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U.S. Officials: Russian Military Leaders Discussed Use Of Nuclear Weapons; Former Prime Minister Netanyahu Appears On Brink Of Return To Power; Bolsonaro Does Not Concede To Lula But Agrees To Transition; Ken Burns' Book Explores America's History Through Photographs; FCC Commissioner Calls For TikTok Ban. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired November 02, 2022 - 15:30   ET

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

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BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: Now some alarming new reporting about the war in Ukraine. Russian military officials recently discussed how and when they would use a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield. That's according to a U.S. intelligence assessment described to CNN by multiple sources.

Some of those sources cautioned that the conversations may have taken out of the context, but others say they show intensifying frustration among Russian military leaders, frustration that they fear could become desperation. CNN's Natasha Bertrand joins us now. So, Natasha, it's important to point out that Putin himself was not involved in these conversations, nonetheless they are troublesome.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Exactly right, Bianna. So, what we're learning is that this intelligence assessment is essentially is a description of a conversation that Russian generals had amongst themselves, about the conditions under which they could potentially use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. Now this intelligence has the administration kind of divided. Because it is not a raw intelligence product. It's not, for example, a readout of the exact conversation that these generals had.

Rather it is a description based on a source, and the intelligence community kind of putting some analysis over it as to what it could mean. And so, the rub here is really as to how to interpret what this intelligence actually means. Is it the general discussing concrete plans to want some kind of nuclear weapon. Is it more of an abstract discussion about, you know, what-if. That's something that administration officials the at manufactures officials are trying to figure out now.

Some of them say that this intelligence really is not enough and that it could be taken out of context, it could be misinterpreted. But other officials are more concerned about it. They say that given all of the rhetoric that we have heard from Putin, from other top Kremlin officials about their desperation in terms of the battlefield losses in Ukraine, the evacuation from certain southern cities in Ukraine, that has raised some fears that perhaps something could be -- definitely could happen, right. And so, the administration is emphasizing that they have seen no plans

-- that Putin has made to conduct this kind of attack. But still, they are watching this very closely because of course, no one is in Vladimir Putin's mind himself.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, and in response to some of this reporting, this excellent reporting, we even have Kremlin officials saying once again, reiterating that there Constitution says that they would only use a nuclear weapon if their sovereignty was threatened. Natasha Bertrand, will continue to follow all of this, thank you.

Well, it's a potentially remarkable political comeback for Benjamin Netanyahu. Nearly 17 months after he was ousted from office, Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister is on the verge of a triumphant return to power. Now this despite being on trial for corruption. With the vast majority of votes counted Netanyahu's far right coalition appears poised to win a majority in the Israeli parliament. Joining us now is Bloomberg's foreign affairs columnist, Bobby Ghosh.

So, Bobby, help put into contact what we're seeing in Israel right now, specifically with the right in that country and what we could see in a new Netanyahu collision-led government.

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BOBBY GHOSH, FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST, BLOOMBERG: What we're seeing there is a continuing push towards the right in Israeli politics. This is a process that has been going for several years. The last election was Solomon aberration where the center and the center left and the center right together managed to cobble together an unwieldy coalition -- that didn't hold. And now the extreme right has made enormous gains.

The context is very important. This is not a one-off. This is not a result of low turnout. In fact, this is the highest turnout in any Israeli election in more than a decade since 1999. And most of the turnout, the spike in the turnout comes from the extreme right. It shows that the extreme right after a period of uncertainty has consolidated. And Benjamin Netanyahu has aligned his Likud Party -- which is center right -- to the extreme right and has driven that combination back in the power.

It means that the center right are now beholding to the extreme right. And the extreme right parties now basically are going to be kingmakers in Israel. In this next round of government formation and perhaps for some years to come.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, and it comes after a historic coalition government where for the first time we saw an Arab party represented as well in the Knesset.

Let's move on to Brazil. And Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro finally broke his silence days after losing his reelection bid. He spoke yesterday. He vowed to abide by the constitution. But notably, he did not explicitly concede the election. And this is important because since the election we've seen his supporters block highway traffic, hundreds of highways across the country, concerns about the effect that would have on the economy. Does his non-concession at least ease some of that tension?

GHOSH: It eases tension to the extent that he's not calling directly for his supporters to come out into the streets. But as you point out, many of them are already in the street, and they are challenging the results. He hasn't said whether he will set up a formal challenge in the courts, but his sort of chief of staff immediately after Bolsonaro spoke, his chief of staff came out and said that they would begin the work to transition to the new government led by, although President Lula, which allows for a little bit of optimism.

But the fact that Bolsonaro hasn't come out openly and said, look, I lost fair and square, the other side won, let's move on. That leaves open the possible that he might be simply taking the measure of the -- of his base, to understand where his base stands. Whether he can mount a challenge in the streets, having failed to win the election.

And the crucial, the crucial, the billion dollar question now, Bianna, is what will the military say? If the military faces down the protesters in the street, forces those protesters to go back home, if the military throws its weight behind Lula, who won the election, then we can begin to exhale. Until then, I would still by holding my breath.

GOLODRYGA: South America's largest democracy. Bobby Ghosh, we'll be watching closely, thank you.

A tense political time and a test of democracy is just the latest chapter in American history. Legendary filmmaker Ken Burns' latest book looks at the country's history through photographs. He'll join me next with an inside look.

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GOLODRYGA: This just in the CNN. New York Democratic congressional candidate Max Rose says his campaign headquarters was defaced with what he calls an antisemitic trope. Rose tweeted this image of the graffiti which shows the word "Soros" referring to George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and frequent target of conservative conspiracy theories.

Rose, who is Jewish, tweeted: Overnight my HQ -- headquarters -- sign was graffitied with an antisemitic trope. Enough. We cannot stand for a violent and extreme ideology to be embraced by our politics any longer. Together we must extinguish this hate and choose a better America.

The NYPD says it was investigating this incident.

Enough political violence, economic anxiety and racial hate dominate headlines in America today. And my next guest knows better than most how history repeats itself. Ken Burns is a veteran documentary filmmaker known for telling stories of America's history that can help guide our path forward. He has a new book called "Our America: A Photographic History." And he joins me now.

So great to have you on the program. We've just been going through this beautiful book, and we're going to show our viewers some of these incredible photos captured in it. If we can just start to talk about the book and the message you hope readers take away from it.

KEN BURNS, AUTHOR, "OUR AMERICA: A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY": Well, thank you for making me. I've been making documentary films for almost 50 years about America. But I've also been interested in the still photograph as a kind of DNA, the basic building block of the stories I tell. And I've been dreaming of this book for about 15 years, working on it in the evenings and weekends.

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Trying to compile the best photographs in chronological order, one photograph per page, minimum caption. Beginning with the first photograph ever taken -- a self-portrayed of the photographer and going more or less up to the present. Representing every 50 states, all black and white, and also having in the back material that gives you a lot more detail, kind of the story behind the story of the photograph.

And it is as you say, I'm not sure if history repeats itself, but Mark Twain once suggested, that it rhymes. And I've never made a film in which I haven't been aware of how much the story, however distant in the past, however recent in the past, is always rhyming in the present. Our most recent film on the U.S. and the holocaust did exactly that.

So, this book is about those rhymes, about how we are in all our glory, our greed and generosity, our venality and our virtue, our puritanism and prurience. All of that's there -- good times, bad times, the beauty of our natural setting, all that is there.

GOLODRYGA: That documentary series is so important and as you know it's timely, too unfortunately. Every day we're covering it seems a new antisemitic attack, the incident, as we just did with Congressman Rose. I want to pick up on the cover photo for this book. Because I would imagine it's sort of an embarrassment of riches, just to figure out which one of these goes on the cover. But it's a picture of a boy in front of a car. And we're showing it right now. What's the story behind it?

BURNS: The story is, this is a photograph by my mentor, the late Jerome Liebling, an extraordinary still photographer who really at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, kind of rearranged all my molecules and set me on the path. I don't think he's know I was. I don't think I be here today without Jerry Liebling.

This is a photograph he took in 1949 in New York City of this just wonderful kid looking at the camera, with all his business, the hat, the coat, shoes flapping, an improbable shoot, the beauty of the curve of the car. You know, I had lots of choices for this. And I felt I could honors my mentor by putting his on the very front. And to say -- the word "our" has to be as inclusive as possible. It's

everybody's stories. And what I've learned -- I've made films for 50 years of the U.S., but I really made films about us. And what I've learned in those 50 years is that there's no "them." And today everybody is telling us there's a them that's responsible for their grievances.

And I think what we have to get back to in our country is a sense that there's no them, that we're all in this together, and our problems are not the other person's fault. But we're all bound to each other. Lincoln understood this. All of our great leaders understood that. And this book is an attempt to sort of draw together all of that into one place and celebrate how incredibly beautiful our country is. How incredibly dark parts of our past is, but how people have joy and fun. It's all in the book.

GOLODRYGA: You mentioned the Civil War -- you have made a series about the Civil War, and there are photos represented in this book as well. If you can talk a little bit about them, "The Harvest Of Death," really focusing on inequity in this country. There you see the images of bodies there. Talk about that.

BURNS: This is from -- this is a beautiful photograph by Timothy O'Sullivan, who worked for Matthew Brady, the famous celebrated photographer. I think this is from the second day of Gettysburg. That would make it July 2nd, 1863, it's the dead I think in the wheat field. You know, it's the biggest battle ever fought in New York America.

It's the most consequentially important battle of the Civil War and it has to be there. and it's facing a page on the right which shows people looking at the list of the dead from Gettysburg outside a newspaper office in New York City. And so, the photographs begin to talk to one another as they sit next to each other on the page, but this is of course, about the horror of the Civil War.

GOLODRYGA: Can I just ask you, as someone who has covered history so much, and covered it the good, the bad, the ugly here, we turn to historians as almost therapists as we're covering every day a new, unprecedented headline or news cycle. And none of it seems very good as of late. How are you feeling about the currents state of not just politics, but our rhetoric, Americans living together, coexisting in a country that as unique as ours?

BURNS: Yes, it's -- we're in a major, major crisis. I feel like there are three crises before this time, the Civil War, the Great Depression and the Second World War, but in those, even with the Civil War -- and there was great, you know, yelling at each other and calling each other names and violence, of course, 750,000 people died in the Civil War.

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But this one -- but during those crises, things like free and fair elections, the peaceful transfer of power, the independence of the judiciary, seemed kind of assumed by everybody. And now, they're not. And that poses perhaps the greatest challenge we've ever faced. So, while there are rhymes, backwards and forwards with our past, I think we now have to understand, you know, as I said, when I was promoting the film on the holocaust, you know, the time to save a democracy is before it's lost.

And I hope that the pictures that are assembled in this book remind us of the cohesion which has been our strength. We're a lot of different tributaries flowing into one place. And what happens when you begin to subscribe to the authoritarian playbook -- the Misa Verdi, these are gals in Jamestown, Rhode Island playing in their very risque bathing suits, the first subway station in America, in New York City, all of these things remind us of our glory. And that we are an alloy, strong for all of the elements that go into it, much stronger than any single element.

And the problem with the grievance politics of today is it suggests there's only one of us, we're being replaced and we need to get everyone away. And that's not in the American spirit. So, I hope it's optimistic because people get through bad times like the Civil War, but I think at this point, we need to be extraordinarily cautious and vote for our democracy.

GOLODRYGA: That is important. It's a beautiful book. It reminds us what a beautiful country we have. We've got to preserve it. The book called "Our America: Photographic History." Ken Burns always great to talk to you, thank you.

New today, the FCC commissioner calls for a ban on one of the most popular social media platforms, TikTok, we'll explain why, up next.

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GOLODRYGA: FCC commissioner Brendan Carr says TikTok should be banned in the U.S. His reasoning, well, he says the social media company can't be trusted to settle on a national security agreement with the federal government. CNN's tech reporter Brian Fung is here to give us more context. So, Brian, what's behind the commissioner's statement?

BRIAN FUNG, CNN TECH REPORTER: Yes, well, this all goes back to the bipartisan concerns about China, and whether China could force TikTok or its parent company ByteDance to hand over data on U.S. citizens that use the app.

You know, this claim, this call by Commissioner Carr that TikTok should be banned from the U.S., you know, ties back to negotiation that TikTok has been having with the U.S. government over a possible deal that would allow TikTok to continue operating in the U.S.

But in an interview today, Carr told me that the more he reads about TikTok in public reporting, the less confident he is that TikTok will reach an agreement with the U.S. that will it won't try to try and get around or circumvent, somehow, which is why he's calling for an outright ban of the app now. It's important to point out here, that the FCC does not regulate

TikTok or other social media companies. So, in some respects, Commissioner Carr is, you know, speaking out of his lane a little bit. But you know, he's saying that his experience on the FCC, dealing with other Chinese businesses in the telecom space, and trying to block those companies from U.S. telecom networks has given him important context for his efforts in trying to prevent TikTok from being able to operating in the United States.

Now what is TikTok staying about all this.

In a statement here they gave me they said: Commissioner Carr has no role in or direct knowledge of the confidential discussions with the U.S. government related to tick-tock and is not in a position to discuss what those negotiations entail. He appears to be expressing his personal views, independent of his authority as an FCC commissioner. We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the U.S. government that well satisfy all reasonable national security concerns -- Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: All right, we'll continue to follow the story, Brian Fung, thank you.

And thank you for watching, "THE LEAD" starts right after this short break.