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New Day

Biden Seeks to Sell Democracy as it's Under Attack at Home; Biden's Attorney General Defends Controversial Decisions. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired June 10, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

SYDNEY GLASCOCK, INTRODUCED PRESIDENT BIDEN AT ROYAL AIR MIDENHALL: Very personal and they were always making sure that I knew where I was going, what I was doing.

[07:00:04]

And, yes, they really put me at ease. They are very comforting.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: And maybe this is something you can both speak to, but, Sydney, you talk about being part of a military family. Military service is very much a family business, yours especially. I mean, you're in a dual military family, and your mom is serving at an incredibly advanced level. So you have two parents who are very much involved, and you sort of have to bend around what they're doing.

What do you want people to know about that, Sydney, and chief as well?

S. GLASCOCK: Well, I'm very proud of both of their positions, and I'll support them no matter where they go. But being a military child is a blessing, personally. I get to go to a lot of cool places and do a lot of cool things that a 14-year-old doesn't usually get to do, so, yes.

CHIEF MASTER SGT. KATHI GLASCOCK, COMMAND CHIEF, 100th AIR REFUELING WING: Absolutely. And the flexibility, being a military child, you know, from birth until now, for the 14 years that Sydney has been with us, it has been absolutely amazing. We just -- we try to remain flexible. We try to prepare any time we can. We're always looking ahead, what do we need for this week so that we can knock those barriers down so that we're ready when the day comes and we can be flexible.

But, honestly, we laugh a lot, we joke a lot because it helps us get through, and we definitely try to stay in touch with one another as often as we can. We try to talk to dad any time we can. Him and Sydney, since he left, they have a weekly Skype session with one another where they just -- the two of them sit and talk, and that has been absolutely amazing, especially when you're a teenage girl being that connected with your dad. And so that's been really wonderful.

KEILAR: Yes, it's Amazing. Well, he's on a combat tour. Technology is wonderful for these things these days. Look, thank you so much to both of you for your service. Please pass on, Sydney, our regards to your father as well. We appreciate you both being on. Thank you so much.

K. GLASCOCK: Absolutely. Thank you all so much.

S. GLASCOCK: Yes, thank you.

KEILAR: And New Day continues right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: I'm John Berman alongside Brianna Keilar on this New Day.

President Biden's message to the world about the future of U.S. diplomacy and what he plans to tell Vladimir Putin to his face.

KEILAR: And an inspector general's report is raising some new questions about that ugly scene that took place a year ago across from the White House when protesters were forced out of Lafayette Park with pepper balls.

BERMAN: Plus, a high school yearbook club forced to stop sales after some parents and teachers complained about Black Lives Matter.

KEILAR: And stargazers waking up early, like us, this morning to witness a solar eclipse. We're actually here to work but we get to see the solar eclipse. We're going to have astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson joins us live.

BERMAN: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. It's Thursday, June 10th, and the United States is back and facing an inflection point in history to prove democracies can endure and excel. That's the message from President Biden to the world as he kicks off a weeklong trip abroad in Europe. This is his first overseas trip as president.

He will attend the G7 and NATO meetings before his long awaited face- to-face showdown next week with Vladimir Putin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: I'm headed to the G7 and then to the NATO ministerial and then to meet with Mr. Putin to let him know what I want him to know.

I've been clear, the United States will respond in a robust and meaningful way when a Russia government engages in harmful activities. We've already demonstrated that. I'm going to communicate that there are consequences for violating the sovereignty of democracies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And joining us now from England is White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield. Kate, thanks so much for being with us from across the pond there. I want to start off --

KATE BEDINGFIELD, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Thanks for having me. KEILAR: Yes, of course. As we listen to the president there, one of the big things he's doing on this trip is selling democracy abroad. But here in the U.S., we're seeing cracks. We're seeing even crisis when it comes to our democracy. So how do you sell it when the U.S. has actually a bit of a credibility problem when it comes to democracy right now?

[07:05:04]

BEDINGFIELD: Well, one of the things that President Biden views as a core responsibility and a responsibility of his presidency is to restore faith and democracy. And part of the way you do that is by showing democracies can still deliver, and that's something President Biden has done in his first now almost 150 days in office, and he's done that by passing the American rescue plan and getting checks that he promised into the bank accounts of people all across the country who need that money to help pay for food and pay for their rent. He's done that by standing behind a vaccination program that is approaching getting 70 percent of the adults in the United States vaccinated. We're leading the world in terms of the rate at which we're vaccinating people.

So, part of the way that we demonstrate on the world that democracies can deliver is by delivering at home. And that's something that President Biden has done in the first now almost five months of his presidency. And over the next few days here at the G7, he's going to be talking with some of our closest and longest standing allies about what democracies can do to lead on the world stage again.

KEILAR: The big part, I mean not that this entire trip is not big, but I think the part that everyone is really training an eye on is this meeting he's going to have here in several days with Vladimir Putin. And Putin just sent a message to the president. He labeled Navalny supporters, Alexei Navalny supporters extremists. They will be disqualified from running in legislative -- running in elections, among other ways to exercise their rights.

Is there a scenario where the president would actually consider calling off this meeting with Putin?

BEDINGFIELD: He has every intention of having this meeting with President Putin. And what he would say is that he sits down with President Putin not in spite of our differences but because of our differences. He is somebody who has done, of course, diplomacy on the world stage his entire public career, and he's known President Putin for a long time. He's met with him face-to-face before.

So this conversation with President Putin is going to be direct, it's going to be candid. He's going to talk about, he's going to raise our issues of concerns, including, as you say, human rights violations, including incursions on the Ukrainian border, including these cyberattacks from outfits who are based in Russia. So these are all things that are going to be on the table. These are things that he's going to raise directly with President Putin.

But what he's looking to do is to create a stable, predictable relationship with Russia, and that means working with the Russians on areas where we can find consensus and areas where it's in our interest in the United States to work with them, things like nuclear proliferation. It's why we signed an extension to the new START treaty.

So, there are things that we can do to work together. But, first and foremost, this conversation with President Putin, rest assured, is going to be direct, and it's going to be very candid.

KEILAR: I want to turn and talk about another important foreign trip, which was the vice president's first foreign trip, where this was just South America as she's training her eye on the root problems behind the immigration crisis. White House sources tell CNN that they are perplexed by her border answers. What do you say to that?

BEDINGFIELD: I say she's done a tremendous job already on this incredibly difficult portfolio, this incredibly important task that the president gave her precisely because it is an important task, and she's the person to get it done. And, look, the work she's doing already on this important diplomatic assignment is already making a difference.

Our latest data shows that unaccompanied -- excuse me, I'm hitting the microphone in front of me -- unaccompanied children coming from the northern triangle where Vice President Harris was visiting is down -- that number is down 23 percent since April and 32 percent since March. So the work that she has been doing to address the root causes of migration, that work is already paying off, and this is an incredibly important assignment.

And, look, the other thing I would say about this is, you know, conservative Republicans, right-wingers, love to attack on this issue, right? But this is a moment for people to come together, for us to find practical bipartisan solutions. If people want to make progress on this incredibly important issue, rebuild an orderly and humane immigration system. This is the time to come to the table and do it. President Biden put forward a bill on his first day in office to institute a humane, comprehensive reform of our immigration policy.

So we would welcome anybody, Democrats, Republicans, to come to the table to work with us on finding these solutions. That's what the American people are looking for.

KEILAR: And she has taken a lot of incoming from the right. I will say that in itself is not a reason to not ask questions about how she has done on this trip. But we do have some reporting that Republicans have been frustrated, that none of their attacks are really sticking to the president, they see opportunity in attacking Vice President Harris.

[07:10:01]

Why do you think that is?

BEDINGFIELD: Well, I think the fact that President Biden and Vice President Harris have been able to make incredible progress in their first now almost 150 days in office, getting a vaccination program stood up, vaccinating Americans --

KEILAR: But why her, Kate, instead of him?

BEDINGFIELD: Well, that's a question you'd have to ask them, Brianna. I think what that says is that the work that the President Biden and Vice President Harris are doing, leading an economic recovery that is the envy of the world, you know, we come into the G7 world here with the U.S. economy growing at the fastest rate of any economy from around the world as we're emerging from this pandemic, to me, that says that the work that President Biden and Vice President Harris is doing is hard to attack, so they're making personal attacks. It's disappointing, certainly not what the American people want to see, but we're focused on the work, we're focused on getting shots in arms, getting this economy going again, and making sure that all Americans have equitable opportunity.

KEILAR: Let's talk about the domestic agenda. Some Democrats are saying it's time for the president to move ahead without Republicans when it comes to infrastructure. He's already ended one round of talks. Do you agree with that?

BEDINGFIELD: There's progress moving on all fronts here. I think there's a lot of prediction that things are breaking down or hitting a barrier. In fact, we're seeing progress on multiple fronts right now. There's a bipartisan group in the Senate working on an infrastructure proposal. There's a bipartisan group in the House working on an infrastructure proposal. And Senator Sanders is introducing the budget resolution, which is another vehicle where some of this important economic work that President Biden has proposed that can be handled.

So there are multiple paths that are moving forward, and President Biden has said that he has only two red lines in these conversations. One is not raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year, but two is inaction. He's not going to tolerate inaction. We're seeing a lot of movement on a lot of different fronts. We're encouraged by that. There are a lot of different to get this done. This is the process. This is how the bill becomes a law. It's a process with many steps and we're encouraged by all of the progress happening on these different paths simultaneously.

KEILAR: Kate Bedingfield with the White House, thank you so much, for joining us from the president's trip, his first trip to Europe.

BERMAN: All right. Joining us now with reaction, CNN Anchor and Chief Domestic Correspondent Jim Acosta. Sir, you have been on many trips like this, as have you, Brianna Keilar. It's interesting to hear from Kate Bedingfield talk about the challenges of convincing the world that democracy works, which, by the way, is an interesting way of framing it that the Biden team is doing, and it's different than we've seen before, that democracy works and it's worth doing it while simultaneously on the phone, in Zoom, trying to make democracy work in the United States. It's a challenge.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: It's a huge challenge, but, listen, I think that this is probably one of the key moments of the first year of the Biden presidency. How he handles the meeting with Vladimir Putin is going to send a message across the world. I was talking to a senior European official just the other day about this trip who said, we're looking forward to quality leadership being restored is how this official put it. They are definitely suffering from post-Trump around Europe, and so they need Biden to come in there and, yes, to score some points for democracy even though they're not scoring many at home right now.

BERMAN: I want to turn now and talk to you a little bit about this I.G. report, this inspector general's report about a very key day, which was when Lafayette Square was cleared and then we saw President Trump with his photo op in front of the church there. Tell us what we're learning, and tell us what this means. Tell us if this raises more questions than it answers. What do you think?

ACOSTA: Well, I certainly think it raises more questions than answers. You know, the I.G. report is saying that the park police cleared the park with the purpose of setting up this fence because, obviously, the protesters needed to be moved back from this area where they were defacing statues and potentially pulling down the Andrew Jackson statue and so on.

I was in the rose garden that day when Trump gave that speech and said I'm going go this special place, talking about the church, and you could hear the park police and other federal forces, D.C. Police, clearing that park. They were violently pummeling protesters, tear gassing protesters. Remember at that time, the White House was telling us, oh, we didn't use tear gas. The D.C. Police were using tear gas.

The other thing that is not clear about all of this is what did the White House team know at this time. According to the inspector general's report, they did not speak to senior White House officials, they did not speak to the Secret Service. So this certainly raises more questions.

And I have to say, when I read through this report, it sounded as if this inspector general was auditioning to become the inspector general at Mar-a-Lago, because, I mean, this is almost a whitewash of what occurred on June 1st.

[07:15:00]

These protesters were largely demonstrating peacefully and were violently cleared from that park. It was just a huge blow to the First Amendment, I think, in this country. You can't have protesters pummeled by police officers when they're trying to make a statement about racial injustice in this country.

BERMAN: The I.G. report didn't though that that didn't happen. What it really specifically said was that the park police, and only the park police, not necessarily the Secret Service or other law enforcement agencies, but the park police didn't clear those protesters so that the president could go hold up the bible.

ACOSTA: Right.

BERMAN: That's a very specific, narrow finding. ACOSTA: But what we don't know is what the White House was plotting at the same time. Remember, if you look at this inspector general's report, there's one point where a park police commander talks to the attorney general and the attorney general says -- this is in the I.G. report -- are these protesters still going to be here when the president comes out? So, clearly, they had this intent to use the clearing of the park to stage this photo opportunity even if that was not the original intent of the park police.

And so, you know, I think that there are other investigations going on up on Capitol Hill inside the interior department, over at the Justice Department. We need more answers than this. This doesn't go nearly far enough to explain what happened that day.

KEILAR: Yes. We don't know what the A.G. said. We also didn't hear from a lot of folks who would have known that as well in this report.

We're also learning that the Trump administration went to considerable lengths to get the records of one of our colleagues, Barbara Starr, who covers the Pentagon. They actually put a secret gag order on CNN's general counsel. Let's listen to how he describes this legal battle.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID VIGILANTE, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CNN: That's what's the most sort of unnerving and bizarre part. Nothing we did or nothing we requested would prompt them to create -- to provide us any sort of clarity as to what they might be looking for. And we couldn't even narrow the search as a result of that, nor do we have any idea what the stated threat of national security or imminent harm was an issue to justify issuing an order like this, which is really the standard that should be met, and I'm skeptical that it ever was met.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: I wonder what you think about that and not just what happened under the Trump administration but really what could happen under any administration.

ACOSTA: What is this, the Handmaid's Tale? I'm sorry. There's some secret court that can tell us that we can't talk about the fact that the government wants to take our emails? This is totally insane. I think it's a pretty interesting moment that David Vigilante relays to the public in this op-ed that he published on cnn.com, where he talks about this other court that looked at what the federal government was doing, essentially said, they didn't establish their case, they didn't establish this need to have this kind of draconian secrecy attached to this entire process.

We can't have the government, no matter who's in office, no matter which administration is in charge, which party is in charge, you can't have the government going around grabbing people's emails and then have lawyers for those companies, no, you can't even talk about it.

Vigilante, our senior counsel at CNN, couldn't talk about this with the public, couldn't talk about with other people inside CNN. I understand there are reasons for secrecy and so on, but I think it speaks volumes that a separate judge later on looked at what the case was from the federal government and said they didn't go nearly far enough.

I know personally what it's like to be on the receiving end of the government going after your First Amendment. The Trump administration took my press pass and then when it was held up in federal court, a federal judge said that the Trump administration, what are you guys doing? Are you nuts? You can't do this.

And so I think it's pretty striking that the Trump administration seemingly, time and again, just getting, you know, in the way of the First Amendment, going after the First Amendment rights of whether it's journalists or protesters. I mean, this was just a steady theme throughout this entire administration.

BERMAN: Jim Acosta, you're here, you're talking out loud, great to see you.

ACOSTA: That's right, No Handmaid's Tale here.

BERMAN: Thank you so much.

ACOSTA: Good to see you.

BERMAN: Coming up, Trump fans putting their support on display at a Major League Baseball stadium. See what happened after they unfurled a giant banner.

KEILAR: Attorney General Merrick Garland facing some tough questions about the direction of the Justice Department after President Trump.

BERMAN: And we're seeing new images just in from the solar eclipse overnight. If you missed it this morning, we have a full play-by-play recap.

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BERMAN: Attorney General Merrick Garland on Capitol Hill yesterday facing tough questions from Democrats too about controversial Justice Department arguments, including the government's defense of former President Trump in a defamation lawsuit stemming from an allegation of rape by Writer E. Jean Carroll.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MERRICK GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL: The job of the Justice Department in making decision of law is not to back any administration, previous or present. Our job is to represent the American people.

And the essence of the rule of law is what I said when I accepted the nomination for attorney general. It is said that like cases be treated like, that there not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, that there not be one rule for friends and another for foes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining me now is former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He also served as White House counsel in the George W. Bush administration.

Just your general reaction to what we just heard from Merrick Garland.

ALBERTO GONZALES, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL, BUSH 43 ADMINISTRATION: I don't disagree with a word that General Garland expressed to the American people. I think it's the right approach for any Department of Justice.

Now, of course, sometimes practices, decisions are affected by new laws passed by Congress. Sometimes there are court decisions that cause a department to take a different approach with respect to procedures and how they actually pursue wrongdoing.

[07:25:00]

But as a general matter, you want a department to be consistent in the way it approaches cases. It builds credibility at the department. It upholds the morale of the department. And I think it was the right approach.

BERMAN: The question is though is it the approach that was taken up until January 20th this of this year? In other words, was that really the approach that the last administration used?

GONZALES: Well, that will be something to study for quite some time and something for historians to look at and people like yourself, John. You know, I'm commenting here this morning on it on the approach that (INAUDIBLE) is going to be followed by this administration, which I think is the absolute right approach.

BERMAN: Yes. But the question though that some Democrats ask is basically what you're saying, we need to unilaterally disarm, we need to behave in Democrat administrations when you have a Justice Department like the one of the Trump administration that clearly doesn't. So is it unequal, it's an unsymmetrical as it were here?

GONZALES: John, it's either right or it's wrong. And if it's right, you do the right thing. That's the way that I would approach these kinds of decisions. And irrespective of what the last guy did, what the last administration did, what the previous party did, you do what's right for the American people.

BERMAN: And, look, that's clearly the argument Merrick Garland was making yesterday. And, by the way, it's the argument Merrick Garland made during his confirmation hearings and promised when he was nominated for this job to begin with.

I want to talk about Don McGahn's testimony behind closed doors. We saw the transcript yesterday. Don McGahn, former White House Counsel, that is a job that you too once had inside the White House. You have an interesting perspective here. Look, Don McGahn, among other things, he told Robert Mueller but admitted it again yesterday that he was told to do something that he thought was inaccurate or illegal. He was asked to write a letter that would -- as a lie, he thought, or inaccurate, as he put it, about whether or not he had been instructed to remove Robert Mueller.

That's a problem for a White House Counsel, you note, because of who the White House Counsel represents, correct?

GONZALES: Well -- but Don McGahn did the right thing. And here, you have an example of where the institutional guardrails actually worked. Don McGahn understood that his allegiances to the Constitution and to the American people and, of course, you work with the president for the president, for the White House, but in this particular case, that doesn't give you the authority or permission to lie, quite frankly, ro to cover up wrongdoing.

And so if I had been asked by President Bush, which I was never asked by President Bush, to do something that I thought was unlawful, we would had a very candid conversation. I had that kind of relationship with President Bush. And if he insisted that we move forward on a course of action that I thought was wrong, unlawful, then I would have resigned. And at that point, then I might have made a public statement. But I certainly wouldn't have made a public statement while working in the White House, and I just simply would have done my darn best to make sure that the White House wasn't engaging any kind of wrongdoing.

BERMAN: Former Attorney General, former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, unique perspective, as always, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

GONZALES: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: So, free beer, free joints, cold hard cash, states getting creative with incentives to get people vaccinated. But a former surgeon general says that may not be such a good idea.

KEILAR: And a Florida high school forced to halt distribution and sales of its year book. Wait until you hear what some teachers and parents were upset about.

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