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Trump in Kenosha Where Police Shot Jacob Blake in The Back; Trump in Kenosha Despite Official Objections; Trump Rips NBA Players for Speaking Out; Facebook Tipped Off by FBI About Russian Campaign Targeting Americans; Medical Expert on COVID-19 Says There is a Perfect Storm of Inequality. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired September 01, 2020 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Right now President Trump is in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a city still traumatized by the police shooting of Jacob Blake and the chaotic street clashes that left two people dead just days later.

Live pictures here as he's sitting at the high school having this round table flanked with law enforcement. But it's the street violence that the President is really focused on during his visit. Not what happened to Jacob Blake and the anger that its unleashed beyond Kenosha and what led up to the shooting.

He began the day in fact attacking NBA players on Twitter blasting them for taking a stand against police violence by leading a boycott of games that spilled over into other sports.

The administration has dismissed the NBA protests, scoffing at them as silly while suggesting sports has no place in politics. But the athletes behind the movement are more than just celebrities and they are truly using their voices as they too deal with the emotional grief that comes from witnessing police brutality.

So many of them too are parents and my next guest is Kweku Ramel Smith. He has worked as a psychologist in public schools and veterans' hospitals and with pro-football players and recently the NBA Milwaukee Bucks. So, Kweku, an honor, sir, welcome.

KWEKU RAMEL SMITH, PH.D, LICENSED PSYCHOLOGIST: It's an honor to be here, Brooke. Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: Snapshot of the nation right now, is you have this fatal pandemic, this polarizing election, social and racial unrest, it's heavy. And you have the President today, Kweku, you know, despite the wishes of local officials and Jacob Blake's own family in Kenosha and you have been in communities like these. What impact do you think this visit will have?

SMITH: You know, we don't know yet. But we know that just from a level of anticipatory trauma, everybody is extremely nervous. Everybody in Kenosha was like everything was quelling down. That's why the governor asked, the mayor asked, say listen, your presence would not be a help at this time.

But with this president we know that was all of the ammunition he needed to really come. So when you say what is it going to do? Whenever you have any type of a uprising usually things don't start to happen at night. So right now you're going to have the calm people, you're going to have the peaceful protesters. I think the real tell will come later on tonight.

BALDWIN: What about Jacob Blake's family. It's my understanding you've actually spoken with, met with Jacob Blake's uncle. Will you share some of that conversation?

SMITH: Yes, you know what, I'm just so amazed at the resiliency and the power of the family, specifically his uncle. When we talked on Sunday, we were talking about strategizing actually for the visit of Trump. What we could do to be able to really to reduce the noise.

And you would think that after, you know, your nephew was shot seven times in a very inhumane fashion, when he was strapped to the bed like an animal after he wasn't able to walk, that they would actually like the violence, but they were all about the peace. What they could do to bring the people down?

What they want they want to do is to hold those officers accountable but they want the land to be at peace. They said that's what his nephew wants and that's what their trying to promote.

BALDWIN: Kweku, I know that you've been doing, you know, all of this work in so many of the communities and you run the front lines after George Floyd's death earlier this summer, you know, you see all of the people, black, brown, white, young, old, protesting, you know, feeling perhaps change is in the air and then, yet, you know, in time another person of color gets killed and the cycle seems to repeat itself.

SMITH: Yes, this is America and this is what it is. But, you know, what I think this is a different time. Every time you have these different epochs in time, you have these special moments where you say, you know what, this is not exactly like the same.

And when you talk about -- you know, I call it the unholy trinity right now because not only do we have the pandemic, we have the social justice unrest, but we have people who just had life problems before this happened, so we put all of those things together.

It creates a recipe for everybody saying, you know what, something has to change. And so you say, you know, we look at those powerful moments from the Civil War, we look at powerful moments that come after the civil rights movement and we look at this and this has the same type of feeling.

And you know why? Because if you do like a reverse look in history, you look at Bacon's Rebellion, when all of the people collectively, poor people came together to kind of rise up after that aristocrat state, saying hey, they have us divided, there's no reason for us to be divided, if we all come together we can really make this true America what it needs to be.

And so I think we're at a time right now where we're not trying to make a more perfect union, we're really trying to create that perfect union. Can it happen?

[15:35:00]

Nobody knows. But I know this is a special time that's different from any other time in the recent past.

BALDWIN: It's special, it's challenging. It's, you know, at times hopeful and through all of this, as I mentioned a second ago, you know, you have these ball players, these professional athletes --

SMITH: Yes.

BALDWIN: -- who are wearing these social justice causes, you know, quite literally on their sleeves. We know that the Milwaukee Bucks boycotted game five of their first round series against the Magic last week, the Orlando Magic, and it was the Bucks way of making a statement against racial injustice and police brutality.

Kweku, what do you think of the role that these athletes are really, you know, playing in this overall movement and how would you advise them because it's not lost on any of us that so many of them have young black boys and girls and this is personal for them.

SMITH: Oh, you know what it is and when we talk about a special movement. What does this remind you of? You know, we think about the untimely passing of Chadwick Boseman and we think about that iconic character. That kind of got his career launched into a different stratosphere as Jackie Robinson.

So we know that athletes do have a great place to play in politics, athletes do have a role in changing in society. Because when you look in the athletic arena, that is when people can come together of very different varying backgrounds and can forget about all of those seeming demographics that change us, that separate us and brings us together.

So now when you see an athlete who has the revolutionary power of a Cassius Clay, who love as Muhammad Ali, who said I'm willing and ready to give it all. That's when you know it' something different because sometimes athletes can play it safe because they have a small window to make that money, they don't want to be able to upset the owners. They don't want to upset their base because they understand what it is.

But a true revolutionary is ready to die, they're willing to give their life, they're willing to give their name, they're willing to give their reputation and willing to give their money just like Mohammad Ali.

And what the Milwaukee Bucks, of course, I'm a bit biased, not only because I work there but because I grew up cheering for them, but what they said is we're willing die for this one game. They were going to forfeit that game. But when all of the other teams saw that, they said we will stand in solidarity with you.

So, whether it was a boycott whether it was going be just a moment in time to pause for what was going on, what you see is athletes saying, hey, we know we have a voice. We understood the pressure that was on us coming back into the bubble. We didn't want to be a distraction. So we're going to make sure that the power we have now we're going to leverage no matter what it may cost.

And now whenever you're dealing with a large group of people it's hard to get on one page and be in concert and symphony, but we do now is this that all of the athletes are tired.

And not only do we see it in Major League Baseball, after the Milwaukee Bucks and the NBA. Not only did we see it in the WNBA, but we saw it in Major League Soccer and when you saw it in National League Hockey, a league that is predominantly white and known for having racist actors, that's when you know, you know what, this is something special.

So we go back to that beginning. How do we know this is a time? It takes that one person to be the Crispus Attucks that's willing to come up to sacrifice themselves but then for everybody else to come on.

So this is a beautiful spirit but what the athletes are saying, we can't do this by itself.so it's not only the athletes and the entertainers, but it's the people like you and me, Brooke, who are going to also help and do our part. It's only if we all do this together that we can make a change. But I applaud the athletes for using that microphone that podium --

BALDWIN: Yes, yes.

SMITH: -- to do something special and bring the word out.

BALDWIN: Stepping forward and helping lead the change. We all play a role in this. Kweku Ramel Smith --

SMITH: We all have a role.

BALDWIN: Bless you. Thank you, sir.

SMITH: Thank you, queen.

BALDWIN: Thank you. Coming up, Facebook, after getting a tip from the FBI, now warning that Russia is targeting Americans again and in new ways. We have those details next.

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[15:40:00]

BALDWIN: We're counting 63 days from the November election and now Facebook is warning about a new effort by Russian trolls to meddle in the whole process. Facebook says a tip from the FBI led to the discovery of members of that same group that was actually part of Russia's attempts to interfere back in 2016. And may also be happening on other social media platforms.

So CNN's Donie O'Sullivan is looking into all of these developments. And Donie, what's Facebook doing about this?

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Hey, Brooke, yes, this is a very significant update on foreign interference here. It all centers around a website called Peace Data which posed as a left wing independent online magazine and recruited real freelance writers including some Americans to write pieces for the magazine.

Graphica, a company which looked into some of these pages pointed out that the tactics here we're quite similar to what we saw the Internet Research Agency, the troll group doing in 2016 where they were trying to split Democrats.

They saw here that Biden and Harris were being attacked from the left. But, of course, this was not a real left-wing magazine. It was actually, according to Facebook, based off a tip from the FBI, linked to this Russian group.

The good news is that it got pretty low traction, it was relatively in its early stages of development. And but the bad news of course is that this is happening and that the fact that they found this, there's probably some more stuff going on -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: What about how some of the profiles were created with the images of just fake people. What is that all about?

O'SULLIVAN: Yes, so this is the real crazy part of this story and I want to show you an image of a person who purported to be the editor of Peace Data. Went by the name of Alex Lacusta. If you see there that Twitter account doesn't look particularly suspicious and you see the man in a pair of glasses, there. Looks like a real person.

[15:45:00]

But would you believe that according to the experts that analyze this, that picture is not of a real human being. It is an artificially generated image made by a computer of a fake person that has never existed. The same sort of technology that's used to make deep fake videos.

And if you remember back to 2016, you know, one of the ways that we could figure out if a account was fake or if it was a troll, was that they would sometimes use images stolen from real people's accounts.

With this sort of technology out there now it's obviously almost impossible to tell the difference. So really, we are sort of swimming in unprecedented and very murky online waters as we lead up to November's election -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: (INAUDIBLE) in hell technology can advance and it's troubling. Donie O'Sullivan, thank you so much for that.

It is being called the quote, perfect storm of inequality. A rare but serious complication from coronavirus hitting one population especially hard. That's next.

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[15:50:00]

BALDWIN: There is so much we don't know about COVID-19. But the one thing we do know is how devastating it has been to communities of color. The CDC says that the black and Latino people population more likely to contract, be hospitalized and die from the coronavirus as white people and at devastating rates.

But children in these communities can also face serious challenges. There's a condition known as Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome and it can emerge weeks after a COVID-19 infection in kids. 73 percent of children diagnosed are either African-American or Latino.

And this new story on CNN.com really dives into why this is happening, and one medical expert calls it a perfect storm of inequality.

So with me the author of that article, primary care pediatrician Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez. And so Dr. Bracho-Sanchez, thank you so much for being on. And, you know, in reading this piece this morning I mean explain to everyone who may not know what is Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, first of all?

DR. EDITH BRACHO-SANCHEZ, PRIMARY CARE PEDIATRICIAN: Sure, Brooke, it's great to be with you. So we're talking about a serious condition that occurs two to four weeks on average after children have contracted COVID-19 or they've been exposed to the virus that causes it, the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

It is serious. These kids have to be hospitalized for it. And it comes with fevers that are high that last at least four days as well as a rash, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, red eyes, sore throat, a number of other symptoms. And it is very serious -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: You talk to the Director of Community Pediatrics for Columbia University. And so she called this sickness plaguing black and brown communities, the perfect storm of inequality. What did she mean by that?

BRACHO-SANCHEZ: That's exactly right. She's my good colleague, Dr. Dodi Meyer. And she's been studying this for decades, Brooke.

And what happens is that we in this country have created conditions everyday life circumstances in these communities. We're talking about housing. These communities unfortunately live in housing that is more crowded. We're talking about food insecurity. They communities have seen high rates of food insecurity for decades that are now worse with COVID-19.

We're talking about health information that is slow to trickle into these communities. And then when you have something like COVID-19 that comes on top of all these other things that we've created which are known as the social determinants of health, you get a perfect storm -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: So what can be done?

BRACHO-SANCHEZ: That's the million dollar question, right. But you really have to start by investing in public health. Unfortunately, other countries have figured this out and we in America have been slow to actually make the commitment.

Other countries are as Dr. Meyer explains it and I outlined in my piece, investing $2 in social services for every 90 cents that they're investing in medical care. In this country we have it backwards, we're in medical care and not in social services and we have worse health. And if we are ever going to change this, Brooke, we have to flip it.

BALDWIN: We do. We do. I want to encourage everyone to read your piece. CNN.com/opinion. Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez, thank you so much for calling our attention to it. Nice to have you on.

BRACHO-SANCHEZ: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: A big change in plans for students in New York City schools. Just this morning Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a two-week delay for the first day of school. So students will not be going back as planned next Tuesday. Instead, teachers and staff will continue preparations to reopen safely. A transition period with remote instruction will begin September 16th. And students can return to school buildings for blended learning, is what they're calling it, September 21st.

Vice President Mike Pence reportedly was put on notice when President Trump was taken to the hospital last fall. Why new statements are raising more questions about that.

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[15:55:00]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: And welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Pamela Brown in today for Jake Tapper.

And we begin with breaking news. Right now President Trump is wrapping up his visit in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after defying local officials' wishes and visiting the city today in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Now the President is not meeting, did not meet with members of Blake's family. Instead, he's been meeting and thanking law enforcement and the National Guard with Attorney General Bill Barr by his side.

Now the President has also been touring some of the damage from the unrest and claiming the city of Kenosha would've been burnt to the ground without federal involvement.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins is at the White House. So Kaitlan, the President's message primarily focused on law enforcement today, right? KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it did. He did

not actually talk about Jacob Blake unless he was asked by a reporter about it, which he was on a few occasions.

And at one point a reporter said, you know, you're not meeting with Jacob Blake's family, but what would you say to them if you were? The President said, quote, I feel terribly for anybody that goes through that.

He noted that the shooting of Jacob Blake is under an investigation and said it's a complicated subject.