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Interview with White House Economic Adviser Jared Bernstein; Strong U.S. Jobs Report; Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Assassinated; Pat Cipollone Testifies to January 6 Committee. Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired July 08, 2022 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:23]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone. I'm Alisyn Camerota. Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. Victor is off today.

The shockwaves from the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continue to reverberate across the globe. The 67- year-old longtime leader of Japan was shot to death during a campaign speech outside of Osaka. And that blood-curdling moment was caught on video.

We have to warn you the video that we're about to show is very disturbing. Police apprehended the gunman just moments after he fired the two fatal shots from a homemade gun. An investigation into the shooter and his motive is now under way.

Abe's murder has shaken Japan, where gun violence is virtually nonexistent. A four Abe adviser says the assassination is the equivalent of JFK's. Abu was considered one of the most transformative leaders in post-World War II Japan.

Let's bring in CNN's Selina Wang in Beijing.

Selina, do we know anything at this hour about the suspect and the investigation?

SELINA WANG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we have learned from the police that the suspect confessed to shooting the former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

He is a 41-year-old unemployed man and said that he holds a grudge against a specific organization and believes that Abe was a part of it. The police declined to give any more details about the motive of the suspect, but, right now, there are 90 investigators working on this case.

Now, Abe was shot at 11:300 a.m. local time during this campaign speech rally. He was shot in broad daylight. At 5:00 p.m., when he was pronounced dead, the medical examiner said it was because of excessive bleeding. That sent shockwaves around the world.

He was such a towering political figure at home in Japan, but also abroad. He was known for being able to cultivate these close personal ties with leaders from around the world. Remarkable that he was able to cultivate close ties with both former U.S. President Obama, as well as Trump, famously playing golf with Trump, having regular phone calls with him, eating burgers together, was able to sustain stable relationships with him, something that other world leaders struggled to do.

He will also be remembered for trying to boost Japan's military. He wanted to revise Japan's Constitution, pacifist Constitution, to have a more fully-fledged military. That was a controversial move. So he remained a divisive figure in Japan, but incredibly influential over Japanese politics and society even after he stepped down in 2020.

CAMEROTA: And, Selina, we have been learning today just how astonishingly rare gun violence is in Japan. So what can you tell us about guns in that country?

WANG: Well, virtually, guns and gun violence are nonexistent. In all of 2021, there was only one gun-related death in all of Japan.

It is extremely hard to get a gun, and most guns are illegal. I just want to read to you what potential gun buyers have to go through in Japan. And this is not a full list, comprehensive list, by any means. But they need to attend an all-day class, pass a written test, pass a shooting range test with an accuracy of at least 95 percent, undergo a mental health evaluation and drug tests, and undergo an extremely rigorous background check.

So guns are mostly illegal, extremely hard to get. And Japan is also considered one of the safest countries in the world. I'd lived there before my posting here in Beijing up until a few months ago. I was always shocked to see how many young children would be walking alone by themselves on the streets, taking the subway, getting into taxis by themselves, because this is the safe environment that Japan is.

So it is heartbreaking to see something like this happen in a country that is considered so safe and secure for residents. And it is -- just speaks volumes to the fact that police say the suspect used a handmade gun -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Selina, thank you very much for all of that context.

So, leaders around the world sharing their heartbreak and outrage over this assassination. President Biden met with Abe many times over the years, the president ordering flags lowered to half-staff in Abe's honor.

In a statement, President Biden says -- quote -- "I am stunned, outraged and deeply saddened by the news. He was a champion of the alliance between our nations and the friendship between our people. The United States stands with Japan in this moment of grief."

[14:05:00]

Let's bring in now Gordon Chang. He's a columnist for "Newsweek" and the author of "Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World." And we also have David Sanger. He's our CNN political and national security analyst and a White House and national security analyst for "The New York Times." And David spent six years working in Japan as the Tokyo bureau chief as Abe was rising in the political ranks.

So, David, let me begin with you. And just explain what he meant to the country and what his assassination means to Japan.

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, he transformed the country, as you suggested, Alisyn, even though he was not able to revise the Constitution.

He turned Japan much more into a national security state. He created the National Security Council there. He allied Japan much more firmly with the United States and with the West, after concluding that Japan could not handle a rising China by itself.

You will notice that, when the Russians moved against Ukraine, even though Abe was long out of office by that time, Japan didn't waffle, the way it would have a number of years ago and joined the sanctions. It took a few months, but they joined them.

So I think he fundamentally changed the attitude of Japanese on this issue. And he brought about a reinterpretation of the Constitution that allows basically for collective defense. That is to say, it's not just, if Japan is attacked, the U.S. must come to its aid. He's now -- he was the one who engineered the reverse of that, which is that Japan will come to the aid of its allies.

CAMEROTA: Gordon, Abe was no longer prime minister. But yet you say that his assassination will reverberate, will have political reverberations across Asia. How? Why?

GORDON CHANG, AUTHOR, "NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN: NORTH KOREA TAKES ON THE WORLD": Well, first thing, he was the leader of the biggest faction in the Liberal Democratic Party, which is the governing ruling group.

And that really means that there's going to be a vacuum and there will be a scramble for control, because the politics inside the LDP can really be vicious. So that's one thing.

But, also, because of Abe was really this notion of Japan as a strong nation, which David just talked about, Abe was very closely aligned with the people who wanted to defend Taiwan. And so China right now is trying really to destabilize politics in Tokyo.

A friend of mine who monitors, for instance, social media in Morocco noticed immediately after the assassination that they were getting postings from China about this and inundating Morocco's social media scene.

CAMEROTA: That's really interesting.

David, as we go to our next question, this is President Biden right now. These are live pictures. He's at the Japanese Embassy. And he is signing the condolence book there for former the Prime Minister Abe. And that leads me to my question, David, which is on the world stage.

I mean, we have seen him with Joe Biden when he was vice president. We saw him, of course, with President Obama. And then we saw him with President Trump, and he seemed to have a great relationship with all of them, which is no easy needle to thread always.

And so how do you explain that?

SANGER: Well, the Obama team was initially pretty suspicious of Abe when he came in for his second time as prime minister in 2012.

They viewed him as sort of a right-wing figure who was not going to apologize for Japan's actions in World War II. And they were -- they were right about that.

But they were able to build a much more constructive relationship with him. And Abe himself worked hard on that. When Trump got elected, Abe was the first one to go visit him at Trump Tower. He brought along a gold-plated golf club.

He, as Selina noted earlier, was playing golf with Trump. He understood that every time he would meet with Trump, Trump would basically make the case that the United States should not be defending a country with which it had a trade surplus, but he just sort of patiently ignored it and kept building the relationship because he recognized that a Japan without the United States was a Japan adrift.

CAMEROTA: Gordon, I sort of interrupted you there because we wanted to show what was happening with President Biden, but how exactly will China now seize on this?

CHANG: Well, first of all, they're now talking about July 7, 1937, which is a big day. This is Japan invading China for the second time in the 1930s.

So they're now playing on this nationalist theme that Abe was a nationalist, this is a militant Japan, we're poor Chinese victims. And so this is going to roil Japanese political opinion, because there is a divide in Japan about how Japan should interact with China.

This is something that we have seen China do in a number of other countries. So we got to be concerned that this is one of those things that could actually ripple out through Japan to the rest of the region and destabilize things.

[14:10:00]

CAMEROTA: David, it's just astonishing to hear about the relationship with guns in Japan, particularly after these months that we have just experienced here in the U.S.

I mean, political violence and gun violence in Japan is virtually nonexistent. And so if you could just tell us what -- how they have been able to do that in Japan, I mean, from your time there. And, obviously, we all pray that this is a one-off and not the start of something. SANGER: Well, there aren't very many guns.

And, as you heard before, probably, the reason this was a homemade gun was that it was the easiest way for this assassin to get one. It's hard to do a real measure of the number of guns either in the United States or in Japan, but the last set of reliable numbers we have had is 0.25 guns per 100 people in Japan, and about 120 guns per 100 people in the United States.

So there's a huge difference just in sheer numbers. Of course, the Japanese do not have a Second Amendment. And they don't have a history born of that.

As for political assassinations, the most famous era of assassinations in Japan was the 1930s, when there was a militant group trying to get the United -- Japan into a war with the United States. The last prime minister or former prime minister who was killed was in 1932. That was 90 years ago.

There have been other political leaders killed since, not many, mostly stabbed or hit with swords.

CAMEROTA: Gordon Chang, David Sanger, thank you both for your expertise and for giving us all of this context, as we watch President Biden there at the Japanese Embassy paying his condolences for Shinzo Abe.

All right, now to this: the January 6 Committee hearing some of its most critical testimony yet, as former White House counsel Pat Cipollone meets with the panel today behind closed doors.

Plus: President Biden is touting today -- well, it was a better-than- expected jobs report. But economists warn this could make the fight against inflation harder. We discuss what all that means.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:16:31]

CAMEROTA: Right now, on Capitol Hill, Pat Cipollone, Donald Trump's former White House counsel, is testifying before the January 6 Committee behind closed doors.

Recent testimony placed Cipollone at the center of the events on January 6. Multiple witnesses say he tried to persuade Trump to stop the violence and warned that any attempts to stay in office or go to the Capitol that day were unlawful.

Joining us now is CNN congressional correspondent Ryan Nobles.

Ryan, do we know anything yet about Cipollone's testimony today?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the one thing we know, Alisyn, is that it's still happening.

And that is significant, because Cipollone has been there since early this morning around 9:00. And he has been behind closed doors with the committee up until that point. He's ducked out one or two times to have private conversations with his attorney.

But the fact that he would be in the room for that long at least is the most significant confirmation that we have had that his interview is being productive, and that they are getting him to answer at least some of the questions that they're looking for.

There was some concern that Cipollone, being an institutionalist, may be unwilling to answer certain questions because of his concerns about privilege as it relates to the executive branch. This was something that they talked about in their negotiations leading up to it. And the fact that the interview is still ongoing shows that they are -- that he is at least answering some of those questions.

I guess the other question that we have, though, Alisyn is, what do they do with this information? Could we see testimony from Cipollone as soon as the next hearing on Tuesday? Could there be the opportunity to see clips in future hearings? That is all a possibility right now, because, as you point out, Cipollone is someone that was at the center of so much that went on in the White House between the 2020 election and January 6.

And that committee has a lot of questions for him.

CAMEROTA: So, Ryan, we also have some new video of the raid at the home of the former DOJ official that we have heard so much about lately, Jeffrey Clark.

And, based upon how he was dressed, I'm guessing that was a surprise. What have you learned about that?

NOBLES: Yes, well, I think what this shows us, Alisyn, is just how serious the Department of Justice is taking this expansion of their investigation into the efforts to overturn the election and how important they view Jeffrey Clark as a player in all of this.

Of course, Clark is someone who the committee believes was attempting to be installed as attorney general at Donald Trump's behest. He is someone that could play a key role in all of this. And it's somebody the Department of Justice believes is very important to their investigation.

The fact that they banged on his door early in the morning, that they had him come out, not even giving him the opportunity to put on a pair of pants, shows that they wanted to preserve any piece of evidence that could be inside of his house on that particular day. And it shows that this committee believes and -- that he is a very key part of this investigation.

CAMEROTA: OK, Ryan Nobles, thank you very much for all of your reporting.

Let's bring in CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig. He's a former assistant U.S. attorney.

OK, so, Elie, what information does the committee want out of Cipollone today?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Alisyn, let's remember, Pat Cipollone was part of the innermost circle of power in the Trump administration. He was White House counsel for a little over two years.

He tended to keep a low profile, except, you will recall, in the first impeachment, the Ukraine impeachment. He actually defended Donald Trump in the Senate, notably not so in the second impeachment relating to January 6.

There's a bit of history here. Cipollone gave an informal interview to the committee back in April, so they have some general idea what he's talking about. Last week, they issued him a subpoena, probably not coincidentally, the day after Cassidy Hutchinson testified.

[14:20:10]

And today, as Ryan said, he is now going into hour five of videotaped testimony. I think it's a safe bet that some congressional staffer is going to have a busy weekend getting clips ready to show us next week, when the hearings resumed.

In their letter to Pat Cipollone -- this is how important the committee believes he is -- they said you are -- quote -- "uniquely positioned" to testify, uniquely, the one and only. And the committee specified a few areas that they want to ask Pat Cipollone about, the effort to install Jeffrey Clark as the head of DOJ, the effort to install a fake slate of electors for Donald Trump, the effort to influence the counting of the electoral votes in Congress.

And, finally, they want to know what happened inside the White House on January 6. We have reporting that we reported earlier on CNN that Pat Cipollone was with Donald Trump while he watched these events unfolding on TV.

CAMEROTA: I mean, would this even be happening today if it weren't for Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony? I mean, how did her revelations play into what will happen today?

HONIG: Yes, big new revelations you know they're following up, two things in particular.

Cassidy Hutchinson testified that, as the Capitol was being breached, Pat Cipollone said to Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, OK, the president has to do something. Meadows said he doesn't want to do anything. And, according to Hutchinson, Cipollone responded: Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die and the blood is going to be on your hands.

You can bet the committee is following up with questions about that exchange. Another memorable exchange, Hutchinson said that Cipollone said: We cannot let Donald Trump go up to Capitol Hill. Otherwise, according to Cipollone, we're going to get charged with every crime imaginable, potentially obstructing justice or defrauding the electoral count. By the way, Cipollone is right on point. Those are the two crimes that

I think are most likely potentially in play here. But I would want to know, did you, Pat Cipollone, have conversations like this with other people, with Mark Meadows, with other White House staffers?

CAMEROTA: We keep hearing about attorney-client privilege or executive privilege. How much does that come into play today?

HONIG: There's not going to be an attorney-client issue, because Pat Cipollone was not the personal lawyer for Donald J. Trump. He was White House counsel. So there's no attorney-client privilege.

Now, he is, Pat Cipollone, seemingly going to rely on executive privilege to opt out of answering some questions. In a perfect world, with unlimited time, the committee could go to court, challenge that. They don't have that time. So the reality is, they're going to have to make the best of whatever they can get from Cipollone.

CAMEROTA: That brings us to the Department of Justice investigations.

HONIG: Yes.

CAMEROTA: So will they be obviously watching this, but have they interviewed him? Again, are they following the January 6 Committee in terms of their investigation?

HONIG: It's a great question, Alisyn.

We don't know whether Cipollone has already talked to DOJ. There's zero indication he has. And, remember, last week, when Cassidy Hutchinson testified, DOJ was completely blindsided by that. Maybe we will find out if they're talking to Pat Cipollone. Maybe we won't.

But if they're not, I don't know what they're waiting for. It's obvious he needs to testify, and DOJ needs to get his information as soon as possible.

CAMEROTA: Elie Honig, thanks so much for walking us through all of this.

HONIG: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, so President Biden calls the economy well-positioned to fight inflation following the release of a very strong jobs report today. But some economists think otherwise.

So we're going to speak to a member of the Biden administration about it all next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:28:01]

CAMEROTA: President Biden is touting today's better-than-expected jobs report. The U.S. added 372,000 jobs in June. And the unemployment rate held steady at 3.6 percent for the fourth month in a row. The strongest gains were in professional and business services, hospitality and health care industries.

Joining us now is a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Jared Bernstein.

Jared, hello. Thanks for joining us.

JARED BERNSTEIN, WHITE HOUSE COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS: Pleasure to be here.

CAMEROTA: So, very good news, obviously. These are really strong numbers, higher than what was expected.

Did they catch you by surprise?

BERNSTEIN: Well, I always expect these monthly numbers to jump around a bit relative to expectations.

One of the things we like to do at the Council of Economic Advisers is smooth out some of these monthly data by looking at longer-term averages. So, you filter out some of the bits and bobs and the more noisy data to try to pull the signal out, 375,000 jobs per month, on average, over the past three months. So that's the second quarter.

Now, that's a bit slower if you go back a couple of quarters, but it's still extremely strong job growth. This is a very welcoming labor market. And, by the way, that slowing from a breakneck pace of around 500,000 and 600,000 jobs per month, on average, to something closer to these 350,000-375,000 range is precisely what the president was talking about in transitioning to more stable, steady growth rates.

CAMEROTA: So, obviously, the unemployment rate is just one metric of the economy. And there are others that are more concerning to economists.

So, "The New York Times" put it together. I will put it up on the screen for everyone.

The Commerce Department says retail sales fell in May. University of Michigan had a survey. Consumer confidence hit the lowest level they have seen. Half say inflation is eroding their standard of living. Demand for real estate has dropped. Mortgage rates are high. The S&P 500 had their worst first half of a year since 1970.

What's most concerning here to the White House?