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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Interview With Bishop T.D. Jakes; Minneapolis Votes to Ban Police Choke Holds. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired June 05, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:13]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD on this Friday. I'm Jake Tapper.

And we begin with our national lead. Former Trump White House Chief of Staff retired Marine General John Kelly today adding his voice to the chorus of former top Trump officials not just dismayed with President Trump's handling of the current crisis, but worried.

Kelly agreeing with former Defense Secretary James Mattis' withering assessment of Trump as someone who seeks to divide the American people, someone not mature enough to run the country, saying -- quote -- "I think we need to look harder at who we elect. What is their character like? What are their ethics?" -- unquote.

Right now, protesters across the U.S. are taking to the streets, demanding change, in the wake of George Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police.

All four officers, former officers, currently remain behind bars. And this afternoon, the Minneapolis City Council voted to ban the use of choke holds.

This all comes as a number of other dramatic police confrontations are drawing increased scrutiny, including this disturbing video from Buffalo, New York, officers knocking over an elderly man yesterday, causing him to fall back and hit his head. We're told he's currently hospitalized and the two cops involved have been suspended.

But it's important to note the department originally lied about this incident, falsely claiming that the 75-year-old tripped on his own and fell, once again driving home the point that smartphones are exposing not only police brutality, but official government lies about such abuses of power.

Today, New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo blasted the officers, saying that the video made him sick, as CNN Jason Carroll reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eleven days of nationwide protests, anger, outrage and a call for change after George Floyd was killed with a police officer's knee on his neck.

This is the message on a street leading straight to the White House, the words "Black Lives Matter" now emblazoned in yellow paint. Part of that call for change, renewed scrutiny on police. In Minneapolis, the City Council voted to ban the controversial choke hold and vowing to work towards systematic change in the department.

All four former police officers in the department are in jail, charged in George Floyd's killing, this as a growing number of disturbing police incidents on video are emerging. In Buffalo, New York, two officers have been suspended after a 75-year-old protester was pushed and left bleeding on the ground, an initial message from police described as a man who tripped and fell.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): When I saw the video, I got sick to my stomach.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my, God that looks so scary.

CARROLL: In Tacoma, Washington, a new video posted to social media appears to show officers violently striking Manuel Ellis as he lies on the ground. A second video also appears to show officers holding Ellis while he's on the ground and telling him to put his hands behind his back.

Ellis died after being physically restrained by police. His family is calling for four officers involved to be fired. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.

MARCIA CARTER-PATTERSON, MOTHER OF MANUEL ELLIS: He was a blessed child, OK? He was blessed. He was good, and did not deserve to be murdered at the hands of the police.

CARROLL: And in Atlanta, new video of a woman being body-slammed by a police officer, breaking her collarbone, at a protest May 29. No word yet from the Atlanta Police Department on whether the officer involved will face disciplinary actions, while, in New York City last night, a small sign of hope, as a police chief in Brooklyn de-escalated a situation with protesters by shaking hands and listening.

(on camera): As an African-American law enforcement officer, I mean, how does that make you -- how does that fit with you?

JEFFREY MADDREY, NYPD ASSISTANT CHIEF: Well, I'm a black man, but I love being a police officer. So I'm not resigning. And I'm going to continue to make sure everybody's safe.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL: And, Jake, today, the governor announced his plans to introduce what he calls significant police reform legislation. It's called Say Their Name.

Part of that legislation includes banning choke holds and also appointing the state attorney general to independently investigate whenever allegations of police misconduct arise. As for New York City, New York City is still under that 8:00 curfew.

Many of these demonstrators out here today say they plan on doing exactly what they did in previous nights and march right through it -- Jake.

[16:05:05]

TAPPER: All right, Jason Carroll in New York, thank you so much.

Joining me now to discuss is Bishop T.D. Jakes. He's the founder and senior pastor at The Potter's House megachurch in Dallas.

Bishop Jakes, thanks so much for joining us.

You said this country is at a turning point right now. So where do we go from here?

BISHOP T.D. JAKES, PASTOR, THE POTTER'S HOUSE: First of all, thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here today.

I think that we are standing on the precipice of either a great rejuvenation, a rebuilding, a restructuring of our company, or we walk away from it with the myopic view of only seeing it within the context of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and the other cases that we can so easily name.

I want to be clear that these are just the tip of the iceberg for all of the people who didn't have a camera, who didn't have footage, who never made it to the press. They're just an icon for millions of other people in our community.

And we have a lot of work to do. But I have never seen the riling of people of all races, cultures, ages and generations behind a cause like we have seen in recent weeks. And I think that gives me hope that there is a possibility that we could get substantive change.

TAPPER: I want to play for you what Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms recently said, if we could roll that tape.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS (D), MAYOR OF ATLANTA, GEORGIA: We are in the midst of a movement in this country. But it's going to be incumbent upon all of us to be able to get together and articulate more than our anger.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: In your view, what does real change look like from a policy perspective?

JAKES: I'm so glad you asked me that, because while the marching has drawn attention to the issue, and the murder has drawn -- the murders have drawn attention to the issue, no real decisions are made on sidewalks or bridges or marching. That is the place where we galvanize attention. I think it's time to

move into the second phase, where we begin to first realize that this is not just about police officers and their behavior. It is about the entire criminal justice system.

It is about the district attorneys and how they work when we do find police officers who are acting out improperly. It is about returning the right to vote in the areas where the returning citizens from the criminal justice system have the right to vote.

It is about not CEOs making nice statements and writing small checks, but it is about them in creating a way for returning citizens to have gainful employment, so that they do not digress back into crime again. It is about looking very strong at the way poor people of all colors are represented in the criminal justice system, often stuck in the system, with court-appointed attorneys, remanded over into the court, never represented fully, talked into plea bargain deals that causes them to be incarcerated for years.

We need a complete overhaul of the entire system. It's just that what you're seeing on the sidewalk, it's the gate of entry to what you're seeing going on in the courtrooms and in the jail cells all over America.

TAPPER: And what about the people watching right now who aren't district attorneys, who don't run Nike or the NFL? How do they, how do we form a more perfect union? What do we as citizens need to do?

JAKES: There are two things that we're looking at here.

One of them is racism, which is a condition of the heart, and the other one is injustice, which is a result of imbalance of power. And we have to work both of them. I think one of the things that every citizen can do is hold our elected officials to a higher standard, question them more deeply about, what agenda do they have for black America, how functionally -- let's look at their record and their history as it relates to how they have dealt with us in the past.

It's not that we can't forgive them, but we have to confront and have a conversation about that. And you could also begin by talking to people who look differently from you, rather than learning about us from your favorite news channel.

And when you write the books you read, the truth that you come up with is often skewed to one side or the other. And I think we have to build those relationships. We keep looking for the change to come from the White House. And they certainly have a role to play. I'm not excusing them of their responsibility. Congress does too.

But what I'm seeing in the streets of America is average we, the people, standing up and joining hands and singing songs and working together to bring about massive change. And I think that, together, we can.

[16:10:03] We have to look at the fact that 70 percent of black people that are incarcerated in prison are for nonviolent crimes. And we have to say, does that really make sense, considering the fact that we incarcerate more people in America than all the countries of the world combined?

We have to look at the whole system. It's not working. We have to take them off the stock exchange, and start making big business out of locking up black people. That's just a nicer way to go about slavery. We're still being bought and sold.

Those types of things have to be addressed. And we need average people to look at it, because you are the voters. And if you don't vote it in, we don't have to live with it.

TAPPER: All right, Bishop T.D. Jakes, inspiring words. Thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate it.

JAKES: Thank you for having me. Have a great day.

TAPPER: Coming up next: the stunning remarks by President Trump today using George Floyd's name.

Plus: The big cities might get a lot of attention, but protesters are filling the streets of towns coast to coast as well. We're going to take a look.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:15:16]

TAPPER: In our politics lead today -- minutes before his former chief of staff, General John Kelly, seemed to assail his former boss's character and lack of ethics, President Trump claimed today is a great day for George Floyd, the black man who had been killed in Minneapolis police custody last week. The president said he hopes Floyd is looking down from heaven, praising what's happening in the country right now.

The remark came after the president said that every American should be treated equally by police, a comment seemingly at odds with his insistence just moments before that governors should use the National Guard to, quote, dominate the streets during protests.

As CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports, there was also a tense exchange at the White House today as the president, celebrating the fact that the overall unemployment rate went down, sniped yet again at PBS "NewsHour" reporter Yamiche Alcindor for questioning why the president was celebrating the economy while unemployment numbers for blacks and Asians were only continuing to rise.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: After the unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to 13 percent, President Trump seized on the first good news he's had in months during a last-minute address in the Rose Garden today.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Everything that you've seen this morning was unexpected, even the pro sitting here would understand that. Everything.

COLLINS: The president predicted that an economic turnaround could happen sooner than expected. And as he acknowledged the unrest across the nation, he invoked George Floyd's name.

TRUMP: Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying there's a great thing that's happening for our country, It's a great day for him, it's a great day for everybody.

COLLINS: The president hasn't held any listening sessions with leaders of the black community but he claimed a rebound in the economy could address racial tension in the U.S.

TRUMP: That's what my plan is. We're going to have the strongest economy in the world.

COLLINS: As Trump was taking his victory lap, his former chief of staff that he agreed with the scathing assessment of his leadership by the president's former defense secretary.

JOHN KELLY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: I think we need to look harder at who we elect.

COLLINS: John Kelly said if he was still chief of staff, he would have argued against clearing the street of protesters for the president's photo op at St. John's church.

KELLY: I would have argued that the end result that have was predictable.

COLLINS: As more of his former top aides turned into critics, "The Wall Street Journal" editorial board wrote that Trump's demand for personal loyalty and his thin skin clashed with people who care about larger causes.

That breaking point could have consequences for the president's support within the Republican Party. The GOP only has a three-seat majority in the Senate but after Senator Lisa Murkowski said he was struggling with whether to support Trump in November, he vowed to campaign against her and support any candidate with a pulse.

And another feud may be brewing for the president. Today, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser wrote a letter requesting that he remove all extraordinary federal law enforcement and military presence from Washington, D.C. Trump responded by calling her up incompetent and said if she doesn't treat the national guard well, then we'll bring in a different group of men and women.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Now, Jake, I want to point out something else that happened during that press conference today, or the White House called it a press conference. The president did not take any questions, he just made a statement. If you look at what was happening in the Rose Garden before reporters made their way out there, you'll notice that the chairs weren't set up according to CDC guidelines, socially distanced as they have been for weeks now at multiple events in the Rose Garden where typically White House staffers come out and wear masks.

If you look at this second photo, you'll see the chairs were moved much closer together. Those reporters then were not following CDC guidelines as the White House had set those chairs up and they were instead very close together. Now, the White House Correspondents Association has put out a statement blasting this move by the White House, saying they were basically using reporters as a political prop during that event today by putting them so close together knowingly. And when they asked the White House press office why they had moved these chairs once they had been socially distanced to them putting them together, Jake, they said it was because it looks better.

TAPER: Well, of course they were using reporters as a prop. They said it was a press conference and they didn't take any questions. That's exactly what they were doing. I guess the question is how long is the White House Correspondents Association going to continue to let this happen.

Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

An elderly protester shove by police and then ignored while he bleeds on the sidewalk in Buffalo. We have some breaking news on the Buffalo police. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: We have breaking news for you now from Buffalo, New York, where two local stations are reporting that 57 members of police emergency response team in Buffalo have resigned in response to the suspension of the two officers.

[16:25:03]

Those officers will stay on the force, not just as part of the team. It's a response to the video, the resignation or the suspension rather of the two officers. Those two officers are seen pushing a 75-year-old man. They were suspended and now the 57 resignations in alliance with those two.

Let's bring in CNN law enforcement analyst Charles Ramsey who served as police commissioner in Philadelphia and police chief in Washington, D.C. Also with me, Darnell Hunt, he's professor of sociology and African-American studies and dean of social sciences at UCLA.

Chief Ramsey, let me just start with you and your reaction to these 57 officers resigning from the emergency response team in support of those two officers who pushed the 75-year-old man onto the ground and then lied about it.

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, if they want to resign, they should resign from the department. They don't have a vote in what unit they're in or the running of that department. They would not be allowed to step down from those positions. If they want to resign from the police department, let 'em go, and I would not bring them back, it just means you have some slots you have to fill. That kind of stuff is ridiculous and can't be tolerated.

TAPPER: One of the things that's interesting here, Chief Ramsey, to stay on you for one more question, there are a lot of people out here in the world who want to support the police and understand that, you know, most police are probably good people, and also decry police brutality at the same time we decry violence in the streets from protesters, anarchists or looters or whatever. But the police force this week, initially, the police statement in buffalo said that the 75-year-old man we saw pushed, the original statement said he tripped and fell, that's not what happened. We all saw it.

RAMSEY: Right.

TAPPER: In Washington, D.C., U.S. Park Police originally said no tear gas was used to move protesters before president Trump walked across Lafayette Square Park, but again, that's not true, we saw it. We saw the tear gas.

How do these statements coupled with all this, I mean, how does this cultivate trust in the police?

RAMSEY: It doesn't. And that's part of the problem. I mean, you can go back to Laquan McDonald and the statements that weren't true. Anybody who looks at the video of the man being pushed down and injured and say, that's OK. I'm going to resign over it. You don't need them on the police force quite frankly.

And what was even worse than that, because they gave him a shove, which is inappropriate.

It may not have been intended for him to fall, but how do you walk by a person on the sidewalk with blood pooling from their head, and that's OK? That officer shut get a pat on the back and go back to work? No, it doesn't work that way. That's why they're protesting the street right now because kinds of actions on the part of the police. That's exactly why we're where we are right now. It's an embarrassment, quite frankly.

TAPPER: Professor Hunt, Jamelle Bouie, I know he is in an opinion piece for "The New York Times" and he wrote today, quote, where rioting protesters can be held to account for destruction or violence, rioting police have the imprimatur of the state. What we've seen from rioting police in the other words is an assertion of power and impunity in the face of mass anger over police brutality. They've effectively said, so what, unquote.

What's your reaction to that? Do you understand why some people might feel that way?

DARNELL HUNT, DEAN OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, UCLA: Yeah, it's a ridiculous double standard. Let's face it, the problem that we're dealing with right now is one in which we've sort of come to this place where the mentality of policing is the idea of the thin blue line, where the police are there to basically be the last line of defense for society descends into chaos. That particular perspective sets up this us against them sort of dynamic as opposed to the police being partners, being protectors, being part of the community. So, this whole idea of community policing has fallen apart.

We have a huge cultural problem where you have cultures within police departments that can allow the type of just brutality that we saw in Minneapolis or the fact that these 57 officers would resign from this particular unit in support of the two officers who pushed down this older man. And that just -- I mean, it speaks to a broken culture and something that we have to fix. I think that we have to look at incentives and disincentives, structural solutions to make sure that this happen. This is more than just about individuals.

TAPPER: Chief Ramsey, I want to get your reaction to this video that captured a tearful police officer telling a crowd in Ocean City, New Jersey, an African-American officer, that the problem in his view is lack of awareness of what black Americans have been going through for centuries. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TYRONE ROLLS, OCEAN CITY, NJ POLICE: I get it, because I'm not recognized when I'm out of uniform. I understand. I get it from both sides, I understand both sides.

But the problem is, it's lack of education. The education system is failing us. We don't teach the real American history or where it comes from.

[16:30:00]