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Colgate Campus Mitigates Spread; Trump Pardons Flynn; First Latino DACA Recipient Awarded Rhodes Scholarship. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired November 26, 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]

CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: For December 12th. So that's the 10th game called off so far this week in college football, a season-high 18 were canceled or postponed last week. And college football playoff teams are going to be selected on December 20th. So schools really running out of time here, Poppy, around the holidays to kind of fix some of these scheduling mishaps.

But, hey, we still have golf. We still have a couple of games this afternoon and we've got turkey. So, overall, in a pandemic, it's OK.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Amen. We'll take it. And we'll wait for the football.

Carolyn, thank you. Happy Thanksgiving.

Well, college students this Thanksgiving faced really, really difficult travel decisions. But for Colgate University in New York, the choice was made for them, go home and stay home. A strict measure, but for good reason. For weeks the campus had stayed -- has stayed nearly COVID free. Zero students testing positive there in the last month. Since August, only 53 cases among the more than 3,700 people, students, who have been on campus.

With me now we're happy to have back Colgate University President Brian Casey.

Good morning. Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for joining us.

BRIAN CASEY, PRESIDENT, COLGATE UNIVERSITY: Thank you, Poppy. Thank you for having us.

HARLOW: I remember having you on beginning of the semester. You were quarantining for two weeks in -- in a dorm room to show the students that you could do what they had to do. It seems like what you did worked overall. You did have, you know, some positive cases in a semester, but very few and you did thousands, over 10,000 tests.

Why do you think this worked?

CASEY: You know, I -- it did work. And it was hard. But I think it worked for three reasons. One is, we had a plan. I have looked at some towns and some other colleges that just didn't have a plan. We had a science-based plan. We used our biologists, our sociologists.

We brought them altogether and said, how can science and how can data help drive decisions. So that was the first level.

What we also did is, we had the data direct us in letting students just have more and more freedoms and motions. So as we had another week of good test results, we'd let students, you know, move around a little bit more. So we just -- we had a good plan.

The other thing is, we communicated like crazy. We have a terrific vice president for communications, Laura Jack, who sent out an e-mail or a video every day to the campus saying, here's where we are, this is away we're doing, we just want to -- we wanted everyone to know where we were because people just -- if you don't give them information, they'll speculate and things will go awry.

And then we never lied to anybody. We said this is going to be hard. We never said it was going to be easy. This is going to be a hard thing. So I think this sense of joint endeavor took over the campus. So I -- you know, it was a multilayer effort that that involved everybody on the campus.

HARLOW: I mean congratulations on having so much success and -- just for the health and safety of all of your students and all of your faculty and staff.

So now you're telling the kids, stay home, basically, so exams, everything, I guess, remote. And then you hope to bring them back in the spring.

How are you -- how are you going to do that safely? Is it testing before everyone comes back?

CASEY: Yes.

HARLOW: Is it another quarantine? I think we have video of you quarantining before. Are you going to do it again with them?

CASEY: I'm -- I am going to do it again. And we're going to -- we're going to put that -- all those wheels into motion.

And, look, we recognize that things now are quite different than they were in the summer. I mean we're seeing 200,000 cases a day. So we're really looking at the different conditions.

But we're going to -- we're going to try to do what we did before, which is everyone -- we sent everyone home with an at-home test so they'll get tested at home before they show up. They'll get tested upon arrival. They've go back into quarantine. We'll take care of them in quarantine. I'll be in quarantine. And then we'll test them on about day eight or nine.

HARLOW: OK.

CASEY: It depends, you know, the guidance is changing, but we'll test them before they come out and then we'll just keep letting the science and the data keep dictating what we're going to do.

HARLOW: Are --

CASEY: It's interesting, science does help make good decisions.

HARLOW: Do you think you're going to mandate that every student take the vaccine when -- when it's available to them?

CASEY: You know, that is a real conversation. I think we will. We require, as do almost every college and university, you can't show up without your measles vaccination and other vaccinations. So we would probably get to that point. When we'll see the vaccine is, of course, the issue that everyone is wondering.

HARLOW: You talk about, finally, Brian, the plan that you guys had. And it -- it's fascinating. And for anyone who didn't see our last segment with you a few months ago, you guys even were testing toilet water because the science told you that it could be one of the first indicators of a spread of COVID literally from toilet water.

CASEY: Yes.

HARLOW: But everything you did cost millions of dollars.

[09:35:00]

And you guys are a private institution. You know, the tuition is expensive. Is there a lesson here that you think can be broadly applied to, you know, community colleges, to state schools that might have a bigger student body and a lower tuition base. Like, what can more people do that isn't so expensive?

CASEY: You know, we did test the waste water. We did have lots of testing. But when we look back at what happened this semester, it really did boil down to masks, not gathering in large groups, social distancing. Those layers, in addition to testing, but those I think really helped us the most.

And the other thing is just to do this together, to recognize that this is a common endeavor and -- and this is a public good. It's very hard to have people realize that your personal sacrifice is (INAUDIBLE) down to but will go to other people's benefit. But just do what you can, do your small part and it will work for everybody.

HARLOW: OK. Well, Brian, congrats on a successful semester.

CASEY: Hey (ph).

HARLOW: Thank you for keeping the kids healthy. And a quick shout-out to your mom, Carol Casey (ph), who I know doesn't get to be with you Thanksgiving, but we're thinking about her.

CASEY: Yes. Poppy, thank you for that.

HARLOW: All right, have a good one. Thank you.

CASEY: Happy Thanksgiving. Yes.

HARLOW: Happy Thanksgiving.

Well, President Trump has pardoned last night the national security adviser that he fired for lying to the FBI and, by the way, to the vice president. So what else can we expect the president to do in his last 55 days in office?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:40:55]

HARLOW: Welcome back.

Now, less than two months to go in his presidency, and President Trump has granted a full pardon to his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn, you'll remember, pleaded guilty twice under oath to lying to the FBI during the Russia probe.

Let's bring in Elie Honig, former federal and state prosecutor.

There is so much here, Elie.

But I just want to remind people that not only did he -- did he lie twice under oath and lie to the vice president and that's why the president fired him 23 days in, but he was at one point cooperating with Robert Mueller. And then he stopped. And he was cooperating so much so that Mueller himself said that the information that Flynn was providing was particularly valuable to ongoing investigations. That's a big deal, right? And now he doesn't need to cooperate.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Poppy, I think that's one of the things this makes this pardon so unusual and such an abuse of power. We know Michael Flynn was cooperating. We know he was giving valuable cooperation. Robert Mueller went out of his way to say that in court papers. And for some reason, he stopped. And if you're cooperating -- I've dealt with dozens and dozens of cooperators -- if you're cooperating and then you go bad, it's the worst thing you can do as a criminal defendant. The fact that Michael Flynn stopped, he put himself in jeopardy, unless he knew or believed that someone would be coming down the line to help him.

HARLOW: OK. But presidents are allowed to do this. So it's not a question of being allowed to it. He can do it. And there have been controversial pardons before by Republicans, by Democrats, like Bill Clinton when it comes to Marc Rich, when it comes, of course, also to Roger Clinton.

But when you look at the words of Judge Emmit Sullivan, who, you know, this whole thing, by the way, wasn't over. And two years ago the words that Judge Sullivan said in court about Flynn are this, let me remind people, quote, all along you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States. That undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold out your country. And I read that because, Jim, my co-anchor, last night when this news

broke, I think made a great point saying, remember, he did damage to national security while being the national security adviser.

HONIG: Yes, Poppy, absolutely. Look, this is not the first bad pardon. This is not the first pardon we've ever seen in our history that I believe is an abuse of power. But this one is different. Like you said, like the judge said, Michael Flynn betrayed his country. I mean he was not just any old person. He was the national security adviser for the United States and he lied to the FBI about his interactions with Russia. That is core primary stuff that he's responsible for.

The other thing that I think makes this pardon different from other pardons that live in infamy, such as Marc Rich, that you mentioned, is this is a pardon of someone who was directly associated with the president, who was potentially in position to implicate the president in wrongdoing. That's why I put this one in sort of its own category when it comes to pardons that I think history will look on very poorly.

HARLOW: Just your reaction to another view of this coming from the White House, their statement, but also "The Wall Street Journal" editorial board this morning writes, quote, this is an overdue act of justice that ends four years of political harassment, unjustified prosecution and judicial abuse. And they point to the fact that there is documentation from Comey saying in 2017 another FBI agent quoting Comey saying that those FBI agents that intervened Flynn, quote, saw nothing that led them to believe he was lying.

Now, Comey later said he never believed that or said that. But this is the point they're making.

HONIG: Yes, all due respect to "The Wall Street Journal," they don't know what they're talking about when it comes to this.

Look, I'd be interested if a real prosecutor wrote that piece. I doubt it because there's no question Michael Flynn lied to the FBI. I mean they asked him squarely about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, and he lied. He told the Russian ambassador, hey, just hang easy, play easy until we come in office, suggesting we'll go light on you. He was asked exactly about that by the FBI and he lied.

[09:45:01]

This whole idea that Michael Flynn was wrongly prosecuted, was persecuted, it's really a conspiracy theory. It's based on an unjustifiable, unsubstantiated view of the facts.

And, by the way, the judge was headed in that direction, but this pardon effectively pulled the plug on the Judge Sullivan being a able to reach that conclusion.

HARLOW: Right. Right. You wonder what he's saying this morning.

HONIG: Yes. HARLOW: Elie Honig, thank you and Happy Thanksgiving.

HONIG: Thanks, Poppy. Have a good Thanksgiving.

HARLOW: All right, next, I can't wait for you to hear this story. It's an incredible one. A story of an undocumented immigrant brought to the United States as a young child, overcoming all of the odds and now he has just been named a Rhodes Scholar.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:50:03]

HARLOW: Well, we have some wonderful news to share with you this Thanksgiving morning.

Santiago Tobar Potes, a recent graduate of Columbia University, is the first ever Latino DACA recipient to earn the prestigious Rhodes's scholarship. The news just came this week and he came to this country when he was just four years old from Columbia. His grandfather had been killed by terrorists. His family wanted to give him a better chance at life.

Santiago was undocumented. He was a so-called dreamer. He received DACA status in 2012, and that protected him from deportation. It also enable him to go to college. And I spoke with him on CNN back in 2017, this was after the Trump administration announced it was attempting to end DACA protection for hundreds of thousands of dreamers.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANTIAGO TOBAR POTES, DACA RECIPIENT: So many of us have lived entire lives in hiding, fearing that we'll be discovered. And I just think that this -- this -- this type of -- unless this problem with immigration is solved, I really feel that my experience have showed me that we've lived lives as second class citizens. We don't have agency over our lives for things that happen to use.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Well, Santiago himself was grandfathered in from that policy change and able to renew his DACA status.

He joins me this morning.

The first Latino DACA recipient to get the Rhodes Scholarship. I knew you were smart but then but, wow. What does this mean to you?

SANTIAGO TOBAR POTES, FIRST LATINO DACA RECIPIENT TO RECEIVE RHODES SCHOLARSHIP: I just can't believe it. I think -- of course I wanted to get it to be able to study at Oxford, but I think the main motivator is I want to inspire the next generation of Latino people who want to, you know, get this scholarship and, you know, help to change the world. HARLOW: What was it like getting the letter or the call? I mean I

remember when I got into college, I got a letter at home -- that was a long time ago -- and I -- no one was home and I danced around by house by myself.

What did you do when you found out?

POTES: Yes, honestly, I had like -- I have like a reaction video. And it's not much of a reaction. Like I think I just blinked and that's it because I honestly still don't believe it. you know, I think I'll finally believe it that I'm a Rhodes Scholar once I'm on the plane going to Oxford. But, yes.

HARLOW: Well, I know when we talked a few years ago your goal was to become the president of Columbia, not the university, but the country where you were born.

POTES: Yes.

HARLOW: But that's changed.

POTES: Yes.

HARLOW: What do you want to do now?

POTES: Yes, I'm really interested in foreign relations. I really want to study -- I want to study international relations at oxford. I really want to, you know, help position the U.S. be able to answer all different types of circumstances with china in the future. So that's what I really want to do.

HARLOW: Wow. Wow. We need a lot of brains on that, that's for sure.

So just big picture, you know, the narrative from some about people like you, about immigrants, about DACA recipients, is that they're a drain on the U.S. economy, that they take U.S. jobs. You've heard it, right? And it's not backed by fact.

But, I guess, what's your message to those people this morning about the value of immigrants?

POTES: Yes, I think -- I mean can -- I can -- I can -- I can empathize with people that have those just erroneous ideas. It's really motivated by fear. And I would say that immigrants, the vast majority really want to help improve the United States. I can't say about all of them, but I can say, especially about dreamers, the vast, vast majority want to help improve the United States in gratitude, just like I am.

HARLOW: Yes.

POTES: Yes.

HARLOW: Well, Santiago, I know that, you know, you give your elementary school gifted teacher a lot of credit for helping you get to where you are today. And you've stayed in touch with her over all of these years. We have a photo that we can pull up, a recent photo, of the two of you after an art lesson that she gave you. Can you talk to us about -- there she is -- the impact of Mrs. Marina Esteva on your life?

POTES: Yes, she was -- you know, she was one of the biggest blessings that I've had in my entire life so far. You know, she -- my parents didn't go to college. You know, my parents were -- they had me when they were 16 years old. So she really became, you know, kind of like my first mother figure actually. She went out of her way to teach me like rigorous education. And so like this Thanksgiving I'm just so extremely grateful for elementary school teachers. And I wish there were a larger national conversation about how important elementary school teachers specifically are.

HARLOW: Yes.

Well, I think if this pandemic has taught us anything about teachers, it's that they should all make a billion dollars a year, and I mean that.

POTES: Yes. Yes.

HARLOW: Let me leave you with this. So my great producer, Nora, actually called your teacher last night, called Mrs. Esteva last night. And so, you don't know this, but we want to read to you what she said about you and this award. He is so complete. He is a well- rounded human being with the highest moral caliber, with a sense of justice, with a sense of what is excellent and willing to sacrifice for excellence, not for show, but for excellence itself.

What does that mean to you?

[09:55:00]

POTES: Oh, my goodness, it's -- it's -- it's really -- it's all I ever wanted to be, actually. I remember, you know, she talked to us when we were in like third grade about what a renaissance man is, and that's really, I think, all I've ever wanted to be in my life, just to fulfill that ideal. And I'm happy that she's -- you know, she thinks I'm on the way there.

HARLOW: Santiago, I'm so proud of you. I'm so -- I'm just -- we're all so proud of you. We wish you so much luck. And I know you're going to do -- continue to do so much good for this country. So, thank you.

POTES: Thank you very much.

HARLOW: Told you. Feel good story this morning.

Well, as the nation gathers this Thanksgiving, COVID, unfortunately, not taking a holiday. Americans and the death toll here is spiking, hospitalizations are setting new records. We're following it all, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:04]

HARLOW: Good morning, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving. So glad you're with me this morning. I'm Poppy Harlow.