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U.S. Sees Surge in Air Travel Heading into Memorial Day Weekend; Freedom Fighters Find Enduring Hope with New Generation of Activists. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired May 25, 2021 - 10:30   ET

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

JONATHAN GREENBLATT, CEO AND NATIONAL DIRECTOR, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE: On 4chan and from TikTok to Instagram, it's been incredibly ugly.

[10:30:06]

Now, I want to point out, Jim, when you make unhinged conspiratorial claims about the Jewish state, that it's systemically committing genocide or intentionally slaughtering children, we shouldn't be surprised when there are then real world consequences for Jewish people, because we've seen this before with the Asian-American community, right, unhinged conspiracies about china led to attacks on Asian-Americans.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: Yes.

GREENBLATT: All of this is wrong.

SCIUTTO: Yes. the pattern is clear there. I wonder, I mean, you see it on social media, we saw it on some of the T-shirts that the insurrectionists were wearing as they assaulted the Capitol on January 6th. Do you see anti-Semitism on the far-right and the far-left?

GREENBLATT: We certainly do. Like sometimes it's -- we hear complaints and critiques about Jewish people that they're illegitimate, that they don't belong, that they're corrupt from the far-right, and then from the far-left, Jim, we hear it's not the Jewish people, it's the Jewish state that's illegitimate and doesn't belong and is corrupt.

But, you know who gets caught in the middle? Ordinary American Jews, regardless of how they feel about Israel. You wear a kippah, you're a target. And in this moment, I'm talking to folks across the country, Jim, they are frightened. They're asking me, can I walk to synagogue on Saturday morning? Is it safe for my daughter to go back to college campus and wear a Star of David necklace?

I mean, this is in America, in this time, it should be an affront to anyone, not just Jewish people, but anyone who cares about our freedoms, about our liberties, about our dignity as Americans.

SCIUTTO: And it's such a good point. It should be felt as an attack on all of us. Jonathan Greenblatt, thank you so much for putting it into context for us.

GREENBLATT: Thank you for having me, Jim, I appreciate it.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: All right, a great interview.

All right, up next, more vaccinations and more vacations, how Airbnb is trying to adapt to a new travel reality, what they see ahead.

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[10:35:00]

HARLOW: Welcome back. As more Americans are getting vaccinated and memorial weekend is approaching, air travel is seeing a huge bounce across the country. The TSA reports it screened nearly 2 million people on Sunday. That is more than a million-and-a-half more than during this time last year at the height of the pandemic.

And this comes as vacation rental company Airbnb is making sweeping changes to its platform in the anticipation of this big travel rebound, focusing on flexibility as many Americans see more flexibility in where they have to work.

Joining me now is Brian Chesky, CEO and co-Founder of Airbnb. Good morning, Brian, good to have you.

BRIAN CHESKY, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, AIRBNDN: Thank you for having me today.

HARLOW: You say this is going to be a travel rebound unlike America has ever seen before. Really, ever?

CHESKY: Well, certainly in my lifetime and probably in a number of lifetimes.

HARLOW: You're only 39.

CHESKY: So, certainly, last 40 years, I think this is probably the most important thing to happen in travel probably since World War II. And, you know, obviously, I've been doing travel for 13 years but we're a pretty big company and we've studied the history pretty closely.

You know, what you have right now, just to give you a couple pieces of data, number one, you know, on Airbnb, we're seeing travel activity that is at 2019 levels already. This is before cross border travel completely reopens, which was half of our business, and this is before, you know, you have re-emergence of people traveling to cities. You combine those two, that was 68 percent of our business. So without that full recovery, we're still back to 2019 levels.

I think sometimes in life, when things are taken away from you, you want it more. What was taken away from us, traveling and connecting with other people. And I think this Memorial Day weekend, you're going to start to see something that is unlike anything we have ever seen. HARLOW: You have talked about the blurring line between business and leisure travel. And for a lot of folks, they don't have to go to the office. I do. But there are folks that now can have an office anywhere. Do you really believe that traditional business travel is dead?

CHESKY: I think traditional business travel is never going to return the way it was. It doesn't mean business travel is dead. It's just business travel, as we knew it, isn't coming back the way it was. The reason why is I think the bar is now higher to get on a plane to do a meeting, we're realizing how many things can finally be done remotely.

And I think that people now have what they didn't have a year or two ago. Many people now have flexibility. They have flexibility about where they travel, where they live and where they work. And they're starting to combine all those. And I think once people have something, they're not going to let go of it.

HARLOW: Is Airbnb considering at this point allowing hosts to deny people the ability to rent their homes if they're not vaccinated and can show proof of that vaccination? Are you thinking about that?

CHESKY: You know, we are working really closely with health care professionals. Just to give you one example, last year, we worked with the now surgeon general, then former-Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, on a hands cleaning protocol for hosts. More than 1 million hosts worked on that. We're going to just kind of take this step-by-step with guidance from health care professionals, so we don't have anything to announce right now. We want people to travel very safely and responsibly though.

HARLOW: Okay. So, TBD, more to come on that.

Let's talk about infrastructure. You look like you wanted to say something else there. Is that right?

CHESKY: No, I was just agreeing with you. I was just agreeing with you that, you know, I think I'll add to that answer is, you know, I think people are now feeling really comfortable to travel.

[10:40:05]

You're starting to see vaccination rates rise, borders reopen. And what we have seen is, as that happens, a lot more people travel, nut it's not exactly like it was before. As you said, travel and living are starting to border (ph) together. It means the length of stay is increasing. People are traveling longer.

The other thing is people are more open about where they're traveling. They're not just going to the big cities. They're now booking uniques on Airbnb. We have unique homes and people are booking really unique places to stay. So it is a really different kind of traveling than before, it's back but it's different.

HARLOW: Let me ask you about infrastructure, because you know Biden's infrastructure plan pretty well, I'm sure, and the co-founder and president of Lyft, John Zimmer, was on the show with me just a few weeks ago. And e said that, yes, Lyft supports a 28 percent corporate tax rate to fund it. Does Airbnb support a 28 percent corporate tax rate to fund infrastructure?

CHESKY: I mean, I'm certainly very supportive of funding infrastructure and we want to pay our fair share of taxes. With regards to what the tax rate will be, I will not opine on that right now. But I do think that obviously --

HARLOW: But if it was 28 percent, I mean, that's a lot more for you guys. You're $100-plus billion company.

CHESKY: I mean, we collect and remit taxes all over the world. For example, we've collected and remitted $3.4 billion of hotel tax through our platform. So, we are absolutely supportive of paying whatever taxes we have to.

HARLOW: Okay. I was so interested to see what you guys did following the insurrection at the Capitol on the 6th of January. You canceled all Airbnb reservations in Washington, D.C., around President Biden's inauguration. The reason I bring this up is because in the months following that, you talked about Airbnb learning a lesson you say, in your words, earlier than other big tech companies because we had people getting physically hurt or worse.

As you look at the other big tech companies, your peers and social media right now, do you think they have learned that lesson that misinformation, whether it be on COVID-19 or politics, can lead to death and violence?

CHESKY: I mean, it's -- Poppy, it's super hard for me to try to speak on behalf of others, certainly those who haven't asked me to speak on their behalf. I do think that this industry has learned a lot of lessons. You know, I came to the Silicon Valley 13 years ago. When I came here, we viewed ourselves all as platforms. We are platforms. We are platforms that, I think, now acknowledge we have more responsibility and we have to take responsibility for the actions that are happening in our communities every day.

And I think you're starting to see that with a lot of the technology companies around the world, and including here in the United States.

HARLOW: You have long been a proponent of not taking a hands-off approach when it comes to social issues and weighing in on them and seeing what you did in D.C. following the insurrection.

On that note, I do want to ask you, Brian, about China, because Airbnb does a huge amount of business in Chian, you're growing a lot there. And as you know, now, both the Biden administration and the Trump administration have said that genocide is being carried out by the Chinese government against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang.

Because of the laws of operating in China, you guys have to turnover user information to the Chinese government. It even says as much. We have it here on your website, right, that if people book in China, the government will have access to their information. I just wonder if all of these human rights violations in China that persist there, despite the Chinese government's denial, have gotten so egregious that you think about scaling back your business there or ever pulling out.

CHESKY: Well, there are two different topics there, so let me do one- by-one. With regards to what information we share, we do the exact same thing that hotel, like a Hilton or Marriott would do. When you check-in the front desk, they hand your identification to the government. And we do the same thing they do. We don't try to do anything that is not, we think, standard for a U.S. company operating even a hospitality business in China.

Now, with regards to the other issue, we have a community compact and we have some very clear standards around, you know, we don't allow discrimination on our platform. And we've removed, you know, members and, you know, all over the world for discriminating. We're not going to stop, you know, and we're not going to allow that to happen in any country in the world. So, obviously, you know, we kind of take it very much case-by-case.

HARLOW: But at this point, you're still comfortable with growing at the scale you're growing in China?

CHESKY: Yes. I mean, we're -- we think of China as a long-term investment. It's primarily been an out down-market, as can you imagine during a pandemic. There are not a lot of people crossing borders. So this is very much a long game that we're playing here.

[10:45:00]

HARLOW: Brian Chesky, we'll have a much longer conversation on more of this another time, but thank you very much for being with us.

CHESKY: Thank you very much, Poppy.

HARLOW: Okay, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Nearly 60 years ago, a generation of civil rights activists and leaders challenged this country to end racism and discrimination.

HARLOW: Now, one year after George Floyd's murder, how much has really changed? Our Susan Malveaux spoke with three civil rights icons about what their fight accomplished and how much still needs to be accomplished. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREW YOUNG, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: George Floyd's death went around the world in less than an hour.

[10:50:03]

XERNONA CLAYTON, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: I looked at that and I kept saying to myself, I can't believe this. I can't believe this.

REV. JESSE JACKSON, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: I see him begging to live, begging live, let me breathe.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The civil rights leaders who fought for racial justice with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. more than 50 years ago are shocked that some of the same issues they marched and bled for are being re-litigated today, voting rights, health care, police brutality.

CLAYTON: There are so many broken promises, so many unfinished pieces. We have repaired and eliminated bigotry, and it's still with us.

JACKSON: He is the Emmett Till of this generation.

MALVEAUX: Till was the 14-year-old boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955. His killers acquitted by an all white jury. But the video and conviction of Floyd's killer, Police Officer Derek Chauvin, makes this moment in history dramatically different than the overwhelming number of police brutality cases against black people. Floyd's killing pierced through a global pandemic, perhaps igniting the largest mass movement in U.S. history.

JACKSON: Black Lives Matter. People are saying that people matter, that black lives must not be (INAUDIBLE).

CLAYTON: I can't breathe. It's become now almost the language of the streets.

YOUNG: I compare it to the little girl in Vietnam who was walking down the road naked because the napalm had bombed the clothes off of her. George Floyd's death had that kind of disgusting impact on people of goodwill who said, no, this is too much.

MALVEAUX: For the surviving members of Dr. King's inner circle, there are lessons today's activist that's can learn from their experiences and the experiences of leaders that were lost in 2020, Reverend C.T. Vivian and Congressman John Lewis.

For former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, one of King's most trusted advisers, dedication to the greater cause is key.

YOUNG: We just decided that freedom and justice and opportunity and to perfect this democracy was really worth your life. And he said, we probably won't make it to 40. He said, but if we make it past 40, we're going to have to make it to 100 because it's going to take a long time to straighten this place out.

MALVEAUX: For media pioneer Xernona Clayton, Dr. King's confidant, activists must protect the movement.

CLAYTON: Dr. King never did anything without a plan. Keep your environment pure and clear of interlopers, people who just want an opportunity to get in on the news-making moments.

MALVEAUX: For Reverend Jesse Jackson, King's protege, hope is powerful.

What do you take away from your experience with your close relationship to Dr. King?

JACKSON: Keep your faith, love matters. There must be a way out of a crisis. I miss him very much.

MALVEAUX: But the most important common lesson, uphold non-violent resistance. For Young, it was the moment he and fellow marchers kneeled before dogs and police in Birmingham to show the power of non- violence.

YOUNG: Instead of marching up to the dogs and yelling at them, people got down on their knees and they started praying. The dogs will calm down by the people praying. And the policemen were telling the firemen to turn on the fire hoses and they just -- they too were moved and they let the fire hoses drop. That was one of the amazing things about the civil rights movement. Nobody gave a damn about death, you know? In fact, Dr. King used to preach our funerals and he made us laugh at our own possibility of death.

MALVEAUX: Laughter in the face of death and enjoying the journey. The three all recall King's final birthday, trying to help him breakthrough some of the depression they all felt.

CLAYTON: It was Jesse and Andy. They said, you know, Xernona is the one who could change this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We thought you would be strung out on shoestring. So when you go to jail, here are some shoestring potatoes.

MALVEAUX: They knew that through the pain and struggle, you must also find the joy. It was his last birthday at 39.

YOUNG: Martin Luther King is more with us now than he was in 1967.

[10:55:00]

I would say to these young people that we're not going to ever be able to get George Floyd out of our systems, as we will never forget Martin Luther King or John Lewis, and we shouldn't.

MALVEAUX: Suzanne Malveaux, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: What a piece. Suzanne, thank you for that so much. And thanks to all of you for joining us today. We'll see you tomorrow morning. I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: A lot of history there. I'm Jim Sciutto.

At This Hour with Kate Bolduan starts right after a short break.

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