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D.C. Mayor Asks White House for Emergency Declaration to Get Funding for Inauguration Security; First Lady Mourns Lives Lost in Capitol Riot But Doesn't Assign Blame; Right Wing Social Media Site Loses Its Major Platforms. Aired 11:30-12p ET

Aired January 11, 2021 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:07]

REP. DAN KILDEE (D-MI): They still clung to this big lie because they saw the political benefit to it.

So I take -- I give Jim Jordan especially no comfort. Where was his speech about unity when they were on the floor of the House of Representatives contesting a legitimate democratic election, trying to disenfranchise the votes of the American people?

And for my Michigan colleagues, where are their crocodile tears about unity when they were actually going not just to court but to the court of public opinion and the Congress of the United States trying to take away the legitimately cast votes of millions and millions of Michiganders, millions of Americans?

This false clutching of pearls that these members of Congress are now trying to conjure just falls pretty flat when they fan the fuels of this flame because they warmed themselves by the heat of this flame and now they're pretending that they never saw the fire in the first place.

They could tell somebody this. Maybe they look at themselves in the mirror and tell them this story. Don't give it to me and don't try to pass this off on the American people because we're not falling for it.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: You've said that you want to see obviously Trump convicted and removed from office immediately. I lean on the immediately because we did hear from the majority whip, Jim Clyburn, who said that the House could hold on to the article of impeachment for a few months and then send it over to Senate for possible -- for trial. Do you agree with that strategy? I don't even want to call it a strategy. I don't want to seem -- I don't know what I don't want it to seem. But would you agree with that, would you support that move?

KILDEE: It is possible. It may be made necessary because Mitch McConnell is clinging to this pretense that he has no authority to call the Senate back in to take this important action to save the country. BOLDUAN: But then -- but does it then also call into question the -- your call for immediacy?

KILDEE: I think the immediate need is that, in real-time, the house, which is the only body over which we have control, will have used the constitutional tool to rein in a rogue presidency. And there are immediate effects to that. The president's ability to execute the use of pardons, for example, could be compromised by the fact that an impeachment has occurred.

And then, ultimately, the conviction in the Senate, wherever it may take place, you know, the removal from office is the penalty for the conviction. The conviction itself is important. It has value. It is a moment where the Congress has acted even if it takes a while to convict the president of a crime. The sentence, if you will, is the loss of office and the loss of any future office.

Now we may not remove him because he could already be gone and down in Mar-a-Lago, but the fact that we will say to the world that we don't tolerate this, and we won't tolerate this person ever allowing his shadow to glance upon the doorstep of the American government, that is an important statement that I think has to be made even if it takes months.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, thank you for coming on.

KILDEE: Thanks, Kate.

BOLDUAN: I want to get back over really quick on the breaking news that we were discussing with Congressman Kildee, Phil Mattingly back on the Hill.

So, Phil, where do things stand now?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the four-page impeachment resolution, the one charge of incitement has been introduced by the sponsors of the resolution, David Cicilline, Ted Lieu and Jamie Raskin as well. So that's been introduced.

And right now, the expectation, according to lawmakers in the wake of that introduction, is while nothing is finalized or nothing will be final until Speaker Pelosi announces it. The expectation is there will be a vote on Wednesday.

As we talked about earlier, Kate, there is no question, no doubt Democrats have the votes to impeach the president. I think the big question is a couple of things. First, how many Republicans will join. Democrats have made clear they are reaching out, they are trying to get Republicans who they know are just as angry or just as frustrated or just to be frankly scared as they were in the wake of January 6th, to see if they will come on board and sign on to impeachment, something that didn't happen back in 2019.

And then the other question is once the president is impeached for the second time by the House, when does the article of impeachment get sent over to the Senate? What we're starting hear -- you heard it, Kate, James Clyburn, obviously in leadership, said something along the lines of maybe we'll wait 100 days for the Biden administration to be able to get their nominees confirmed, to get their stimulus package through and move some of their legislative proposals, that was absolutely on the table.

What we're hearing more and more from lawmakers today, now that the impeachment has been introduced, is they want to move quickly.

[11:35:02]

They want to send it over as soon as possible. Obviously, that creates the issue of the Senate currently not being in session until January 19th. And so those dynamics are going to have to play out a little bit. There is a very real possibility that this ends up in the lap of new Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of new President Joe Biden.

But right now, all of the focus is on the House, and with this resolution now officially introduced, and obviously no sense right now that President Trump will resign or that Vice President Pence is going to invoke the 25th Amendment. Let's make something abundantly clear, President Trump is just two days away from being the first president in the history of United States to be impeached twice, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes, Phil, thank you. Phil is going to continue to follow the breaking news from the Hill, and there's a lot. We'll get back to him as it happens.

Still ahead for us, still, Joe Biden's inauguration is just nine days away. The mayor of the D.C. is now asking President Trump for emergency help to secure her city.

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[11:40:00]

BOLDUAN: Ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration next week, there are now new concerns over security for this very big event. Washington, D.C.'s mayor is also now asking the White House for emergency declaration funding to beef up security. This is as online chat are calling for more extremist violence is ramping up not only in our nation's capital but in all 50 states, we are learning, putting local law enforcement on alert.

The National Guard says it is stepping up its presence for the inauguration, the guard personnel from -- with guard personnel from at least 11 states who will be assisting.

CNN's Jessica Schneider and Shimon Prokupecz are joining me now with more on both -- on all angles of this.

Jessica, what is D.C.'s mayor asking for?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kate. So she is making a urgent plea to the president. She wants him to declare a pre- emergency disaster declaration. And this morning, Mayor Bowser explained, this is the exact type of designation that was actually granted back in 2009 to support President Obama's inauguration and it is really intended to facilitate more funds here and more resources that will safeguard the inauguration.

This is coming at the same time as the mayor is asking DHS to put emergency procedures in place. She wants them in place between today and January 24th, four days after the inauguration, that would extend the initial time period. And she also wants more federal coordination to secure all the federal property so D.C. police can instead focus on the rest of the city and not be dragged into any riots or attacks if they were to take place again, like we saw last week.

And finally, Kate, Mayor Bowser, she is asking the Department of the Interior to deny all permits for people who want to protest, demonstrate, gather and any time between now and January 24th because, of course, we know that there were several permits issued last week, January 6th, for the gatherings there. So now, the mayor wants to shut down all gatherings before they even start, Kate.

BOLDUAN: And, Shimon, you have new reporting that investigators are looking at the level of planning that went into the attack on Capitol on Wednesday, and if there are plans, if there were coordinated plans at all to take hostages. What are you learning?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. When you look at some of these images with the people that the FBI has arrested, some of them had zip ties, some of the equipment that we saw people bring with them inside the Capitol, this has authorities very concerned that perhaps there was a bigger plot here underway to try and take some of the lawmakers hostage. Specifically one of the things that they're looking at is whether or not people were targeting the speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Another clue as to why perhaps authorities think this was more planned out was because the outgoing Capitol police chief told The Washington Post that those pipe bombs that the FBI and ATF found, he believes they may have been placed there as a diversion to try and get police to leave the Capitol and to pay attention to the pipe bombs, therefore, depleting some of the resources at the Capitol. So that is a significant clue.

FBI agents all across the country, Kate, are really digging into this from every field office trying to figure out what exactly was going on here, who was planning what. Some of the people they've arrested are talking. So that is good for the FBI because they're able to gather some more information. And while we're seeing some charges appear to be minor at this point, some of the charges that these guys are facing, we do expect those charges to get more severe as the investigation goes on.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Shimon, thank you, Jessica, thank you both very much.

Coming up for us, after five days of silence, First Lady Melania Trump, she is finally speaking out on the riot and insurrection incited by her husband. What she is saying, that is next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:45:00]

BOLDUAN: First Lady Melania Trump is finally speaking out over what happened at Capitol last week, an insurrection incited by her husband, President Trump, the first lady putting out a lengthy statement condemning the attack but also in it lashing out what we called salacious gossips surrounding her whereabouts when the violence unfolded.

CNN's Kate Bennett, she is joining me now for more on this. Kate, what is your take on this statement from the first lady? What is she really saying here?

KATE BENNETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: It's a good question, Kate. I mean, we waited five days to hear from her. She did not even tweet condolences and certainly she had to lot to say about how she was being treated in the wake of this attack.

I'm going to read this two-part statement. I am disappointed and disheartened with what happened last week. I find it shameful that surrounding these tragic events, there has been salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks and false, misleading accusations on me from people who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda. This time is solely about healing our country and its citizens. It should not be used for personal gain.

So clearly, Kate, she is feeling as though people are coming after her, particularly perhaps her former senior adviser, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who wrote an op-ed about working with Melania and how she's not heard from her since the fallout of this. America has not heard from her.

But, once again, this is Melania Trump making clear that she is victimized as part of this bigger, you know, issue that America is dealing with. It feels to me a little bit obviously late and tone deaf and I think she's going to get a lot of criticism for just this statement.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And parts of the statement are strikingly similar, as a lot of folks are pointing out, to the speech that she gave at the RNC over the summer. I mean, did she just copy and paste here?

BENNETT: Basically. I mean, it's funny, Kate, I've covered her for years now, and I read the statement this morning and it sounded familiar. And I went back to the RNC speech, and sure enough, there were sections that were literally very much the same words, the same thing, and it was a copy/paste situation.

[11:50:05]

Now, I will say that she did lose two senior staffers, one being the White House social secretary, but the other, Stephanie Grisham, her long-time chief of staff, communications director, Stephanie Grisham was the one who wrote most of her speeches, who wrote that RNC speech. So right now, the east wing maybe has a couple junior staffers, but it is very much a skeleton crew. The first lady appears to have cobbled together this statement using her own words from August.

BOLDUAN: Yes. So, I guess we should take this as seriously as we could have taken her initial platform taking on cyberbullying at the beginning of their term. Kate, thank you.

So, now to this, as of this morning, an alternative social media platform popular among the right is offline. This comes one day after Amazon announced that it would no longer support the Parler website through its massive web services offering. Apple and Google removed the app last week as well, late last week, and President Trump was cut off from Twitter, Facebook and many more platforms for inciting the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. What does this all mean in this moment?

Joining me right now is Nick Thompson. He is the Editor-in-Chief for Wired. Nick, thanks for coming back on.

You could see this coming over the weekend, as we've discussed. What does this mean today that Parler is offline? Where does that conversation go now?

NICHOLAS THOMPSON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, WIRED: Well, Parler has been taken offline. But what we've seen in the past is that when the big infrastructure companies knock one side off, it has relatively quickly able to come back on in some other way. So, Parler will likely find another web-hosting provider, and within a week, two weeks, we'll be back up. The question is whether it still has momentum, whether people still want to post there, whether its reputation has become toxic, but we've seen this in the past.

Gab got knocked offline a couple of years ago after quite this terrible event, but a terrible event, and it has come back and people are speaking there.

BOLDUAN: You're already hearing cries of censorship and violations of First Amendment free speech rights. This isn't the same thing. Speak to if there is any truth to that, please.

THOMPSON: No, there is no legal truth to the idea that these companies are being knocked online or that Trump has been sensitive in losing his First Amendment rights because he can no longer post on Twitter. Private companies can do business with the companies they want to do business with. If Amazon doesn't want to host Parler because it thinks that Parler doesn't moderate speech on its platform up to Amazon's standards, Amazon can do that.

So there is no legal way that this is a violation of free speech. However, there is a principle of free speech, and it is important to a lot of companies, and it is clearly counter to that principle what is happening right now. Twitter used to call itself the free speech wing of the free speech party. It no longer, clearly, holds free speech as absolute a value.

So what you are seeing is, in Silicon Valley, the debate about free speech changing and the value being put on it as a value changing if it's not a legal violation. It's only a legal violation of free speech when a government does something.

BOLDUAN: Nick, do these moves or anything that you have heard from the big tech companies get to the bigger more important issue at play here of the role social media has played in spreading extremism, hate and lies?

THOMPSON: No, they don't, actually. The key question for Twitter isn't whether Donald Trump should be on Twitter or should not be on Twitter. It is why someone like Donald Trump found that Twitter was his most important microphone.

What was it about the structure of Twitter, the algorithm of Twitter, the way Twitter works that allowed Trump to use it so successfully? Remember, Trump himself said he would not have become president were it not for Twitter.

So if I were an engineer or project manager at Twitter, I would spend a little bit of time thinking about values and whether Trump should be on the platform, but I would spend a lot of time thinking about what it is about this algorithm, what it is about the nature of this kind of social media that allowed Trump to thrive and ultimately to incite the violence we saw at the Capitol.

BOLDUAN: You raised very important questions. I mean, what would you say -- do you have a singular question kind of regarding big tech going forward after this, real change or real fallout? I mean, do you see it?

THOMPSON: I think there will be real fallout. I think there will be a real splintering. I think there will be a lot of opposition on big tech companies. But I think the most important question to people who work at big tech, to people who many use social media, is did we create a monster in social media? Does the structure of social media, the algorithms in social media, do they inevitably lead to what we have seen in the past week?

[11:55:00]

And if they do, and I kind of think they do, then we need some major rethinking about how those algorithms work.

BOLDUAN: And what about coming from Washington? One thing we often talk about is how D.C. has no idea what to do with the internet.

THOMPSON: Yes, D.C. has no idea what to do with the internet, doesn't know how to regulate the internet. It's not clear who should regulate the internet in a way that has created this problem. The question of whether Trump should be banned is one that has been confusing, complicated, it's not sure that Twitter has upheld its policies. And the reason why Twitter and Facebook or operating in this vacuum is because there haven't been rules and standards put out by Washington on how to regulate their platforms, whether they are regulated, whether they're not.

BOLDUAN: We can talk about this for a long time and we will have to. Thank you so much.

We'll be right back.

THOMPSON: Thank you.

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