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Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) Discusses Coronavirus & Vaccines; FOX Host Sean Hannity Tries to Distance From Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; Smartmatic Files $2.7 Lawsuit Against FOX, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired February 05, 2021 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: But when you were at the height of your cases per capita, because you are a rather rural state, you were number one.

I mean, there isn't a state that has performed more poorly in cases per capita at the height of their surges than North Dakota.

So, I mean, doesn't -- what is the science that tells you, no masks now?

GOV. DOUG BURGUM (R-ND): Well, Brianna, the math part of that needs to be taken into consideration, because we have a lot of cases. But as you know, we were always at the top of the list.

And during that time frame number one in the country in terms of testing. Sometimes testing, two, three, four times as much testing per capita as other states, including those states around us.

So, when you test more per capita, as we know, there was a lot of COVID cases out there.

What really mattered was --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Wait. Governor, I have to stop you.

Tests -- tests are not what reveals COVID. Look at your hospitalization numbers. Your hospitals were overflowing. Your hospital capacity was at risk.

I mean, so you had a problem. It's not like you didn't have a problem.

There were a lot of states that were doing testing as well. Doing a lot of testing.

So, I guess I'm wondering, what is the science that tells you, OK, now we're not going to have masks?

BURGUM: Well, Brianna, again, as you noted, and you're spot-on, we put the mask mandate on when hospital capacity was approaching its peak and that's when we applied it because that's when we needed it.

Again, as we are right now, with less than 2 percent of our total hospital capacity being applied towards COVID patients, we know that mask mandates today, masks are encouraged. We've always encouraged masks from the very beginning, as you've noted.

In our state, it's not about what government says. It's about what people do. If people can't socially distance, if people are in places where they need to wear a mask, we've seen people step up and they're doing what they need to do and that's reflected in the numbers.

We've got lowest percent positivity in the country, the lowest hospitalization. We have to say what we're doing here is working and working well. A credit to all North Dakotans.

KEILAR: Because of masks. I would pause at that.

I want to also to ask you, you have this --

(CROSSTALK)

BURGUM: I wouldn't say that. With the time we did the mask mandate, also put in about eight other things that we did.

This is a multivariant analysis. And you can't attribute success to just one variant, which is, oversimplification of a very complex problem.

So was it other mitigations that went into place or was is that people understood that, hey, now is the time, now's crunch time, and now we need to focus more on social distancing and focus more on mask appliance?

It's not really about the mandate but about what people will to do. They did it in North Dakota and reflected in the great numbers we have now.

KEILAR: CDC numbers are clear, masks work. They reduce infection rates. Which I understand what you're saying. There were business guidelines were put in place. There were guidelines. This was a -- this mask order -- just you can't dispute it. It helped.

I guess the question I have now is, you have your state Senate yesterday voted to limit your ability when it comes to determining if there's a state emergency, and they are voting -- they have voted to limit how long that can go, because you went 300-some days in North Dakota. They want to limit it to 30 days.

If the House follows suit, you're talking about a sweep of guidelines, including masks, an order put in place. Isn't your ability to do something like that going to be curved by what your legislators, folks in your own party, are doing?

BURGUM: Well, there's going to continue to be a -- a robust debate among our citizens and our legislature about pandemics and emergencies going forward, and we expect that they'll be continuing to have that. I think there's a little over 42 bills introduced. You mentioned one

of them represented to the pandemic.

Of course, we're still in the middle of a national emergency, and we'll see how these things play out, on the House side.

But I'm confident in the end that North Dakotans will put in place the right balance of government to make sure that the executive branch and the legislature are working together and can do what we need to do to serve the citizens of North Dakota during future emergencies.

KEILAR: You were criticized by folks in your own party during the process of these guidelines and the mask order put in place.

If this 30-day restriction goes through the state legislature, would you only be able to declare, then, a state of emergency for 30 days? You would only be able to put these guidelines in place, only able to have a mask order in place for 30 days. Correct?

BURGUM: Well, there's certainly -- again, as you know, legislation until it reaches my desk, is never final. I know there's going to be a lot of debate on the House side. I won't speculate might actually come out if it reaches my desk or anything at all.

[14:35:09]

Again, I think it's important for the executive branch to be able to make decisions and move forward quickly at a time of emergency. That's the role of the executive branch, to run the government, both during normal times and in emergency times.

And you mentioned the criticism. I would say that's true of every governor in the country in both parties. We've all been criticized by people in our own party, people of opposite parties, people with no parties.

And every single aspect of the pandemic has been politicized. Not just masks but vaccines, therapeutics, visitations, school rules.

This has been a challenging time in trying to find the right balance that we saw here in North Dakota, a data-driven approach, in trying to make sure we were not only saving lives, which we have, saving livelihoods.

And here we are today with our economy open and some of the lowest unemployment in country. We felt we found the right balance. But in these times, you're never going to make 100 percent of the people happy.

But we serve all of those people. We serve 100 percent of the people of state. We listened to all the feedback from all corners and all edges of this thing and then tried to make the best decision we can with the information we have on that day and keep moving forward.

And the result has been North Dakota is in great shape today. KEILAR: Look, I will leave you with this. You are in great shape

today. You are in the top 10 for deaths per capita in states. You were the number-one for cases per capita in states.

I have to leave it there, Governor, but I just want to be clear about the numbers.

Governor Burgum, of North Dakota, I appreciate you coming on. Thank you, sir.

BURGUM: Thank you, Brianna.

KEILAR: Next, FOX News host, Sean Hannity, no stranger to spreading conspiracy theories, is now trying to distance himself from Marjorie Taylor Greene, and we're going to roll the tape.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:41:00]

KEILAR: As FOX hosts come under scrutiny for their promotion of the big lie that the election was stolen, some are trying to cut ties with conspiracy theories.

Chief among them, Sean Hannity, who said this as he tried to distance himself and Republicans from the conspiracy theories of Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments by Democrats and even some Republicans yesterday for her previous comments endorsing conspiracy theories, including the central one to QAnon, that a ring of pedophiles has overtaken the U.S. government and Hollywood.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN HANNITY, FOX HOST, "HANNITY": I don't know a single conservative or a single Republican, frankly, that even knows what QAnon even is, let alone, buys into whatever those beliefs are.

From my perspective, there's not a single conservative I know that shares those conspiratorial beliefs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The only thing more disingenuous than comment is that he made it with a straight face.

Here's Hannity inviting a congressional candidate, who, in the past, sympathized with QAnon, now a congresswoman, on his show lavishing her with praise during what would be her successful run for the House of Representatives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: And the president's allies, they're standing strong. They're taking on the Washington swamp. A up and coming Colorado Republican congressional candidate, Lauren

Boebert, who, late last year, called our Beto Bozo O'Rourke to his face about all of this left-wing lunacy.

Good luck in your campaign, Ms. Boebert. Thank you for being with us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Here's Congresswoman Boebert on QAnon just a couple of months before that interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. LAUREN BOEBERT (R-CO): I am familiar with that. So that's -- that's what my mom thinks. She's a little Fringe. I try -- I just try to keep things on track and positive. I'm very familiar with it, though.

Everything that I've heard out of "Q," I hope that this is real. Because it only means America's getting stronger and better, and people are returning to conservative values. And that's what I am for.

And so everything that I have heard of this movement is only motivating and encouraging and bringing people together, stronger. And if this is -- if this is real, then it could be really great for our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: A spokesperson for Boebert says she is not a supporter of conspiracy theories, despite her comments.

Even if conservatives don't publicly agree with QAnon conspiracies, like the ones pushed by Marjorie Taylor Greene, some are enabling those who do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FOX CORRESPONDENT: What's your top line reaction to that?

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): Bravo, Marjorie Taylor Greene. That was so good, I almost had to smoke a cigarette afterwards.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Gross. Right?

That would be the apparently post-coital congressman from Florida, Matt Gaetz, who endorsed Greene and helped her get elected.

Back to Sean Hannity, thank god -- which is something I never thought I would say -- he also tries to play dumb on QAnon, which is straight out of the playbook of conservatives who pretend to not know what it's about, while either tepidly denouncing it or channeling the energy of its believers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much.

MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't know anything about QAnon. And I -- I dismiss it out of hand.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): But let me be very clear. There's no place for QAnon in the Republican Party. I do not support it. I denounce it, QAnon. I don't know if I said that right. I don't even know what it is. Any from the shootings, she said she knew nothing about lasers --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: It is February 5th, 2021. The FBI determined that fringe conspiracy theories were domestic terrorist threat last year and we have known that for about six months.

And when it comes to those fringe conspiracy theories, QAnon is king of the jungle.

So Hannity's claim that he and other Republicans don't know what QAnon is, it just doesn't pass the smell test.

QAnon supporters have made their presence known at Trump rallies for years. Its promoters and sympathizers have been elected to Congress. Many QAnon adherence were among those who attacked Congress a month ago in one of the worst moments in the modern history of this democracy.

[14:45:08]

So pretending not to know what QAnon is at this point is just plain dumb.

Also, Hannity says he denounces Taylor Greene's lies, especially ones about school shootings and children, but he defends her from being removed from a committee dealing with children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: So Democrats want to purge Taylor Greene from committees. Then this same standard must be applied to them. Right? Out of fundamental fairness.

Mark my words, they go through with this action tomorrow, it will be a slippery slope. It will not end well politically for some of, yes, the Democrats' own radical members and full-on conspiracy theorists.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: But the most ridiculous claim here is Sean Hannity insisting that conservatives that he knows don't believe in these QAnon conspiracy theories.

Even though conspiracy theories are a feature of his show. Even though he's been mainlining them into the mainstream for years.

And so I take this moment to introduce Sean Hannity to someone he might know, who traffics in fringe conspiracy theories: Sean Hannity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY (voice-over): There's no doubt this was stolen. No doubt whatsoever. I don't have any doubt in my mind.

(on camera): After what we have all now watched unfold over the last month, how does anybody trust the election results?

We've supposed to believe he got 15 million more votes than Barack Obama and 15 million more than Hillary.

Several large mysterious suitcases, yes, they believe filled with ballots, were rolled out from under a table. So do you trust your secretary of state, Georgia? I don't know.

In the state of Michigan, Republicans are moving in to investigate the software glitch, called Dominion, that actually changed thousands of votes from Trump to Biden.

He did talk in his book how he went and, prayers, and went to a Muslim school and he did talk about all of this. And he studied the Koran and prayers at sunset, were some of the most beautiful things he saw in life. So he spent a lot of his youth in Indonesia.

Why won't they release the person?

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: Why are they just releasing it and get over with it?

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: The only reason they don't release is it because it insults him.

Explosive new evidence in what is becoming the biggest scandal, or at least one of them in American history.

(voice-over): Hillary herself has to sign off on the Uranium One deal, where Russia literally controls 20 percent of American uranium.

(on camera): A soft coup is under way right here in the United States of America, in an attempt to overturn November's election results and forcibly remove a duly elected president from office.

What's unfolding about the Deep State is so dramatic, so shocking, but at the same time, so very predictable.

It is the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal. It makes Watergate look like a parking ticket.

Spying on an opposition party, in an election year, are you kidding me? This is what you would see in the former Soviet Union.

Obama's comments this weekend, he's been awfully quiet. Was he sending a message to Deep State operatives to go out and do more dirty work?

Here in America, we're at a turning point tonight with forces forming an alliance to try and remove President Trump from office. It's that serious.

I'm actually beginning to have doubts. I've been telling my friends I'm going to get the vaccine. Half of them agree and the other half think I'm absolutely nuts. They wouldn't take it in a million years. I don't know who to listen to.

I am not backing off asking questions, even though there's an effort that nobody talk about Seth Rich. This kid shot in the back. They said it was a robbery, yet had his watch, wallet and his phone. I don't believe it's a robbery.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: That last conspiracy tormented a family who had already lost a son and a brother, a victim of what police say was likely a botched robbery but was portrayed as a conspiracy theory that Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer, leaked a trove of DNC emails to WikiLeaks and was killed for it.

FOX News ultimately retracted the actual news story it had published. On his radio show Hannity, "All of you in the liberal media, I am not FOX.com or FOXnews.com. I retracted nothing."

Hannity would eventually say he cut it out on TV for the family.

And after Seth Rich's family sued FOX for emotional pain and suffering, the network settled confidently.

Hannity was one of several FOX employees scheduled to be deposed. It's not clear whether that ever took place. And FOX didn't reply for clarification on that. Nor on our inquiry today about conspiracy theories.

Sean Hannity may not subscribe to QAnon, but when it comes to normalizing conspiracy theories, as Jay-Z might say, wasn't born a hustler of conspiracies, he was birthing them.

Lies about election fraud and voting machines being rigged could end up costing FOX billions of dollars.

[14:49:59]

Voting technology company, Smartmatic, has filed a massive, nearly $3 billion lawsuit against FOX, some of the network's stars, and pro- Trump attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, as well in this lawsuit.

And the lawsuit opens with this line. It says, "The earth is round, two plus two equals four, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election, the election was not stolen, rigged or fixed. These are the facts.

I want to bring in Carl Cameron, a former FOX News chief political correspondent.

I wonder, Carl, as you look at this, I want to ask you, did FOX go too far this time?

CARL CAMERON, CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "FRONT PAGE LIVE": Certainly, going to find out with these lawsuits. It's really interesting because Smartmatic is a fairly small operation in terms of the election.

They did supply election technology to one county, and it's now a $2.7 billion lawsuit against FOX for a variety of things, and -- and it's going to be a hassle for them.

FOX is very accustomed to lawsuits. They have a relentless legal team.

But it's not just Smartmatic. It's also Dominion, which is suing -- has essentially warned FOX, Newsmax, the America One Network, Parler, Facebook, Twitter, all of them, that they are looking into the ways in which they perpetuated these lies.

You know, it's -- it's OK for there to be advocacy journalism. It's OK for there to be partisan journalism. But it has to be based on fact.

And what was happening in all of the aforementioned operations was conspiracists and conspiracies of falsehoods to help a president who obviously lost and still hasn't fully acknowledge it had.

KEILAR: There were some in the network who would report or certainly knew that these conspiracy theories were untrue.

I wonder, you know, considering the size of this lawsuit. because at this point FOX has two routes, right, they either settle, which says something, or they proceed, which would get them into potentially a discovery portion of these legal proceedings, which could get, you know, Smartmatic or their lawyers into e-mails and things at FOX.

Do you think that the ultimate effect is that this will maybe have FOX reining in some of their hosts or letting go some people who spread lies or disinformation?

CAMERON: Well, the network seems to be in a massive sort of deck shuffling, getting the deck chairs resettled for the Biden administration. and to try to get back some of the audience that it had lost to some of the other conservative online and on cable right- wing operations that were espousing the conspiracies.

I think we're already seeing that they are doubling down. That they realize beating up Biden is a way to bring back conservatives and speaking to the facts is going to be their test. Making up stuff as they did, mostly driven by Donald Trump and following his rhetoric, that's -- that's not available anymore.

So I think their capacity to survive some of these lawsuits without taking a big, big hit depends on how they behave because they have a capacity to string them out for a long, long time.

KEILAR: Yes.

Before I let you go, Carl, I'm going to read this statement real quick from FOX, which denies any wrongdoing with a spokesperson saying, "We're proud of our 2020 election coverage and we will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit in court."

Carl, always great to see you. Thank you so much for coming on. Carl Cameron.

Super Bowl weekend is upon us. And defending champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, will be taking on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this Sunday.

But preparing for the game certainly looks a little different this year. The stadium in Tampa is sold out. But it's only a fraction what have it can actually hold. That's what's going to be there in the stadium, with the league closely following COVID restrictions.

And 25,000 fans will be in the stands. That includes thousands of frontline health care workers. Everyone attending the game will be required to wear a mask. The league saying that they will distribute PPE kits and KN-95 masks to every attendee.

Coronavirus is also disrupting commercial breaks. Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Pepsi are among the big names not buying ads this time.

And a reminder this week to all Americans from health officials to watch the game with only the people in your household. No Super Bowl parties this year, they say.

[14:54:39]

And do not forget to join CNN as we take viewers inside of the Super Bowl kickoff in Tampa Bay. It's a CNN "BLEACHER REPORT" special that will be airing tomorrow at 2:30 Eastern.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:59:59]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: You're watching CNN on this Friday. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me.

President Biden is drawing a line in the sand today, justifying moving forward with his COVID-19 relief package without Republican support.