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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Alaska Lawmaker Banned From Flights For Refusing to Wear Mask; Republican Propaganda; Biden-Putin Summit Planned?; FBI Opens Civil Rights Investigation in Andrew Brown Jr.'s Death. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired April 27, 2021 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:35]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Lies and consequences.

A Republican Alaska state lawmaker is now banned from the only airline that can fly her from Anchorage to her job at the state capital in Juneau. Alaska Airlines says she repeatedly refused to wear a mask.

Senator Lora Reinbold, known for pushing COVID conspiracy theories, now has to drive more than 14 hours across the Canadian border and then take a ferry to vote.

CNN's Pete Muntean reports for us now the state senator claims that she went to -- quote -- "new heights" to serve Alaska, but she's grounded for now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Alaska state Senator Lora Reinbold was a frequent flyer of Alaska Airlines. But the carrier says confrontations like this one in the Juneau Airport became too frequent.

STATE SEN. LORA REINBOLD (R-AK): I have got to get on the flight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need you to put your mask up, or we're not going to let you on the flight.

MUNTEAN: It was after this flight that Alaska Airlines said in a statement that Reinbold is suspended from flying for "her continued refusal to comply" with the federal mandate to wear a mask when traveling, a ban Reinbold says in a new radio interview that she learned via e-mail.

She claimed she has a mask exemption, but did not specify what it is.

REINBOLD: It just completely blew me away, what -- that they wouldn't even get my side of the story, didn't do due process, and yet they issued a punishment.

MUNTEAN: Reinbold is a firebrand in Alaska politics. In February, she was admonished by the state's Republican governor for spreading lies about coronavirus, and, this month, she was booted from leading a state Senate committee.

Now she will have a problem just getting to work. Alaska Airlines is the only carrier that flies from her home district near Anchorage to the state capital in Juneau. Reinbold will now drive hundreds of miles into Canada and take a five-hour ferry, a journey she documented on Facebook.

REINBOLD: Beautiful Alaska.

MUNTEAN: Masks have been mandated on commercial flights during the Biden administration. The Transportation Security Administration has received 2,000 reports of passengers refusing to wear masks.

But Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants says enforcement has been up to airline employees, who Reinbold once insulted as mask bullies.

SARA NELSON, PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS: The rules don't shift just because of what your title is. There's no special considerations because you think that you are special in some way. That's the message here, is that, in aviation, we're all equal.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MUNTEAN: The FAA tells me it's looking into this incident.

In fact, it just fined three passengers new fines as high as $30,000. The FAA has a zero tolerance policy against unruly passengers. And, Jake, Reinbold is not returning my request for an interview.

TAPPER: What a shock.

Pete Muntean, thanks so much.

"The New York Post" had to make a correction after it ran a bogus story about Vice President Kamala Harris. Before they made the edit on Tuesday, Republicans, including Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and at least one 2024 presidential hopeful, spread the false story.

The story claimed, without any actual evidence, that copies of the vice president's children's book titled "Superheroes Are Everywhere" were being given to migrant kids at a California shelter in their welcome kits.

RNC Chair McDaniel tweeted about the story just yesterday, saying, falsely -- quote -- "After learning officials are handing out Kamala Harris' book, is she profiting from Biden's border crisis?" -- unquote.

The answer, of course, is no. The story's a lie.

CNN's Daniel Dale tracked this down. And it was actually, Daniel, you found out, just one book that had

been donated to one migrant center for kids in California. And all those mendacious tweets from Ronna McDaniel and the lawmakers, they're still up, and there's even a new "New York Post" story with an editor's note.

DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: Yes, so this whole thing was complete nonsense.

This was, according to the city of Long Beach, California, where the shelter is located, a community book drive for migrant children at this new temporary shelter at which all kinds of books were donated, none of which were put in migrants' welcome kits. They were made available in an informal library for the children to pick out if they chose.

Now, somehow, from a single photo taken by a local photographer of Vice President Harris' children's book on a cot, "The Post" turned that into copies of Harris' book being given out in these welcome kits.

And they even said on "The Post" Saturday front page -- a cover story, they said the books were being given out illegally, so accusing the shelter or someone of lawbreaking, based on nothing at all.

Now, "The Post" today temporarily deleted both this story and another story that was related to it. They then republished both of them, making substantial corrections without calling them corrections. They called them an editor's note, and this time acknowledging it was one book, it was donated, wasn't being given to everyone, wasn't being put in welcome kits -- Jake.

[16:35:15]

TAPPER: And yet a whole bunch of senators and members of the House and the Republican National Committee chair tweeted out this lie. Their tweets are still up.

Has the White House had anything to say?

DALE: Yes, so Vice President Harris' office basically said she had no idea that a single copy of her book was donated to a shelter in California, which makes -- obviously make sense.

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked about this yesterday by a FOX News reporter who asserted that the story was true in the premise of this question. She said she had to get back to him. She didn't know what he was talking about. And she also joked that she heard that this was a good book.

TAPPER: And this comes after an anchor at MAGA media station admitted that his show made a completely false claim about Biden restricting Americans' red meat consumption.

Has "The New York Post" said anything about its own inaccurate reporting, the way that was done? DALE: It hasn't.

I asked for comment from "The Post." They haven't issued an apology. They haven't issued a formal retraction. They did post the editor's note. But I don't think that's sufficient, frankly, when you spread this entirely baseless nonsense that goes viral widely in conservative media.

You can't just attach an editor's note, tweaking the story, to the bottom. I think you have to do something more substantial. Jake, that just hasn't happened.

TAPPER: Look, reporters make mistakes. There are -- sources get things wrong, but then there's just making crap up and politicians regurgitating it.

Daniel Dale, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Poisoning, hacking, military aggression, just 100 days in, and President Biden has quite a bit to discuss with Vladimir Putin. CNN learning details of a potential summit, those details already being hammered out. That's next.

Then: Is it Iran, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, China cyberattacks? We're going to discuss the biggest global threats facing the U.S. right now with the secretary of state, Antony Blinken.

That's live, and that's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:41:35]

TAPPER: In our world lead: the White House now hammering out details of a possible summit between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, one that could happen early this summer.

It's a meeting that's expected to be remarkably different, I think it's fair to say, from the last time the presidents from these two powers met, as I'm willing to bet President Biden will not side with Putin over U.S. intelligence, for example.

CNN White House reporter Natasha Bertrand joins me now.

And, Natasha, from poisonings, to prisoners, to hacking, a lot for these two to discuss. Is it definitely going to happen?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: So, the White House is still hammering out details about whether the summit is actually going to occur and when.

Of course, there could be some preconditions for when the summit actually does occur, because the Russians, of course, have been very aggressive on the border of Eastern Ukraine. And they have shown very little sign of actually keeping to their word on de-escalating there. And the Pentagon has said that they are not exactly confident that the

Russians are going to follow through and remove all of their forces from the border. There's also the question of Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader there, his health. And he's in prison right now. And his health is deteriorating rapidly.

So all of these things are factoring into whether or not the summit is actually going to take place. But details are being worked out in the event that it does. For example, some countries have already volunteered to host a summit. Vienna has said that it would be happy to host a presidential summit between the two leaders.

So, I think, right now, what we're waiting to see is whether there are any preconditions for that. The president did not answer a question today about whether he would cancel a summit or whether there would be any conditions for such a meeting.

TAPPER: So many problems with what the Russians are doing right now. We just heard Dr. Hotez talk about Russian disinformation about vaccines. We have been covering on the story of the two former U.S. Marines that are in Russian jails right now on trumped-up charges.

And then you just mentioned the fact that -- Russia and their military action in Ukraine, both Crimea, and, of course, in the Eastern Crimea. How are the Ukrainians -- I'm sorry -- Eastern Ukraine. How are the Ukrainians feeling about this?

BERTRAND: They're very nervous about this, understandably, because, when you have these kind of two great world powers that are going to meet over your head, essentially, is what -- how experts put it to me, then it's natural to be nervous about having this kind of influence in the region that you might not necessarily be fully a part of.

And so that's why they really want President Biden to sit down with the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, before any meeting with Vladimir Putin takes place, because they want to work out kind of the details of engage of U.S. engagement with Russia and whether there's going to be any kind of abandonment of Ukraine as an ally for the U.S.-Russia relationship to thrive.

So I think they're really hoping that, when Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, goes to Ukraine early next month, as soon as next week even, they're hoping that he can reassure his Ukrainian counterparts that they're not going to be sold down the river here, that there is going to be a place for Ukraine in the U.S. relationship, and that they are confident in the U.S. support for the relationship there.

TAPPER: And the stakes, you have to feel like they're pretty high for Biden, especially after what we just went through as a country when it came to Russian interference in the 2016 election, potential -- attempted interference in the 2020 election, and just the Trump-Putin relationship.

So, this, in a way, raises the stakes for Biden.

BERTRAND: They are very high.

And I think the Biden administration will not say, of course, that they want to do a reset with Russia, because that would imply that they would just simply forget about all of Russia's malign behavior and activities in the past.

[16:45:05]

And so, they are taking a new approach. They're saying, look, we can cooperate where we can. We can talk about mutual interest, but at the same time, we're going to hold you accountable in the way that the previous president was never willing to do, at least not publicly and on the world stage.

TAPPER: All right. Natasha Bertrand, great to have you here. Thanks so much. Congratulations and coming to CNN. We're really happy to have you.

BERTRAND: Thank you.

TAPPER: The FBI is now getting involved in the police shooting death of Andrew Brown Jr. in North Carolina. What are they saying about the case? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our national lead, the FBI says it has opened a civil rights investigation into the deadly police shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. in North Carolina last week. The announcement comes just hours after Brown's family released a private autopsy result which found that he had been fatally shot in the back of the head, the back of the head.

Let's get straight to CNN's Brian Todd in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

Brian, what do we know about this FBI investigation?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, the FBI just making that anointments this afternoon saying that they are investigating this as a civil rights matter, along with the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney for eastern North Carolina to ensure that basically everything in this investigation is above board because simply there is not a great deal of trust in the way the sheriff's department has handled this and the way the local county attorney has handled this. They have come upped a lot of criticism from Andrew Brown's family and the FBI has decided to jump in and launch this civil rights investigation.

There's still just a lot of outrage in the community and among Andrew Brown's family and their representatives just over the fact that transparency has not been forthcoming in the six days now since Andrew Brown was killed. We do not have more than 20 seconds of body camera footage that we've been table look at, and none of us has been able to look at it, only Andrew Brown's family has been able to look at that footage and they are not satisfied with it. They are convinced there's more there. The sheriff says there's 30

seconds on the footage that covers the entire incident but basically, Jake, there's probably eight body camera videos from eight different deputies that captured this in some way, shape or form. And we're not seeing hardly any of it. So, the FBI deciding to jump into this today.

TAPPER: Well, the lack of transparency is certainly not helping matters.

Brian, moments ago, Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey, one of the few African-Americans in the Senate, he joined calls from the Elizabeth City, North Carolina mayor, and the state's governor for all of the body camera video to be made public.

Are we getting -- is there any indication we're getting any closer to that happening?

TODD: We could be, Jake. A judge is going to hear a lot of these petitions tomorrow in a courtroom not far from here and could order that this be released. I mean, look, you've got the governor now calling for it, the state's attorney calling it. Obviously, the family of Andrew Brown calling for it.

You know, almost -- even the sheriff himself has said he favors the release of this but it's got to come, you know, with a court order. So there's an enormous amount of pressure to get this released to the public. We may know more in 24 hours after a judge hears this case.

TAPPER: And, Brian, faith leaders are calling for independent investigators to take over the situation. Why?

TODD: Because the trust level here, Jake, has just basically spun out of control meaning there's hardly any trust in the way the local authorities have been handling this. Faith leaders are fed up. They're joining members of the Brown family. They've kind of working in tandem with them through out the week and their representatives.

And, look, everybody in this community is fed up. You see it on the street. You see it around here. They just feel -- there's a collective feeling in this community among people on Andrew Brown's side of everything here that authorities are trying to hide something.

Now, if they're not, they're not doing a very good job of illustrating that frankly, and there's just a feeling that everyone is a little bit fed up. Get the video out already and let us make our own conclusions. Faith leaders are jumping into that fight as well.

TAPPER: And, Brian, there have been protests since last week. Tell us more about that.

TODD: Right. I mean, these protests, Jake, have been very, very peaceful. Hardly any incidents really to speak of. Really almost none. We've been with them every single night. They've been marching from this location to certain areas, a main drag along Herring House (ph) Street, which is not far from here. That's a main drag in Elizabeth City. Their strategy has been to disrupt commerce, to block intersections

but to do so in a very peaceful way. That's the leverage that they have. That's what is making their point and what is getting the side of this out there and that's putting pressure on the authorities to release this footage. It's all come off without a hitch. It's been really, really peaceful.

Tonight, there's a curfew in place starting three hours from now, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time because the authorities are just saying as a measure of caution we want to institute a curfew from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. the next day to make sure that there is not unrest if this body camera video is released or even if it isn't.

But I can tell you that the protests here have been very, very peaceful here so far, Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Brian Todd, thank you so much.

Coming up, going to dinner outdoors with a friend. What you need to know about the new CDC mask guidance.

Plus, the school where teachers are being told they will lose their jobs if they get vaccinated.

And then, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will join me live at the top of the hour to talk about China, immigration, America's standing on the world stage and much more.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:59:20]

TAPPER: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

In moments, I'm going to talk live with Secretary of State Tony Blinken about the worldwide threats that the Biden administration is facing. Also this hour, the rift in the Republican Party, especially within House GOP leadership and what's supposed to be a unifying retreat.

Plus, a small step back to normalcy if you're fully vaccinated. The CDC now says that vaccinated Americans can go without a mask outdoors under some circumstances.

President Biden this afternoon making that case.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The bottom line is clear. If you're vaccinated you can do more things, more safely, both outdoors as well as indoors.