Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Trump Holds Rally In Tulsa, Oklahoma; Protesters Gather Outside Venue Of Trump's Tulsa Rally; Trump Attacks Biden During Campaign Rally; Attorney General Bill Barr Claims Trump Fired Top U.S. Attorney; Shooting In Seattle Autonomous Zone Leaves One Dead, One Injured. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired June 20, 2020 - 22:00   ET

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

[22:00:00]

BLITZER: Boris Sanchez in the "CNN NEWSROOM." Thanks for watching.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Hello, and welcome to our viewers in the United States and all over the world. Thanks for joining us. I'm Boris Sanchez and you are in the CNN NEWSROOM.

The scene tonight, President Trump addressing a much smaller than expected crowd of supporters at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, tonight. The president eager for a triumphant return to the campaign trail instead facing a series of embarrassments.

First, there was a standoff between the administration and a federal prosecutor who's been investigating members of Trump's inner circle. Attorney General Bill Barr's attempt to fire U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman backfiring. Barr claiming that Trump wanted him gone only for Trump to later say, and I quote, "I was not involved."

Then, just hours before the rally, six of President Trump's campaign staffers doing advanced work on the event, testing positive for coronavirus. And then the crowd size at the rally. President Trump failing to fill the arena after bragging that a million people were trying to attend his rally. Entire sections had empty seats. Almost no one was in the overflow area.

We haven't even mentioned some of the content of his speech. There is lots to get to this hour. Let's begin with Ryan Nobles. He's at the BOK Center.

Ryan, a shocking headline. President Trump telling the crowd he wants to slow down on coronavirus testing in the middle of a pandemic.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Boris, the president touched on a lot of topics here tonight. He made a little bit of news on many fronts. We'll get to that point you made about testing in a second, but we should also point out that tonight the president went after Vice President Joe Biden. He also accused the news media and protesters for depressing the crowd size here today.

And he also even called for a one-year prison sentence for Americans that are caught burning the American flag. But you're right, it is that suggestion that he made about testing that testing is the reason that COVID numbers are spiking across the country. And the president even went to suggest that perhaps testing should be rolled back in the United States. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know, testing is a double-edged sword. We've tested now 25 million people. It's probably 20 million people more than anybody else. Germany has done a lot. South Korea has done a lot. They called me, they said the job you're doing -- here's the bad part. When you test -- when you do testing to that extent you're going to find more people, you're going find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBLES: Now, we should point out that the administration and a senior administration official telling our Jason Hoffman that the president was obviously joking when he said that they should reign in the number of tests of coronavirus across the country. And we should also point out that public health officials would argue against that point exactly, that the more you test, the more you are able to locate the virus, and that ultimately allows the number of cases to drop.

And we have seen that across the world. Countries that increase their testing were able to locate it, contact trace it and then ultimately reduce the number of cases. So a peculiar claim by the president to say the very least, Boris, but there were many of those here tonight in Tulsa -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes. No shortage of those, Ryan. Very notable that with 120,000 Americans dead because of coronavirus, the president is making jokes about testing during a pandemic.

The president also addressed the fact that there were protesters outside his rally. What was his message about that?

NOBLES: Yes, again, Boris, this is something that has us scratching our heads, frankly. You know, part of this is an expectations game, right? This was a very big crowd here tonight. I don't think anybody can deny that. If you've covered campaign rallies you know it's difficult to bring as many people to an arena like this as the president did. But it's also worth noting that he expected a lot more people to show up.

They said they didn't expect there would be an empty seat here in the BOK Center. Roughly 20,000 people. And they also expected huge crowds outside the arena. The president himself saying as many as 40,000 people could jam the streets outside of the BOK arena. It was nothing like that. They didn't fill this arena and there was no one outside and they ended up ending or cancelling the program that was supposed to take place outside.

And his campaign and the president himself is saying that it was because protesters prevented people from getting into the arena. Now, there were some protesters outside. There were scuffles, but they were very minor and as far as we can tell -- and we've reached out to police. We've had reporters spanned out outside the BOK Center all day today.

[22:05:04]

It did not prevent any of the entrances into this arena for being closed for any significant amount of time and it certainly did not prevent some 50,000 people from not getting into this arena and into the streets outside the arena, as what the original expectations were.

So, again, Boris, I want to emphasize. We're only going by what the campaign told us. They expected that many people to show up here tonight and the simple fact of the matter is it just did not happen -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes, Ryan. The president blaming protesters and the media as the well. Interesting that the president thinks that his supporters are listening to warnings from the media to stay away from gatherings like this even though he is encouraging them.

Ryan Nobles reporting from Tulsa, thank you.

Here now to discuss the president's rally, a star studded panel. We have chief political correspondent Dana Bash, chief political analyst Gloria Borger, political correspondent Abby Phillip in Tulsa, and Dr. William Schaffner, he's a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University.

Doctor, I have to start with you. This is remarkable. Again the president says that he told his people to slow down testing. He says testing is a double-edged sword because it counts in cases where young people have the sniffles.

Doctor, I am not an expert, but it seems like the worst thing to do during a pandemic is to scale back testing.

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, PROFESSOR, DIVISION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: Well, Boris, I think it surprised and dismayed every doctor and every public health person who was listening this evening because they couldn't figure it out. As Ryan said, when you test more, you find more cases, surely. The testing doesn't cause the cases. And the important thing is, when you find someone who's positive, you can provide them good medical care and you can do the contact tracing.

And from a public health point of view also, you get a better sense of where this virus is in your community. So for all those good reasons, testing is very important. You know, we test people for diabetes and for high blood pressure so we can provide them good care, and also find out how common this problem is in our communities, and that informs our public health policy. So for all those good reasons, testing is important.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Gloria, to you. There was a lot of anticipation for this event, right? President Trump back on the campaign trail after three months off. This is amid multiple national crises. Again more than 120,000 Americans dead because of coronavirus.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

SANCHEZ: No question, many of his supporter have friends and family that have been affected and this was almost just like any other Trump rally. He spent a long time talking about himself, he attacked the media, the radical left. According to his campaign he was joking about slowing down testing. The president is making jokes about the pandemic.

BORGER: Well, it is as if he is back in 2016 and he's kind of clearing the deck. The pandemic is not the problem that it is, with 120,000 people and counting dead, that the questions about race relations in this country are not there, and that -- he sort of -- it's the same old, same old. And I think this is a president who could probably use a new act right now because you cover the president, you know this is the same act that we heard in 2016, and of course it worked really well in 2016.

I think the question is whether it's going to work given where we are. This is a president who looks backwards. He looks to the '60s and the '70s, talking about law and order as if that's a way to handle race relations in this country right now. He jokes about COVID. Uses racial epithets to talk about COVID, as he did tonight.

So I think the moment in the country demands a seriousness, a seriousness of purpose. It doesn't demand a 20-minute riff on what he looked like walking down a ramp at West Point or how he held his glass of water. And that's what he spent his time doing tonight.

SANCHEZ: Yes, Abby, this rally was intended to kick off the 2020 campaign, to restart the president's 2020 campaign, but it raises the question, what exactly is his campaign message?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It really does, and I think in some ways this did not go as planned. Not just because of what the crowd looks like, but also because of the message that came out of all of this.

Earlier this afternoon, you know, our own David Axelrod was saying that in some ways what has happened is that Trump has highlighted two of his greatest weaknesses. One is his inability to address the deep concerns in this country about racial divisions as evidenced by the protests. And secondly, his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

This rally has become -- it has epitomized the problem with the president not following his administration's own messaging on the greatest public health crisis this country has faced in many, many decades.

[22:10:14]

The fact that there weren't that many people here at this rally seems to suggest that some of the president's own supporters believed that they didn't want to risk it, they didn't want to risk coming into this environment where they would be shoulder-to-shoulder with people. So instead of restarting his campaign on a message that is perhaps forward looking or on a message that is about his accomplishments or hopes for the country, it really highlighted a lot of things that are some of his greatest weaknesses right at this particular moment.

And his attempts to attack Joe Biden, which there was a whole section of the speech where he riffed a lot of new lines or tried out some lines on Biden where he was reading from that speech, it seemed to kind of fall short because it was sort of a laundry list of items. The crowd didn't respond particularly well to them. And at a time when the country is really struggling right now, and they're looking for leadership, attack lines are not sufficient.

I think people, as Gloria said, are looking for the president to give them something that elevates himself. He is right now the president of the United States, and this is an opportunity to rise above it, and I don't think, necessarily, that we saw that tonight.

SANCHEZ: Dana, it's really not been the day that Trump hoped for. Sources have told us that Trump spent most of the day upset with tonight's event being overshadowed by news that six of his campaign staffers working on this rally tested positive for coronavirus.

You spoke to sources that said that he was kind of upset over the issue with Attorney General William Barr firing the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Hard to call this a transition to greatness.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. And also just on that note, I mean, if you just kind of go back in time to earlier today before the rally, which he was still hoping at the time, you know, this morning and into the early afternoon, would be the arena full, outside overflow situation that they had predicted inside the campaign.

But even before that, we were in a situation that until the pandemic, we and especially someone like you, Boris, who covers the White House every day, has seen so many times, which was the president was embroiled in a crisis of his own making, and that is the really shocking -- and we can't let this go, really shocking move that the administration made, that the attorney general-slash-president made to fire the attorney general -- excuse me, to fire the U.S. attorney who is in one of the most prominent districts, the Southern District of New York, but most importantly, has been investigating the president's allies and has been -- you know, had a lot of tension with the administration and the president in particular because of that.

It is his prerogative and that is why I'm told that he was saying to allies that he didn't understand why he was getting such bad press for it, but just because it is his prerogative it doesn't make it right, it doesn't make it palatable. It just feeds into the notion that he just does what he wants even -- and especially when it can be perceived as just blatantly corrupt.

SANCHEZ: And Dr. Schaffner, this probably isn't on the top of the list of things that we're examining that the president said that are controversial, but nevertheless it does raise eyebrows. Listen to what the president said about re-opening schools.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The kids are much stronger than us.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: When you see a little kid running around, say, boy, oh, boy, do you have a great immune system. How about a piece of your immune system? They don't even know about this. Let's open the schools, please. Open the schools.

(CHEERS)

TRUMP: Open the schools. We got to get them open. In the fall, we got to get them open.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: And Doctor, what would be your professional advice to educators, to teachers, parents?

SCHAFFNER: Well, Boris, everyone would like schools to open. We'd like colleges to open also. And everyone responsible for those institutions is figuring out how to do that in the most reduced risk way possible. They're thinking about everything from how children are arranged in class, how they can go to the cafeteria and eat, how you can use the gym safely, athletic events. All of that is being thought of very, very carefully by school administrators across the country.

[22:15:07]

And my hat's off to them because the way we open up is carefully and very, very thoughtfully. And if we do that, then I think we'll be in good shape. But we can't be frivolous. We have to be very thoughtful and careful.

SANCHEZ: And Abby, I want to get your thoughts on something that you noted earlier, and that's the unrest that we've seen nationally over relations between police and the African-American community. Tonight, the president said, quote, "They want to demolish our heritage." He's talking about the push to remove confederate memorials and symbols.

You've spent the week in Tulsa. We cannot ignore the history, the context for this rally, what happened in Tulsa 99 years ago, this racist massacre, one of the darkest chapters in American history. The president choosing to hold this rally on Juneteenth, ultimately deciding to postpone it by one day.

I'm wondering what the people who you have been speaking to in Tulsa this week think, perhaps, about what the president said. How do you think his message was received?

PHILLIP: Yes, I talked to a lot of people in Tulsa about this very issue over the last week. And just to give you one example of how resonant this issue of removing the names or the images of these -- the figures from the past associated with the Confederacy or other bad parts of this American history, there was a big debate here in Tulsa about removing the name of the founder of this city that was on a street sign, and that person was also a KKK member.

He was also believed to be one of the people involved in that 1921 massacre. And so for black residents here it is extremely important to think about whose heritage the president is talking about. If he's only talking about the heritage of white Americans that ignores the need of people like some of the folks here in Tulsa who say these images, these names that represent slave owners, that represent people who were racists or segregationists, they need to come down from places of prominence and I think every person that I spoke to here from Tulsa, many of them have -- are descendants of people who survived that massacre.

They say these issues are not just theoretical. It is about who do we venerate and who do we hold up 100 years or more after they committed really atrocious acts? And the president ignored all of that. I thought it was really stunning to be in this place where that issue is so deeply felt for the president to simply ignore the feelings of so many people here who have been fighting over issues like that for so, so very long.

SANCHEZ: All right. Abby Phillip and Dr. Schaffner, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Dana and Gloria, please don't go anywhere. We still have plenty more to talk with you about after a quick break. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:21:41]

SANCHEZ: Welcome back to the CNN NEWSROOM. Dana Bash, Gloria Borger still with me, and we're joined by CNN presidential historian, Douglas Brinkley.

Douglas, starting with you, I'm hoping you can put tonight's rally into perspective for us. A crowded arena, in the middle of a global pandemic where the president is joking supposedly, diminishing the severity of the coronavirus. The president's priorities appear to be politics and maybe not science.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, that's right. And first off, you know, I think it was smart that people in Tulsa just didn't show up. I mean, it's going to be remembered as a yawn of a launch for a presidential campaign, bleachers empty on the second deck. They had a big stage with bullet proof glass for Vice President Pence and Trump to speak outside. Nobody came.

Part of the misunderstanding is Tulsa has been coping with its African-American history and heritage long before this Trump rally. They had a great jazz, Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in Tulsa. They've just built the biggest, the most beautiful park along Arkansas River as a public works project with the Kaiser Foundation. Folk singer Woody Guthrie is on a big mural playing a guitar saying this machine kills fascists.

So we don't want to stereotype Tulsa as just being only red Trump country. It's a very interesting and progressive community going on in Tulsa right now. And so here, they just didn't have to turnout. They also didn't have the violence. It was a pretty smooth rally and Donald Trump was at his utter worst. He even in the middle of a speech called himself average tonight. There weren't cheers like in 2016. There was some laughter here and there. There was some good humor.

But I think the big takeaway for me is you can see the game plan for Trump's campaign against Biden. He's going to call Biden the puppet of the far-left that burns churches, rips down statues. He's going to be in really a George Wallace candidate Trump and he's stealing some ideas from Richard Nixon, how Nixon beat McGovern in 1972 by painting the government being for acid, abortion and amnesty for Vietnam War draft dodgers.

So he's trying to be William Jennings Bryan of 1896 and going on oratory tours but he didn't have the enthusiasm that Bryan have when William McKinley beat him by being a much more low key campaign like Biden is. I think the idea of holding this rally in the middle of a COVID pandemic was a horrific idea without social distancing, and it's just been a sandcastle -- one problem after the other this week just being washed away.

In the end it was a very tepid rally, and particularly one that was supposed to be launching your big presidential campaign route.

SANCHEZ: Great history lesson, Douglas.

Gloria, your thoughts on the comparisons to Wallace and to Nixon?

BORGER: Well, obviously he's really channeling Richard Nixon because of the constant talk about law and order. Instead of looking forward and about how policing can be improved in this country and race relations can be improved in this country he's just parroting what worked for Richard Nixon. And I think the issue is that the country is different from the country in the '60s.

[22:25:01]

And you mentioned Wallace. Well, you want to use racial epithets to talk about the coronavirus? You want to talk about the serious protesters in the streets as a mob or as thugs? That is out of sync with where the American public is. You look at the polling, and the American public, over 50 percent, over 60 percent in some polls, have some sympathy with the protesters in the street.

Now, among Donald Trump's base that number goes down considerably. But I watched someone standing today who really wanted to get up on the stage, he wanted to be Rocky. And he wanted to climb those steps and he wanted to be the guy everybody was cheering. Instead, he just was rocky. He was just rocky. He meandered. He spoke for, what almost two hours? With no particular theme, it seemed to me, to his campaign.

And all he could do was just kind of bat Joe Biden over the head, saying that he was old and, you know, someone who's a captive of the left. But the problem is that there is no message, and he is portraying Joe Biden as somebody that in fact, if you look at the polling, the American people don't agree with him. You know, and they've known Joe Biden for quite some time. So it seems to me that as a start of a campaign, it was a flop.

SANCHEZ: And Dana, final thoughts?

BASH: Yes, I mean, I think one of the big things that I heard from a lot of Republicans, both in and out and around the Trump campaign going into this, was that because of the coronavirus, because of all of the other issues that the president and his campaign have not taken the opportunity or haven't had the opportunity to define Joe Biden because he's been the, you know, presumptive nominee at this point for several months.

And although the president started to go there, associating him with the radical left, and, you know, hitting on the notion that, you know, that he's weak and so on and so forth, he didn't do it in the most aggressive way, certainly not in the way that people around him want him to. Because at this point it is a referendum on this president. And that's always the way it is when there's an incumbent president.

But when we have seen incumbents win a second term in recent history, that has happened because the incumbent has really quickly and harshly defined their opponent as worse than what you see now. You know, the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don't. And he was much more into Trump the entertainer today and Trump the story teller.

And using incredibly insensitive racially charged comments like the "kung flu" in a way that really was all about his base and making it clear that they believe -- or at least he believes -- the notion that because his campaign has been working so hard with so much money to identify tens of millions of potential Trump voters, that is the way he can win and uniting the country or even reaching out beyond his base is not what he's interested in.

SANCHEZ: Yes. I wish we had more time. Unfortunately, we are all out of it.

Dana Bash, Gloria Borger, Douglas Brinkley, thank you so much for sharing some of your Saturday night with us. We appreciate it.

BORGER: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: You heard us mentioned Joe Biden. Next, President Trump takes a swing at his Democratic foe. We dig deeper with Congressman Cedric Richardson, he joins us next with a counterpunch from the Biden camp.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:32:30] SANCHEZ: President Trump is on his way back to Washington after his first rally since the coronavirus pandemic, and protesters are still out after demonstrating all day in Tulsa.

I want to get straight to CNN's Martin Savidge who is on the ground there.

Martin, the potential for conflict high with two very different groups of people on the ground. What are you seeing?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. That's exactly right. What you have is of course all those people who are inside for the rally for the president now coming out. But while they were inside, the crowds of demonstrators on the streets of downtown Tulsa have increased significantly. There are hundreds if not thousands of people now that are protesting a number of different causes that are filling the streets.

They are moving so they've sort of become a huge moving crowd that blocks traffic, stops everything, but at the same time they get intermixed with Trump protesters or those who support the president. Arguments do break out. We haven't seen anything like tear gas. There has not been a heavy police presence. It seems for the time being the police are willing to sort of let these conversations and these moments play out.

They may feel that their presence could only accelerate the temperament of the crowd. So they're staying at the periphery. We know they are. They could soon move in. They have not done so. So in the meantime, the main streets of downtown are blocked, traffic is a mess, and you've got a very diverse crowd of very different ideas that are now melding as one. And it remains to be seen if they can continue to be peaceful.

It has been throughout the day. It continues to be boisterous, but again, we haven't seen any sign of tear gas or any sign of the police about to move in.

SANCHEZ: Let's hope that continues. Martin Savidge, please stay safe and stay close by. We'll check in with you again as things develop.

In a preview of what's to come as we barrel towards election day, President Trump took on the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden tonight using his often-used nickname for the former vice president and criticizing his record on race relations. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: America should not take lectures on racial justice from Joe Biden, Sleepy Joe.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: A man who praised and partners with segregationists, shipped millions of black American jobs overseas. Virtually every policy that has hurt black Americans for half a century Joe Biden has supported or enacted.

[22:35:08]

I've done more for the black community in four years than Joe Biden has done in 47 years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: I would imagine that national co-chair for the Biden 2020 campaign might have a reaction to that.

Congressman Cedric Richmond serves in that position and he joins us now.

Congressman, welcome, and thank you for sharing your time with us. What did you think of what the president said?

REP. CEDRIC RICHMOND (D-LA): Well, I think that this was Donald Trump in his best form. He will never let facts get in his way. It's easy to point at other people, but the truth of the matter is he had a chance to do something big tonight. He could have talked about Juneteenth, he could have talked about race relations in America, he could have talked about how he would reform policing and enact racial equity, which is what this moment calls for in this country.

And instead of healing this country, he did what he does best, and that is try to divide this country over and over again. And I'll just tell you, I mean, at some point, this country has to go tired of a president that you cannot watch on TV without him slinging curse words out at the audience. And this is just, I think, a bridge too far for a great America, which we are, and we strive to be better every day.

But there was nothing in his speech that was calling people to come together and make this country a more perfect union. This was about Donald Trump, like everything he's done since he's been president.

SANCHEZ: And tonight's rally in Tulsa was billed by the campaign as a re-election kickoff celebration. The president, his campaign has set expectations very high. They obviously took shots at the former vice president before, during, likely we'll see some tweets pretty soon. They joked about the contrast and excitement for the candidates on Twitter, specifically. As we know, the president is sort of obsessed with crowd size. It fell short of expectations tonight. There's still a lot of support for this president. They were still enthusiastic for him.

Do you feel that your candidate is doing enough to court those voters, the ones that were in that arena in Tulsa tonight?

RICHMOND: He absolutely is. And I think that this is the clearest difference, and I think -- I want people to understand, for the president of the United States, Donald Trump, it's all about Donald Trump. It's about his crowd size, it's about people waiting in line to see him, which by the way was a failure according to their standards. And I'm sure we'll get stories somewhere about how he's upset tonight at his staff for promising so many people in the overflow area that never came to pass.

But here's the difference I want people to go home with. For Joe Biden it's about us, it's about the country, it's about bringing people together. For Donald Trump it's about Donald Trump. And I think for the future of this country we want a president who will make it about America, who will make it about making sure that people who aspire to be in the middle class can make it. Making sure that when we rebuild this economy everybody comes along.

Making sure that we have a just society. And so I think the contrast is very clear. And look, I want Trump out there every day, talking and rambling and doing what he does best, because it was a disaster tonight, and I think that objective people watching that speech, they do not see a commander-in-chief. They see a guy having a temper tantrum who, it's all about him. And so I welcome that contrast any day of the week.

SANCHEZ: Now, your candidate has a sizable polling lead, and we just learned that Biden and the DNC outraised the Trump campaign and the RNC by about $7 million in May. Many out there in your party are still urging caution, though. Trump maintains a very strong campaign apparatus. We saw him beat expectations in 2016.

Where do you see room for improvement in your campaign to not see a repeat of the upset that we saw in 2016?

RICHMOND: First, this is not 2016. Trump was a nonelected official who could promise with the best of them, and lie with the best of them, and we've seen that since he's been president. And so, remember, he was going to hire the best people. Not true. He was going to do all these great things. Not true. And so I think there is a completely different race. You have someone who tells the truth, someone who lies. Someone who wants to bring the country together.

So I think where we are is a great position to be in. I would not trade with Donald Trump, that's for sure. Our lead is going to continue to grow. We are going continue to build a big tent, raise money, and build more and more support. So everything we're doing is ascending.

[22:40:03]

Everything Donald Trump doing is descending and sooner or later he's going find himself in the basement or the cellar that he deserves to be in.

SANCHEZ: So we're now past the halfway point between the Iowa caucuses and election day. We know Biden has a short list of candidates. I'd love it if you broke some news about who he might nominate as his vice president. You may choose not to, but I still want to know what kind of conversations are happening about the quality or the characteristics that his VP pick must have.

RICHMOND: Well, look, I will tell you this. And nobody knows what they want in a vice president better than Joe Biden. He served as vice president for eight years and he was a great vice president. And I think he knows what it takes to be one. But I will tell you the characteristics is someone who believes in what he believes in, someone who will always put the country first and people first.

Someone who of course will help him win because you can't govern if you can't win. And so -- and someone who brings something to the table. And the good news is we have a whole bunch of people in the Democratic Party that can do that. And so he's doing his due diligence. Another thing I'll say about the vice president, he's very deliberate about what he does, so I think he's doing his normal due diligence that he always does, and we should hear something, you know, before the convention.

SANCHEZ: Can you give us a hint?

RICHMOND: The only thing I can tell you is it won't be me, and it won't be a male.

(LAUGHTER)

SANCHEZ: All right, we appreciate that.

Congressman Cedric Richmond, thank you so much.

RICHMOND: Thank you for having me, and Happy Father's Day.

SANCHEZ: I appreciate it.

Up next, opponents are calling it obstruction of justice after the president fires an attorney who had investigated his associates including his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:45:25]

SANCHEZ: You may not have known his name, but Geoffrey Berman was one of America's most powerful prosecutors serving as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was investigating President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and some of his associates. And what we saw over the last 24 hours was a remarkable sequence.

Last night, Attorney General Bill Barr announced that Berman was resigning. Shortly after Berman said, no, he's actually not resigning and would be staying put. But today Barr sent Berman a letter saying that President Trump fired him. Just a short time later, though, Trump literally said on camera, quote, "I was not involved." And this evening Berman announced he will be leaving his position in the SDNY.

With me now is CNN's Evan Perez.

Evan, help us make sense of what transpired. What led Berman to announce this evening that he was actually leaving the post?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think the fact that he was now being fired by the president made Berman essentially have no choice, Boris. I think the idea here was that Geoffrey Berman was taking the position that he cannot be fired by the attorney general simply because of a quirk of the law and because of just, frankly, incompetence by this administration. He never actually got Senate confirmed.

He was actually never even nominated by the president, officially nominated by the president, to serve in that job, and yet he was able to serve in that job for three years. And so in the end, he was really there because the judges in the Southern District of New York appointed him to serve in that role.

Again, this is something that is very unusual. It's one of the -- again, as you pointed out, one of the most important prosecutor jobs in this country and it is someone that was picked by the president, and yet never actually got the job officially by Senate confirmation. So as a result of that, Berman decided to play his hand and he decided that he was going to wait it out and see until the president actually did the firing.

And that is what Bill Barr, in a letter officially today, said that was what happened. He said that officially the president was firing Berman.

SANCHEZ: Now, a notable thing about this is that according to a source, the attorney general offered Berman a job at the Justice Department and Berman declined. That doesn't quite play into Barr's argument about why he wanted to fire Berman.

PEREZ: Right. We've never actually gotten an official reason from the Justice Department as to why the attorney general wanted to make this change. Now, behind the scenes we are told, you know, by sources that there's been a long series of clashes. This has been a power struggle. Bill Barr wants to take firm control of the department, and Geoffrey Berman was simply not going along, was simply not, essentially, following the chain of command in the view of the Justice Department.

There was a lot of frustration that the attorney general didn't trust that, you know, Geoffrey Berman wouldn't pull any more surprises. You'll remember that during the investigation into Michael Cohen, the White House and the Justice Department was surprised to find out that this U.S. attorney's office named the president as individual one, essentially called him an unindicted co-conspirator in the crimes of Michael Cohen.

So they didn't want any more surprises and they didn't trust that Geoffrey Berman would be able to not do anymore of those surprises. So that's really the root of conflict that has been going on now for some time. They have been looking to try to find a way to get rid of him for some time. And this was as messy an exit as I've ever seen in a job like this.

Imagine you -- you know, having your boss come and tell you, essentially, you're out, you're fired, and you say, no, I'm not. And then, you know, you have 24 hours of drama. That's what we saw today.

SANCHEZ: Yes. All right, Evan Perez, thank you so much for helping us sort that out. Coming up, we'll bring you an update of a fatal shooting that happened

in Seattle's Autonomous Zone. As police officers there say they were unable to get access to the victims because of protesters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:53:30]

SANCHEZ: We're following news out of Seattle tonight where a fatal shooting left one person dead and another injured inside the Autonomous Zone, an area that protesters have controlled in the city for almost two weeks. Seattle Police say they were unable to safely access the shooting victims inside that zone.

I want to get straight to CNN's Paul Vercammen.

And Paul, police say they were met by a violent crowd when they got there. Tell us what happened.

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, they were responding to calls of shots fired at 2:45 this morning and they headed toward that autonomous zone. It's also known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest Zone or the CHOP zone. And this is exactly what they were responding to, shots fired.

So police say they were met by a violent crowd that kept them from getting to the victims. The video shows at least eight officers, some are carrying shields, and you can hear one of the officers asking the demonstrators to let them through.

[22:55:00]

So police say before they could get to those victims they were both transported to a local hospital. One, a 19-year-old male, has died. Another is in critical condition in intensive care. And a suspect in all of this still on the loose.

Now, this Capitol Hill zone, this Autonomous Zone, is where police boarded up the East Precinct in Seattle because protests reached a boiling point. That was during the demonstrations after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But for now they are still searching for a suspect in all of this -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes, and Paul, we're also seeing protests under way in Los Angeles where you are. What can you tell us about those?

VERCAMMEN: Boris, not very far from here. The Refuse Fascism Group held a protest right near Donald Trump's star. And they said they were galled by the fact that Trump had a protest in Tulsa which had been scene of some horrific violence a hundred years ago, and they just didn't accept that the timing of this was proper at all. They have said some very, very derogatory things about Trump and Pence today.

And as we come back here live it may seem a little bit darker here, but, Boris, we lost the light for just a second. We can tell you that that protest went off without any violent demonstrations. SANCHEZ: You shine bright enough, Paul Vercammen. Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Top of the hour, unpacking the president's big reelection rally. Why he said he wanted to slow down coronavirus testing. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Hello, and welcome to our viewers in the United States and all over the world. Thanks for joining us. I'm Boris Sanchez and you are in the CNN NEWSROOM.