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Bomb Threats for HBCU Lockdowns; Biden Orders Troops to Europe; Goldberg Suspended from "The View". Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired February 02, 2022 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Google's parent company, Alphabet, turned in better than expected earnings.

We're also watching a new employment report out this morning that showed the private sector lost about 300,000 jobs last month. Analysts point to the omicron variant as the main cause.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:35:16]

GOLODRYGA: This morning, a former lecturer at UCLA is in custody, accused of threatening the school in a violent 800-page manifesto. Investigators say they linked Matthew Christopher Harris to emails containing that manifesto. He was arrested in Boulder, Colorado, yesterday.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Authorities say the 31-year-old made thousands, thousands, of references to murder, shooting, bombs, massacres in those messages. UCLA moved classes online today because of that threat. Harris now faces federal charges.

GOLODRYGA: Law enforcement, meantime, is pressing forward with its investigation into a string of bomb threats against several historically black colleges and universities. In the past month alone, at least 19 schools have received a threat prompting many of them to go into lockdown or postpone classes.

SCIUTTO: Yes, they're taking them very seriously. More than a dozen of those came just yesterday, notably, the first day of Black History Month.

Joining us now to discuss, former assistant DHS secretary, CNN national security analyst, Juliette Kayyem. Juliette, as you know, the FBI cites white supremacists as the primary

domestic terror threat. When you look at threats like this, how does it fit into the broader threat and how seriously do you think authorities should be taking these?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So, you have to take them seriously because it's coordinated, right? So, Monday, Howard University gets a threat. And then by Tuesday you have 12 additional HBCUs. So colleges and universities you were just reporting on at UCLA often get threats. But it's the coordination that was troublesome.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KAYYEM: And then the universities and colleges are forced to react in different ways depending on their perception of the threat. So, some of them closed down, some of them delayed for a couple of hours, and that's a disruption, of course, to the educational opportunity afforded students at those schools.

GOLODRYGA: Well talk about that and the consequences of this because, thankfully, no bombs have been found or have gone off, right?

KAYYEM: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: But the amount of resources that go in to effect on all of these campuses, as soon as these calls are made, and not to mention the fact that students and teachers are deprived of doing their jobs and going to classes. What impact does that have as this continues to unfold?

KAYYEM: Right. And I'm glad that you mentioned even just the threat of violence. It's not -- you don't have to have a bomb. It's just the threat or the concern.

So, there's two ways I think about this. One is, of course, it's just targeted against historically black colleges and universities. So, the racial element is just hard to deny and this sense and the racism that is animating those attacks.

But the second way to think about it is from the perception of those who are being targeted. In other words, HBCUs are not -- don't come out of nowhere. They come out of our history as a country and the opportunities that were not afforded the minority communities. And so these colleges and universities provide access and opportunity for communities that didn't have it before. And so the threats are a deprivation of that access and opportunity. That's a kind of fear. That's, in fact, a kind of terror that you don't allow someone the ability, right, to have access to education of all things, which is the clearest route to success for so many people who have been denied it.

And so I really, you know, so you have the racism and then the access issue.

SCIUTTO: Yes. KAYYEM: And that's not -- that is not, you know, not known by those who are on the receiving end. And so this is, you know, this is something that should be thoroughly investigated.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KAYYEM: And I'm hopeful, because of the coordinated effort of it, that -- that someone will be found.

SCIUTTO: Juliette, as you know, in the DHS, under the Trump administration, there was an effort to de-emphasize the threat from white supremacist groups, even when the FBI's and DHS' own data showed the number of those attacks rising. That's changed in the Biden administration sufficiently to get a handle on this threat, in your view?

KAYYEM: Well, it's changed -- yes. I mean, in other words, the focus now on this as the major domestic terrorism threat is absolutely essential. The FBI and DHS are absolutely correct in that. And if you just look at the division of resources, that is -- that is a clear priority choice and absolutely correct. It is not that we don't have the threats of Islamic terrorism as we saw at the synagogue just a couple of weeks ago. But this is the primary threat.

The good news that I tell people is that it's not -- no longer being nurtured. I mean it's out there. We know that. We know that the politics and the incitement still exists coming from the former president and others. We know that. He mentioned -- you know, Trump mentioned racism against him when he was talking about an African- American prosecutor in New York. He knows what he's doing. But that's not being nurtured by a White House where Biden clearly understands the, you know, the benefits of a diverse country.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. Yes, and Jen Psaki reiterated yesterday that this is something that is both alarming to the president and something he's paying very close attention to as this investigation continues.

[09:40:03]

Juliette Kayyem, thank you, as always.

KAYYEM: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Well, just minutes from now we take you live to the Pentagon for a major announcement on U.S. troop deployments to eastern Europe. Will this latest move deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine. I'll discuss with professor of international affairs, Nina Khrushcheva, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GOLODRYGA: We're turning back to our breaking news.

[09:45:01]

President Biden formally approving additional U.S. military deployments to Europe. And this morning we have new satellite images which appear to show significant Russian military deployments in Belarus, Crimea and western Russia. Soon we expect an update from the Pentagon on all of this. We will bring you that live as it happens.

And joining me now to talk about it all is Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs at The New School and the great granddaughter of former Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev.

Welcome to the program. Good to have you on, Nina.

So, let me just get your reaction to this news of President Biden approving this troop redeployment there to eastern countries in NATO, coming just a day after we finally heard from Vladimir Putin after a month of silence, where after some wild accusations that the U.S. is somehow provoking Russia to invade Ukraine, he did seem to open the door to more conversations. That was seen as a bit reassure reassuring. How do you think then the Kremlin will react to this news?

NINA KHRUSHCHEVA, PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, THE NEW SCHOOL: Well, thank you for inviting me.

I thought it was a little odd timing of President Biden to allow the more troops. But at the same time, we've seen that before. I mean I think before it was 8,500 troops that they approved, but then it turned out they're not going immediately. So, we don't really know exactly how soon that will happen.

But I also believe that since this is kind of a game of who will blink first, and how the conversation will continue, both sides seem to be willing to kind of up the stakes until they finally get to the point when the threats are so tremendous that there is nothing more than just to sit down and again have a conversation and try to kind of undo the very heated rhetoric, or very heated actions.

We've seen that before. It's really quite known tactics in diplomacy using military threats to come up with diplomatic solutions. So, it's -- the timing is odd, but at the same time not too much.

GOLODRYGA: But both sides don't approach this from the same playing field given that at the end of the day President Biden is beholden to Congress, right, and we are seeing bipartisan support, both Democrats and Republicans, pushing the president to act more aggressively in terms of Russia and what it's doing there on the border.

Putin acts as czar. You know this better than anybody else. And I was struck by something that political -- Russian political scientist Yevgenia Albats recently said. And she said, Putin doesn't have anyone in his orbit who can talk to him out of his madness. I can only hope that children and wives of billionaires in power understand that their current lifestyle today in Moscow, tomorrow in St. Barths, can end in one second.

Obviously, she's talking about all of those oligarchs who surround President Putin as well.

Do you agree with her assessment? KHRUSHCHEVA: Yes, I do, absolutely. And she's a wonderful analyst and

commentator on (INAUDIBLE) who knows her Russian and American stuff (ph). Who absolutely, I think, and you are absolutely right, that Biden is more (ph) to talk (ph). He's not making decisions in a vacuum. He actually has to be responsible to the nation, to the Congress, to talk to his advisers, while Putin is making his own decisions. And so that is clearly, clearly a difference.

I am not entirely sure that Putin, when he's backed into a corner, he's going to listen to his St. Barths and Antalaia (ph) and London (ph) oligarchs because one of the things that he's been doing for almost 20 years and kept saying, well, we are basing that potential confrontation with the west. He already spoke about it. In fact, in 2008, with the -- his conversation with George Bush when Ukraine and Georgia were promised to become NATO members, that he said there will be problems. So he kept asking them to give up their foreign citizenships, stop investing money in the west and so on and so forth.

So it may be that he would say to them, I warned you, now we are and you basically dug your own grave, in a sense. So -- but it also depends, as Joe Biden one time said, it depends on which side of the bed Putin will get up from.

So, yesterday, he was quite conciliatory and tomorrow he may not be. But I continue to insist that the war is not in his interest, whether somebody is advising him or not, and all of it is just to show the muscle, to make sure that he's not only heard, but finally the west would have no other way than to make concessions and legalize the Ukrainian situation that we now have somehow. And that's why he's -- they're pushing by threatening force, they're pushing for the Minsk agreements, for those peaceful -- technically peaceful solution with -- with Ukraine.

[09:50:03]

GOLODRYGA: So -- so is this how you see this ending, that the Minsk agreements and sort of solidifying whatever happens to those regions there in the east, the Donbas, right, and Donetsk, that they will, perhaps, go as Crimea did? Is that what it's going to take? And what message, if so, does that send to the rest of the world, that you can be a bully and really blackmail another sovereign country to get to this outcome?

KHRUSHCHEVA: Well, that's the message and that's Putin's message. And, yes, I think that that -- the final outcome is to bring Minsk -- bring Kyiv to keep up with those Minsk agreements that Kyiv really was not -- I mean hasn't been able to follow and to keep because this taking away, I mean, as you mentioned, Donetsk and Luhans (ph), the other self-proclaimed republic, the Russia affiliated republic, to keep them in sovereign states, in a sense, sovereign parts of Ukraine, and Crimea, obviously, would be a status quo.

So, yes, I think that's his plan. And Vladimir Zelensky yesterday when he spoke with Boris Johnson of -- prime minister of Great Britain, did say that he didn't like any of the aspects of the Minsk agreement, but there is no other choice right now because the bad Minsk agreement is still better than a very good -- than a very good war, as they say. And so I think that's what Putin's plan. And we'll see how Joe Biden can, you know, bite off at least a little pieces of that Putin's result.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, it's hard to wrap your head around coming away as this as a good solution to somebody just bullying their way and breaking through all democratic norms there in the process.

Nina Khrushcheva, great to have you on. Thank you so much.

KHRUSHCHEVA: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: I mean, remarkable for her saying the resolution would be not the first but the second violation of European borders in eight years.

GOLODRYGA: Right.

SCIUTTO: Because that's, of course, what Russia did by invading and annexing Crimea. To do it again, I mean, huge implications for Europe.

GOLODRYGA: Giving Putin an ultimate win again, right?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: And who knows what he would do after that. He went to Crimea. She got these two regions. Who know what he'd be after next.

SCIUTTO: Who's next, right?

GOLODRYGA: Yes.

SCIUTTO: It's always that question.

Another story we're following, suspended for two weeks over comments about the Holocaust. What "The View's" Whoopi Goldberg said that drew fierce criticism. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:55:58]

GOLODRYGA: ABC News has suspended "The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks after she drew significant criticism for falsely declaring that the Holocaust was not about race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WHOOPI GOLDBERG, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": The Holocaust isn't about race.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No?

GOLDBERG: No. It's not about race. It's about --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, maybe ethnicity.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, they considered Jews a different race. GOLDBERG: But it's -- it's not about race. It's not about race.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is it about?

GOLDBERG: Because you -- it's about man's inhumanity to man.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Goldberg has since apologized. ABC News, however, says her words remain both wrong and hurtful, adding they'd like her to take those two weeks to reflect, learn about the impact of her comments.

CNN's senior media reporter Oliver Darcy joins us now.

So, Oliver, tell us about not only ABC's decision here but also Goldberg's apology.

OLIVER DARCY, CNN SENIOR MEDIA REPORTER: Yes, Jim.

Goldberg first apologized on Monday night. She issued this written statement that said basically that she understood the criticism, that she was wrong and she offered her sincerest apologies to everyone. And then she opened up the show yesterday on "The View" reiterating that and offering another apology to anyone that may have been offended by her words and for misconstruing what the Holocaust was about.

Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WHOOPI GOLDBERG, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": I said something that I feel a responsibility for not leaving unexamined, because my words upset so many people, which was never my intention. And I understand why now. And for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DARCY: So, throughout the day, Jim, I was talking to people inside ABC News. Some people said that they did still feel that even after the apology that some action was warranted from executives. But others I talked to said, look, Whoopi apologized. You don't punish ignorance, you learn from it. Use it as a teaching moment. She had the head of the Anti-Defamation League on "The View" yesterday and they had this moment where they talked about the Holocaust and what it was about. And so some people think, you know, that maybe ABC may have gone too far with the suspension. The ADL head actually was on CNN and he said that he hopes that it can be used as a learning moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN GREENBLATT, CEO AND NATIONAL DIRECTOR, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE: This is an opportunity for Whoopi, and I think for "The View," to engage in some education and introspection. You can imagine, you know, Whoopi going to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Holocaust Museum, working with an NGO. There are many great ones, ADL included, but lots. And maybe "The View" could think about, how do they deal with Jewish representation on their show? Maybe they should have a Jewish host on "The View." That might be a good place to start.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DARCY: Yes, Johnathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, has been reiterating his call for "The View" to perhaps install a Jewish co- host in the vacant seat that they have right now. We'll see if ABC follows through and takes it under consideration.

GOLODRYGA: Listen, it never hurts to continue to talk about these important issues on the show, and perhaps the show itself could go to some of these museums and have more segments on the topic as well instead of just punishing someone and moving along. This is definitely a teaching moment and something that all audiences should continue to follow and learn from.

Oliver Darcy, I know you broke this story for us. Thank you so much.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

SCIUTTO: A very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto. Welcome to Washington, Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: And I'm Bianna Golodryga. I don't remember the last time I was on set with anybody.

Great to be back on with you.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: Well, we are watching two breaking stories this hour. President Biden authorizing adding U.S. troops to Europe as the threat of a Russian invasion looms.

And we're learning they could deploy any day now. A Pentagon briefing is about to begin. And we'll take you there live.

Also happening now, thousands of people gathered at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York to pay their respects to the second NYPD officer killed in a shootout in Harlem.

[10:00:06]