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New Day

Biden's Domestic Agenda Stalls as He Begins First Foreign Trip; Lawyer Says, Rioter is Victim of Conspiracy Theories, Lies; Texas Hospital Workers Suspended for Defying Vaccine Mandate. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 09, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

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[07:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: Parts of Arkansas and Mississippi are under water. There are some areas that are actually prepping for more than a foot of rain. Can you imagine that? A rare flood warning is issued now because of this across the mid-south. It's a level four out of four. Let's check in with Jennifer Gray.

Okay. So, this is bad news. Tell us what to watch for here, Jennifer.

JENNIFER GRAY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, this really is bad news. And that level four out of four that you're talking about is that area on the map shaded in hot pink. It's eastern portions of Arkansas on into northern sections of Mississippi.

This weather is presented by Carvana, the new way to buy a car.

So, this flooding is going to continue as we go throughout the day today. Just in the last 48 hours, this area shaded in pink has received up to ten inches of rain, some areas even more. And over the next couple of days, we're going to see an additional two to five inches for today alone. But then we could see the storm total anywhere from 10 to 15 inches of rain. So a lot of rain in a short amount of time is basically what has caused this. And you can see more developing today and again tomorrow morning.

Another hour of New Day begins right now.

KEILAR: Hi, there. I'm Brianna Keilar alongside John Berman on this New day.

President Biden is departing this morning on his first foreign trip as president, leaving the future of his agenda here at home very much in limbo.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: A suspect charged in the Capitol riot claiming he's a victim of lies and QAnon conspiracies, and that he got his marching orders from the former president.

KEILAR: And more than a hundred staffers walking out of a Texas hospital. They're putting their jobs on the line over the vaccine mandate there.

BERMAN: And a jaw-dropping report, how do the country's richest billionaires avoid paying really hardly any income tax for years and get away with it.

KEILAR: Good morning and welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Wednesday. We're halfway there. It is June 9th today.

And President Biden is about to depart on his first international trip here in the next hour. One item on what is a very packed agenda, as they are on these trips, is the global response to the single biggest conflict facing the world over the past year, and that is, of course, the coronavirus pandemic, how to vaccines accelerated to the world population, get everybody vaccinated.

The first stop here is England. That is for the G7 summit. That is also for a meeting with the queen, and then Brussels next to discuss security with NATO members. Then it is on to a high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

BERMAN: Now, the president leaving behind a domestic agenda which all of a sudden feels reasonably stalled. Hopes for an infrastructure deal on life support this morning. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has declared the era bipartisanship is over, which is ironic to say the least. Voting rights, even the January 6th commission all seemed to have hit a roadblock, Senate Democrats now unwilling to budge on filibuster and unlikely to attract ten Republicans across the aisle.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny is traveling with the president in England.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Joe Biden is stepping onto the world stage for the first time as president and equal to foreign leaders after spending a lifetime as someone's envoy. As Air Force One touches down today in the United Kingdom, Biden has made clear his intent on assuring the world that democracy works and is alive in the America.

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: As I've told every world leader I've met with over the years, it's never, ever, ever been a good bet to bet against America it still isn't.

ZELENY: The week-long European tour includes a stop in Cornwall, on the southern coast of England to see British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other leaders of the Group of Seven. First Lady Kill Biden joins at Windsor Castle for an audience with Queen Elizabeth, and then to Brussels for a summit with NATO allies and to Geneva to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Biden is carrying a message of transatlantic unity and trying to move beyond the lingering baggage of President Trump's America First agenda.

[07:05:07] BIDEN: America has been tested, and we've come out stronger for it. We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.

ZELENY: No American president has logged as many miles around the globe as Biden, 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president, and then as a private citizen, including this 2019 visit to Germany during the second year of the Trump administration.

BIDEN: We will be back. We will be back. Don't have any doubt about that.

ZELENY: Biden is back, but confronting a wave of new challenges like COVID, climate change and cyber attacks, provocations that are testing the new president and America's place in the world in post-Trump era. He believes in the power of personal relationships, but knows well skepticism toward the U.S. is running high, after only recently starting to share vaccines with the world.

For Biden, the meeting with Putin holds the highest stakes with some questioning why he's giving the Russian adversary a meeting at all.

JAKE SULLIVAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: We do not regard a meeting with the Russian president as a reward. Joe Biden is not meeting with Vladimir Putin despite our country's differences. He's meeting him because of our country's differences.

ZELENY: Even inside the west wing, he was subject to internal debate, CNN has learned, but Biden insisted on engaging Putin face-to-face.

SULLIVAN: There's never any substitute for meeting face-to-face, particularly for complex relationships. But with Putin, this is exponentially the case.

ZELENY: At the White House, the first five months of Biden's presidency have been dominated by domestic challenges, yet foreign policy is Biden's first love. At long last, he's setting it and will be judged by it.

BIDEN: The United States is determined, determined to reengage with Europe, to consult with you, to earn back our position of trusted leadership.

ZELENY: Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Falmouth, England.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Now, our thanks to Jeff for that, and we're going to have much more on this important trip in a moment. But we should note that Jeff Zeleny was supposed to be live for us from England, but he had to take a later flight because of cicadas. An armada of cicadas grounded the White House press plane. Somehow the insects crawled into the plane's engines and another plane had to be brought in overnight. Cicadas grounded the White House press plane. Let that sink in.

Now, this is the same of generation of bugs --

KEILAR: Same the brood.

BERMAN: -- that attacked the man you're seeing there on the screen, our Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju on Capitol Hill. So, joining us now to share his expertise on this subject, CNN Chief Cicada Correspondent Manu Raju.

Manu, you woke up to the news that the White House press plane grounded because of cicadas. I wonder what your reaction is. How surprised are you given what you've lived through?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: In fact, I'm not surprised. Because the first thing I thought of when it happened to me, it's going to happen to you too. And it clearly did here with this press plane because those beasts are everywhere in Washington, D.C. I mean, outside my house, I'm stepping on dead cicadas everywhere. You can hear them behind me right now over this -- yes, over this -- in this weekend, they were flying at my head. So it happened once and it certainly can happen again.

KEILAR: Are you surprised that the proper precautions were not taken to avoid this? It's not as if they haven't been here for weeks.

RAJU: Reporter: exactly. You would think they would be aware that cicadas are everywhere. And actually I assumed they would get into people's hair as they did. I thought they were in my hair. But they were actually on the back of my neck and they get all over me and on my legs sometimes as I'm walking. They're actually all over my car when I get out to my car every morning.

But actually getting into something and actually causing serious disruption, that was surprising, I might say. I was surprised that it could lead to a serious delay of a flight. I'm a bit worried about my car now since they do seem to take a liking to my car inside my house.

BERMAN: Well, Brianna, was explaining to me, they like the hum of the engines. Manu, I don't know if these bugs have an issue with the First Amendment, but first to attack you, a congressional correspondent, and then to ground the White House press plane certainly does raise questions. I'm wondering if you have any advice for your fellow journalists who are on the plane this morning.

RAJU: Well, just beware of your surroundings. Always be aware from your surroundings. It could happen at any moment. But I could tell you, what happened to me, this has been actually the one thing that people from all walks of life have continually asked me about, whether it's people I haven't heard from in 25 years, whether it's friends, whether it's senators, whether it's close allies, mortal enemies, if you will, people seem to have really taken to the fact that I had that a cicada

crawl on me.

[07:10:09]

And I think that this is actually going to be something that I'll probably be remembered by, probably the headline of my obituary some day. It will be Manu Raju died -- who was attacked by a cicada one day died today. So I think that's -- to all reporters out there, beware.

KEILAR: Chief Cicada Correspondent be laid to rest today, is what it will say. Manu, thank you so much. Look, just proof, for you it worked, cursing at the bug seemed to work, seemed to deter it. I guess when you're dealing with a lot of them, that just isn't the way forward.

BERMAN: Too many.

KEILAR: Too many. All right, Manu, thank you so much for your expertise, our Chief Cicada Correspondent.

President Biden -- this is the serious stuff, right? This is the serious stuff. This is what all of those White House press corps members are going to be covering because the president and his cabinet, they're planning to continue discussions on his domestic agenda while overseas.

Progressives in Congress are growing impatient by the day over perceived roadblocks. This includes some of their moderate colleagues as well.

So, joining us now to discuss this is CNN Political Commentator and former Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy. Thank you so much, Congressman, for being with us. This isn't how Democrats expected things to go, I think, when they gained the White House, when they had a slim majority in the Senate in addition to controlling the House. Things are looking bleak when it comes to Biden's domestic agenda. What are his options here for him and Democrats?

JOE KENNEDY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Brianna, good morning. Look, I actually don't think it's all that different from what expectations were because you have 50-vote majority in the Senate and you actually have a five-vote majority in the House. No one thought this was going to be easy, nobody. And we've got quite a spectrum amongst that representation in both chambers and you have literally zero margin for error to try to do these big things.

What we actually saw was the first part of Biden administration an enormous amount of success, particularly getting through that first rescue package and the size of it, which I think most folks thought was actually done very well and actually considerably smooth sailing. The fact that after that level of investment, you've got some trickier path forward isn't wholly surprising.

That being said, let's be clear, this is tough and this is hard, and it's going to get harder over the course of the months ahead. And the remaining items on the to-do list for Democrats are critical not just for the Democratic Party, they are critical for our country. So the leadership, the White House, they have to find a way to make this happen and move it through, and I expect it to go on, but it's a tough road.

KEILAR: Look, the president who, you know, has recently had some words for Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who are the most moderate Democrats in the Senate and have a lot of power, you know, now he's really going to have to rely very much on them. And just to put that into perspective, there was a closed door lunch yesterday and Sinema insisted on dealing with the Republicans on infrastructure.

After the meeting, her colleagues expressed extreme skepticism. One Democrat said there's no way Manchin and Sinema are going to cut a deal that represents the view of the caucus. It's just not going to happen.

So how does this working things out with Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin look for Joe Biden? How can he really get them to see his perspective on these agenda that he would still like to push through?

KENNEDY: Look, when I was in office, I was a pretty progressive guy. I'd be frustrated too here. There's a lot that we need to get done, and particularly not just this investment but obviously voting rights and other structural fixes to make our democracy healthier. And this is going slower than I certainly would like.

That being said, we still need Manchin and we still need Sinema and you others too, by the way, who aren't quite as out front but I think still have some reservations here. What do you got do? You've got to play the hand that you dealt, which means you've got to go through this process. If there are senators that say, hey, they want to try this bipartisan effort, you've to go through it.

And, by the way, that's not just a question as to whether they can get agreement within that group, they have to find ten Republican senators that will come on board with that and then be able to hold every Democrat. That's not easy. And if they can't do that, then they have the ability to go back to the -- the Senate leadership can go back to all of those senators and say, hey, we tried your effort. Now it's time to go through ours and go through that reconciliation package, which, again, you're starting to see that process begin.

There's the inside game here, Brianna, as you're saying, what happens inside those rooms, and then there's the outside game, right, which is organizations and people, activists starting to build up that pressure outside of Washington, which is really where that change in that momentum is going to come from.

[07:15:00]

Because, again, this isn't just about the health of the Democratic Party delivering an agenda, this is an agenda that is dedicated to trying to address the structural failures of our economy and our democracy at this moment. And if you're not going to do that, then, yes, I think it's politically perilous for Democrats. But the broader part there is it's damaging to our country. We need to move.

KEILAR: Well, look, we're already seeing progressive groups take aim not at Republicans but within the Democrats Caucus, at Kyrsten Sinema, at Joe Manchin. So we'll see how this pressure does continue to build. Former Congressman Joe Kennedy, thanks so much.

KEILAR: Thanks. BERMAN: An accused Capitol rioter is asking to be released from jail, telling the judge he feels deceived and recognizing that he bought into a pack of lies fueled by QAnon and the former president.

CNN's Whitney Wild joins us now with the details. What have you learned?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, Douglas Jensen was among the most visible of the rioters on January 6th. He's seen on video wearing a QAnon T-shirt pursuing Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman ahead of an angry crowd, following him up the stairs and inside the Capitol.

Jensen claims he was misled into joining the deadly insurrection and that he was not part of any mob and simply came to Washington from Des Moines, Iowa, to observe. He even argues that he felt threatened by Officer Goodman.

Jensen is asking to be released from jail until his trial. In a court filing, his attorney writes, Jensen's initial attraction to QAnon was its stated mission to eliminate pedophiles from society for reasons he does not even understand today. He became a true believer and was convinced he was doing a noble service by becoming a digital soldier for Q. He fell victim to this barrage of internet-sourced info and came to the Capitol at the direction of the president of the United States to demonstrate that he was a true patriot.

Prosecutors, of course, see it quite differently. As the crowd coalesced into a violent mob, they say Jensen was among the first to push his way inside the Capitol.

Jensen is just the latest Capitol riot suspect to express remorse and to blame QAnon or the former president for inciting the riot. So far, the federal judges overseeing the Capitol riot cases have been unmoved by those arguments, John.

Jensen has been charged with seven federal crimes, including obstructing congressional proceedings, interfering with police officers, civil disorder among other things. He has pleaded not guilty. He's been in jail since his arrest in January. There's a hearing scheduled for next week to deal with his continued detention, John.

BERMAN: All right. Whitney Wild, very interesting, thank you very much.

Joining us now to discuss is Peter Strzok, former FBI Deputy Assistant Director and Author of Compromise, Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. Peter, it's so nice to see you here.

There were two types of victimhood being claimed by Douglas Jensen there in that Whitney Wild report. Number one, that he was the victim of some kind of manipulation, moral, emotional, intellectual manipulation, and the second type of victimhood is somehow that he was being threatened by one of the Capitol Police officers on Capitol grounds. Your view on both? PETER STRZOK, FORMER FBI DEPUTY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Well, I think that's an extraordinary statement for him to make that he might be threatened in any way. But his story points to the absolute necessity of having a commission to look into exactly what happened on January 6th. We're well past the point of having any debate about whether or not that's necessary.

It's necessary simply to get the facts on the record about what happened on that day in a way that's not objectionable, not debatable by anybody that's there. But it's broader than that. We need to have a commission because there are a lot of things that went wrong. And the Senate report clearly demonstrates that. So, a bipartisan committee who can come together and look at those things, come up with solutions, is absolutely essential. Because this isn't just a historical problem, this is something we're looking at potentially in 2022, potentially the elections in 2024. And we absolutely need to make that work.

BERMAN: Look, Tim Kaine, Senator Tim Kaine told me last night that it can't be just about protecting the building, it has to be about protecting democracy. In light of that, listen to what Senator Mitch McConnell continues to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Today's report is one of the many reasons I'm confident in the ability of existing investigations to uncover all actionable facts about the events of January 6th. I'll continue to support these efforts over any that seek to politicize the process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: But that report that came out yesterday doesn't address the issues raised by Douglas Jensen right now, one of the people charged. He says, I don't know why I ended up believing this. Don't we need to know why?

STRZOK: Absolutely, we do. And that statement by Senator McConnell is absolutely not beyond ironic. It's cynical. And the fact that he can go on the floor of the Senate, make that statement and then just months later refuse to engage he or his party in any serious debate about setting up a commission. So, again, absolutely, we need to have that information. We need to do it in a bipartisan way so that it's credible, and there's absolutely no reason that it shouldn't happen.

[07:20:04]

BERMAN: So, CNN has a piece of extraordinary exclusive reporting. Matthew Chance and his team obtained audio of a phone call between Rudy Giuliani, the former president's lawyer, and a Ukraine official in 2019. We knew the substance of this conversation where he was asking for Ukrainians to lead an investigation into Joe Biden. But now for the first time, we're hearing Giuliani's own voice, the own ask. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, TRUMP'S FORMER PERSONAL ATTORNEY: If he could say something like that, on his own, in conversation, it would go a long way. It would go a long way with the president to solve the problems.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: If you do this for me, I will do that for you. The Latin translation of that is literally quid pro quo.

STRZOK: That's absolutely right. I mean, I listened to this call and it sounded very much like a diplomatic exchange, but then you step back and you remember this was not something being done for the foreign policy or the interest of the United States. This was a conversation by the president's personal attorney who identifies himself as that, to gain something for the president's advantage, specifically adverse action against his political opponent. Had this information, had this call been available to the prosecutors at the impeachment, no telling how this would have changed, how that unfolded.

But it absolutely speaks to the absolute impropriety of what was going on between Giuliani and Trump during the administration.

BERMAN: And just the counterintelligence measure, which is something that you worked. And also the fact that this audio is out there is a problem for the United States.

STRZOK: That's absolutely right. I mean, you listen to this and it very quickly was recorded on the Ukrainian side of things. But let's not forget that, A, they had this call from the time that it occurred, but they're not the only ones interested in these conversations. So any time you have a cell phone conversation between a Ukrainian adviser, the attorney to the president, you can bet that other countries, specifically like Russia, are also very, very interested in those conversations, and they absolutely had the ability to intercept and record those as well.

BERMAN: Don't forget, Rudy Giuliani helped run cyber security for the former president.

STRZOK: That's right.

BERMAN: Talk about ironic. Peter Strzok, thank you for being with us.

STRZOK: John, thanks for having me.

BERMAN: So, the debate over whether companies can require employees to get vaccinated boiling over at a hospital in Texas, why some nurses are among workers there walking out and risking their jobs.

KEILAR: And the richest in America are paying almost nothing in income taxes. What their tax returns reveal, next.

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[07:25:00]

BERMAN: Putting their jobs at risk, a group of hospital employees in Houston have been suspended for defying a mandate requiring workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The group staged a walkout and protest and now have two weeks to get fully vaccinated or they will be fired. The hospital president explained why on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MARC BOOM, PRESIDENT AND CEO, HOUSTON METHODIST: Every one of our professional tenets require us to put patients first, require us to keep our patients safe by anything we can possibly do. And so those individuals who were choosing not to get vaccinated are basically saying they're going against the tenets of our profession and they're not putting patients first.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Let's get some perspective on this from our CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. I think one of the reasons this captures our attention so much is because you're talking about medical professionals, Sanjay, and there's still this huge chunk of the American public, including some medical professionals, who aren't vaccinated, don't want to get vaccinated. What's holding them back?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, with the hospitals, I think that's going to just be a different population because, by definition, they are vulnerable people within those hospitals. They are the most at risk. And I think that's the point the CEO of the hospital and other hospitals have made in terms of mandatory vaccination.

But if you look -- let's look at the country overall. What you see is obviously an increased willingness for people to get vaccinated, 66 percent roughly of people. This is the green line here, sort of either have been vaccinated, are willing to get vaccinated right away. You have a wait-and-see population that has shrunk somewhat over time, since we first started really looking at these numbers.

And that red line has stayed pretty stable. It's about 19 percent, 20 percent. About 70 percent of people say only if needed and 13 percent say absolutely not. What holds the 13 percent back? It's really four main reasons. Some of it is just logistics, I don't want to take the time off, I think there's really going to be costs even if you say there's not. Another reason is safety. It was rushed. I think this is going too fast. They would actually be more convinced if there was full approval. There's a group of people who say there's enough other people getting it, I don't need to get it.

And then, finally, the politicalization of this, like we've talked about with so many other issues, it's affected vaccines. So, 90 percent of Democrats have either received this or say they will, whereas it's about 50 percent of Republicans. So that's really broken down quite significantly across political lines.

BERMAN: Sanjay, broadly speaking, do we know how people feel about vaccine requirements for returning to work?

GUPTA: Yes, this is really interesting data. I was a little surprised by this. We can show you that, overall, for a return to work, the idea that you'd have to show proof of vaccination, about half, about 52 percent. You can see the line just below that, around 47 percent, proof for indoor dining, so around half there as well.

But look at sporting events and international travel. International travel, people feel fairly strong. Two-thirds of Americans say, hey, look, you should show some proof of vaccination if you're going to get on am international flight, for example, and close to 60 percent for sporting events. So we'll see how that shakes out. I mean, you know, when it comes to public sort of events and things like that, there's no mandatory proof of vaccination required.

[07:30:02]

Obviously, private venues can do what they want to do.

And there are some s places that are saying you have to have vaccination.