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GOP Slams Trump Conviction; Mitch Landrieu is Interviewed about Trump's Verdict; Police Officer Ambushed and Killed. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired May 31, 2024 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): Agree with Larry Hogan. He is wrong. Because you cannot respect a process when the fix is in from the beginning.

So, if Larry Hogan is playing to voters in Maryland because Maryland is deep blue, I find that to be reprehensible. But that's his decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Add that up. What do you see?

JULIAN ZELIZER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's remarkable. All he was saying, Hogan, is that he respects the decision of the jury and the court. That is it. And yet he is now going to come under attack. He might be the next Liz Cheney in terms of someone who stands up against Trump to some extent and is then isolated and removed from the party.

BOLDUAN: Especially when - when you look politically, Larry Hogan, and what happens with that Senate race, could add to the math of who - well, does add to the math of who has the majority come the next Senate - in the next Senate.

ZELIZER: Well, we saw in the 2022 midterms, Republicans are sometimes willing to sacrifice themselves politically stand by the former president. And I don't think that's very different than what we're hearing. Just in the first few hours of this, that will intensify as Republican positions harden. But, yes.

BOLDUAN: There are many important moments, and we often bring you on in these moments, for a sitting president, in crisis, in moments of sorrow for a nation. I don't want to add this - put - I don't - I'm not sure what scale to put this moment on, but it is an important moment for this sitting president and how he first publicly reacts and responds to the verdict of a former president, of course, his political opponent.

What do you think is or should be the consideration of Joe Biden if - if and when he speaks out about this? ZELIZER: Well, he has to balance. On the one hand he wants to be clear what the court just decided, then this is his opponent. This is part of Trump's record now. An important part. On the other hand, he has to be careful because the attack against President Biden will be, he has politicized the courts. He is using this to stop his opponent. And so he wants to act with restraint.

You know, it's a little like George H.W. Bush as the Soviet Union collapsed. He wanted to show his support for all the satellite nations finally reaching freedom, but he didn't want to become the story. And so he always restrained his words. And I think that's what Biden is going to try to accomplish in the coming weeks.

BOLDUAN: That's really interesting, that comparison.

It's great to see you, Julian. Thank you.

ZELIZER: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, just moments ago, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave new details on the authorization from President Biden to Ukraine that they could use U.S. made weapons to attack inside Russia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: Over the past few weeks, Ukraine came to us and asked for the authorization to use weapons that we're providing to defend against this aggression, including against Russian forces that are massing on the Russian side of the border and then attacking into Ukraine. And that went right to the president. And, as you heard, he's approved the use of our weapons for that - for that purpose.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Blinken said this is in specific response to Russia's actions around Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine that has come under increased attack over the last several weeks. When Blinken was asked if the door was open for the U.S. to allow Ukraine to strike beyond the border area, the secretary said the U.S. will continue to adapt and adjust moving forward.

All right, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has issued a stern, new warning to China. What he said to the Chinese defense minister.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:38:18]

BOLDUAN: Strong and swift reaction to say the least from Republican allies after Donald Trump's historic conviction.

Watch this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TULSI GABBARD, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: There needs to be a wholesale cleaning of house within these institutions to root out the corruption and the deep state.

GOV. DOUG BURGUM (R-ND): New York does a lot of things that the rest of the country wouldn't do. And this is an example of one of those things.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): What we saw today was an absolute travesty of justice. This was not law, this was not criminal justice, this was politics. This was a political smear job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: CNN's Hadas Gold joining us right now.

Kind of taking a catalog of the range of Republican reaction. A lot of similar talking points, but what are we hearing - what happens with this?

HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Well, it goes to show you the sort of alternate realities people are living in depending on the news they consume or their social media feeds, because on one side yesterday after we got this guilty - the guilty convictions, we saw from more of the, you know, establishment, mainstream press, the sort of historic front pages. I'll show you here. "The Washington Post." They laid out actually all 34 of the guilty pleas, which when you see it laid out, how many of - how many of the guilty verdict there are -

BOLDUAN: The quantity is something, yes.

: It - it's kind of arresting, excuse the pun there.

But then - and, you know, the big broadcast networks, they broke into the regular programming. If you were just walking your local ABC channel, they broke in to show what was going on. That goes to show you the moment.

But then if you go to the other side, you get things like "The New York Post," which say this is an injustice. And if you go into other elements of sort of the right-wing media sphere, it goes even further. And some of the rhetoric was quite frightening. And I think that's on purpose. They're talking about how they feel as though this is now a dictatorship.

Take a listen to what Fox News' Laura Ingraham had to say.

[09:40:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS: I guess we all need, what, to shop at Banana Republic from now on, because that's what it feels like, yes, a banana republic. I wish there was something to laugh about, but there's not. This is a disgraceful day for the United States. A day that America may never recover from. This is a humiliating day for the country that we all love. It makes us look like a joke to the rest of the world. Is this what they meant by the American way?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLD: Now, some of them are going even further. We have "The Daily Wire's" Matt Walsh who tweeted, "Donald Trump should make and publish a list of ten high-ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office." First on the list should be Joe Biden. Second should be Joe Biden's crackheads son."

And I think that you have to think about, what's the intended effect here from - I mean, obviously, they have a personal feeling about what happened yesterday. But the intended effect is to chip away at the American's trust in our institutions and think about also what that will mean as you're chipping way the trust in the institutions, the legal process, all of that ahead of a 2024 election.

BOLDUAN: And, of course, then - then what would be the necessary cognitive shift immediately to then trust the institutions right afterward.

GOLD: And keep in mind, if Trump had been acquitted, we'd be hearing a totally different tones from all of these people.

BOLDUAN: Of course. And that's why it is challenging to follow it all.

It's good to see you, Hadas.

BERMAN: All right, very shortly we could hear from President Biden on the conviction. He will leave Delaware and have a chance to comment publicly, if he chooses, as he heads back to the White House. We don't know if he will choose to do so. It will be very interesting to see if he does.

The Biden-Harris campaign put out a fundraising appeal after the guilty verdict and warned voters the only way to keep Trump out of the Oval Office is by going to the ballot box - is at the ballot box.

With me now is the former mayor of New Orleans, and the national co- chair for President Biden's re-election campaign, Mitch Landrieu.

Mr. Mayor, thank you very much for being with us.

I want to read you the Wikipedia entry from Donald Trump. We just looked it up a minute ago. And the very top line is, "Donald John Trump, born June 14, 1946, is an American politician, media personality and businessman." I think we have a graphic of this. "Who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021." That's the first paragraph. It's not until paragraph six where it says he was convicted of a felony.

My question to you is, if it were up to you and you alone, Mayor, where would convicted felon appear in this entry? MITCH LANDRIEU, NATIONAL CO-CHAIR, PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN'S CAMPAIGN:

Well, I'm not going to tell people how to write their Wikipedia pages. But here are a couple of facts. Yesterday a very sacrosanct principle that is necessary to sustain democracies was upheld, which is very simple in America, that everybody is subject to the rule of law and nobody is exempt from it, not even somebody who was president of the United States.

And yesterday was a very sober and somber day for our country. It's not good for anybody that we have an ex-president that is now a convicted felon. However, it is really important for us, in order to maintain our democracies, to make sure that we are, in fact, a rule of law and not the opposite, which is a rule of the mob. It is a fact now that Donald Trump is a convicted felon. It's also a fact that he has been held civilly liable for defamation, sexual abuse and business fraud. It is a fact that in order for him to be president of the United States, he has to destroy democracy. And nothing that happened yesterday is going to change the fact that only the American people, on Election Day, can stop him from becoming president again. And that is just where we are.

And Joe Biden, as you know, gets up every day thinking about the American people, thinking about trying to preserve our freedom, preserving democracy, making lives better for everybody else. And Donald Trump wakes up every day thinking about himself. I understand that Donald Trump's going to talk in a couple of minutes. I would venture a lot of money, a wager to anybody, that he is going to blame everybody else but will never take one iota of responsibility for his behavior in his personal, his private, his business, or his political life that have helped destroy this country.

BERMAN: As Kate just pointed out to me, Isaac Dovere has an article this morning saying that there is a discussion within the Biden campaign, a debate really, about how much or if at all to focus on the criminal conviction of Donald Trump. What is the discussion? What's the plus minus on talking about it for the Biden campaign?

Well, I - let me say this, in a close election, everything matters. The most important things that matters are facts and reality, not people's opinions about facts and reality. The very simple choice between the American people, between Donald Trump and Joe Biden goes like this. Donald Trump wakes up every day thinking about himself. Every - the people who know him best like him least. That he's used his power to hurt people. And as you saw with the Larry Hogan story, when given the opportunity, which is pretty much every day, he takes it to hit somebody over the head and to hurt them and to repress them. And that is what he has done. When he was president, he will do that again. He just said that he wants to get better at it in "The Times" news article.

[09:45:02]

Joe Biden wants to be president. He brings receipts. He created 15 million jobs. He has the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. And we're going to talk about what Joe Biden wants to do and not Donald Trump, because you notice that today we're talking about Donald Trump again. That's the way he wants it. We're not talking about the needs of the American people. That's what Joe Biden wants to talk about. And that's what he will do between now and Election Day.

BERMAN: Does that mean that President Biden won't speak about this when he leaves Delaware this morning?

LANDRIEU: No, listen, I'm not going to get ahead of the president. I don't have news to make on that.

Here is a fact, whether President Biden speaks to it or not, Donald Trump is a convicted felon, 34 counts, and he has three other cases pending against him. The American people have to weigh that because here's the bottom line, character, wisdom, and judgment really matter in who the president of the United States is. Democracy is really important. It is fragile, but it can be bolstered by the American people making a good choice about what the future of America is going to be.

And this is a really, really clear choice. You can be for autocracy, or you can be for democracy. Joe Biden is for democracy. He's spoken to it seven times. This is a nation that will last a long time if Americans make the right choice about what our future is. And we will continue to speak to that very forcefully. We are not going to bring a knife to this gunfight.

BERMAN: I spent longer than I should this morning looking at Louisiana politics. And I'm not trying to pick on your home stay here, but you do know there are a lot of politicians over the last hundred years or so that have faced some legal issues in Louisiana and still had very successful political careers. You know that sometimes it just doesn't matter to voters, does it?

LANDRIEU: Well, let me say this, Louisiana is not necessarily an outlier, unfortunately, with political corruption. But we have had our fair share of it.

I think every matter - everything matters to voters. So, it's not just that Donald Trump is a convicted felon, is that Donald Trump, in order to succeed, he has to destroy democracy. And on any day, democracy is more important than Donald Trump. I know that he doesn't believe that. I know that he believes that he's the most important person in the world and he's actually better than Donald Trump or maybe even Jesus Christ. But my best guess is, most Americans disagree with him and they know what is at stake. That is why Joe Biden wakes up every day and is going to stand between Donald Trump and autocracy and we need the American people to do that. And if you want to help, go to joebiden.com and let's get ready.

BERMAN: Mitch Landrieu, thanks for coming on this morning. Appreciate your time.

LANDRIEU: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right, we have new details in a deadly ambush that killed a police officer in Minnesota. That officer shot by someone he was trying to help. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:52:03]

BOLDUAN: Breaking overnight, a Minneapolis police officer was killed when he was ambushed by the person he thought he was headed to help. Jamal Mitchell was responding to a shooting call at an apartment when he himself was shot. And he is now being remembered as a hero, described as being exceptional in every way.

CNN's Whitney Wild has more on this.

Whitney, this is so sad what has happened. Bring us up to speed though. What did happen?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: This was a very chaotic scene, Kate. It happened in two places. Let me just walk you through the timeline here.

5:15 p.m. yesterday, police get a call for shots fired. Law enforcement, Minneapolis Police, responded to an apartment where they were immediately met with gunfire. That scene unfolding very rapidly. Officer Jamal Mitchell was also responding to that scene. And about a block to two blocks away, he spotted someone he thought needed help. So, he jumped out of the car, tried to render aid to that person, and that's when that aspect shot and killed him.

This was, again, a very chaotic scene. There are a lot of details that we're still trying to work through. But what we know now is that Officer Jamal Mitchell was killed, the gunman was killed, a civilian was killed in this incident. In addition, there were for people who survived. That includes a police officer and a firefighter as well.

Kate, what is so tragic about this is this is the fourth incident of first responders being ambushed when they're trying to go rescue lives. The Minnesota governor putting it plainly, saying, this cannot be the norm.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN): For Minnesotans across the state, and here in Minneapolis, but across the state, you're feeling the trauma of this once again, because this is one of those incidents should be unthinkable, but it's very thinkable because it's now happened four times in the last couple months.

That trauma quickly should turn to anger and a commitment that this cannot happen. We do not have to live this way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILD: Kate, let me tell you a little bit about Officer Jamal Mitchell. His courageous was on display the minute he became a Minneapolis police officer. It was in March of 2023 CNN featured him in a piece because he ran into a burning building to save an elderly couples. Kate, when he did that, he had only been on the job for three days. That is the legacy this father, son, and fiance leaves behind at the Minneapolis Police Department, which is reeling from this today. It's celebrating his life and legacy, Kate.

BOLDUAN: God, it is so sad. Every element of what you have just laid out. Thank you for the reporting.

BERMAN: John.

BERMAN: All right, this morning, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart held rare in-person talks. They were in Singapore. Austin issued a stern warning saying that if China continues to provide military aid to Russia, the U.S. and its allies will, quote, "have to take further measures."

[09:55:00]

It's unclear at this time what those measures will be.

A verdict in a horrifying triple murder. A jury found Chad Daybell guilty of murdering his ex-wife and two stepchildren. The children's mother, Lori Vallow, his serving life in prison without parole for the same killings. Prosecutors say Daybell was the mastermind. He could now get the death penalty.

And the 2024 National Spelling Bee from Scripps crowd last night. The 12-year-old Bruhat Soma came out on top. Soma won the title in the competition's second ever spell-off. That's when the final two contestants raced to spell the most words correctly in just 90 seconds. And we spoke to him last hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRUHAT SOMA, SCRIPPS NATIONAL SPELLING BEE WINNER: When they first announced that there was a spell-off, my heart was pumping so fast. But then I realized, because I just practicing spell-offs for six months, I realized that maybe I have a shot at winning. And I did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, ten hours a day on the weekends he practiced.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BERMAN: Six hours a day during the week. And he says he types out the words on stage because it helps him get it right.

BOLDUAN: I like that genius move. You can understand that.

BERMAN: Yes, except I type like this, so (INAUDIBLE) -

BOLDUAN: He actually does.

BERMAN: It wouldn't help.

BOLDUAN: I am not kidding. You should see his spelling.

BERMAN: All right.

BOLDUAN: Literally.

BERMAN: Thank you all for joining us. Quite a day.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BERMAN: This has been CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

"CNN NEWSROOM" with Jim Acosta up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)