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Interview with Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) about the Breonna Taylor Case; Goldman Sachs Downgrades Economic Outlook as Stimulus Talks Stall; Trump and First Lady Arrive to Pay Respects to Justice Ginsburg. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired September 24, 2020 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: You previously served as the attorney general of Kentucky yourself, you're a lawyer yourself. Are you satisfied with the grand jury's decision in this case?

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D-KY): Well, the challenge here is that the facts and the evidence have not been shared with the public. I trust the people of Kentucky with the truth. But they need to be able to see the truth, read the evidence, look over what grand jury may have seen or the investigators or the attorney general looked at.

So I've asked the attorney general at this point, given that they've announced that they're not pursuing charges at least in one direction, to post it all online. It's been done in other places and let people read it and process it, and then to be able to ask the tough questions that we as elected officials have to be able to answer.

But then we don't have that vacuum. That vacuum where sometimes there is a lack of information, and our frustrations and our emotions can fill it up. Everybody deserves the facts and to see the evidence themselves.

SCIUTTO: Governor, the attorney general, the current attorney general is a Republican, called this last night self-defense, and said that given Kentucky's vigorous self-defense laws, as he described them that this shooting was justified. What's your response to that argument?

BESHEAR: Well, my response is that's a conclusion and we ought to be able to see the evidence and see the facts that led to that conclusion. Again, I trust the people of Kentucky with the truth. I trust them to be able to look at the facts, but they're not able to do that right now.

You know, throughout the last six months, there hasn't been really any explanation of the process. The evidence you'd have to secure. What it even takes to make certain charges? And then the evidence, itself, to date has not been shared.

Certainly, I think that now is the time. Let people read it. Put it out there. Trust people with the truth. SCIUTTO: There was -- in the wake of the killing of George Floyd,

there were discussions, there were negotiations on legal changes. You have issues such as qualified immunity, et cetera, that many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said it makes it difficult to prosecute police when deadly force is used.

I wonder, do you believe that the law as it is today is sufficient to handle cases like Breonna Taylor's or do we need new laws? Do we need to change the laws as they stand?

BESHEAR: I think any time that a tragedy occurs, any time where there is a loss of life that may have been able to be avoided, we ought to look at ways that we can do things. Better, whether our processes are right. Now here, we've already started having discussions on general changes to the law, whether that's warrants, whether it is training. And I think what we have to be able to do is to make sure that every single day we're trying to do better because in those moments, somebody's life might be on the line.

I have been talking with our black legislative caucus here in Kentucky. I have been talking to law enforcement groups. We've been trying to find common ground for even a potential special session. But what's been made very clear to me is if we're going to do something like that, we have to make real progress.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BESHEAR: And not window dressing. Not something to just make people feel better, but real progress. And I'm committed if we go a little broader to addressing systematic racism here in the commonwealth.

SCIUTTO: OK.

BESHEAR: It exists throughout our country. We have to be willing to acknowledge it and I've got to be willing to start the conversation with admitting that I will never feel the depths of what that feels like and of the frustration. But being committed to listening and trying to hear.

SCIUTTO: Breonna Taylor lost her life, right. Was this a failure of justice, in your view?

BESHEAR: Well, I hope that we could look at any situation like this and to say how can we ensure that something like this does not happen moving into the future and then willing to share the facts, the truth, the investigative file, everything out there.

You know, we have the attorney general who went through and described different pieces of evidence the other day but didn't put the evidence out. He described two ballistic reports. If we describe them, put them out and let people see them. But again right now, what we've got are conversations with a vacuum of facts and we need to make sure that people can actually see those, evaluate them and process them.

Let's trust the people of Kentucky and the people of America with the underlying evidence in this case. SCIUTTO: The president tweeted last night that he spoke with you and

that you -- he says you are prepared to work together immediately upon request. Do you need or are you asking for the president's help?

[09:35:06]

BESHEAR: The president did give me a call last night. He said it looked like we have things under control here in the commonwealth. I believe we do. He said to call if we needed additional help.

But again he had stated and I agreed that we think we have things what's necessary in place to protect everyone, to allow people to express their First Amendment rights, to express their pain and frustration, but at the same time keeping everybody safe. Because we saw last night that we can have 99.99 percent of people doing the right thing, but one person that wants to get out there and do the wrong thing.

It caused a lot of harm and can even change the perception. So we're doing everything it takes here in Kentucky to make sure that people can be heard but that we can keep them safe.

SCIUTTO: Final question, if I can, we saw images of civilians armed to the teeth on the streets of Louisville yesterday, vigilante groups, militias, whatever you want to call them, kind of self-appointed law enforcement. And I'm curious, as governor of Kentucky do you see any place for groups like this responding to protests?

BESHEAR: I see no place for what are often white supremacy groups in our society in general. They've protested me. They hung me in effigy on our capitol grounds, and them being in this situation with the ability to cause chaos if they choose, to potentially turn something peaceful into something that is not is incredibly dangerous. They need to go home. They need to go home.

SCIUTTO: Governor Andy Beshear, thanks for taking the time this morning. We wish you. We wish the people of Louisville the best of luck and peace going forward.

BESHEAR: Thank you very much.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Goldman Sachs this morning just downgraded their economic outlook. Actually cutting it in half. Why? Because stimulus talks are all but dead in Washington. We're going to talk about that ahead with President Obama's former White House chief of the Council of Economic Advisers. What are the implications for everyone? Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:41:38]

HARLOW: Well, just this morning news that 870,000 more Americans filed for first-time unemployment last week. This as stimulus talks have essentially stalled in Washington just as millions and millions, almost 13 million unemployed Americans are desperate for more help. Joining me now is professor of economics at the University of Chicago

and former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama, Austan Goolsbee.

Good morning, Austan.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: Great to see you again, Poppy.

HARLOW: All right. So Congress doesn't act and can't get its act together to make a deal. You've got, you know, 13-plus million Americans desperate for help. And you have Goldman Sachs this morning cutting their fourth quarter economic growth outlook in half because there is no progress on a stimulus bill. On the business roundtable, all the big CEOs saying you've got to do something or this recovery is going to stall.

What are the implications going to be here if no deal?

GOOLSBEE: I think it's crazy, I mean, that we could be adding more than 800,000 new people to the unemployment rolls and we're not talking about finding relief or rescue to these people. I think we could be saying at the aggregate level for the whole economy a clear slowing down of what was supposed to be a fast rebound, and then over the longer run, I think this thing that you got the K-shaped recovery with some people doing very well and millions of people really struggling. We're going to live with that for some time.

HARLOW: For sure. Not to mention the disparity when it comes to race. I mean, I don't think people totally understand the K, but you're saying the rich people, you know, will be better and then a lot of people go like that and fall down.

GOOLSBEE: Yes.

HARLOW: And then the implications of that, for example, for African- Americans whose unemployment rate is still much higher than white unemployment rate. Their recovery in this has not been akin to the recovery for many white Americans. So, on that note, and I understand, you know, you worked in the Obama administration. You don't like the skinny deal that McConnell put forward.

However, at this point with no deal, Senator Thune, the Republican of South Dakota, said, quote, "The Democrats seem to be saying that they would rather have zero than have what we put up." Do you think he has a point or at least half a point that something would have been better than nothing when they go home?

GOOLSBEE: Maybe. Look, I'm an economist. So I come at this strictly as the policy guy and that's more of a political question of, should you accept a tenth of a loaf at a moment of crisis?

HARLOW: Well, let me reframe it because that's a fair point.

GOOLSBEE: Yes.

HARLOW: Let me reframe it from an economic lens. For our economy would something be better than nothing right now?

GOOLSBEE: Something would be better than nothing and something bigger would be a lot better than something smaller.

HARLOW: All right.

GOOLSBEE: I think the context that it definitely feels like we're not as keeping our eye on the ball after slowing the spread of the disease. And that's really the thing that's knocked out the furnace, and we can talk about rescue and relief.

I think it's important money to states, money to the unemployed, there are millions of people struggling, may get evicted from their homes. But at the end of the day, if you can't stop the spread of the disease, what we see is a continuation of this U.S. as the outlier in the whole world of all the rich countries.

[09:45:04]

So they've gotten control of the disease, even though there is not a vaccine in Germany and Korea and Japan and various places, and so it's more than just public health. Their economies are able to recover faster because they got control of that.

HARLOW: Right. You made the argument that you can really aid in an economic recovery even before a vaccine by taking these steps. It's a fair point.

GOOLSBEE: Yes.

HARLOW: I wish more people were listening to it. So you are also an informal adviser to Joe Biden's campaign. I want to ask you about these polls because you've got unemployment that has surged as we know. You've got businesses going under. We've seen how devastating this has been for small businesses. You've got farmers complaining now that they can't compete. But yet every single poll in all of the key swing states in the last few weeks, Austan, has the president beating Joe Biden on the economy.

I mean, I went through all of them this morning. Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and the Quinnipiac national poll. Why do you think that is?

GOOLSBEE: I don't totally know. I know that the polls show that they're close to even and that's the president way down from where he was at this time. That was --

HARLOW: I mean, not totally, Austan. It's like 10 points, 11-point spread in Florida. 15-point spread in Arizona, I'm just talking about the economy. 10-point spread in Pennsylvania.

GOOLSBEE: OK.

HARLOW: It's the economy, stupid, right? I mean, Joe Biden needs to get those economy numbers up, no? GOOLSBEE: He definitely needs to get the economy numbers up. There's

no doubt about that. My point is, if you go back eight months, the economy was President Trump's strongest area by far and even in the polls now, he's down, he, the president, is down substantially from where he was at his peak. And I think that is because people are slowly realizing, maybe we aren't snapping back as fast as the president said.

We are going to have the greatest economy in the history of the world unless we actually do something. So I think this one is one that is just playing out by time. In my read of the Biden plan, when asked about the content of what's in the Biden policy plan, big substantial majorities of the country favor Joe Biden's policies over the policies that President Trump put forward.

HARLOW: OK. Do you think, with your informal advice to the Biden team, then be to get the message out there more strongly? Because we're less than a week away from a debate and it doesn't seem like the American people are getting that message and they trust the president more in all these key states still on the economy than they trust Joe Biden.

GOOLSBEE: Yes. Look, you don't want to ask a guy with a PhD in economics about message advice. But yes, he should get his message out more. I think after Labor Day now we're in the thick of the campaign and people start paying close attention to what you say and what you say you're going to do as president. And I think at the debate, that's not a debate that the Vice President Biden needs to run from at all.

I greatly valued working with him in the Obama administration when we turned around a depression-like economy to something that would become the longest boom in American history. And I don't think that Vice President Biden needs to shy away from that. I think his politics are pretty solid.

HARLOW: OK. Austan, we got jump. We're going to go to the Supreme Court where the president is heading right now.

GOOLSBEE: Good to see you again.

HARLOW: I always appreciate having you. Thanks very much.

GOOLSBEE: Nice talking to you.

HARLOW: OK. I believe we have these live pictures if we could pull them up. Are we on at the Supreme Court, Jim?

SCIUTTO: This is the casket, of course, of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lying in repose right there at the top of the steps on the Supreme Court. The president, we are told, is on his way to the Supreme Court. His limousine has left the White House. He'll be visiting there with the first lady.

Our Ariane de Vogue covers the Supreme Court and has been covering these events the last 24 hours or so.

Tell us what the mood is there today and what we expect the president to do on arrival.

ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN SUPREME COURT CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Jim, the president and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have had a complicated relationship. She was known, right, for being friends with her ideological opposites like Justice Antonin Scalia. But with the president not so much. Remember back in 2016, Ginsburg told our own Joan Biskupic that she thought that Trump was a faker and that he should have released his tax returns.

She later regretted making that statements. But note, Jim, she didn't regret the sentiment. He fired back at the time with a pretty strong response on Twitter. But after her death, he did release a very poignant statement. He called her a titan of the law. And I'll read his statement. He said, she was renowned for her brilliant mind and her powerful dissents at the Supreme Court.

[09:50:06]

Justice Ginsburg demonstrated that one can disagree without being disagreeable toward one's colleagues for different points of view. So that's what he said after she died -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: The president -- go ahead, Poppy, I'm sorry.

HARLOW: That's OK. OK. Sorry. We thought we were going to go to a commercial.

Ariane, stay with us, because it sounds like the president is arriving at any moment. The comments from the president in Minnesota right after he learned of her death, quote, "She led an amazing life, an amazing woman whether or not you agree, she was an amazing woman.

She led an amazing life." Meaning he was very -- you know, he had very kind words for her after her death and I thought the words we heard from the chief justice yesterday about her as well, it just -- speak to it in terms of this moment of division in this country and what she can teach us all about unity.

DE VOGUE: Well, that's one of the things, of course, that she talked about with her clerks a lot in these lessons that she gave, and she said, you know, this is a lesson -- she gave them lots of lessons about the law but also life in general, but one more thing to keep in mind is that the president did not name his nominee.

He could have maybe done it before this memorial, but, Poppy, he chose to wait, and that was obviously in deference to some of these memorials, I think, but also keep in mind, there are people in this building behind us who are very close with the Trump administration but also with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and that's the Scalia family, right?

Very close. They may have thought that it's better to wait. And Clarence Thomas, in one poignant Clarence Thomas moments, at the end of the term, last term when Ginsburg was having difficulty sometimes moving, negotiating the back of the bench, she would wait and Clarence Thomas would lift, have his hand out and take her hand, take her off the bench down those steps, and they would leave together, ideological opposites hand in hand. So that was vintage Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

SCIUTTO: Well, Ginsburg getting enormous respect in these ceremonies we're seeing here now on the top of the Supreme Court steps. Tomorrow she will be the first woman, remarkable for that to be a fact, but the first woman to lie in repose in the Capitol rotunda, statuary hall in the Capitol tomorrow.

We'll, of course, bring you those images live as well. This as we await the president's arrival at the Supreme Court to pay his respects along with the first lady to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

We're going to take a very short break and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:55:18]

HARLOW: All right. Take a look. The president there on the steps of the Supreme Court. He is there along with the first lady to honor and pay his respects for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Jim, you'll remember when President Obama made a similar move when Justice Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg's best friend on the court, passed just a few years ago.

SCIUTTO: That's right. The president, then President Barack Obama, along with the first lady visited to pay his respects there. President Trump chose not to pay his respects to Representative John Lewis after the civil rights hero lay in state at the Capitol rotunda, not invited to John McCain's funeral.

It's CNN's reporting that the president -- some of the president's advisers were pushing to announce his nominee to replace Ginsburg this week. He says he will announce it on Saturday, wanting to delay it until after the memorial services were over. We can see the first lady there, too as well.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Next to the president. Our Ariane de Vogue is at the Supreme Court.

I wonder if you could tell us about the scene there. We're hearing something in the background. Ariane, what are you seeing and hearing on the steps of the Supreme Court?

DE VOGUE: Right. So it's not the steps. It's to the far left and they are protesters and they are booing and they're protesting Trump's presence here. I will say that I think it's probably the same group that just a couple of hours ago was in front of Mitch McConnell's house here protesting the Supreme Court because, keep in mind, that when President Trump does come across with his new nominee, it is going to raise this bitter fight.

The Democrats haven't forgotten that it was McConnell and the Republicans who refused to have hearings for President Obama's nominee, and the Republicans are still furious because of the way they think that Justice Brett Kavanaugh was treated during his confirmation hearings. You'll recall when he was alleged to have an improper sexual relationship when he was a young high school student, so that's what's going on here.

We're really beginning to see, Poppy and Jim, the next phase of this after the memorial of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We are looking toward a big fight that's going to start across the street from here.

HARLOW: Ariane, I think we'll get back to images of the president in a moment. It's really notable, Ariane, that he is wearing a mask, right, as is everyone there.

DE VOGUE: Yes.

HARLOW: But he just walked back inside but that he was outside wearing a mask even after repeatedly mocking Vice President Biden for wearing a mask. Notable and important that he's wearing one today in public.

DE VOGUE: Right.

HARLOW: Is your reporting that this replacement of Justice Ginsburg is going to go so quickly that we're going to hear Saturday night, right, who the president's pick is and then October 12th, that week, is that what we're looking at in terms of Senate confirmation hearings?

DE VOGUE: That's what they're saying which is an extraordinary timeline that the hearings would be October 12th. I had one person saying that they wanted the vote by the end of October. That would happen obviously before the election.

Keep in mind, Poppy, as you know, the Supreme Court term starts the first Monday in October. And another thing is one week after the election this Supreme Court is going to hear one of the biggest arguments, of course, of the term, having to do with the Affordable Care Act.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and possibly the election. I believe we just saw there, Ariane de Vogue, also paying their respects, I believe that was Robert O'Brien, the national security adviser, perhaps the Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as well, joining the president.

We're going to continue to cover this solemn moment for our nation playing out on the steps of the Supreme Court, the Late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lying in repose. We'll bring you more. A moment for our country.

And a good morning to you, a solemn morning for this country, saying good-bye to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I'm Jim Sciutto.

HARLOW: And I'm Poppy Harlow. Also, a lot of news this morning. Part of the president's re-election strategy apparently assault the election itself. Already laying the groundwork to contest the results making it clear that if he loses he will not go quietly. Listen to this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN KAREM, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, PLAYBOY: Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power after the election?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, we have to see what happens. You know that. I have been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster. And --

KAREM: I understand that. But people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power?

TRUMP: We want to -- get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very-- we'll have a very peaceful -- there won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Listen to those words. Get rid of the ballots.