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Interview with Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) about Impeachment Trial and Filibuster Rule; National Guard Back Inside U.S. Capitol After Being Moved to Parking Garage; Why Trump's Corrupt Pardon Spree Still Matters; Extremists May Not Go Away After Trump. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired January 22, 2021 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:31:59]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, new Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is asking that the Senate impeachment trial not begin for another two weeks.

How is that being received on the Democratic side?

Joining me now is the new Democratic senator from California, Alex Padilla.

Senator, thank you so much for being with us. Congratulations, welcome to the U.S. Senate. The honeymoon is over. I'm jumping right into business here. So Mitch McConnell is saying, he wants to wait until the middle of February for the impeachment trial. How do you feel about that?

SEN. ALEX PADILLA (D-CA): Justice delayed is justice denied. It's time to get on with the business of the people, both in terms of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We must protect public health, but we must defend our democracy without delay, and that means holding Donald Trump accountable.

BERMAN: That means you do not support waiting two weeks to begin the trial?

PADILLA: Look, I think sooner rather than later. What I'm fearful of, frankly, is that this is simply a delay tactic. In two weeks, then what? It's time to move on with the people's business.

BERMAN: One of the things that's holding up an agreement on power sharing in the U.S. Senate is that McConnell wants some kind of agreement that Democrats won't try to do away with the filibuster. Turns out you don't have the votes to do away with it anyway, but McConnell wants it in writing. Your view?

PADILLA: Yes. What's he afraid of? That members of his own caucus may break and actually agree with Democrats on a bipartisan basis, that it's time to modernize the rules of the Senate? Come on, the voters have spoken. Yes, it's a 50-50 majority right now with Vice President Harris casting a lot of deciding votes in the months and couple of years ahead. So it's time to start bringing items to the floor and let the debate begin.

BERMAN: Do you feel as if the filibuster is worth preserving?

PADILLA: Look, I appreciate what the filibuster has represented in terms of history, but if we look at the last few years and what the practical impact of the filibuster has been, we surpassed the first year of the first case of COVID-19 and 400,000 people who have died. It's the rules of the Senate that have been in part keeping the Senate from acting more aggressively in terms of response. And that's just one issue.

There's been issue after issue that we haven't been able to make progress on over the years, that, you know, the filibuster has stood in the way of. So the time to act is now on COVID, on expanding access to health care, climate change, commonsense gun safety reform, criminal justice reform, and so much more.

BERMAN: I get the sense that you are eager to start getting things done. On that front, President Biden wants bipartisanship when it comes to the COVID relief bill, but how long are you willing to wait to get Republicans onboard?

PADILLA: Look, I think the real question is not how long am I willing to wait, how long are American families willing to wait?

[07:35:02]

American families that are struggling to put food on the table, small business owners struggling to keep their doors open. Families that have loved ones in hospitals, on ventilators. How long should they wait for the United States Congress to do the right thing? I say we need to act yesterday. You know, one example, this debate about, you know, $2,000 versus $600 on checks, direct assistance for families. Those aren't stimulus. Those are survival checks.

And that's after months and months of lack of support from Congress for the American people. So let's get those out the door now, but know that we're going to need to do more in the months ahead, because, well, yes, there's two vaccines that have been approved, we clearly have more to do in terms of increasing supply, improving distribution plans. Actually administering vaccines to the people who need it.

BERMAN: My question -- I guess my question is, is it worth waiting weeks to try to convince 10 Republican senators to vote along with Democrats or do you think you ought to move right to reconciliation, which would let you get this done, with just the bare majority?

PADILLA: Look, I just got here, I'm getting to know my colleagues. You know, in my heart of hearts, do I want to give some benefit of the doubt? Sure. If we can wait another week and have a much more meaningful response, but I know that we have been waiting for years and years and years to see much more bipartisan action than we've seen in Congress of late. So if Democrats have the numbers, let's do what we can now.

It doesn't mean that we can't work on a bipartisan basis to continue to do more in the weeks and months ahead. It doesn't have to be an either/or.

BERMAN: At the beginning of the interview, I said, the honeymoon is over, let's jump right to business. I actually do want to ask you about what it was like to take the oath for you as the first Latino senator from the state of California. We have the pictures here on the Senate floor. You're taking the oath right beside Senator Ossoff and Senator Warnock. Quite an image taking the oath from the first female vice president of the United States. How did that feel?

PADILLA: Pretty incredible. A lot of history in one moment. A lot of history in that frame. But I've got to tell, it definitely comes with mixed emotions, as tremendous as this milestone is for me, for my family, for the state of California, you know, my heart's breaking that, you know, my wife and my kids couldn't stand right next to me. Why? You know, traveling cross-country during the middle of the COVID- 19 pandemic comes with some risk. Add to that the security situation at the Capitol. So it was a sobering reminder of the work ahead, not just the severity of it, but the urgency of it.

BERMAN: Senator Padilla, congratulations on joining the U.S. Senate. Thank you for being with us. We look forward to speaking with you on NEW DAY in the future.

PADILLA: Thank you very much.

BERMAN: Some members of the National Guard say they feel betrayed this morning after being booted from the U.S. Capitol, forced to rest in an unheated garage for hours. Details on a live report from the Pentagon, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:41:57]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Thousands of National Guard members are back inside the U.S. Capitol this morning after the troops were banished to a cramped and unheated parking garage on Thursday.

What was going on here?

CNN's Barbara Starr is live at the Pentagon with more. What happened, Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. Nobody's very clear on who banished them, but indeed hundreds of National Guardsmen who have been here for inauguration security duty on Capitol Hill were sent on their rest breaks into this parking garage.

Look at the pictures. You know, to be on a floor, and it occurs to you and me right away, fumes from automobiles, oil leaks possibly on the floor, very limited bathroom facilities. And once these pictures were seen, however, that's perhaps where the good news starts. Many members of Congress weighed in and, you know, basically said, what the heck is going on, and moved very quickly last night to get this decision reversed and get them back into the Capitol Hill complex. Again, taking their rest breaks on floor, but inside where there's

heat, light, and bathrooms. You know, the National Guard knows that they may be called upon to sleep on the ground when they respond to natural disasters in the United States, to crisis situations, but this time, it's hard to see how it happened. It wasn't necessary. The facilities were there. They are back inside.

And now, here in Washington, many members of the National Guard over the coming days will start heading home. 25,000 have been here for the inauguration. They will start heading back to their home stations, but some certainly staying on Capitol Hill, we are told, for many days to come -- John, Alisyn.

BERMAN: All right, Barbara, thank you so much for that.

So former President Trump issued a number of pardons to friends and allies when in office. So when he issued a wave of pardons to some seriously questionable characters on his way out the door, it was seen as more of just the same. But it shouldn't be just more of just the same.

John Avlon with a "Reality Check."

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Tone comes from the top of everything organization, especially presidential administrations. And one way to gauge that was the sheer number of indictments directed at the previous president's inner circle. Nine people indicted or imprisoned. Now that's more than double the past four presidential administrations combined.

But in the chaos of the past few weeks, you might have missed Trump pardoning almost all of them on his way out the door. The only ones he didn't pardon were Rick Gates and Michael Cohen, the two that cooperated with authorities. The unforgivable sin in Trump world wasn't breaking the law, but cooperating with the law.

Trump tried to normalize corruption. And if that sounds harsh, take a closer look at some of the other pardons you might have missed. He pardoned former Republican congressman Duke Cunningham, who had a bribe menu on his congressional stationary for military contractors. His two earliest congressional endorsers, Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter, got pardons for insider trading and misuse of campaign funds, respectively.

[07:45:03]

Trump commuted right-wing former congressman Steve Stockman, who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for charity, and pardoned a former North Carolina GOP chairman and a former Arizona lawmaker convicted of bribery.

But these weren't just partisan favors. He pardoned former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat who essentially tried to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat, and commuted the sentence of former Detroit mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, who turned his city hall into what prosecutors called a private profit machine. And that's not all. He commuted the sentences of some of the biggest

Medicaid fraudsters and real estate racketeers in American history, including one New York businessman sentenced to more than 800 years in prison for money laundering and massive insurance fraud.

As former Republican congressman Peter Smith told "The New York Times," he does not just distrust the law, he scorns it, sees it as an obstacle to doing whatever he wants. It is classic strongman behavior."

So while Trump campaigned as a law and order candidate, he really wanted order, not the law. And he tried to convince his supporters that every politician was just as corrupt. That lying and cheating were normal.

They're not. A look at the records of recent past presidents shows it's just not true. The Obama/Biden administration served eight years with not a single indictment of senior officials. And even Nixon, who had more administration indictments than Trump, did not pardon his Watergate co-conspirators.

Now the Biden administration is just beginning. There will be mistakes and stumbles and scandals. But because of the sordid chapter that just ended, this statement by the new president to his appointees jumped out at me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you're ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: It's a simple, but profound demand for personal decency. But it's precisely what we've been missing. It doesn't need to explicitly warn against corruption because kindness and consideration preclude it. And it matters because tone comes from the top.

And that's your "Reality Check."

BERMAN: And we will see if the record bears out.

More than 120 people facing federal charges from the attack on the U.S. Capitol. So what are far-right extremist groups saying now that President Biden is in office? Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:51:23]

CAMEROTA: The inauguration of President Joe Biden has rattled extremists and conspiracy theorists alike. Message boards reveal their confusion today. So what are the fringe followers of QAnon and the Proud Boys saying now that Donald Trump is gone?

Joining us now is Arieh Kovler, a political consultant and an independent researcher who studies the far-right.

Arieh, great to see you again.

ARIEH KOVLER, POLITICAL CONSULTANT: You, too.

CAMEROTA: So you've been monitoring the online chatter of these extremist groups and it's been very interesting what they've been saying and what's been happening since Joe Biden's inauguration. What are they talking about?

KOVLER: Well, as you said, there's a lot of confusion, and the different groups are sort of splintering somewhat. You have a faction, actually quite a wide faction that's really angry. Trump told them he was going to carry on. He was going to stay president, and they think they're convinced the election was fixed, but they thought he had a plan. And it turned out he didn't have a plan. He left the White House. And many of them are angry that he's quit on them.

You know, Trump told them that Joe Biden would be a communist Asian and America was going to be destroyed, and then he went home to Florida. So, you know, there's a sense of like, you know, Trump quit, too. Trump also betrayed us, amongst some of them. And that's only one strand. I can talk more if you want about this.

CAMEROTA: Well, a couple of things also. "The New York Times" is reporting on the language that some of these groups like the Proud Boys are now using about Donald Trump. Quote, they are calling him extraordinarily weak. A shill. Quote, "a total failure." "Weak and flaccid." What did they want him to do? I mean, were they expecting pardons? What did they actually think was going to happen?

KOVLER: They weren't expecting pardons. They were expecting a military coup or something along those lines. They were expecting that Donald Trump would remain the president and he would remain it by finally rounding up his enemies and doing what he wanted to the country. In fact, one thing that I and other analysts are seeing is that some of these more radical ideological extremists are trying to use this moment to recruit some of the pro-Trump extremists into their midst saying, you know, Trump and Biden, they're both controlled. Come and join us, you know, white nationalist groups or violent boogaloo type militias. They're using this disillusionment to get people in even deeper.

CAMEROTA: And is that working? Or is there just so much disaffection now for who they thought was their leader, who they thought they were perpetrating these acts on his behalf? Is it kind of demoralizing them?

KOVLER: I think there's a lot of demoralizing out there. I'm not going to say the majority of them are angry at Trump. They're certainly, like I said, confused and disappointed. There is a sense that there's no point in engaging in politics anymore. Remember these people were absolutely convinced the election is rigged, and I think the next one will be rigged, too. So there's no buzz for example around possible 2024 run by Trump like you might think. Instead they're saying the ballot box has failed us. We need to look to the bullet box. CAMEROTA: OK. That's obviously very alarming. Here's one of the things

that "The New York Times" -- according to "The New York Times," here's one of the things that they've seen the Proud Boys saying. "To all demoralized Trump supporters, there is hope. There is an alternative. Abandon the GOP and the Dems." And so what is the battle cry now?

KOVLER: Well, there is a move, and this isn't new. It's actually been around for three or four years, even before Trump was elected. It started during the election campaign in 2016 to form some kind of a patriot party. It's what they're calling it.

[07:55:05]

Adam would be a lion, the Lion Party, that would follow in Trump's ideology, even if he wouldn't necessarily be their leader. If you look at his policies, I mean, I think perhaps this might be an extreme thing to say, but you'd want to call it a third positionist or even neofascist party. I'm not sure such a thing will come to pass but it does seem to be something that some people were calling for and there was a report in "The Wall Street Journal" that Trump himself had like heard of this and was considering setting up such a party. So --

CAMEROTA: In fact, I think he used that term, Patriot Party. I think the reporting suggested. And so, Arieh, help us understand. Are they digging in? Are they getting more extreme? Are they suggesting that they'll resort to more violence? Or is there some sort of breaking of the spell? Now that what they expected to happen on Inauguration Day didn't happen, are some sort of coming to their senses?

KOVLER: I think there's an element of selection bias that makes it hard to tell. The people who have given up, you don't see them posting in these forums, you don't see them talking about it because they've given up. They've gone back to their lives and they're just not there anymore. So sometimes you might see one of these groups becoming more and more extreme, and that's because the more moderate extremists are leaving.

So I think there are a lot of disaffected that have given up. There's still a lot of anger in particular at Republicans who voted to certify the election and you might see people talking about, we've got to stay in the Republican Party, to vote out our enemies, but never actually vote for them ever again. So, you know, you might end up not a lot of people voting in the Republican primaries and they're staying home on election day, and taking out their anger unfortunately in other ways.

CAMEROTA: I mean, well, so in terms of your, you know, Defcon level, your concern level because you monitor this all the time, and you're the person, we should remind people, who saw the violence being -- you predicted that there would be this violent uptick on January 6th. You saw weeks earlier what was going to happen at the U.S. Capitol. You called it. And so now, in terms of your concern level, has it gone down or up?

KOVLER: That's a really interesting question. I think right now it's hard to point to a -- any particular threat and say this particular thing is more likely than it was. That said, there's definitely an aura of menace in which, again, dangerous, troubling, angry individuals or small groups like militias might take extreme actions, extreme violent actions.

CAMEROTA: In terms of the QAnon followers who believe this, you know, mind-blowing conspiracy theory about government and pedophiles, and how Donald Trump was going to save them and he was going to free children who were in the basement of a pizza parlor or whatever it is, are they coming to their senses? Are they -- I mean, I understand there's all this cognitive dissonance of like, what happened, how did the apocalypse not happen that we were expecting?

Do you -- I mean, we've talked before on this program about people having to be deprogrammed. Can that happen on their own? Are you seeing that? Or is this going to require some sort of intervention?

KOVLER: There were definitely some people who hung up on QAnon the day the inauguration walked away. Definitely some. That said, there were a lot that lost their faith that night and woke up the next morning convinced that there must still be a plan, that Trump is still in control. Some of the messages that I've seen is they're convinced that Joe Biden right now is not in the White House. He's in a movie set and is really, you know, under military arrest and is being forced to pretend to be the president in a fake White House, or there are also those that are absolutely convinced that the whole District of Columbia is being occupied by the military, is considered no longer part of the United States, and everyone who is there, you know, the president, the vice president, all of Congress, are in open-air jail.

So there's some really wild ideas out there and QAnon hasn't gone away. It might become a bit less about Trump as time goes on. There's lots of voices I've heard that say they believe that Trump is not the president anymore but now the military is in charge. Now America is a military dictatorship, I guess, and they're very happy about that.

I think it's hard to tell. Again, some of these guys when they leave, they're gone. You don't see them anymore. I do know that in smaller QAnon communities that are harder to monitor, there were some groups of 100 people. There, nobody is losing the faith. People are still convinced that this was all part of the plan.

CAMEROTA: The leaps of logic that have to jump across the Grand Canyon for some of these things to make -- they don't make sense.

Arieh, thank you very much. We really appreciate all of your insight into these groups. Thanks so much for sharing it with us.

KOVLER: Thanks for having me.

CAMEROTA: So there's a new interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is weighing in on President Biden's coronavirus strategy. And NEW DAY continues right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. And moments ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci on NEW DAY.