Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Biden Taps Vice President Harris to Lead Effort on Voting Rights; Meat Producer JBS Says Vast Majority of Plants will be Operational Today after Ransomware Attack; Today, Biden Gives Update on COVID-19 Vaccinations, Meets with Top GOP Senator on Infrastructure Deal. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired June 02, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: A very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

President Biden demanding action against the big lie and what he calls an unprecedented assault on American democracy as Republicans push to restrict voting in states coast to coast. The president says June is the month of action, pushing Congress to fight back against voting rights restrictions. But that is not all. Biden also tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the administration's efforts to restore voting rights.

SCIUTTO: the new role for the vice president comes as the administration condemns efforts by the Republican-led state legislatures to pass dozen of restrictive voting laws in the wake of the 2020 election. Despite his frustrations with GOP efforts to make voting more difficult for many Americans, the president still has hopes of working across the aisle, specifically on infrastructure. And this afternoon, Biden will host Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia keeping, at least, his intention of negotiating in a bipartisan way alive.

Let's bring in CNN White House Correspondent John Harwood. And, John, you've heard more and more from Democrats who are becoming impatient with the president's efforts, not just on infrastructure, but certainly on voting rights. So, what's the significance of giving the reins, in effect, to Vice President Kamala Harris here?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, he's elevating attention to the fight, Jim, as he did yesterday in Tulsa. But this is a very challenging assignment for Vice President Harris. She does have a law enforcement background as California attorney general, so she can talk about some of the legal issues at play. She's popular within the Democratic Party, and so she can rally Democrats, try to rally public opinion to put pressure on those Republican-led states which are trying to curb voting rights. And in some cases, as we saw in Georgia, some public pressure had the effect of moderating some of the things that Republicans were trying to do.

But the chances of a large bipartisan fix to preserve voting rights, prevent them from being rolled back between President Biden and Republicans is pretty much zero. And that's because the Republican Party sees its survival as being key as the country moves away from it, the key to its survival is making it harder for people who are not white to vote in elections. They've lost seven of the last eight popular votes.

And so, ultimately, what Vice President Harris' task is going to be is the same as President Biden's task, which is trying to a crucial small number of Democrats, most notably Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, steps to protect voting rights with worth it. They're not just in the interest of the Democratic Party, their interesting in the interest of the country and our democracy. And that's going to be the test for Vice President Harris and Joe Biden. It's a very difficult test.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, it's not an accident that some of the most aggressive bills took place in states that went Biden's way by small margins, right? John Harwood, thanks so much.

Over on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing forward with a new path to investigate the January 6th attack on the Capitol, this, of course, after Republicans stymied a bill, a bipartisan proposal, in fact, to form a bipartisan commission to investigate.

HARLOW: Our Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill this morning. Good morning, Manu. It's interesting about the different things that Pelosi is considering here. Can you walk us through them? And do you have any reporting on which way she's leaning?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's very clear that the House Democrats are prepared to investigate on their own what happened on January 6th, everything in the run-up to it, things that an outside commission initially would have investigated had there actually been enough support to get it through the Senate. It was, of course, blocked by Republicans in the Senate last week. And, as a result, there will not be a law establishing this commission.

So, what Pelosi has detailed are several options, one of which is to try to give the Senate another chance to have a vote on the commission. That seems unlikely, given that it will not change minds here in the Senate, but there's a possibility of maybe changing the bill and trying to do it again. It just does not seem that is a likely outcome.

The more likely outcome of the bottom three here, that you're seeing here, either create a select committee, a new select committee, that would be within the House led by Democrats to investigate going forward.

[10:05:03]

Or allow one of the existing committees that are already investigating aspects of January 6th to continue with those probes or perhaps designate one specific committee to take the full lead itself. Pelosi floated the option of the House Homeland Security Committee taking the reins here. So that seems like a very likely option.

Now, the thing that also seems unlikely is the possibility of a special council. That is something the Democrats talked about on a private conference call yesterday, something potentially where the Justice Department could name an outside special counsel to investigate January 6th. That seems very unlikely.

So that means here is that the ultimate outcome could be one of those three options to have the House investigate. So they would have subpoena power, guys, the Democrats would. They could schedule hearings, they would have a report. But the Republicans would be on the committees. Those committees presumably have competing reports and then they would have to take the argument about what exactly happened to the voters. Guys?

HARLOW: And then you sort of -- I mean, you end up with something that is going to be, again, a political partisan football. Manu, thanks.

SCIUTTO: Joining us now to discuss all this, CNN chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash. Dana, so good to have you on.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You too.

SCIUTTO: I want to begin on voting rights, right, you hear the president describe this in catastrophic terms, right, as a genuine threat to people's right to vote, to democracy. And, by the way, Republicans have been critical of a lot of these measures as well. But we know that, practically, those two voting measures, HR-1 and the VRA, they face really an uphill battle, even from some Democrats in the Senate, though I suppose VRA has a better chance.

I mean, the question is where does it go then? I mean, if it is truly for Democrats an existential issue here, what are they going to do short of passing these voting rights legislation? Are they going to fight this kind of stuff in court?

BASH: Fighting this stuff in court is going to be time consuming and maybe too late when it comes to the 2022 election, and depending how long those court battles could go, maybe even the 2024 election. So the answer is that they feel that, as Chuck Schumer has said in a briefing where I was, and I believe he said this publicly, failure is not an option.

But you asked the right question, Jim, how do you find success then given the very real logistical and numerical obstacles that Democrats have in the United States Senate. The answer needs to be somehow, some way, some form of compromise. And that is continuing to be a dirty word even on the most basic and fundamental things like -- I don't know -- coming up with a commission to investigate in a way that isn't as partisan, as Manu just laid out, the attack on the workplace where every one of these lawmakers go every day.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and their staffs, right? BASH: And their staff.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Right. Let's take a minute to listen to what, Dana, is a promise that Biden made about Harris being able to get this thing over the finish line. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: With her leadership and your support, we're going to overcome again, I promise you. But it's going to take a hell of a lot of work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: That's a big promise, and another huge task for Harris on top of the border. Can you talk about what she can actually do in terms of affecting the change they'll need to make in Congress to get either the John Lewis Voting Rights Act through or HR-1 or SB-1?

BASH: Roll up her sleeves and try to find out if there is a compromise. And when I talk about compromise, we're talking about the notion of federal -- not federal oversight, but a federal law that will dictate what the standards are that will supersede or negate these laws that are being passed in states like Georgia and elsewhere, what they tried to pass in Texas.

Now, this did happen in the '60s after so much duress and protest and death, and that's what led to the Voting Rights Act, the one that Democrats want to update now, the one from 1965. And the argument was then, as it is now, there need to be federal protections from states that take this in a partisan direction. Look for, as our colleague, Kate Bolduan, said so eloquently yesterday, look for a solution where there isn't a problem, like giving people the right to have equal access or more access to voting.

And even more dangerously in a lot of these bills, it is taking away the backstop that we saw in 2020, which is that there are laws and there are election officials who could throw up their hands and say, I can't do anything, they can't do that with these laws because they're putting elected officials, partisans in those jobs.

[10:10:03]

That's why this is one of the many reasons this is so dangerous for democracy.

SCIUTTO: Which was exactly the tactic the former president attempted to pursue in 2020 without any evidence of fraud.

I do want to ask about infrastructure. It's infrastructure week again for the 8 billionth time. And infrastructure was seen as low-hanging fruit, right, for bipartisanship. And we're running up against that same -- can you get those ten Senate Republicans and then this question of can Democrats reliably move this through reconciliation, in which case they would only need 50.

Can you help us understand, has the Senate parliamentarian made that more difficult or is that still the most likely path?

BASH: Yes and yes, the Senate parliamentarian did make it more difficult by saying that, to use that tool called reconciliation, which our viewers are this point more steeped in Senate procedure than they ever wanted to be, but to allow this to pass by 51 votes. They have to prove that there is something more than a partisan desire at play that has to be an economic argument.

At the same time, there a really important meeting that you mentioned at the White House today. Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, is working in good faith, as the Democrats are, to try to find a compromise. The question that still isn't answered, Jim and Poppy, is what is the scope of this bill? It's not just the numbers. It's how do you define infrastructure.

And Republicans like Capito and others who want a compromise still argue that human infrastructure, as the Democrats call it, things like child care, things like elderly care, do not belong in this bill. If the Democrats argue and Joe Biden says that this is a red line, it does belong in this bill, it's unclear how they're going to find a compromise.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And the dollar figure is still a part at least on new money, right, as it is.

BASH: Yes, it is.

SCIUTTO: Listen, there's a lot to go. Dana Bash, thanks so much, as always.

BASH: Thanks, guys, you too.

SCIUTTO: Still to come, a new cyber attack with sweeping implications for millions of Americans. The world's largest meat producer was forced to shut down processing plants around the globe.

HARLOW: Also, an American journalist, Danny Fenster, is still detained in Myanmar. He's been there for more than a week. The U.S. embassy has not been able to contact them at all. His parents will join us with their emotional plea ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:00]

SCIUTTO: The world's largest meat producer, JBS, says it has made significant progress in resolving issues caused by a big cyber attack that forced the company to shut down plants across the world, including in North America and Australia. It does expect a vast majority of its plants to be operational today, thankfully.

HARLOW: Right. But still this attack is sparking fears, once again, of a major disruption to global supply. The White House says JBS was hit with what is a ransomware attack likely from a criminal organization based in Russia. If that sounds familiar, it should. It just happened to Colonial Pipeline.

Joining is our National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem. Juliette, big picture, JBS, big deal, good thing they could get everything online pretty quickly. Colonial, it took longer. But the bottom line here is this is a new kind of warfare that criminal gangs are in action on in the United States.

I mean, you wrote, quote, we built an entire security apparatus based on the unsustainable, completely antiquated notion of a difference between cyber attacks and physical attacks. What do you mean?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. So it means that difference now, we have to merge those differences. Because what we're seeing now is a motivation, not unlike what the Russian government did during the elections, of chaos. Everyone wants to know why are they doing this. It is chaos, that is all. They want to show the vulnerabilities of our system, whether it's an electrical grid or a gas pipeline or now in the meat production industry.

These should not come as surprises. While this is new, it has happened before. I think we've seen about 50 against the agriculture and food industry in the last couple years, 50 ransomware attacks.

So there are solutions but what we need to do first is recognize that these cyber attacks are not cyber. They are attacks. They are attacks on our critical infrastructure, just like any other attack, and we have to treat -- we have to defend ourselves and be on offense in the same way.

SCIUTTO: I mean, what's the saying? Once this happens, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. I think that was Ian Fleming.

I mean, Russia is the common denominator here, right, on Colonial Pipeline, criminal group operating from Russia, JBS, criminal group operating from Russia, and, by the way, what the U.S. believes to be a Russian state action, the SolarWinds hack and many others. You can't help but see a pattern here.

And while there is a criminal element to this, is this a broader Russian attack on the U.S. to destabilize? I mean, they successfully kept people from getting gas a couple weeks ago, now barbecue. I mean, that is real life effects.

KAYYEM: Right. This is -- these are -- but we don't conceive of it this way but these are attacks on civilians, right? And they are attacks on you and I, our ability to get into the car and drive, our ability to go to the market and know that there's meat. We just aren't conceiving it this way.

So, first, of course, as you said, there's an offensive action which may be both convert against the Russians that we don't know about by the Biden administration and then the overt things that we're seeing in terms of the dialogue and questions to get Russia to either clean up its act, which it may or may not do, but also to name and shame.

[10:20:12]

But I'm also really focused on the defensive posture. I am done with these critical structure industries with their hands-off attitude. We saw changes after Colonial Pipeline. The Biden administration did have an executive order, but it only addressed the pipelines. We have 15 other critical infrastructure networks that we call, whether it's food, transportation, the electrical grid, that we need to get regulations behind.

The market is not solving this problem. These companies are either paying it or they're vulnerable and not getting more secure. So I'm into defense as well in getting these companies to wake up.

HARLOW: We don't know if JBS paid a ransom like Colonial Pipeline did. Colonial paid $4.4 million, and basically said, we were given no other option, right, and they weren't. My question to you is, looking forward, is it incentivizing these criminal gangs to hack, because these big companies have insurance against the hack? Meaning the criminals know they're going to get paid. What about the thought of making it illegal to provide that insurance?

KAYYEM: Yes. I think that's where we are and where we need to be. There is a debate about this and a fair one that these are sort of negligible payoffs to protect the system and why should the systems go down all the time. But I think we're at the stage just given the frequency that we've seen and the boldness of these attacks, whether it's half of our grid in New England and the east coast or it's one- fifth of our meat supply chain, that we need to prohibit these payments, that the payment of ransomware by these companies making them more bold, they're not becoming less bold. You're essentially supporting a criminal terrorist enterprise by paying them. And then, of course, it gives no transparency to stop them because these companies are doing it under the table.

So there are solutions that are not market-based. And I think that's where we need to be now. These are essentially public entities. Civilians are the victims, and we need to get the kind of regulations that we're talking about in.

SCIUTTO: Yes, it's like you pay ransom for hostages makes the next hostage more likely to be taken. These companies are being taken hostage, in effect, and their customers. Juliette Kayyem, thanks very much.

KAYYEM: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Today, President Biden is set to host the lead Senate Republican negotiator on infrastructure as Democrats and Republicans struggle still to find middle ground. We're going to discuss with a co-chair of the House Problem Solvers Caucus. Can they solve this problem, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:00]

SCIUTTO: A busy day in Washington, but will they get something done? Today, President Biden is set to speak on the progress of COVID vaccinations, urging people to meet the goal he set for July 4th. And later this afternoon, he will meet with Senator Shelley Moore Capito, lead Senate GOP negotiator on infrastructure. Is there still hope for some sort of bipartisan agreement?

SCIUTTO: Joining me now to talk about all this is someone who tries every day to come to bipartisan agreement, Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer from New Jersey. He's a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus -- the co-chair, in fact, of the Problem Solvers Caucus in the House.

Congressman, thanks for taking the time this morning.

REP. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-NJ): Hey, Jim, good to be here.

SCIUTTO: All right. So, infrastructure. Capito is going to meet Biden, they've been working at what seems a good faith effort, but let's be frank, they're far apart, one, on defining what goes into this, is it just the hard stuff or is it also human capital, in effect? But also on the dollar figure, because although the top line on the GOP offer is $928 billion, as you know, it's really $257 billion in new funding there -- so well below where the Biden plan is.

In your view, and you've heard this from some of your colleagues, is it time for the Democrats and the president to move on?

GOTTHEIMER: I don't think so. I think it's still time for us to sit down at the table and keep working until we can get a bipartisan deal done, and I think we can, on the physical infrastructure piece, as you mentioned, right? And that's where I really see people coming together.

In the Problem Solvers Caucus, we've gotten behind what we call a scope for that physical infrastructure. We're now working with a group of senators, bipartisan, on the -- how much should we spend, how much do we actually need for those line items, like roads, bridges, tunnels, broadband, water infrastructure, energy and the grid.

So I think there's plenty of -- I know because I'm in these meetings, there's plenty of agreement there. Obviously, we've got to work out the numbers. And, listen, I'm hoping Senator Capito can get there. If not, there's many of us also working on other plans.

So I just think we shouldn't give up. I think we've got to keep working at this until we get there.

SCIUTTO: I mean, the question, though, is for how long, right? Can you get to 10 Republican senators in the Senate? If you can't get -- you, writ large, Democrats and Republicans can't get to 10 Republicans to investigate an attack on the Capitol that threatened Democrats and Republicans equally, right, on that day, January 6th.

If you can't get to that, how do you get to an agreement on this? [10:30:00]