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Soon: Ex-Trump W.H. Counsel McGahn Testifies Before Congress; Economy Adds Back 559,000 Jobs in May, Jobless Rate Falls to 5.5 Percent; Vet's Mic Cut When Discussing Black History in Memorial Day Speech. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired June 04, 2021 - 08:30   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Joining me now with those is former Senior Counsel to Ken Starr, Paul Rosenzweig. Okay, let's start with your first question here, you would ask - did Donald Trump ask you to not take notes or to destroy notes you had taken in a meeting?

[08:30:00]

What could stand to be gained here from an answer to that question, do you think?

PAUL ROSENZWEIG, FORMER SENIOR COUNSEL TO KEN STARR: Well, we know from the Mueller Report that President Trump is alleged to have asked Mr. McGahn to destroy notes that he took of a meeting that they had, and to have asked him to stop taking notes. He said that attorneys don't take notes, and McGahn said, no, I'm a good attorney, I do take notes.

And Trump has reportedly said yes, but Roy Cohn never did. So this would help establish the truth of what's in the Mueller Report, establish that McGahn testified truthfully to Mueller, and also that Trump, in fact, tried to change the historical record of what he did. And that, in some context, could form a basis for an obstruction of justice prosecution.

KEILAR: And then it would be did Trump ask you to have Mueller fired?

ROSENZWEIG: Well, that was what was underlying these notes is the story that at - on at least two occasions, Trump called Mr. McGahn and asked him to talk to Rod Rosenstein, who was then the Acting Attorney General of the United States, and have Rosenstein have Mueller removed because of alleged conflict of interest which nobody thought were real.

KEILAR: And of course, you say - you would ask if Trump asked McGahn to deny that he had ordered Mueller's firing? And then your fourth question would be if Donald Trump instructed you to create a paper record that would indicate he had not asked for Mueller's firing so as to actually create something?

ROSENZWEIG: Well that - yes, that's the second part. In addition to destroying old notes, Trump is said to have asked McGahn to create a fake record of denying that the first things had happened, that he'd asked to have Mueller fired. He said no, I want you to write notes that say Donald - President Trump never actually asked me to do that, which would have been an extreme example of obstruction.

KEILAR: It would've been huge. Okay, so you would like to ask Don McGahn if Trump asked you to discuss executive legal issues with nonfederal employees, why is that key?

ROSENZWEIG: Well, the executive privilege only extends between members of the executive branch. The president and his lawyer, anything they discuss could be potentially privileged. But President Trump has a history of using people outside of the executive branch, like Cory Lewandowski for example, to do a lot of his work.

And so this would establish a basis, a premise, for finding other witnesses to what Mr. Trump had done. Now some of this may very well be old news, but it's good to establish a factual record of what actually happened.

KEILAR: And here we are kind of returning back to normal with this testimony, even behind closed doors as we're going to see. Paul, thank you for being with us.

ROSENZWEIG: Thanks for having me.

KEILAR: John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we do have breaking news. The latest jobs number is a highly anticipated report. Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans with the details, Romans?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Good morning. Adding back jobs here, 559,000 jobs added back here, and the jobless rate actually falling to about 5.8 percent. So these are - this is definitely the right direction, and you can see where we've been going in recent months.

This is, you know, double about what we were last month, which was a big disappointment. So you want to see these jobs adding back overall. This is what we look like until now in the pandemic job loss. We're still down about 7.5 million jobs. You can add another 559,000 on the end of this, but we're still down about 7 million jobs in the pandemic.

Sectors to tell you about here, construction - oh, we don't have those filled in yet, but we have a lot of hospitality and retail jobs being added back in here, which is, I think, a good sign. You've seen a lot of those people cautious about getting back in the labor market, John.

Cautious about getting back in for a variety of reasons, not just because of their unemployment benefits but also because they've got child care issues, they still have the hangover of the COVID crisis, if you will, and just not ready for some of these people to get back into the labor market. But you're starting to see these jobs adding back in in this month.

And these are the kinds of numbers you want to be seeing, not the million-plus that some had been hoping for last month, but still a strong performance I would say.

BERMAN: All right. Glad you're joining us here at the table.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

BERMAN: Also with us here is Catherine Rampell, CNN Economic Commentator and a columnist at "The Washington Post." This number, it's a big number historically speaking, but it is a miss. It's lower than what economists had expected.

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMIC COMMENTATOR: It's - it is lower than the consensus. The consensus reflected a lot of variation in forecasts. So I think nobody really knew what to expect, to be fair. The consensus was something like 670,000, this is, you know, a little over 100,000 less than that.

But we did see growth, as Christine mentioned, in leisure and hospitality. That's restaurants, bars, hotels, things like that, places that were really hurting that had been complaining about labor shortages. We saw job gains in education as schools are reopening, in health care, a number of industries that had been held back by the recovery or the - the recession turning into recovery for a while. So those are all good news.

[08:35:00]

I think one interesting thing in this jobs report is that the unemployment rate fell for good reasons, as they say, meaning people got jobs. But the labor force -- the number of people in the labor force, the number of people either working or looking for jobs, was basically flat, which I think is going to fuel more of these concerns about whether workers are really willing to come back to work.

BERMAN: So that's been the huge question -

RAMPELL: Right.

BERMAN: - after last month's jobs report, are people not going out and searching for the jobs because maybe they're getting that enhanced unemployment benefit, or for other reasons, Romans. What's in here to guide us?

ROMANS: It's a combination of reasons. It really is. And we really only have some analysis from the San Francisco Fed to go on. We've never had a situation -- there's no blueprint for this. We've never had something like this, but the researchers at the San Francisco Fed found that essentially, maybe one out of seven workers who are offered a job back declined because of the jobless benefits. There were a lot of other reasons.

So on the margin, a small but noticeable influence from those unemployment benefits, but those are going to be expiring and I think the bigger issue is just after COVID, there are millions of people who had jobs or multiple low, you know, low wage part-time jobs working two jobs or three jobs, and they're not ready to go back to that quite yet. There's a kind of a reckoning in the American labor market about what

kind of work you want to do on the other side of this. And also there's retraining for some of these people. For the first time ever they had the breathing space and the money to retrain to jobs in finance or tech, and you've got a lot of people in education and health care who, frankly, late 40s, early 50s, who are retiring or at least just not coming back right now. They don't need to. They don't want to.

RAMPELL: And there are - there are other obstacles too, right, to coming back, the limitations on access to child care are still there.

BERMAN: Yes.

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: And it's summer, right.

RAMPELL: It's summer.

BERMAN: I mean, we may not know enough until September when school starts to get in person.

RAMPELL: And public transit access has been cut in a lot of cities, so there are other barriers to returning to work besides the fact that people may still be concerned about getting sick at work or being mistreated at work by having to fight with customers over mask wearing or what have you.

Now some of those will abate as more people get vaccinated -

ROMANS: Yes.

RAMPELL: - as it becomes safer to return, as requirements for wearing masks and other kinds of social distancing precautions, you know, get alleviated, but even so there are a lot of factors here, in addition to the possibility of these higher unemployment benefits weighing on people's decisions they make.

ROMANS: You'll see more companies, I think, raising their wages.

RAMPELL: Yes.

ROMANS: You've seen a lot of companies raising their wages, you've seen bonuses, hiring bonuses. I think we're going to be hearing more about that, hiring bonuses to get people back in the labor market.

BERMAN: What questions does this answer and what questions remain?

RAMPELL: I think we still don't really know how quickly people who are sitting on the sidelines will be willing to return to work. Again, because of all of these complicated factors in their lives, including how much the job pays, whether someone is there to watch their kids, how easily they can get back to work. It's just a big question mark.

I think the thing that this report does answer is, yes, the recovery is continuing, right. There was concern last month that perhaps things had gone off track. It was such a big miss from the forecast. Maybe things were stalling out. That doesn't seem to be the case, so that's a relief.

BERMAN: What about inflation?

ROMANS: You know, inflation is transitory if you listen to the Fed. You see higher prices everywhere, quite frankly, and you may have to see higher prices in wages, wage inflation, which is good for working people, maybe not good overall for the recovery. I'm not super - I mean, I don't have a five-alarm fire bell worry - worried about inflation right now. I mean, higher prices are natural when you've come out of the chasm that we've just gone through.

BERMAN: But it won't - I don't think this report, based on what I'm seeing right now, will allay the inflation concerns because it still raises the possibility that there will be increases in wage, it maybe just disproportionate increase in wage, to get some of these workers off the sidelines.

RAMPELL: I think you are going to see pay inflation, right. Now whether that comes in - whether that converts into self-sustaining inflation of the kind that Larry Summers and other people are worried about, we still don't know.

It could very well be the case that there are some reopening pains that are associated with, you know, again, waking up from this economic coma that we were just in.

ROMANS: Right.

RAMPELL: And that will involve higher input costs, higher labor costs, but that may be transitory particularly because, you know, conditions are changing very quickly on the ground.

ROMANS: Can I just say there's a sign of success, Congress actually, a sign of success here that people don't feel they have to go back to two crappy jobs to survive because they have the breathing space, and they're going to be getting more money this summer when these child tax credits start hitting people's bank accounts for low-income working families.

So in a way, Congress has spent all this money to give families a breathing space. You know, do we want to go back to the way it was before when they have millions of people, a low-income army of workers, mostly women and minority workers, who are basically sustaining the consumer experience. Are we going to go back to that? I mean, the numbers will tell you that some people don't want to.

BERMAN: Christine Romans, Catherine Rampell, I have to tell everyone here, those numbers came in like eight minutes ago, and these two people just processed all that information instantaneously.

[08:40:00]

It's not easy, and we're going to learn a lot more over the coming minutes and hours.

ROMANS: But it's fun.

BERMAN: Thanks so much for being with us. Brianna?

KEILAR: Yes, that was awesome. Good job, guys.

And to their point, just ahead, what could be a big dilemma for bosses in America, workers who say that they're going to quit if they can't keep working from home.

BERMAN: And the war veteran who had his Memorial Day speech interrupted. Why did someone cut his mic?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: When a retired army veteran at a Memorial Day event began speaking about the holiday's roots in black history, his mic was cut. Organizers of the ceremony say it was no mistake. CNN'S Laura Jarrett joins us now. What's going on here?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: John, Barney Kemter thought his Memorial Day speech might be a good opportunity to shine a light on some of the more untold aspects of how the holiday started. He showed event organizers a draft of the speech ahead of time, but apparently they weren't big fans of his history lesson. This is what happened next.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT (voice-over): It started off without a hitch.

LT.COL. BARNARD KEMTER, U.S. ARMY (RETIRED): Memorial Day was first commemorated by an organized group of black freed slaves less than a month after the confederacy surrendered.

JARRETT: That's U.S. Army Veteran Barnard Kemter giving a speech at a Memorial Day service in Hudson, Ohio. Now hear what happens as the retired lieutenant colonel continues to talk.

KEMTER: The ceremony is to believed to have included a parade of as many as 10,000 people, including 3,000 African-American children - school children singing the union marching song "John Brown's Body."

[08:45:00]

They were carrying armfuls of flowers and went to decorated the graves. Interesting that there would be a tie back to Hudson with that song with John Brown. Most importantly, whether Charleston's decoration day was the first is attended by Charleston's Black community.

UNKNOWN FEMALE: Mic.

KEMTER: A.J. Mic?

We'll continue on. This is why you moved in closer, so you can hear this.

JARRETT: Kemter's microphone was turned off for roughly two minutes. He told "The Washington Post" he believed at the time it was a technical glitch as he spoke about the role freed black people played in developing the holiday after the Civil War, but muting the service's keynote speaker was no mistake.

An organizer of the event, who is affiliated with the local American Legion Post, telling the Akron Beacon Journal it was because Kemter's speech was "not relevant to our program for the day, adding the theme of the day was honoring Hudson veterans."

KEMTER: It's a situation that I think people are a little upset at the censorship at speaking at Memorial Day.

JARRETT: The American Legion disappointed by what happened saying we salute Lieutenant Colonel Kemter's service and his moving remarks about the history of Memorial Day and the important role played by Black Americans in honoring our fallen heroes. We regret any actions taken that detracts from this important message.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT (on camera): The Ohio American Legion now says it's investigating this incident and will take disciplinary action if necessary. As for Kemter, he told "The Washington Post," despite being cut off; he's received a number of messages praising his speech. John?

BERMAN: It's just censorship, and think about what they're trying to silence.

JARRETT: Well - and it's also a story about what happens when you try to be an ally, right?

BERMAN: Laura, thank you so much for that. I appreciate it.

Next, a lot of bosses want employees back in the office, but what do workers say?

KEILAR: And Joe Biden's concession on infrastructure, will it help him strike a deal with Republicans?

[08:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: As more and more Americans get vaccinated against the coronavirus, the next step for many is the inevitable return to the workplace, or is it? Folks are dreading it, it turns out. According to a recent survey by Bloomberg News, nearly 40 percent of workers in all age groups say they will quit - they would quit if they were forced back to the office. That number is even higher for millennials and Gen Z employees.

So let's talk about all of this with James Citrin, he's the author of "Leading at a Distance: Practical Lessons for Virtual Success." OK, James, these numbers - I mean, they're really eye-popping here.

And one of the ones that stood out to me too was that only 2 percent of people said they wanted to return to fully in-person. What do you make of what you're seeing here?

JAMES CITRIN, AUTHOR, "LEADING AT A DISTANCE": Good morning, Brianna. It's really not a surprise because once employees were given the flexibility and overcame the shock of working remotely, they really found there was a lot to like about it. It does pose challenges for CEOs, chief HR officers, and leaders as they think about the return to work. Those new surveys, though are really indicative of the flexibility that many employees really want to live with going forward.

KEILAR: So I mean, that's a thing - the employers here are going to have the hard time because your research shows that a quarter of virtual teams are not performing to their full potential, and also that more than a third of these teams say that their leaders are less effective while managing virtually, so what do you do here?

CITRIN: Well, it's interesting. So my co-author and Spencer Stuart partner, Darleen DeRosa, she's probably the world's number one expert on remote leadership. She has her PhD in this and we've been studying virtual teams for many, many years.

There are leadership changes and tactics that need to be put into place to lead effectively, and there's a rise in the importance of purpose that leaders and managers need to infuse with their employees, but there also needs to be different processes put in place. And it's that balance of purpose and process that leaders need to really play with to get it right in this new - really hybrid environment that most companies are going back to.

KEILAR: So it turns out, for an employee, working remotely is actually cheaper. It can save you time, of course - and it saves them money. Some say that they have saved $5,000 by working from home. Do you think this is something that - how does that affect employers in this equation?

[08:55:00]

CITRIN: It's really one of a number of factors that employers are thinking about going forward. Our research here at Spencer Stuart shows that about 10 or 15 percent of companies are looking to go back to the pre pandemic approach, and another 10 to 15 percent are moving to a work from anywhere approach.

But about 75 percent of organizations are really going to be testing out a hybrid or blended model, and that really puts new requirements on the managers and the employees alike. So that is really something that we're still at the relatively early days at, but there are tactics that employers, managers, and employees need to understand to be effective.

And you're actually right, in leading at a distance we studied 600 virtual teams, and the highest performing virtual teams found that they optimized on two things, purpose - what are we all doing and are we aligned in what we're trying to accomplish as a team and as an organization?

But also, process, because everybody's working remotely or some are working remotely the old ways of managing by walking around don't work anymore so there need to be some intentional processes whether it's on boarding, whether it's performance reviews, and whether it's informal ways to keep in touch as well. So it's that balance of purpose and process that is really important and that bring out the best in these virtual teams.

KEILAR: Yes, this is what companies are dealing with now. Jim Citrin, you're the expert, thank you for talking with us on this. And again, the book is "Leading at a Distance: Practical Lessons for Virtual Success."

Just ahead, President Biden speaking today about this just released jobs report and what it means for America's recovery.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Researchers estimate that food insecurity tripled in U.S. households with children because of the pandemic. When this week's CNN Hero had to shutdown her Chicago supper club during COVID, she redirected her love of cooking, providing free, nutritious meals to the hungry in her community.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

Q. IBRAHEEM, CHEF: I witnessed that people are literally a paycheck away from not eating, that's heartbreaking - that's unbelievable but it's so very real, and it's continuously happening.

We've served over 60,000 meals in the past 14 months. I'm inspired to keep going because the need has not stopped.

We've got goodies.

It's a great feeling to know that I'm able to ease the burden, if just a little bit.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's beautiful. Oh my gosh, I see okra too.

IBRAHEEM: I'm giving them a sense of understanding that we are in it together. A sense of knowing that people in your community do care.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: It's so important. For the full story about her ongoing work, head to cnnheros.com.

CNN's coverage of all the news today continues right now with Jim Sciutto and Poppy Harlow. Have a great weekend, everyone.

[09:00:00]