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Tom Brady Retires After 22 NFL Seasons, 7 Super Bowl Wins; Putin Breaks Silence on Ukraine, Says West Has Ignored Russia's Security Concerns; Nearly Two Dozen Trump Allies Running for Election Jobs in 2020. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired February 01, 2022 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[14:32:27]
VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: All right, it's official. Tom Brady's 22- year NFL career is over. He announced his retirement from the NFL today. The 44-year-old Brady departs with a record seven Super Bowl rings.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: In his lengthy Instagram post, Brady thanked his teammates and others who helped and supported him over the years, including his family, writing:
"And lastly, to my wife, Gisele, and my children, Jack, Benny and Vivi, you are my inspiration. Our family is my greatest achievement."
"I always came off the field and home to the most loving and supportive wife who has done everything for our family to allow me to focus on my career."
"Her selflessness allowed me to reach new heights professionally. And I am beyond words, what you mean to me and our family."
We feel that way about our CNN colleague and Tom Brady super fan, John Berman, who joins us now in his full regalia.
Also with us is Damien Woody, a retired offensive lineman who won two Super Bowls with Tom Brady when he played for the New England Patriots.
Great to see you, Damien.
But, John, I have to start with you.
How are you processing this breaking Brady news? JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I feel empty.
(LAUGHTER)
BERMAN: I feel -- I feel lost.
No, look, you know, actually, he did us all a favor, or ESPN did, by sort of leaking it out over a few days. So I have had a few days to adjust to this.
And I'm doing better now. I've come to terms with, I'm going to have some more time on Sundays.
CAMEROTA: Oh.
BERMAN: I'm going to have --
(CROSSTALK)
CAMEROTA: A ton of free time.
BERMAN: I have to get into fashion.
Yes, I mean, you know, I'll have to watch the Patriots but I won't have to watch the Bucs also.
I have to get into nutrition or fashion or whatever the next area that Tom Brady wants to dominate is. But I'm prepared to change. I mean, I'm ready for change.
BLACKWELL: Damien, as I listed off just some of the accolades here, seven Super Bowl wins, 10 appearances, five-time Super Bowl MVP, 35 playoff wins, 243 career regular season wins, 624 touchdown passes, 84,520 passing yards.
Can there ever be another Tom Brady?
DAMIEN WOODY, RETIRED NFL OFFENSIVE LINEMAN: Victor, you'll be hard pressed to find someone in this lifetime that will put up those type of accolades. And it's just tremendous what Tom Brady's been able to do over 22 years.
But you know, when I look at Tom Brady, he really is the epitome of the American dream if you think about it.
This was a guy -- he wasn't a heralded pick. This was a guy picked in the sixth round, 199th pick in the 2000 draft.
[14:35:00]
He was a fourth-string quarterback coming out of University of Michigan. And he worked his way up, methodically, became the back-up quarterback behind Drew Bledsoe.
And all it took was an opportunity. And once he got that opportunity, he ran with it with arguably the best career in NFL history. CAMEROTA: John Berman, you never really told me all that stuff about
Brady. You just talked about how cute he was.
(LAUGHTER)
BERMAN: Well, it's all true. It's not mutually exclusive. I just want to be clear about that.
And Damien Woody knows, he hit on the thing what's most amazing about Brady. He was the 199th pick. He was 199th pick in the NFL draft. Every NFL team passed on him five times.
Imagine how they felt every day for the last 22 years. Like, oops. Five times? We had a chance to pick that guy. And we didn't do it. It really is amazing.
And the other thing, just in terms of New England and Boston, what he meant -- and Damien can speak to this because he was on some of those great teams, but also was there when they were struggling a little bit.
If you were a Boston fan, Red Sox, Patriots, you were kind of used to it all going belly up at the end. Things went wrong.
And then all of a sudden, starting with Tom Brady, they didn't anymore. Things stopped going wrong. They went incredibly right. I mean, look how right.
(LAUGHTER)
BERMAN: It just -- it was a totally different mindset. He just completely changed the way we looked at everything.
BLACKWELL: Just every once in a while, you glance over at a monitor and just feel it again, John. Just feel it again.
(LAUGHTER)
BLACKWELL: Damien, let me come to you.
What do you make of this first statement, not including mention of the Patriots, not including mention of New England, and then the, "Thanks, Patriot Nation, afterwards? No mention of the team specifically.
You think there's some -- something there we should be paying attention to?
WOODY: No, Victor, it's nothing there.
And all I've been hearing all day is a bunch of whining and crying from Patriot Nation about, oh, Tom Brady, you know, dismissed us. How could he possibly do this after 20 years in New England?
And I'm telling everyone, just chill out. Calm down.
When he left New England to go to Tampa Bay, he put out this lengthy statement thanking Patriot Nation for everything that he was able to do in New England for 20 years.
And you know, I'm sure Tom Brady's going to go back to New England and he's going to -- it's going to be a love fest.
So for all the Patriots fans out there that was crying because Tom didn't include the Patriots in that lengthy statement, relax. You got six championships. What more do you want?
(LAUGHTER)
CAMEROTA: John, did you feel snubbed?
BERMAN: No. I will say, I know if he went to the sixth page on the Instagram post or seventh page, he would have thanked me personally, but I know he's thinking about me.
(LAUGHTER)
BERMAN: No, I didn't feel slighted.
He plays for the Buccaneers. He had to be talking about them. He did.
And you know, my friends up in Boston, my fellow Massholes, sometimes they take things too personally. And this was not about them.
And Brady clearly knew what he had to do to correct it after the fact. He saw it. He made us all feel better. He cares about all of us.
CAMEROTA: As usual.
John, very quickly, what are you going to do with your super fandom? Where is that going to be channeled now?
BERMAN: I'm going to, you know, it's up for sale. I'm going to shop it around.
(LAUGHTER)
BERMAN: I don't -- honestly, you know, I don't --
(LAUGHTER)
BERAN: I don't know. I honestly -- it's been 22 years.
Like I've been a Brady fan since before I've been married. And I'm practically a grandfather now. My kids are practically out of college. And I have been a fan of Brady before that.
I was a producer at ABC. You know, this was generations ago. This was generations ago when this all started. So it's going to take a while to figure out the future.
CAMEROTA: Here you are with your boys, or I assume this is you with your boys. It's hard to know who the overgrown --
(CROSSTALK) (LAUGHTER)
CAMEROTA: -- middle child is there. I think that's you, with your boys.
All right, well, John Berman, Damien Woody, great to talk to you guys. Thank you so much. Really fun to hear the sadness and the celebration.
BLACKWELL: Yes.
WOODY: Thank you.
BLACKWELL: Thanks, guys.
BERMAN: Thank you.
[14:39:15]
CAMEROTA: OK, moving on. Vladimir Putin is pointing a finger at NATO and the West today. The Russian president said NATO screwed us over. And claims Russia's security concerns have been ignored. We have the very latest from Moscow, next.
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CAMEROTA: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking out on the rising tension with Ukraine. During a press conference just a short time ago, Putin accused the U.S. and its allies of ignoring Russia's security demands.
But he also said he hoped dialogue would continue in order to avoid, quote, "negative scenarios, including war."
BLACKWELL: But in a call today with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not give an indication that Moscow will de-escalate.
CNN international diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson, is in Moscow for us.
What should we take away from Putin's comments today?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: We should take away that he's not backing down, is not giving an inch.
He say it's NATO that's taken the ground, NATO that broke the agreements in 1997 not to expand, NATO and the United States that haven't listened to Russia's key demands that Ukraine can't join NATO.
[14:45:05]
That NATO needs to go back to 1997 boundaries, that there are missile systems placed in NATO territory that are a threat to Russia.
None of that, he says, has been addressed.
Indeed, he used some very salty language to describe the way he feels Russia has been treated by NATO.
And I'll just give you the polite version. He said they deceived us.
And he played out a scenario that is clearly on his mind, and this is the way that he sees it.
He said, imagine Ukraine joins NATO and then Ukraine tries to retake Crimea, which, he said, by the way, is Russian, and that's not going to change.
Of course, the international community knows that he annexed Crimea, doesn't recognize it as being Russian.
But he said, just imagine Ukraine tries to take that back when it's a member of NATO, then Russia would be at war with NATO.
So he was playing out some of, you know, his real deep-seated concerns here.
Call this a negotiating position. I mean, this is a guy that's shown up with an army to the negotiation, if you will, and refuses to take the army back off the line.
But then at the end, he dead throw that bone out, that diplomatic bone, if you like, by saying that he hoped he could be having face-to- face conversations with President Macron of France in the coming days.
He's had two phone calls with the French president over the last couple of days. And the Kremlin is indicating this could be the path to opening diplomacy.
But Macron, if he comes to Moscow, is going to have to come representing the whole of NATO, the United States, and everyone.
And that's not a position that the French president appears yet ready to set out on.
BLACKWELL: Nic Robertson, in Moscow for us. Thank you, Nic.
CAMEROTA: OK, next, dozens of supporters of Donald Trump's big election lie are now running to oversee elections in 18 states. What happens if they win?
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[14:51:30]
CAMEROTA: Dozens of believers of Donald Trump's big election lie are now running to oversee elections.
According to a nonprofit, called States United Action, 21 candidates are running for secretary of state in 18 states.
All of them have publicly questioned or disputed the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Joanna Lydgate is the CEO of States United Action and she joins us now.
Joanna, thanks so much for being here.
How can people who are not rooted in reality be in charge of safeguarding elections in their states?
JOANNA LYDGATE, CEO, STATES UNITED ACTION: Thanks so much for having me. And thanks for covering this critical issue that should matter to every American voter.
There's a group of politicians in this country who are trying to change the way elections are run. They are trying to change the rules and change the referees so they can change the outcome.
When it comes to changing rules, we have seen bills that have been filed across the country that would interfere with the way elections are run.
When we talk about changing the refs, we mean people running to oversee our elections who don't believe in them.
We call them election deniers. These are people who deny the result offense the election, who tried to overturn the election, who campaigned on lies, who participated in Stop the Steal rallies.
Some even attended the rally at the U.S. capitol on January 6th.
CAMEROTA: Yes, in fact, I know who you're referring to.
This is the leading Republican contender for secretary of state in Arizona. He was at the Trump rally on January 6th. He's also affiliated with Oath Keepers.
How is it possible that that person is the leading Republican contender to be in charge of overseeing elections?
LYDGATE: That's right. That's Mark Finchem in Arizona, the candidate for secretary of state.
Unfortunately, what we find in the election denier tracker that we released is that you have two out of three races for governor and secretary of state all across this country where there's an election denier in the race.
So Mark Finchem is certainly not alone.
These are the positions that of see our elections in the country. Elections are national events but they're run by the state.
Your governor, your state attorney general, your secretary of state, these jobs really matter.
CAMEROTA: What happens if these people win? In the battleground states, I know you put up the map earlier of what you're tracking, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada.
What happens if they win?
LYDGATE: Well, these positions are the positions that run our elections. They oversee our elections. They make decisions about certification of our elections.
Ultimately, there's a lot of room for people to really mess with the system, to potentially try to overturn or change the results if they don't like it.
That's why everyone in this country needs to really pay attention in 2022. Look at who is running in your state, who is running locally to oversee your elections.
Pay attention to what they believe and what they are saying. This tracker helps give people that kind of information.
CAMEROTA: As you know, there's many primarily Republican voters who believe this, believe Donald Trump's election lies.
And so in Congress, there's been some failed attempts to reform elections, as you know. But now there's this bipartisan group of Senator who are working on the Electoral Count Act.
Is that the solution to stopping this?
[14:55:00]
LYDGATE: You know, it's been really disappointing to see the failure of the federal voting rights reform so far.
But I think it really just puts even more of the spotlight on the fact that what really matters, matters most, happens at the state level. It's the states that run our elections.
It's these key positions that we really have to pay attention to. And, you know, that's why I think this kind of research is so important.
I also just want to say, Alisyn, that this is actually not a partisan issue. This is not about political party.
We have people who are being challenged by election deniers, who are Republicans, who spoke out, who told the truth about our election in 2020, who protected the will of American voters, who protected our election.
And we see this pattern across party lines. And as I said, we see it all across the country.
We absolutely need federal reform. But our focus at States United is on the state and on these key races that will determine the outcome of our elections and whether our votes are counted and protected.
CAMEROTA: Yes, understood.
Joanna Lydgate, thank you very much for all the work you're doing. Everybody should check out your work and your Web site. We appreciate you trying to sound the alarm.
LYDGATE: Thank you so much.
BLACKWELL: COVID vaccines could soon be available for the youngest age group. Pfizer is expected to seek emergency use authorization from the FDA as soon as today to vaccinate children aged 6 months to 5 years. We'll ask a medical expert about that just ahead.
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