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Trump Team To Still Seek Special Master Despite Justice Department's "Filter" Team Review Of Mar-A-Lago Docs; NASA Team Addresses Postponement Of Artemis I Moon Launch; Artemis I Manager: Will Reschedule Launch, "Not Ready To Give Up". Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 26, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

HEATHER THOMPSON, WITNESS: There are 10 to 20 shots and by that time I went inside and told my dad to get away from the window.

ROBERT, WAFEWAY EMPLOYEE: It was loud enough to make me and three other employees ran into a walk-in refrigerator and closed the door and stayed there. We stayed hidden until the authorities arrived.

CHRIS NGUYEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Such a chaotic scene. Police say they did not fire any shots, but when they went inside, that's where they found the apparent shooter dead and close by was an AR-15-style rifle as well as a shotgun. At least two people were killed in this shooting, one person remains in the hospital. Police have yet to release any details about the shooter or a possible motive, but we expect to learn more from the police department later this afternoon. Victor and Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Okay. Chris Nguyen, thank you.

It's the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell.

We begin this hour with the court debate over who will get to handle the documents retrieved from Donald Trump's Florida home three weeks ago today. And sources say Trump's lawyers still want a neutral third party to go through those records which included top secret files and information received from spies.

Today, the Justice Department said its own filter team has done that job already. In a new filing, the Justice Department revealed its privilege review team, as it's called, separate from investigators identified a limited set of material that may be subject to attorney client-privilege.

CAMEROTA: So on Thursday, a judge will hold a hearing as to whether to assign that special master. The DOJ also confirmed that it and other intelligence officials are now conducting a damage assessment of those highly sensitive documents that were being improperly stored in Mar-A-Lago. The Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, told Congress about this on Friday writing in a letter to some House members that her office: "Will also lead an Intelligence Community assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant document." BLACKWELL: Let's turn now to the growing doubt inside Donald Trump's

party. Republicans in the House are becoming more pessimistic of the massive wins for the GOP come November. CNN's Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju has the story. So what are hearing?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Republicans are still confident that they will take back the House during the midterms, but their majority may not be as big as they once had hope. Remember, last year Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leaders bullishly predicted that they could pickup, up to 60 seats in the chamber where they need just five in order to take back the majority.

But in the aftermath of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade where we've seen an energized Democratic electorate where we've also seen some Democrats win in some key special election races, those expectations are changing. Some top Republicans telling me and my colleague, Melanie Zanona, that they expect perhaps they're looking at potentially a 15 to 30 seat pickup in the fall and potentially even as low as a single digit pickup.

Now, if they do have a majority, but a slim one, that can present challenges to McCarthy himself. McCarthy needs 218 votes to secure the speaker's gavel. That means there are already a handful of Republicans who say that they will not support him for the speakership, so that raises questions about that issue.

Also passing an agenda, a major question going forward, whether they can keep their conference united and deal with some essential matters next year, including raising the national debt ceiling to avoid that cataclysmic debt default that is looming next year. Those are big questions that the Republicans are now facing.

So while they do expect the House majority, it could be slimmer and on the Senate side, the map is difficult for them to retake the chamber, so despite Joe Biden's problems brought concerns over inflation, the Republicans see November could be beneficial to them, but may not be as great as they had hoped.

CAMEROTA: And then Manu, tell us about Sen. Graham who has this ominous warning if somehow President Trump is held responsible for mishandling of these classified documents.

RAJU: Yes. Some pretty eyebrow raising remarks from Lindsey Graham who, of course, was once a Donald Trump critic in the run up to the 2016 campaign, during the 2016 campaign but emerged as one of his staunchest defenders during the Trump administration and has defended Donald Trump through the course of the search at Mar-A-Lago, even though Graham himself and like everyone else does not know the exact contents of the classified documents that were kept at Mar-A-Lago, but also suggested some potential violence could happen if Donald Trump is prosecuted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): If there's a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information, after the Clinton (ph) debacle, which you presided over and did a hell of a good job, there'll be riots in the streets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So also, what was surprising about that is that Lindsey Graham, of course, was in this building when there was a riot in Capitol - on Capitol Hill on January 6th and at the time said he was done with all this. But defending Donald Trump in the aftermath of the search in Mar-A-Lago as we've seen a number of Republicans do even though they still want to get information about exactly what Donald Trump was storing, why he was storing it and there's still questions about whether he broke the law, guys.

[15:05:14]

BLACKWELL: Manu Raju with the reporting for us on Capitol Hill, thank you.

Let's bring in now Ronald Brownstein, CNN Senior Political Analyst and Senior Editor at The Atlantic, Joe Walsh is a former Republican Congressman from Illinois, who now hosts the white flag podcast. Gentlemen, welcome back.

Congressman, let me start with you. And we know your history, you tweeted ahead of 2016 that if Trump didn't win the election, you were grabbing a musket. You've apologized for those comments. But from that perspective, how do you view what you're hearing from Sen. Graham as this investigation goes on?

JOE WALSH, (R) FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, ILLINOIS: Yes, Victor. Look to predict violence and/or to warn about violence but not condemn it is terribly irresponsible and terribly dangerous and Lindsey Graham knows that. Lindsey Graham knows what he said last night will inflame people and is dangerous. I hear threats of violence every single day and I will say, Victor, if Donald Trump is indicted, there will be violence. I mean, look what happened on January 6.

But those threats of violence should never stop the pursuit of justice. That's what a country who believes in the rule of law does. Lindsey Graham knows that and it's shameful he didn't acknowledge that.

CAMEROTA: Yes. And, Ron, just - I want your quick thoughts on that, because we've all seen this horror movie before as the Congressman says, that if you have to be worried about violence and, of course, we are after seeing the foaming at the mouth mob that came out on January 6th, then that means that Donald Trump can never be held responsible for the things that he's done wrong like the gross mishandling of these classified documents.

RONALD BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, the comments from Lindsey Graham are really, Alisyn, just another measure of how much political and social life in America is changing in the Trump era. I mean, it happens day by day in a way that sometimes it's easy to lose sight of. But think about how common threats of violence have become throughout the political system against election workers, against public health workers and board of education meetings, against members of Congress who voted to impeach Donald Trump.

We are seeing a kind of absorption of threats of violence at the edge of the Republican coalition in a systematic way. And too few of the party leaders explicitly and unreservedly saying this is unacceptable, instead you get the kind of things that Lindsey Graham did yesterday in which he doesn't directly call for it, but he doesn't condemn it.

And by - as the congressman said - by predicting it without condemning it, you are basically inviting it.

BLACKWELL: Congressman, to this expectation that the win in November for Republicans may not be above 60 seats, as McCarthy talked about back in November, the President has some legislative wins, gas prices are down, al-Zawahiri is dead, but how much of this is on the Republicans that that win won't be as broad as they predicted earlier?

WALSH: A whole bunch. I would say most of it. They've - look, we're talking about a party, my former political party, that nominated a bunch of crazy, nutty election-denying candidates. And as we've discussed before, that plays really well in a Republican primary. It doesn't play as well in the general election.

The other thing is Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, I mean, what have we all been talking about for the past month, Donald Trump classified documents down at Mar-A-Lago. Trump energizes the Republican base, but he gets independents and all the rest of America out to vote as well, which is what happened in 2018 and 2020 and it could happen again this year.

CAMEROTA: Ron, I think it's interesting what we're hearing from some Republicans now, mainstream Republicans who really take umbrage at something that President Biden said behind closed doors at this fundraiser. This wasn't on the record, but he said it out loud to this group. And so what the reporting is that he said at this fundraising event on Thursday was: "What we're seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It's not just Trump, It's the entire philosophy that underpins the - I'm just going to say something, it's like semi-fascism."

So what you're hearing from some Republicans now, including Gov. Sununu in New Hampshire, they're trying to, I think, make this sort of the basket of deplorables equivalent, which is they're taking great personal offense at this wrong, Ron. And - but don't they distinguish between the MAGA wing and themselves?

[15:10:01]

BROWNSTEIN: Right. I think that President Biden was on stronger ground because he attributed this to the MAGA philosophy or MAGA movement. You always want to be careful when characterizing large groups of people, obviously as a leader of a country. But the President is not as far from alone in viewing the MAGA faction, which is now clearly the dominant faction in the Republican Party. Whatever - folks like Chris Sununu want to say, that is the dominant faction in the Republican Party. There are many experts in authoritarianism and the decline of

democracy, Daniel Ziblatt (ph), Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who will tell you that that movement in the Republican Party has more in common with what we have seen in authoritarian parties in countries like Hungary or turkey than they do out of the American political tradition. Two-thirds of Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election, two-thirds of House Republicans voted to overturn the 2020 election in multiple polls, including by Vanderbilt and the American enterprises.

A majority of Republicans have said the American way of life is disappearing, traditional way of life is disappearing so fast (inaudible) force to save it. You talked about the nomination of election deniers. It's uncomfortable for people like Sununu to acknowledge that they are now in a coalition that includes clearly anti-democratic forces, but it's hard to ignore the evidence that they are.

BLACKWELL: Congressman, we've only got about 15 seconds. Your thoughts on the outrage in the comment from the President?

WALSH: Victor, it's ridiculous. Look, I come from the MAGA cult. I escaped the MAGA cult. President Biden was talking about the philosophy behind MAGA. He wasn't calling out specific voters. I don't think he went far enough in what he said.

BLACKWELL: All right. Former Congressman Joe Walsh, Ronald Brownstein, thank you.

CAMEROTA: Now, to the moon mission, 50 years in the making scrubbed today after an engine malfunction. Artemis I is the first in a series of complex missions that would enable human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

BLACKWELL: It was scheduled for liftoff this morning, but the launch team discovered a bleed in one of the rocket's four engines. Let's go to CNN Space and Innovation Correspondent Rachel Crane. She's live from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. So what exactly happened?

RACHEL CRANE, CNN SPACE AND INNOVATION CORRESPONDENT: So Victor and Alisyn, NASA just held a press conference about an hour ago giving us a little bit more insight into exactly what went wrong here. They're saying that it doesn't actually look as though there was a problem, which - with the engine itself, it was engine number three. There's four of these RS-25 engines on the core of the SLS rocket.

Actually, those engines were used during the shuttle program. They've all been flight proven, but what they what they think the problem is here is with the cooling system of the engines before they put the very, very cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen through those engines, they need to cool them down and they weren't seeing the right temperatures, the temperatures that they wanted to see.

But exactly why that happened exactly what the issue is, they didn't give any more insight other than that. NASA will be holding another press conference tomorrow where hopefully we'll learn whether or not the backup window for Friday is feasible at this point. Now, there was a backup to the backup also scheduled for Monday.

But if this is a more technically difficult issue to troubleshoot here, Victor and Alisyn, they may have to wheel that gigantic rocket behind me, back to the vehicle assembly building to help get to the bottom of this issue. And just that journey alone is three and a half days.

So you build in the time to then deal with this problem and then the journey back, so it could be a substantial delay if this does prove to be a more serious issue. But, of course, I just want to point out today was a test launch and these scrubs are typical when it comes to spaceflight. Spaceflight is hard, so this isn't anything out of the ordinary here, especially when you're talking about a never before flown rocket here.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Great context. Rachel Crane, thank you.

And stick around everybody, because we're going to be speaking to astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, about what went wrong today and he's also going to answer your big space questions, that's coming up.

BLACKWELL: Also ahead, a Duke volleyball player says she faced racist slurs during a game at Brigham Young University and that school officials there they did not act quickly enough to stop the harassment. We'll speak with BYU's Athletic Director ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:19:05]

BLACKWELL: NASA's long-awaited Artemis I mission was postponed today after an engine cooling issue was discovered. Now, this was supposed to be the first in a series of missions that would return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972 and they will try to launch, again, as early as Friday. But here's what the Artemis I manager thinks went wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE SARAFIN, ARTEMIS I MISSION MANAGER: The combination of not being able to get the engine three chill down and then the vent valve issue that they saw at the inner tank really caused us to pause today and we felt like we needed a little more time. There was also a series of weather issues throughout the window. We would have been no-go for weather at the beginning of the window due to precipitation. And later around the window we would have been no-go for lightning within the launch pad area.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Let's bring an Astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson. He joins us live. He's also the director of the Hayden Planetarium.

[15:20:03]

Neil, great to see you as always. I'm no rocket scientist, just a TV journalist which is obviously much harder, but an engine bleed sounds bad to me. Are you surprised when these things crop up at like the 11th hour right before takeoff?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, ASTROPHYSICIST & DIRECTOR, HAYDEN PLANETARIUM: No. I mean, it - that's - it is rocket science and it's hard and it requires a lot of people, and a lot of things to happen correctly, all things that have to work. And so we shouldn't be surprised. Engineering is hard, science is hard and these are just reminders of that. Better that it gets scrubbed than it explodes on the launch pad, so it's to consider the alternatives.

BLACKWELL: Yes, certainly. Listen, we have asked our viewers on Twitter and Instagram and I don't know how many platforms we have, that's all I have, to submit questions that they'd like you to answer and I'm going to start with one that I've received. Besides executing a safe mission, obviously, what's the top priority scientifically of the mission? What took so long to go back to the moon? Are we in a moon race? I'll let you choose which of those questions you want to answer.

TYSON: I think we are in a little bit of a moon race, even if no one admits it publicly. China has met good on every one of their promises when they said we're going to put astronauts taken out into orbit, they did that. They're going to make - build a space station, they're doing that. And so they want to say they - declare they want to go to the moon, we should really take them seriously.

If we feel threatened by that in any way, this is the kind of response that triggers. That's why we went to the moon in the first place. Our cleanse memory of that period is we're Americans, we're explorers. Well, we were in the middle of a Cold War and we got scared when Russia and Soviet Union launched Sputnik and we had to respond in some way for our own dignity, for our own place in the world. So a lot of things drive space exploration beyond just scientific motives.

CAMEROTA: Okay. This comes from Joseph on my Instagram, who says, "Does Neil think we'll ever colonize the moon?"

TYSON: Yes. So colonies imply that you're going to go there and just hang out and never come back. But there's a little problem - there's like the no air problem, okay, first thing. I don't mind going there for a visit, okay, and there's this old joke, they have restaurants there and they might have good food, but there'd be no atmosphere in the restaurant.

So you can imagine visiting the moon, but the idea that we'd have a permanent colony, who would do that? I'll just stay here on Earth, personally.

BLACKWELL: All right. So this next question came in through Twitter: "How long will the mission to the moon take, and will the astronauts eventually stay/reside on the moon for research purposes?" I think you answered the second half of that. What do you think?

TYSON: So, a straight shot to the moon where you sort of launch, you set off your engines to exit Earth orbit and then coast to the moon, that takes three days and then it's three days back, and you stay on the moon, however long your mission requires of you. This one, Artemis I, and I think also, II, but certainly this one, it has no plans on landing. They're just going to orbit around the moon and testing the hardware and the software and all the things that you want to make sure work before you put people inside the Orion capsule.

And so this is a - these are important tests. By the way, during Apollo, we did the same thing, except we had people on board because we didn't have the robotic remote control abilities that we do today. So that's why we're sending an entire mission that in the future will have people but right now it does not.

So how long you spend there is up to whatever are your goals. And like I said, geopolitics is some of the strongest drivers of why people going - why nations go into space, not science, unfortunately.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Neil, this comes from my - Alex on my Instagram, who says, "What measures are taken to stop rockets from colliding with space junk?"

TYSON: Yes. So space is getting junkier by the moment, okay. And so often, they don't typically tell you this, but often a launch window is set for many reasons, but including the risk of what you want to avoid some known space junk that - through which it could have a - with which it could collide. And so the military at NASA as well as the military tracks space junk and you don't want to run into a piece of space junk moving fast miles per second on an intersection - on an orbital intersection.

[15:25:04]

So, this is a problem, it's a problem - it's going to get worse before it gets better. And I joke that maybe aliens have come to try to visit and they see all the space junk in our - around and - surrounding the Earth and they say, forget it. We're coming back home. We don't want to risk landing there. So I think about what aliens think all the time (inaudible) with me.

BLACKWELL: Well, it's a (inaudible) to consider, thinking about what aliens think all the time. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the man with the best background on television, thank you so much for being with us.

TYSON: All right. Thanks for having me.

CAMEROTA: Neil, thank you.

BLACKWELL: All right. Major developments on the battlefield in Ukraine, forces there have now launched a counter offensive in the south to drive Russian forces out. We've got new reporting ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)