side and voting against the government. This thing could derail everything. So I think that it will be very -- I'm not saying that it's impossible, OK? Yesterday I spoke to Becky Anderson, I told her 30 percent chance. I think that it is still more or less that, 30 percent, 35 percent chance. So it's not nothing, but it will still be very hard to get through this period without Netanyahu being able to get some defectors from the other side.

BRUNHUBER: Interesting. Daniel, I want to end with you there. So if it does come to fruition here, we would have an Arab party involved in a coalition here, we saw that striking picture of Mansour Abbas signing the agreement. The conventional wisdom was that the recent violence between Palestinians and Israel meant that a coalition between an Arab Israeli party and Jewish nationalist party was less likely. So what changed here and what significance does this have?

LEVY: It is significant. After all these years of Israel's existence -- and this is staggering -- never has a party representing the 20 percent of the citizens who are Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel, never such a party have been part of a coalition. It breaks that taboo. That's significant for the future. Of course the legitimacy of those parties, of that public, should never have been in question, unfortunately it is and they have faced structural discrimination, but -- and there is a significant but here -- they will not take a government ministerial position, they will be in the coalition but not in the cabinet. This is a party that actually broke away from the unified list

representing that community in order to be more amenable to a right- wing coalition and given that this government will not improve the situation of the Palestinians writ large, those under occupation denied basic freedoms and rights by Israel. It will be difficult to maintain them in government given everything we know about Bennett and -- significant for the future but very delicate, skating on thin ice.

BRUNHUBER: All right. Well, we'll have to leave it there, as you said, still an eternity left in Israeli politics so we will see if this does happen. Thank you so much for your analysis, Daniel Levy and Barak Ravid, thank you so much for joining us, appreciate it.

Help could soon be on the way for countries struggling to get COVID vaccines. After months of deliberation President Joe Biden is expected to soon announce how the U.S. will distribute 80 million excess COVID vaccine doses worldwide. CNN's Kaitlan Collins has a closer look at how the administration is approaching the distribution process.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, President Biden has now finalized his plan to send millions of coronavirus vaccine doses worldwide and that plan could be announced as soon as Thursday, possibly Friday, in the United States. And that comes on the heels of the Secretary of State Tony Blinken In Costa Rica earlier saying that that plan had been finalized, they were preparing to distribute about 80 million doses of the vaccine worldwide.

Though, when those doses are going to be ready and where they are going still remains to be seen. What we do know is that there have been this intensive months' long efforts behind the scenes where officials have deliberated over how they should handle this. And of course, hose deliberations have gone on as you have seen numerous U.S. allies push the U.S. on when they are going to distribute these vaccines given that you've seen so many countries struggle to ramp up their vaccinations.

What we're told has happened behind the scenes are two things, one a discussion on whether the U.S. should unilaterally decide who is going these vaccines or if they should work in conjunction with COVAX, of course that the international vaccine effort to make those decisions. It's not clear where they've landed if they're doing one or the other or a combination of both, but that remains to be seen when the announcement does actually happen.

And the other thing that the White House has been deliberating is the massive operational undertaking this this is going to be. Because of course the logistics here are enormous when it comes to coordinating this with other countries, having these safety reviews before these doses actually go out, making sure the country has the public health infrastructure to actually conduct this. And so all of that has factored into this announcement that we are expecting to get in the coming days about what this is going to look like.

And it's also going to be a long complicated process where we don't imagine they'll just start with this right away with just these doses. They do plan to do more with other doses in the future.

[04:15:00]

What those doses are remains to be seen, though, because we know those AstraZeneca doses the 60 million that President Biden has pledged to get out by July 4th have not finished that safety review check yet. So those are not expected to be distributed in the near future.

Kaitlan Collins, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: President Biden has declared June a national month of action with hopes of getting at least one COVID shot into the arms of 70 percent of adults by June 4th. He announced a variety of new incentives to encourage vaccinations while emphasizing that getting a vaccine isn't a political move.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Getting the vaccine is not a partisan act. The science was done under Democratic and Republican administrations. As a matter of fact, the first vaccines were authorized under a Republican president and widely developed by a Democratic president -- deployed by a Democratic president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Vaccination rates have been declining nationwide. That number took another hit this past week with doses given at less than a third of the pace as the peak period in mid-April, but the CDC says an average of 615,000 people became fully vaccinated each day last week. Still just over half of Americans have received at least one vaccine dose. Dr. Anthony Fauci says the president's July 4th goal is realistic if people don't get complacent.

All right. To the EU now where seven countries are issuing COVID-19 certificates for travel within the bloc. The European Commission says Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Croatia and Poland are the ones now handing out these digital certificates. The system will be fully enforced for all member states from July 1st. The commission also says international visitors including those from the U.S. will have to get approved by the country they are trying to get to.

The COVID crisis in Brazil is getting worse and the country could soon face a potential third wave of the virus. More than 95,000 new infections were reported Wednesday, the country's second highest daily case count since the pandemic began.

You hear them there, protests erupted Wednesday during President Jair Bolsonaro's national address. Brazilians fed up with his handling of the pandemic could be heard chanting, "Out with Bolsonaro" and "Bolsonaro Genocide." Despite the recent surge Bolsonaro has continued to reject social distancing measures and is insisting on hosting the upcoming Copa America soccer tournament. The president of Tokyo's Olympic Organizing Committee says it's

impossible to postpone the games again. He says the monumental task of moving the games isn't something that can be easily repeated. Former Olympics forecaster Bob Costas told CNN he doesn't expect the games to be postponed even though he thinks they should be. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB COSTAS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think the best course of action would be to postpone it, not cancel it, postpone it to 2022, but that may have led some people to infer that I think that's a possibility. It's not. The IOC holds the hammer here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Now, this comes as thousands of volunteers have quit ahead of the Olympics. Officials say a total of around 10,000 volunteers have withdrawn but they don't expect their exit to affect the games. CNN's Blake Essig joins me with more from Tokyo. Blake, defiance amidst defections. What's the latest?

BLAKE ESSIG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well Kim, Olympic officials say that the volunteers have been quitting for months and it started back in February, around the time that former Tokyo 2020 President Yoshiro Mori resigned after making sexist comments about women. But according to a volunteer I spoke with it's the health and safety concerns that are primarily the reason behind volunteers dropping out.

While losing 10,000 volunteers is significant, Japanese government officials maintain that because of the COVID-19 countermeasures already put in place which include banning foreign spectators from attending, that the loss of these 10,000 volunteers won't impact the games. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATSUNOBU KATO, JAPANESE CHIEF CABINET SECRETARY (through translator): The Tokyo 2020 CEO said that around 10,000 out of the roughly 80,000 Olympic volunteers declined to take part in the games, but since the games have been simplified and there are volunteers who can register both for the Olympics and the Paralympics, there will be no particular problem in operating the games.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ESSIG (on camera): Volunteers aren't the only Olympic participants dropping out. Some doctors scheduled to be in charge of medical services at competition venues are also withdrawing. These doctors were to be tasked with the supervision of medical staff treating both athletes and spectators. Now with 50 days to go before the games are set to begin, Olympic organizers are currently in the process of finding replacements.

[04:20:00]

Now despite scrambling to fill the empty slots, Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto told "Nikon" sports newspaper just yesterday that it's impossible to postpone the games again. Although the Olympics seem to be moving ahead, health and safety remains a big concern of the Japanese public and medical professionals -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: All right, thanks so much. Blake Essig in Tokyo.

Just ahead, the big lie is somehow getting bigger with Republicans doing so-called audits of an election that's been over for months. Donald Trump reportedly believes he could be reinstated as president. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRUNHUBER: The meat processing company hit with a ransomware attack says all of its U.S. facilities will be back up and running today but there's no word on whether JBS paid a ransom. The cyber breach is the latest by a criminal organization believed to be based in Russia and the White House says President Biden will bring up the attacks when he meets with the Russian president later this month.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[04:25:00]

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This will certainly be a topic of discussion that harboring criminal entities that are intending to do harm, that are doing harm to the critical infrastructure in the United States is not acceptable. We're not going to stand by that. We will raise that. And we are not going to take options off the table.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: The 2020 presidential election is long over, of course, but many of Donald Trump's die hard supporters still refuse to accept that he lost. President Biden has denounced Republican-led efforts in a number of states to make voting more difficult calling it an assault on democracy. Well now the U.S. Supreme Court with a 6 to 3 conservative majority is prepared to take up another challenge to the landmark Voting Rights Act that could potentially further limit voter access to the polls.

The "Washington Post" reports that Trump has become obsessed with Republican efforts to undermine last year's election and touting Trump's big lie that the election was stolen has turned into a litmus test for any Republican seeking his endorsement.

A CNN poll conducted in late April found that 70 percent of Republicans say they still don't believe Joe Biden won the election. And according to "The New York Times" reporter Maggie Haberman, Donald Trump himself believes he'll somehow be reinstated in August. The so- called audit of ballots in Arizona is unlikely to change anything, yet some Republican lawmakers around the country want to do the same thing in their own states. CNN's Kyung Lah has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Why are we running across the Arizona's State Legislature grounds?

LAH: Senator --

LAH (voice over): I'm trying to talk to these Pennsylvania state lawmakers who avoided us and local reporters all day.

This is why they're in Phoenix, three Republican Pennsylvania lawmakers are touring the so-called audit of Maricopa County's 2020 election, a partisan effort led by the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate. Why would these Pennsylvanians care about what's happening in Arizona? Ryan Macias, one of the nonpartisan observers for Arizona Secretary of State believes it's to spread the big lie.

RYAN MACIAS, ELECTION SECURITY EXPERT: They are probably going to be the entities that are behind a push to continue to sow doubt in Pennsylvania and to continue to fundraise around this event.

LAH (voice over): The most prominent of the Pennsylvania lawmakers, Republican State Senator, Doug Mastriano, walking here on the floor and pictured here at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, with former Pennsylvania State Representative Rick Saccone.

Mastriano reportedly helped organize a bus tour for Donald Trump supporters to travel from Pennsylvania to Washington to attend Trump's rally protesting the election results. As rioters stormed the Capitol, Mastriano says he had already left the grounds, saying in a statement that he was not involved in any violence and peacefully followed Capitol Police orders to not cross any police lines.

But Mastriano has been supportive of bogus election fraud claims. Here he is just weeks after the November election, with then Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who joined lawmakers in Pennsylvania. Mastriano spoke at that State Senate election hearing that amplified baseless conspiracies of election fraud.

DOUG MASTRIANO (R), PENNSYLVANIA STATE SENATE: We are here today to try to find out what the heck happened in the election.

LAH (voice over): What happened?

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hello, Pittsburgh.

LAH (voice over): Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes. There was no widespread fraud found in Pennsylvania and nearly all of Trumps lawsuits failed in the state.

MACIAS: What is happening at the Coliseum is not an audit, it is not transparent. It does not conform with election laws. It does not conform with elections process and is not conducted by elections officials.

LAH (voice over): For weeks, Ryan Macias, an expert in election technology, has been monitoring this exercise. About half of the nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in 2020 have been spun, examined and photographed by a little known company called Cyber Ninjas, despite two audits conducted by the county showing no widespread election fraud.

MACIAS: The more people that see that they can benefit from this, the more likely that this is going to continue to grab a stronghold across our country.

LAH: So you don't think Pennsylvania is the end then potentially?

MACIAS: Definitely not.

LAH: One of the Pennsylvania Senators did eventually speak with a print reporter who was representing Arizona's broadcast pool and the Senator said that he was looking forward to bringing this type of Arizona style audit to Pennsylvania.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Phoenix.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: "The New York Times" says the Justice Department under the Trump administration secretly seized the phone records of four of its reporters. The paper says the current White House notified them that four months' worth of records were seized in 2017. The Justice Department says the seizure was part of an investigation into a leak of classified information but the reporters themselves weren't being investigated.

Benjamin Netanyahu's political rivals have dealt him a stunning blow. We will explain why the Israeli Prime Minister's days in office may be numbered.