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R. Kelly Found Guilty; Train Crash Investigation; Vaccine Mandates; Big Week For Biden's Agenda. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired September 27, 2021 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:04]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Top of a new hour. I'm Alisyn Camerota. Thanks so much for joining me. Victor is off today.

We begin in Washington, where the stakes could not be higher. Lawmakers face key votes on the debt ceiling, infrastructure and that multitrillion-dollar reconciliation package for social programs.

All of this spells a make-or-break week for President Biden's agenda. The House begins debate on that nearly $1 trillion infrastructure package, Speaker Pelosi pushed back the vote on that bill from this afternoon to Thursday, as she attempts to get enough support for it.

But that is not proving easy. Progressive Democrats are demanding that the House and the Senate first pass that $3.5 trillion social safety net bill to fund programs like universal pre-K and free community college, just to name a few items.

Plus, the U.S. is at risk of defaulting on its debt for the first time if the debt limit is not suspended or increased. A Senate vote in a few hours is expected to block suspending the debt ceiling. Today, the president talked about how high the stakes are.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Any progress on a reconciliation deal today, Mr. President? How close do you think you are?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know me. I'm a born optimist. I think things are going to go well. People are going to get it done.

And -- but I have meetings tonight, tomorrow and for the next little bit.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: What is at stake for your agenda and your presidency with what is happening on the Hill this week?

BIDEN: Victory is what is at stake.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CAMEROTA: All right, let's bring in CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju and senior White House correspondent Phil Mattingly.

Manu, you spoke to Democratic Senator Joe Manchin this afternoon. His vote is obviously pivotal. What did he tell you?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: He's not there yet. This is significant, because, of course, all 50 Democrats need to be on board to move forward on that larger social safety net expansion.

And there's no chance they can actually get a bill together that could pass both chambers of Congress by this week. And what progressives in the House are demanding is that, at the very least, people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema sign on to principles, an outline, a framework of the larger social safety net plan, and some of the details, the top-line number, .

And what Joe Manchin made clear today is that the goal to get this all resolved by Thursday, in his view, is a -- quote -- "heavy lift."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): That's a heavy lift. There's a lot to do and a lot to talk about. But everybody has to keep trying to work in good faith the best you can.

There's a lot in that bill, the 3.5, the reconciliation bill, tax codes, climate change, social reforms. There's a lot. And people need to know what's in it. So it's going to take a while.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So, this is why this is significant, Alisyn, is because Pelosi has scheduled that vote on Thursday on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.

But progressives, I'm told 40 or more, could vote against that plan if Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, other moderates, don't sign off on that larger framework agreement. What does that bill look like? What does that look -- does that have the support of those key members?

If it does not, then it's possible that leadership could be forced to punt on that issue again. And Thursday is significant, because come Friday is the expiration of key for funding programs, transportation funding programs, which is why Pelosi is putting that vote on Thursday to pressure some of the progressives to vote for it or risk seeing that funding lapse.

And, also, you mentioned it too, Alisyn. They need to keep the government open past Thursday. And it's unclear how that gets resolved as Republicans are voting to kill it over the increase of the debt ceiling that's included in that plan, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, well, thanks for that three-day headache you just spelled out there. Phil, you heard the president describe himself as a born optimist, but

I think he would also describe himself as a pragmatist. So what is he doing behind the scenes this week?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think, to some degree, it's meeting -- you saw the meetings last week, more than five hours of meetings with almost two dozen Democrats in the Oval Office.

That was to get people to talk to start talking. The kind of environment had gotten so ugly, from an intraparty basis, that the president wanted to get everybody to start talking again, start to make some progress forward. Now it's to keep people talking.

And I think that's the very real goal. Behind the scenes, you have had White House officials over the course of the last several days just repeatedly on the phone, on Zooms, in person on Capitol Hill, meeting with Democrats, trying to figure out a way to thread the needle, as Manu noted, between where progressive sit and where moderates sit, particularly those two Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

I think one of the big questions right now, as they kind of participate in this very high-wire act, is there any way over the course of the next 72 hours to put a net underneath them?

And the president alluded to this earlier today, kind of getting at the same thing that Senator Manchin was getting out when he spoke to Manu, which was, it may not all get done this week. And there's a reality here that they just want to keep people talking.

[15:05:00]

While there may be a vote scheduled for Thursday, there may be deadlines that are looming right now, keeping people talking is critical because of the stakes. It's essentially a failure is not an option perspective here at the White House right now, because they understand that this $4 trillion agenda is everything the president has put on the table for his domestic agenda.

And it's really everything that Democrats both campaigned on in 2020, and, in large part, from a policy perspective, whether you're talking about paid family leave, or you're talking about universal pre-K, free community college, so many different elements of this proposal, child care, home care, that Democrats have really been for and advocated for, for the better part of, if not years, decades.

And so what the White House is trying to do right now, what the president is trying to do, both in phone calls -- it's a possibility he has Democrats over here to the White House at some point this week, there's a possibility goes to Capitol Hill this week -- is basically this: Keep the options open. Deploy the president wherever he's needed to try and get this to an outcome.

Will they? Still obviously very much an open question.

CAMEROTA: OK, Phil Mattingly, Manu Raju, thank you very much for laying all of that out for us.

Let's discuss it with CNN political commentator Charlie Dent. He's a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania. And CNN political analyst Astead Herndon. He is national political reporter for "The New York Times."

So, guys, outside of the jockeying, and outside of the chess game, I just want to put up again what this means for the American people, OK, what's at stake.

So let's just dive into the child care and education portion. This is -- let me see if this is what we have. Basically, I think that we have something different.

OK, here we go, free day care for lower income families, day care subsidies for middle-class families, up to $14,000 or more. This is what would allow parents to go back to work, moms in particular. Two years of free pre-K. Same thing. Mothers could get back into the workplace. Two free years of community college. What town doesn't need that?

Twelve weeks of paid leave to care for our sick or elderly family members.

These, Astead, are not partisan issues. These are human and American issues. And yet is it fair to say that this is up to the Democrats? I mean, this lives or dies on whether the Democrats can get the caucus together.

ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely.

And I think it is important to talk about the bill in those real human terms. We can throw around the price tag number, but this is basically the kind of core legislative promises that the Democratic Party has been running on and has promised its base for years, if not decades.

These are not things that are outlier, controversial issues. We're not talking about Medicare for all. We're not talking about the Green New Deal. We're talking about things that the large portions of the party universally agree on, large portions of the American public agree on. It's Congress, it's Washington, and it is not set up to do that.

It has structures that people like Sinema, people like Manchin have outsized power. And they are using that power to flex and have their own legislative priorities. This is not -- it's not hyperbole to say this is a make-or-break week for that Biden agenda. But it's also just a basic form for the Democratic Party.

Are we -- with control of the House, Senate and White House, will Democrats deliver on the baseline promises it told voters it would do? We're going to find out.

CAMEROTA: Charlie, you have been in these negotiations. You were in Congress how the sausage is made. What's going to happen this week? Are they going to get it together?

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, this is quite an end- of-fiscal-year crack-up, to be sure.

What I think is going to happen is that -- look, they're going to probably have the vote on the infrastructure bill on Thursday. The reconciliation package is nowhere near ready. And Democrats would be crazy to ask their moderates to vote for a bill that has zero chance of becoming law.

So that's going to -- that's another issue. They will fund the government. I suspect, if they don't come to an agreement on the debt ceiling, the Democrats would be smart to pass like a two-week funding bill, send it to the Senate clean, no debt ceiling, and just to keep things going for a couple more weeks, give them a little more time.

That's what I think could happen. The debt ceiling, of course, no one's going to crash through the debt ceiling, too dangerous, too reckless. But, again, how they get there is going to be the question.

Now, we're going to have a lot of drama between now and that debt ceiling vote.

CAMEROTA: And then, of course, all this set against the backdrop of democracy in peril. And I don't think I'm overstating it.

Obviously, we have all lived through an insurrection at this point. And so Congresswoman Liz Cheney went on television. She's been quite outspoken. She's not pulling any punches. She's talking about who she thinks is to blame.

And last night on "60 Minutes," she talked about Kevin McCarthy. So let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): There's a difference between somebody who voted for Donald Trump and being the Republican leader after an insurrection and setting all of that aside and going to Mar-a-Lago and rehabilitating him, bringing him back in.

That, to me is unforgivable. On the issues that mattered for Wyoming, I stood with him. You can say you disagree with him, you think that his character was bad, which it was, all of those things. But the line that can't be crossed is what happened after the election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:10:00]

CAMEROTA: Astead, Congresswoman Cheney is obviously fighting for her own political future, but it sounds like she -- for something much bigger than that.

HERNDON: It is certainly a moral point that she is trying to make a kind of to signal to her party does not believe that the direction they have gone in is one that's sustainable.

But let's be clear here. She is swimming against the tide. She is an outlier in the Republican Party at this moment. The reason she is doing that on "60 Minutes" or talking about Kevin McCarthy, and not -- and still faces that political threat is because the party is with Donald Trump, and that that remains the energy base, and that remains the kind of large-scale opinion, is that the election was falsely stolen, and that he was the correct winner.

That remains -- I was at the Marjorie Taylor Greene-Matt Gaetz rally in Iowa three weeks ago, and that is the dominant opinion among that group of people. And so what is often described as a battle between the Republican Party's soul right now isn't necessarily always so, because the president, the former president, continues to be the heartbeat of the Republican Party. And that's why he's targeting Representative Cheney.

CAMEROTA: And, Charlie, before I get you to comment on Liz Cheney, I just want you to hear Donald Trump this weekend.

He has, I suppose, such little respect for his supporters that he can engage in a bald-faced lie, bald-faced lie to them, thinking that I guess they're not going to hear the information anywhere else about what happened with these Cyber Ninjas and the Arizona so-called audit, where basically they had to admit that he lost by an even bigger number in Arizona than we knew of votes.

But here he is, once again, pretending that didn't happen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yesterday, we also got the results of the Arizona audit...

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: ... which were so disgracefully reported by those people right back there.

(BOOING)

TRUMP: And the headlines claiming that Biden won.

We won on the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn't believe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Yes, you really wouldn't believe it.

I mean, those are people who I guess get their -- all their information from him.

DENT: Well, Alisyn, what's so sad about this -- and, as a Republican, I'm so dismayed -- it seems like there are a number of us in the Republican Party who deal in reality, and there's such a large number who are not.

And you just heard it, proof-positive of that from the former president. To somehow suggest that this sham of an audit that found that he lost by a larger margin than we originally thought, for him to deny that, I mean, is just simply -- there are really no words to describe that.

I mean, he's just not dealing in reality. And, sadly, too many people listened to him, and they're now also dealing in this false reality that they have -- that he has created. And it's tragic for the country because it's undermined so many Americans' faith in our system of elections and democracy.

It's really done a number on our ability for us just to get along as fellow citizens. Relationships are being damaged everywhere over this, all because one man cannot accept defeat.

CAMEROTA: Astead Herndon, Charlie Dent, thank you both.

DENT: Thank you, Alisyn.

HERNDON: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: We have some breaking news. Jurors have just reached a verdict in the federal trial of R&B singer R. Kelly. He faces racketeering and sex trafficking charges. So we are waiting on the jury's decision to be read.

We will keep you updated on that.

Also, hospitals across New York are bracing for the possibility of staffing shortages, as the state's vaccine mandate takes effect, the state's governor already considering bringing the National Guard to help with some of the staffing shortages.

And federal investigators are looking to figure out what caused that deadly train derailment in Montana. We will soon get an update on what is next in this investigation, and we will bring that to you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:18:32]

CAMEROTA: New York Governor Kathy Hochul says she will call in the National Guard if she needs to, to avoid a health care worker shortage, with the state's vaccine mandate kicking in.

About 84 percent of all hospital employees in the state are already fully vaccinated, but thousands of health care workers are still choosing not to get the vaccine, and now they face getting fired.

Today was supposed to be the deadline to get vaccinated for New York City teachers, but a court just pushed the deadline from Tuesday to Wednesday, at the earliest.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is live in Foley Square, New York, for us, where some are protesting the new mandate.

So, what's happening behind you there, Shimon? SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, just protesting vaccines in general, Alisyn.

I have been out here talking to some of the people here, who kind of just live in their own reality and really feel that the government is trying to control them by using these vaccines. They -- someone, one person compared it to Nazism, all believing that this is some kind of conspiracy by the government to try and control people.

And so it's presenting a real problem for officials here in New York. And that is why they say we need these mandates. Schoolteachers, they say they need to be mandated to get vaccinated. As you said, the courts now taking up the issue. There is a hearing here actually at the federal appeals court on Wednesday about whether or not the city can enforce that.

And then the governor of the state also having issues with health care workers, who say -- there are some who don't want to get vaccinated. So, she says that she's going to call in the National Guard to try and help with some of the understaffing, staffing issues, the shortages that some hospitals and nursing homes across the state may face as a result of people not wanting to get vaccinated.

[15:20:16]

It's a real problem. And then, when you talk to people here, it's not a large number of people, but it's certainly enough where there is concern, the fact that people are believing whatever it is that they're believing, not really based in anything. It's their own reality. It's something that they have just kind of decided on their own.

And they're out here protesting. There aren't many people. There are a couple of dozen protesting against the government here and the mandate for vaccines.

CAMEROTA: OK, Shimon Prokupecz, thank you very much for the update.

At any moment now, we do expect to get an update from investigators on that fatal Amtrak crash in Montana. The operator of the tracks says that those tracks were inspected just two days before Saturday's deadly crash. NTSB investigators are now on the scene.

They say they will hold a press conference shortly. Saturday's derailment left three people dead. Seven others remain hospitalized at this hour. The train was traveling from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest when eight of the 10 rail cars jumped the tracks near Joplin, Montana; 158 passengers and crew were on board.

CNN's Natasha Chen is covering all this for us.

So what do we know, Natasha, about the investigation thus far?

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, yes, Alisyn, we are waiting for that press conference, like you said, from NTSB in less than an hour. The 14 investigators on that team got to the area last night. They

have been working today and hopefully can give us some clue into what might have happened here. Amtrak did say that this train, the Empire Builder, left Chicago, was on its way to Seattle when it derailed near Joplin, Montana, around 4:00 p.m. local time on Saturday.

Now, Amtrak describes that this train has two locomotives, 10 cars, eight of which derailed. And we heard from one passenger in one of the front sleeper cars. She said it sounded like a lot of turbulence and chaotic noise. She and other passengers got outside and saw the extent of that damage.

She said some people in the sleeper cars were very concerned about loved ones who were sitting in other parts of the train. Of course, we know that, unfortunately, at least three people were killed, seven people at this time still in hospitals. We just confirmed in the last half-hour that the two people in a hospital in Kalispell, they are doing well enough to be discharged soon.

There are five still in Great Falls. And the governor of Montana really touted the help that neighbors and citizens did to pitch in, in the moment when they saw this disaster happen, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Natasha Chen, thank you very much for the update.

All right, we have some breaking news. Jurors have just reached a verdict in the federal trial of R&B singer R. Kelly. He has been found guilty of racketeering. He is also charged with sex trafficking. These are charges that could send him to prison for decades.

And CNN's Jean Casarez has been following this case for us. We also have CNN legal analyst Areva Martin. She is here with us also.

OK, Jean, this just happened. I know you are scrambling to figure out exactly what all this means, as am I. So guilty on racketeering.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And the Eastern District of New York, the courts, just tweeted that out.

So they are saying guilty of racketeering. There was one count of racketeering. There were 14 different acts involved, including sexual exploitation of a minor, bribery, kidnapping, and sex trafficking charges. So this is all we have at this point.

Now, he's also charged with the Mann Act, which is a federal law involving sex trafficking. Now, nothing on that yet, so they could be in the midst of the reading of this verdict, because racketeering was count one. The Mann Acts were the counts after that, two through nine. And so we don't know how far they have gotten.

But this is an extremely complicated trial. It is very, very sophisticated. It went for 23 days. There were 50 witnesses. There were many young women that testified that R. Kelly had kidnapped them, held them in rooms. They could only go to the bathroom or eat if they got permission from his people. They had to wear baggy clothes, they testified, unless they were in

his president. They could only look at him. They could not look at other men. It was tearful testimony, emotional testimony. And, ultimately, the prosecution said it is time for him to be convicted.

CAMEROTA: Areva, it's hard to imagine that he wouldn't be convicted of sex trafficking with all the vile details that we heard during the trial, those that Jean just laid out in terms of, as we all know, the singer Aaliyah trying to marry her illegally underage, all of the stuff that we heard

[15:25:05]

So where are you with all the details that we have just heard?

AREVA MARTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I'm not surprised, Alisyn, at all at the guilty verdict.

And not only was there riveting testimony, as Jean just told us about, but there was also video recordings, apparently some pretty graphic video and audio recording that the jurors were allowed to both hear and see, of him berating women, of him engaging in certain kinds of violent sexual acts with women.

So the jurors had an opportunity to not just hear from these women, but to see these videotapes, to hear the audio. And this has been 25 years in the making, according to the prosecution, that he used his platform, he used his fame, his music fame, to lure young girls into his circle, and then had a team of people around him, employees, agents, managers, others in his circle, to create this oppressive environment for these young women.

So, not surprising that guilty verdict on these very serious federal charges, and, as you said, Alisyn, he is facing anywhere from 10 years to life. And this is only the beginning, because there are other jurisdictions that also have filed charges against R. Kelly.

CAMEROTA: Jean, we did hear a lot of details about the case, but not all of them. Was this case more shrouded in secrecy in terms of transcripts and things because some of the women were minors at the time?

CASAREZ: Sexual assault victims, and that can create a situation where things are sealed.

I want to talk about what Areva just mentioned, extremely important, because the indictment and the testimony went onward from the sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, to the production of videos where these young women, many of them minors, were forced to do things before the camera.

Now, right before the trial ended, we know that the jury was able to see some video. The media was not allowed to look at it at all. We don't know what it was, but it corroborated what these young women were saying. Well today, the media was actually able to hear some of the audio. I have seen some of it in writing. It is not appropriate for air, what

these women were told to do, told to say back to R. Kelly. So they place R. Kelly in the room. And, remember, this was a criminal enterprise. It involved R. Kelly. It involved handlers, managers, agents, people to the side of R. Kelly. But he was the head of

it. And so he is the one that had -- was charged.

CAMEROTA: And so, Areva, that brings in the racketeering convictions. So that's usually reserved for organized crime. So how does this fit?

MARTIN: You're right, Alisyn.

Usually, when we think of racketeering, we're thinking of mob bosses. We're thinking of the mafia. We're not thinking of sexual predators like R. Kelly. But the federal prosecutors in this case wanted to and did an effective job of making the case that this just wasn't about one incident. It wasn't about multiple incidents. It was about a criminal enterprise that was carried out over years involving different states, involving different actors, bad actors that were involved in this enterprise.

And, hopefully, this is the beginning of seeing these kinds of prosecutions that carry very serious penalties against sexual predators like R. Kelly. This is a huge decision, given the MeToo movement and particularly to see someone -- we have seen Bill Cosby, we have seen Harvey Weinstein, and now R. Kelly being held accountable for in this case decades of sexual assault and violence against young girls and women.

CAMEROTA: Jean, we are just getting in more information now that he has been convicted of nine counts, I believe, including the sex trafficking charges and that racketeering.

So they're just announcing it slowly. First was the racketeering, and now the sex trafficking, because it would have been unimaginable for him not to be, given what you have just said was the evidence presented in the court.

CASAREZ: And sex trafficking was a part of the racketeering also, but the Mann Act specifically focuses in on sex trafficking, as just you're saying right here.

This jury was seven men and five women. It was a very diverse jury. It was a jury that listened to so much testimony, woman after woman. There was a -- here's one example.

There was a former radio deejay intern who says that R. Kelly invited her to interview him. I mean, what a thing, right, when you're just an intern, and he asks you, you can interview me.

She went to his studio in Chicago. She said she was placed in a room. She realized she couldn't get out. And this was for days. She was finally given food. She remembers passing out and awaking and seeing R. Kelly readjusting his clothes.

And so she believes that she was drugged, sexually assaulted. And that is one example.

CAMEROTA: Terrifying.

CASAREZ: It is.

CAMEROTA: I mean, that is -- that does obviously conjure Bill Cosby accusations as well, as Areva just brought up.

Areva, tell us again. Now that we know that he's being convicted of these sex trafficking and racketeering, how much -- he's 54 years old, I believe. How much time is he looking at in prison?