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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Inside Myanmar; Interview With Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; CNN Live in Myanmar as Military Crackdown Intensifies; Trump Campaign Used Shady Tactics to Get Donors to Making Recurring Donations. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired April 05, 2021 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: But you're a Republican official.

Should elected officials in your state be using their governmental power to punish corporations if CEOs criticize laws they don't like?

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R), GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: Georgia has had a long history of encouraging businesses to move here, to expand here.

And my method would be really to reach out and have conversations with CEOs. I'm very grateful that Delta is here, I'm grateful that we have UPS, Home Depot, a lot of great corporations, Coca-Cola, because they're creating jobs for Georgians, and also the international headquarters.

And so I'd like to have more conversations, really explain the bills and, where there are issues of concern, sit down with them and just sit down and reason with them.

But we have expanded early voting. We have gone from a minimum of now 16 days up to 17 days, plus two on Sunday. So that's not been hurt at all. We have also made sure that the counties are going to shorten lines, will have a maximum of one-hour wait time.

In the November election, after we worked with the counties and gave them some objective measures and objective criteria, we had an average of two-minute wait time on Tuesday afternoon on Election Day. That's the type of performance we need to see in all 159 counties.

TAPPER: But, with respect, don't you think it's an abuse of power for the Georgia legislature to strip Delta of a tax break because they don't like the CEO criticizing them? I mean, that is just -- I can't imagine -- just if that became the standard in this country, legislators saying, oh, you, you're going to criticize my bill, well, therefore, I'm going to do this from my position of power, because I don't like your criticism, I mean, that is just -- that's hideous.

RAFFENSPERGER: Georgia's motto is wisdom, justice, moderation. And I believe that calm voices, calm conversations are much better. I

think, since the November election, I have shown I can stand in the gap, I can take the flak, but also I can still respond appropriately, but also with sound judgment and really with the facts.

And, at the end of the day, I think that is much more helpful for Georgia.

TAPPER: This law also targets you. It undermines your power as secretary of state. You are no longer the chair of the elections board. Instead, it's going to be an individual that the legislature appoints to that position.

So, now the state election board has the power, in addition, to suspend county election officials. I have to say this -- part of it seems like it was designed to avoid what happened last time, when you demonstrated integrity. You refused to undermine the election, even though you're being pressured by Donald Trump and Republican officials.

This seems like setting the stage for an unelected bureaucrat to help corrupt politicians undermine an election in 2022 or 2024.

RAFFENSPERGER: Well, that is obviously one piece of legislation. I believe it's bad policy.

At the end of the day, we need to be able to hold counties accountable. But the challenge is when you have an unelected chairmen of the state election board, who's going to hold them accountable? They don't report to the voters.

So, what I do, as the chair as -- the state election board, or as secretary state, I'm held accountable to the voters. I have stated my point. I don't support that piece of legislation. The speaker has actually stated his. He wanted to use that as retribution for me mailing out all -- to all registered active voters absentee ballot applications when we were in the middle of pandemic.

I think I did the right thing, and I would do it again.

TAPPER: Don't you think that your party is confronting a situation where, instead of trying to appeal to a more diverse America that is happening all over the country, but certainly in Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, it's trying -- instead of trying to appeal to those voters -- and, by the way, Donald Trump showed that he did have an ability to increase his vote with black voters and Latino voters and other groups.

Instead of doing that, they're trying to make it harder for those people to vote, I mean, isn't that really what's going on?

RAFFENSPERGER: Well, when we make any movement on election bills, we need to make sure we touch all the corners, all the stakeholders.

That's why, when we had House Bill 316 two years ago, I reached out to the King Center, talked to Bernice King, let her know what we're doing, had her actually test the machines in a private testing in our office, secretary of state's office.

But then we took those machines at the King Center. She was very gracious to us. But I wanted to make sure we had rapport with our key stakeholders.

We have a legacy in Georgia that isn't very bright at times. And we need to be very mindful of, that, sometimes, what we say has -- carries great consequences. And they may read into it things that we didn't mean.

And, therefore, I have tried to be very cautious and very mindful of my speech, very respectful of people that have done a lot more long before I was here in Georgia.

TAPPER: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it.

[16:35:02]

RAFFENSPERGER: Thank you, Jake.

TAPPER: CNN on the ground live in one of the most mysterious places in the world after a bloody military coup claims hundreds of lives, including those of children.

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our world lead: a CNN exclusive.

We're on the ground in Myanmar following the coup, as the military detains thousands of protesters as part of their brutal and bloody crackdown, including at least 11 people who spoke to CNN just minutes before getting arrested.

Protests across the country started after the military overthrew the elected government in February. And, since then, one advocacy group says more than 500 people have been killed, including children.

[16:40:01]

The military cut off Internet access, and no international journalist has been allowed into the country, until now.

CNN's Clarissa Ward is live for us in Myanmar, with the permission of the military. They're escorting the team on the ground.

Clarissa, explain why it's so important that you're there.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, I want to underscore that no independent international journalists have been allowed into this country in the last two months since that bloody coup took place, as you said, rights group saying more than 550 people killed. This is a massive protest movement that really came about after the

military ousted Myanmar's democratically elected government, the people coming out to the -- into the streets in the millions. And the more they protested, and the more animated those protests became, the more the military tried to suppress them.

The military here really does not have the popular support of the people of Myanmar. So, we felt it was essential, even though it is a difficult situation when you are in a country with the permission of the -- in this case, the military, the main oppressors in this situation, we felt it was very important to be on the ground to see for ourselves whatever we could, and to tell the story of the people of Myanmar, Jake.

TAPPER: And what's it been like to report there? Have you had the freedom to report whatever you want to report?

WARD: So, we have had the freedom to report what we want to report. As you can tell right now, we're going live to you from here in Myanmar.

We are, though, very controlled in terms of how we can move around, who we can talk to.

I'm here in a military compound. We wanted to stay in a hotel. And we were told simply that that was not possible. Every single place we go to, we go with a huge amount of security. We have minders following our every move. They're constantly filming on their iPhones every conversation we have.

And those conversations, by the way, are really limited, because we haven't had a huge amount of access to ordinary people from Myanmar.

And I just want to give you a little bit of a sense, if I can get this clip up, of what it's like trying to report here. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: What's this poster here? We see "We support CRPH."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

WARD: With the three-finger salute.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. OK.

WARD: That's from people who are against the military. Is that saying that the people in this area are against the military?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe. Not sure, because some demonstrators go around Yangon and shout at -- demonstration.

WARD: Can we maybe talk to some of the people? Can we ask them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not sure, because of your security. I'm not sure, because I am just for interpretation. OK. WARD: I'm wondering.

There's some people over there. Maybe we could go and talk to them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

So, the security forces told me we shouldn't stay for a long time here for our security.

WARD: For our security?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

WARD: Gives you a sense of the intense level of security with us, one, two, three, another three over there, six trucks full of soldiers accompanying our every move.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: And I talked there about that three-finger salute, the so- called Hunger Games salute.

This gesture has become the symbol really of resistance against the military coup. And even when we were out on the streets, with all that military -- military people around us, with all those minders around us, people would come up at any available opportunity and flash that salute at our camera.

They want the world to know what they are going through. And they want more people out there telling their story, Jake.

TAPPER: Clarissa, why would the military let you in?

WARD: Well, the military has its side of the story too. And up until now, they have been largely tight-lipped about what that is.

Essentially, what they want the world to know is that the protesters have become much more violent, the protesters are using Molotov cocktails, they're using slingshots, which, again, is no match for the assault rifles that the Myanmar military is using.

But, really, they're trying to cast the protest movement as a violent mob of anarchists that needs to be suppressed. They took us to a number of factories that had been burned down. They said that the protesters were responsible. The protesters say they were not responsible.

But that's very much the narrative that they're hoping will take shape, the idea that, somehow, it's the protesters who are to blame for all the violence here.

But when you're looking at the actual makeup of what's happening during these standoffs and these protests that are quickly turning into massacres, you can see that one side clearly has a huge advantage in terms of its arms, of its level of weaponry and funding. And there's simply no match, Jake. [16:45:05]

TAPPER: And, Clarissa, you sat down with a senior member of the military leadership there in Myanmar. No other journalist has been able to do that. What did you ask him?

WARD: Well, we had a lot of things to ask him. And it was a pretty up comfortable interview. We wanted to particularly drill down on the number of innocent civilians who have been killed. More than 550 protesters, pro-democracy protesters, most of them unarmed, among them 44 children, Jake. That's according to the United Nations.

So we really wanted to get some sense on how on earth the military could justify this. We want to him specifically at one point with a very specific piece of video that shows a young activist being killed in cold blood to give him a sense to explain how on earth such a brutal killing could possibly be justified. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: This is CCTV footage of a 17-year-old going past a police convoy. You can see the police shoot him on the spot. His autopsy later said that he suffered brain injury as a result of a cycling accident which I think we can all see that's not a cycling accident. How do you explain this?

MAJOR GENERAL ZAW MIN TUN (through translator): If that kind of thing occurred, we will have an investigation into it. We will investigate if the video is real or not. There may be some videos which look suspicion, but our forces do not have any intention to shoot innocent people. We will investigate if it's real or not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: We also pushed him hard on what the game plan is here. How can this violence possibly end, this awful cycle of violence and when will the people get to have their voiced heard? He said that the military's plan has always been to allow for another round of elections sometime in either the next year or possibly up to two years.

But it's really important to underscore here, Jake, that the whole reason that this coup took place in the first place is because there were free and fair elections back in November. There were independent election monitors there who did not see any problems in terms of fraud or any significant problems, and that election was won in a landslide by the NLD party, the military's party suffered a humiliating defeat and that's what precipitated this coup in the first place.

So I think people are very unwilling to believe the idea that there will be another round of free and fair elections and that their candidate, their choice who is right now under arrest in prison, Aung San Suu Kyi, will be allowed to become president if she did indeed win again, or frankly no one believes that she will be allowed to run again because she is facing these trumped-up charges, Jake.

TAPPER: And, Clarissa, tell us about the people who talked to you and then were subsequently arrested.

WARD: You know, Jake, this is always your worst nightmare as a journalist, right? We were finally able to negotiate access to a public space, not a controversial space. It was a space that the military actually picked.

But minute we got to this market and we were just shooting video of people going about their daily business, once they saw their cameras and they knew that CNN was in town and they had been writing a lot about it on social media, a lot of people came up to us. They flashed that three-finger hunger games salute that I told about.

They talked about wanting justice. They talked about wanting democracy. They talked about wanting freedom. More than that, so many talked about how frightened they are, Jake. Soldiers coming into their neighborhoods every single night dragging dead bodies away.

And what we found out was that shortly after this trip to the market at least eight people by CNN's count were arrested for the simple crime of just having spoken to us and said that they were afraid.

We pushed the general really hard on that. He admitted that 11 people in total were arrested. He said that they shouldn't have been arrested to give him credit and that they would be released and we can now confirm that they have indeed been released, which is a huge relief for us and also we're grateful to the military for releasing them.

TAPPER: And we should note, I mean, when people talk to you or they flash you the -- the hunger games salute, three-fingered hunger games salute that I'm holding up right now in solidarity with them, I should say. They are -- that's an act of civil disobedience at great risk.

What other acts or forms of civil disobedience have you witnessed?

[16:50:01]

WARD: Well, this is it, just it. The military is trying to control the country through brute force, but what they can't do is make people work, for example, so there's a huge civil disobedience movement. Most of the country's workers are striking. They are not going to work, whether it's ministries, banks. You go by the banks here. There's long, long lines outside of every single paining.

That means that the economy is grinding to a halt. There's garbage in the streets. It's very difficult for the military to kind of keep up with this charade that this is a functioning society now.

As long as people refuse to work, as long as you don't have the support of your own populace, let's be very clear here, we have seen absolutely no evidence that the military has any real popular support here in Myanmar, and as long as that conditions, even if you are shooting at non-protests, even if you are killing children, it becomes very difficult and challenging to actually run a country, Jake.

TAPPER: Yeah. Clarissa Ward in Myanmar for us, thank you so much. Really appreciate your courage. WARD: Thank you.

TAPPER: Make America grifted again. A new report says the Trump campaign ripped off millions from his own supporters, some left with drained bank accounts. That story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: One of the grand hypocrisies of the MAGA movement is how often its leaders fleeced the very folks they claimed to be fighting for. Case in point, throughout 2020 many Trump supporters thought they were making a one-time donation to the Trump campaign only to find out later that their bank accounts were being repeatedly drained leaving some of these so-called men and women unable to pay their basic bills.

The Trump campaign donation site tricked donors with shady language and deceptive pre-checked boxes into making these recurring donations, setting off a flurry of fraud complaints and forced refunds as first reported by "The New York Times."

CNN's Sunlen Serfaty shows us now how the former president bankrolled his campaign even after he was vote out of office.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSS BLATT, BROTHER OF A VICTIM OF THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN RECURRING DONATION SCHEME: I was mad. I was sure it was some sort of a scam.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Last September. Russ Blatt's brother Stacy contributed $500 to the Trump campaign. With a month, Stacy Blatt was bouncing checks, his bank account drained.

BLATT: We saw the six withdrawals of $500 totals $3,000 that had been taken from his account starting in mid-September and over the course of a month, they took $3,000.

SERFATY: Russ had become his brother's financial power of attorney due to his father's failing health. The Blatts realized only then that Stacy was signed up to make recurring donations to the Trump campaign. Stacy Blatt died of cancer in February.

[16:55:01]

BRATT: They just kept taking money out until there was no money left.

SERFATY: And Stacy was not alone. A "New York Times" investigation revealing the alarming extent and reach of a calculated Trump campaign scheme to get supporters signed up for reoccurring donations by default and later adding a second pre-checked box to double a donor's contribution.

According to "The Times" the Trump campaign internally called it a money bomb, a tactic that experts say is intentionally designed to be easily overlooked. When supporters contributed online, a yellow box to make a donation came pre-checked, requiring donors who wanted to make a one-time donation to opt out and it wasn't easy to spot.

BRATT: He didn't remember seeing anything like that. He thought he was giving a one-time $500 donation. It seemed like it was deceitful.

SERFATY: Thousands overlooked it and the Trump campaign ran with it.

SHANE GOLDMACHER, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: In the fall or the late summer as the Trump campaign faced financial pressures, they made a real important change is they took that box and instead of taking donations out every month they began taking them out every week.

SERFATY: Banks and credit card companies have been flooded with calls from donor, "The Times" reports, leaving the Trump campaign and RNC to refund a massive amount of money.

"The New York Times" reporting that from the period of mid-October through December of 2020, the Trump campaign and the RNC made more than $530,000 refunds, amounting to more than $6 had million.

By comparison, the Biden campaign and DNC refunded 37,000 donations amounting to $5.6 million.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: We did very well with the fund- raising stuff but a lot came in small donations.

SERFATY: The boost of money that came with the recurring donations came when president Trump was in need of it the most just weeks before the election and short an cash.

GOLDMACHER: So that money that they took from donors through recurring donations really does add up functionally to being a de facto loan with no interest from their own supporters.

SERFATY: And refund only after the election with funds the campaign collected to promote baseless claims of election fraud.

And Democrats used these same sorts of programs but not to the extent of how the Trump campaign managed this. Now, the former President Trump is pushing back on the "New York Times" report. In a statement he says the fund-raising efforts were all done legally, and he adds, quote, many people were so enthusiastic that they gave over and over and in certain cases where they gave too much we would promptly refund their contribution or overall dispute rate was less than 1 percent of total online donations adding, Jake, he says, a low number.

TAPPER: Mm-hmm.

Sunlen, thanks so much.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: The U.S. Capitol police are, quote, struggling to meet the security demands at the Capitol, according to the Capitol Police Union chair who's calling on Congress to hire hundreds of new police officers. One Capitol police officer was killed just on Friday. Another right around January 6th.

The union says they are staffed below the authorized level, and the shortage has only been exacerbated by the January 6th insurrection.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now. I'll see you tomorrow.