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Winter Storm; FBI Investigates Threats to HBCUs; Whoopi Goldberg Under Fire; Thousands of U.S. Troops Heading to Eastern Europe; Fired NFL Coach Sues League, Alleges Racial Bias. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired February 02, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

RABBI JOSEPH POTASNIK, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, NEW YORK BOARD OF RABBIS: We have failed in terms of providing young people today, and adults as well, with an education that is necessary if we're going to combat the hateful challenges of our time.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Well, on that front, Rabbi, one of the things that Whoopi said that she later said that she was a teachable moment for her and was rethinking, she said it on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," basically, that she had thought that race meant color.

So let me just play that for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WHOOPI GOLDBERG, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": If the Klan is coming down the street, and I'm standing with a Jewish friend, and neither one -- well, I'm going to run.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDBERG: But if my friend decides not to run, they will get passed by most times, because you can't tell who's Jewish. You don't know. It's not something that people say, oh, that person is Jewish, or this person is just.

And so that's what I was trying to explain.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So, Rabbi, after that, she went on to apologize the next day on "The View."

But I'm sure that Whoopi isn't the only person in America who thinks that. So what do you want people to understand about race?

POTASNIK: I think they have to know that the Holocaust was about race, because the Nazis considered all of us to be subhuman, to be inferior. And, therefore, because they could demonize us and divide us, they could destroy us.

So it really was about race. The people who marched in Charlottesville, they said it was about race. "Jews will not replace us." They were referring to a Jewish race.

So I think we have to be very, very conscious of this racism factor, and not dismiss it or not minimize it as something that's visual. That's why there's this great need for really education awareness. We have to have people who understand the depth of the horror of the Holocaust, because it spills over into other areas.

Yes, it was about racism. It's about division. It's about destruction. It's about anti-Semitism. We have to know all of these factors.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I think you make an excellent point when you talk about Holocaust ignorance and calling for some education when we pair this story with the overlaps of the book "Maus" being pulled out of a school district or a library in Tennessee, and laws across the country that are being enacted, or at least introduced to try to limit the scope of some of the horrors of our history being taught in schools.

I mean, how do you educate the next generation, without having some of those difficult conversations? What do you see as we watch these laws that are popping up across the U.S.?

POTASNIK: If people have red "Maus," if it weren't banned in Tennessee, they would see a statement from Hitler which said, the Jews are an inferior race.

If you look at the Nuremberg laws, there were Nuremberg race laws. So, therefore, we need to -- we need to learn more, because we cannot effectively fight against the hatred of today unless we know the hatred of the past. So, we can't -- we need books, we need libraries, we need courses.

We can't get distracted because some book has a cartoon that someone finds offensive. There's too much to learn there. And, again, if they had read "Maus," if Whoopi had read "Maus," she wouldn't have made the statement that she did. But, again, I think we need to go next step. Next step is let's work together.

We have an opportunity here. Take a crisis, make it into an opportunity. We have an opportunity to make this Never Again Education Act an endemic part of a curriculum, and then we will have turned this moment into something that is major and something that is positive.

CAMEROTA: Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, thank you. Great to talk to you.

POTASNIK: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: It is the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell.

We begin with the first U.S. troop deployment to Eastern Europe in response to fears that Russia will invade Ukraine. The Pentagon announced 3,000 American forces will be heading to Romania, Poland and Germany in the coming days. This is in addition to those 8,500 U.S. troops that were put on heightened alert, but are not in that region.

CAMEROTA: So, a short time ago, the White House also said it will no longer describe the Russian invasion as -- quote -- "imminent," because that language sent an unintended message.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I used that once. I think others have used that once. And then we stopped using it because I think it's sent a message that we weren't intending to send, which was that we knew that President Putin had made a decision.

I would say, the vast majority of times I have talked about it, we said he could invade at any time. That's true. We still don't know that he's made a decision.

QUESTION: OK, so you're not using that word?

PSAKI: I think I used it once last week.

QUESTION: But the decision now is that you're not describing it as imminent?

PSAKI: I haven't in over a week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:05:01]

CAMEROTA: New satellite images show Russia continues its military buildup on Ukraine's border in Belarus, Crimea, and Western Russia.

Let's get to CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, who just spoke to President Biden about Ukraine.

So, Kaitlan, what did he say?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, these are the first remarks that he's made since we have learned of this decision from the Pentagon and from CNN reporting earlier today that he is making the decision, he is signing off on this idea to send 3,000 troops to Eastern Europe, something that we knew was on the table and something he had been discussing with his top military advisers in recent days.

But now they have made it official and said that this will happen. And you just showed where those troops are going. And the White House has cited the reason behind this as seeking to reassure NATO allies. And President Biden just a few moments ago, when we asked about his calculus here in sending these 3,000 troops, this is what he told us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Totally consistent with what I told Putin in the beginning.

As long as he's acting aggressively, we're going to make sure we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that we're there, and Article 5 is a sacred obligation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Now, the White House has said that these troops will not be going into Ukraine. They have made that pretty clear. Of course, the big question is whether or not that changes going forward if they send additional troops going forward, because the Pentagon also didn't rule out that idea of sending more troops to Eastern Europe besides just these 3,000 that President Biden has decided to deploy.

And one other thing we should know what we're talking about this decision that the White House is making is one that they have not yet determined that Russian President Putin has made. And that's about invading Ukraine. And the White House and the Pentagon confirmed today they still do not believe he has made that decision.

But they are changing the way that they're talking about the situation the ground in Ukraine, because they have said that Putin is not de- escalating. In fact, he is only escalating and continued to add forces. But instead of using the word imminent to describe a potential invasion of Ukraine, a Russian invasion of Ukraine, the White House says they are purposefully not using that word anymore because they believed it was sending an unintended message.

Of course, we know Ukrainian officials were not happy that the White House was using that word. So Jen Psaki did tell me today they will no longer be using imminent to describe what could happen in Ukraine.

CAMEROTA: OK, Kaitlan Collins, thank you for the reporting.

BLACKWELL: Well, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark has now met with the House committee investigating January 6. You see the video here. Cameras caught Clark entering the panel's meeting room now two months after the panel voted to hold him in contempt for his lack of cooperation.

CAMEROTA: Clark helped push false claims and voter fraud after the 2020 election and became one of Donald Trump's most useful allies inside the DOJ.

So, let's go to CNN Ryan Nobles on Capitol Hill.

Ryan, what could the committee learn from him?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The committee really doesn't have high expectations for this interview today with Jeffrey Clark. And from what we can tell, it didn't last very long. Clark and his

attorney left the building where this interview was taking place only about an hour and 40 minutes after it began, this despite the fact that the committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, telling me that he would hope that it would go most of the day.

Now, we haven't been told officially that the interview has concluded. But it wouldn't be a surprise if it only went that long. And that's because Clark has said in writing to the committee that he planned to plead the Fifth to every question that they answered.

And if -- as you recall, this put him in a situation where they voted to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress. And that's what led to him saying that he was going to plead the Fifth.

Now, this still leaves kind of a gray area with Clark. The committee had been in somewhat of a standoff with him. They voted it out of the committee, the criminal contempt charge, but they hadn't taken it to the full House.

I asked Chairman Thompson today that if today's proceeding would play a big role in whether or not they would take that step, and he essentially said that it would, that they have been very accommodating with Clark, and they had to see how everything turned out today.

So, at this point, we don't ever read out on the meeting, but it seems very unlikely that Clark provided any of the information that the committee was looking for -- Alisyn and Victor.

BLACKWELL: Ryan Nobles for us on Capitol Hill, thank you.

NOBLES: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: A bombshell lawsuit in the NFL today.

Recently fired Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores accuses the league of racist hiring practices. He claims he was used in a sham job interview to satisfy diversity rules.

As evidence, Flores includes a text conversation with his former boss Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who mistakenly congratulated him for getting hired by the New York Giants before he had even interviewed.

Belichick later admitted that he meant to text a different Brian.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN FLORES, FORMER MIAMI DOLPHINS HEAD COACH: It was humiliating, to be quite honest.

There was disbelief. There was anger. There was a wave of emotions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: The NFL and the three teams named in the lawsuit are all denying these allegations. Joining us now is retired NFL player efforts and American University

Law Professor Jeremi Duru.

Great to have both of you.

Ephraim, I want to start with you because you played obviously in the NFL. And there was another part of this lawsuit that Brian Flores talked about, the plantation culture of the NFL. And I just want to read it.

[15:10:03]

He says: "In certain critical ways, the NFL is racially segregated and is managed much like a plantation. Its 32 owners, none of whom are black profits, substantially from the labor of NFL players, 70 percent of whom are black. The owners watch the games from atop NFL stadiums in their luxury boxes, while their majority black work force put their bodies on the line every Sunday, taking vicious hits and suffering debilitating injuries to their bodies and their brains, while the NFL and its owners reap billions of dollars."

What are your thoughts today?

EPHRAIM SALAAM, FORMER NFL PLAYER: I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed, but I'm not surprised in the NFL, in their lack of diversity, not only in ownership, but in upper management, head coaching including -- included.

It's -- you can't help but look at the landscape of the NFL and all the missteps they have had over the years and some of the things they have tried to do to correct those missteps, right? Like, we have all of the things on the back of the helmet, Black History Month celebration. We have all of these things in words and in gestures, but not in real effort.

And by effort, I mean in ownership. Whenever there's a team up for sale, the owners get together and they approve the new owner. And it just so happens we haven't had a black owner, an African-American owner in the NFL. We only have one minority owner in the NFL. And it's a shame.

And it's -- as a former NFL player, and I love the NFL -- it has done wonderful things for myself and my family. But it still doesn't matter. We're seen as people who can't lead. I mean, I'm speaking African-Americans.

There was a notion of African-American quarterbacks not being able to perform at the level of white quarterbacks. There was a notion of African-American coaches not being able to perform at the level of black -- excuse me -- of white coaches, and so on and so forth. And we're still -- we still have that narrative in the NFL, and it starts with ownership.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

Professor, I should say first that you worked with Jim Rooney in collecting some of the data. And as we talk about this Rooney Rule, we should define, it as that teams have to interview at least two external minority candidates for the head coach position, one minority candidate for the coordinator, one for senior football operations as well.

It's almost 20 years old. The goal was to bring some equity in these positions. What is failing? Because a rule clearly isn't bringing that equity.

N. JEREMI DURU, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: Yes. No, it's a great question.

And it's a question we have been trying to tackle over the course of last five, six years. The numbers had gotten pretty good, and there's been a real substantial backslide. Yes, I have to say that the fault lies with the owners, and not with every owner of every club, but with a lot of the owners.

What the rules idea is that you open up your interview process to individuals who otherwise would not have been able to get into the room. And by doing so, you broaden the pool of candidates, you make yourself potentially better, and you give everybody an opportunity.

And what's happened is that owners have short-circuited the rule, have found ways around the rule, have circumvented the rule and, in the alleged case up in New York, have just flatly flouted the rule.

And so an equal opportunity initiative is not going to be effective if you have clubs that are refusing, irrationally, but refusing to implement it.

CAMEROTA: Yes, Professor, I mean, they're not taking it seriously. They're just going through the steps. They're going through the charade of this rule, but they're not really taking these candidates seriously.

So what would you amend in the rule to fix it?

DURU: Well, the -- what needs to be -- so, what needs to be amended is the NFL's approach when a club does that.

This is not the first time that a club has floated the rule. We have seen it done to greater and lesser extents over the course of almost two decades, in some circumstances essentially as grievous as this one. And the NFL has not come in and enforced the rule.

Under the rule, you can be fined a substantial amount of money and there can be all sorts of other punishments that come to bear if Roger Goodell deems them appropriate. But the league has not viewed what clubs have done -- when they have clearly violated the rule, has not viewed those things as a violation.

Case number one in Oakland, 2017, with hire of the head coach there, when Jon Gruden was hired, in a situation where it's clear the club was deeply longing for him to be the coach for a long time and didn't give the candidates of color any opportunities at all, the league turned a blind eye, didn't penalize the club.

[15:15:02]

And I think the consequence was that clubs began to say, you know what? This is not a rule to be taken seriously. And they have not taken it seriously. And we find ourselves in the position we're in now as a consequence.

BLACKWELL: Ephraim, let me get you on your reaction to one other allegation made in this lawsuit.

Coach Flores said that Stephen Ross, the Dolphins' owner, offered him $100,000 per loss at the end of the 2019 -- in the 2019 season, as an effort to, the next season, get a higher draft pick.

This goes beyond the allegations of racism. If that's true, what's your reaction to that type of gamesmanship?

SALAAM: Well, it's sickening, because, as a professional athlete, you never put yourself in a position or you want to put yourself in a position to lose.

You work too hard to go out there and give your best effort. So, for someone to encourage you or incentivize you to lose as a coach or as a player, it's disrespectful to the game. It's disrespectful for the person and the players.

And I say this. The narrative out on Brian Flores is always, he's hard to manage and all of these things. But if you call into question or you try to compromise someone's moral character, he's a coach. Coaches coach to win. They don't coach to lose or coach to get draft picks.

And if you call into question that moral character, and he barks back, and he says, no, I won't do that, is that being difficult? Is that being hard to manage? We have this narrative of African-Americans as, when we don't agree with something, we're deemed the angry black man.

And that's not the case. When you're asked to sacrifice your moral code or your moral compass, and you balk at that, then it's not being angry. It's being true to who you are.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

SALAAM: And we have this notion that any time a person of color has something to say or stands up for himself, it's angry, opposed to his white colleague, that's just passionate. They have passion. We have anger.

BLACKWELL: Yes. You can understand that someone would be disagreeable if you ask them to lose.

Ephraim Salaam, Professor Jeremi Duru, thank you so much for your time.

SALAAM: Thank you. BLACKWELL: All right, this just in to CNN. The FBI says they are

investigating those bomb threats made toward historically black colleges and universities as hate crimes. We have got new information ahead.

CAMEROTA: And just what we need, a huge winter storm hitting the U.S.

BLACKWELL: Another one?

CAMEROTA: Yes, it's threatening to paralyze much of the country with ice and snow.

Make it end. More than 100 million people will be impacted. We have the weather alerts and a live update for you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:22:12]

BLACKWELL: The FBI is giving an update about who they think his believe -- or behind the wave of bomb threats on multiple historically black colleges and universities this week.

CAMEROTA: CNN's Joe Johns is here with us.

So, Joe, the FBI just briefed some school and some local law enforcement, we understand. What did they say?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, probably the headline that came out of that, I think, is that they say they have identified some people suspected of making these threats.

That language comes to us from our colleague CNN's Evan Perez. Probably, the other headline, as you said, Alisyn, is they did talk to some of the stakeholders, the universities, some of the local and state law enforcement on the ground responding to these things.

And the statement says the investigation is of the highest priority for the bureau, and that the threats are being investigated as racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism and hate crimes. At this time, they say no explosive devices have been found. They also point out that the investigation involves more than 20 FBI field offices across the country.

So that's what we know. It doesn't appear that anyone has been arrested. It does not appear that they have any actual explosive devices that have been taken into custody.

Of course, as we know, during all the searches that occurred yesterday and the day before, they didn't find any explosive devices. So the investigation continues and we will get back to you when we have something more.

BLACKWELL: Joe Johns in Washington.

Thank you, Joe. Heavy snow, sleet, dangerously icy conditions, here we go again.

Take you first to South Bend, Indiana. A warning there, could be up to a foot of snow by tomorrow. This is part of a massive winter storm affecting dozens of major cities from the Central Plains all the way to New England.

CAMEROTA: CNN's Derek Van Dam joins us now from South Bend.

So, Derek, the winter storm is expected to affect more than 100 million people. Tell us what you're seeing.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, you said it best, Victor, Alisyn.

Another day, another snowstorm. I guess it's appropriate that it is Groundhog's Day. But this storm has many dangerous -- it's a multifaceted storm.

But, really, what we're focusing on is this pure duration. This is a two-to-three-day event. And it's covering a large space. We're talking about winter weather alerts stretching from New England, the border of Canada all the way to Mexico. This is just a large and very expensive storm system that is impacting over a third of the U.S. population, 25 U.S. states, as well as just an incredible area in coverage.

Now, I'm in South Bend, Indiana. This is near the Notre Dame University. And I want to take you to a mass cam. This is on the upper parts of our live truck. And I want to show you just the road conditions that we're dealing with.

[15:25:04]

So you're looking north towards Notre Dame. And you can see, roads are slick. People are still traversing this particular area. But what happened last night is that temperatures were actually above freezing. So, precipitation started out as rain. Then it slowly transitioned as temperatures plummeted, the cold front moved through this area.

So we have got this virtual sheet of ice on the roadways across this area, not good for Interstate 80, which is, of course, notoriously hazardous during winter weather.

But then now we have got fresh snow, about seven or eight inches. Latest from the National Weather Service, calling for an inch an hour for the next four hours within this particular area all the way south into Indianapolis.

Now, it's interesting too, because some states are dealing with dual hazards from flooding in the South to an ice storm. I'm looking at you, Louisville, to Indianapolis, all the way to Dallas. The potential exists for a quarter to a half-an-inch in ice out of a storm.

It's kind of a one-two punch with this particular system, because the first wave of energy moving through now. And then the second one moves in from Texas, brings in the threat of ice brings in the threat of more snow, and it makes its way all the way into New England later this week.

So that's why this is such a massive, impactful storm for the third -- eastern third of the country -- Victor, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Derek Van Dam, thank you.

BLACKWELL: Former President Donald Trump doubled down on his pledge to pardon January 6 rioters if he retakes the White House in 2024, while also taking a swipe at one of his closest allies.

CAMEROTA: Plus, the Republican Party's purge of non-Trump loyalists could potentially take another unprecedented step.

We will explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)