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CNN International: Brazilian Armed Forces Work to Maintain Order after Bolsonaro Supporters Storm Government Building; Prince Harry Hasn't Spoken to Father, Brother in "A While"; Biden Visits Border for First Time in his Presidency; Is Brazil's Democracy Under a Jan 6-Style Attack; Region Prepares for Influx of Chinese Tourists. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 09, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

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BIANCA NOBILO, CNN HOST NEWSROOM: Hello and welcome to CNN "Newsroom". I'm Bianca Nobilo in for Max Foster today. He's actually sitting right next to me. Just to head Bolsonaro's supporters start to disband outside military headquarters in Brazil's Capital. One day after rioters stormed government buildings.

Also ahead Prince Harry's pain lays bare as he reveals intimate details about his family and the reasons he says he had to leave. And Kyiv rejects Moscow's claim that it killed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers in a revenge attack. Our team on the ground has a firsthand report.

Brazil's armed forces are working today to maintain order over a deeply divided nation following Sunday shocking right wing attack on government buildings in the capital Brasilia. And a heavy Police and military watch. Some supporters of the Former President Jair Bolsonaro are just now starting to leave camps around military headquarters there. Hours after 100 storm the congressional building the Supreme Court and the Presidential Palace.

They smashed windows ransacked officers use furniture to block Police and even tried to set fire to the carpet. At least 400 people were arrested. President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva described the events as barbaric. Let's bring in CNN's Brazil anchor William Waack, who joins us now live from Sao Paulo. William, thanks so much for joining the program bring us up to speed as to what's happening right now?

WILLIAM WAACK, CNN BRASIL CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now, this equation is very calm. It's nothing going on. Actually, the Police in part of the army are working hard to get the people responsible for this. It's not a riot to what we saw yesterday, while sort of Insurrection better organized, but very violently destructive. Right now the situation is very calm.

NOBILO: And how much support do these rioters enjoy among the population at large? WAACK: We have a divided society, Bianca, you could compare with your own country. The elections didn't bring some sort of reconciliation of pacification, whatever you want to call it. We have a divided society. We have a divided political atmosphere, which is not as ossification whatsoever for what happened yesterday, yesterday was terrorism purely simple.

People had the idea that they could occupy the centers of powers, Supreme Court. Legislative is like occupying the Capitol and the White House, our White House was occupied as well. They are they were willing to paralyze traffic in terms of blocking with petrol and fuel refineries. They didn't succeed because it's not my theory in one way, or the other way. They count on some sort of discontent with what they call the system. The systems are basically our democratic institutions.

NOBILO: William Waack, thank you so much for joining us. His, Tell-All book doesn't Spare any details and officially hit bookstores tomorrow but in a series of television interviews, Prince Harry is making more explosive allegations about the inner workings of the British Royal Family. He's accusing the Queen Consort of leaking stories and says that he hasn't spoken to his father King Charles or his brother, Prince William in a while.

Max Foster is here with more now on the latest revelations from Prince Harry. Max, let's start with these allegations about the Queen Consort Camilla how damaging are those for the royal family?

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MAX FOSTER, CNN ROYAL CORRESPONDENT: I think it's damaging because the one, the big mission of Buckingham Palace over the last 20 years has been to rehabilitate Camilla's reputation to allow her to get in the position to become Queen Consort which is something Queen Elizabeth obviously supported.

And Harry, really taking a torch to that he does still says he approves of them being together, and they get on very well. But that she was dangerous and she was leaking these stories against his brothers will and they were stories about William.

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PRINCE HARRY, BRITISH MILITARY OFFICER: I love my father, I love my brother, I love my family, I always will always do nothing of what I've done in this book or otherwise has ever been any intention to harm them or hurt them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Prince Harry, justifying his bombshell exposes of the royal family. The latest revelation, that Camilla the Queen Consort, leaked stories in a campaign to be queen.

HARRY: With a family built on hierarchy. And with her on the way to being green console, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Then there was the family's distrust of Meghan

HARRY: She has changed. She must be a witch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Prince William and Kate didn't get on with Meghan, from the get go, he says.

HARRY: Some of the things that my brother and sister in law some of the way that they were acting or behaving, definitely felt to me as though unfortunately that stereotyping was causing a bit of a barrier to them really, sort of, you know, introducing or welcoming her.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (on camera): What do you mean specifically?

HARRY: Well, American actress divorce biracial, there are all different parts to that and what that can mean. But if you are like a lot of my family do if you are reading the press, the British tabloids at the same time as living the life. Then there is a tendency where you can actually end up living in the tabloid bubble rather than the actual reality.

He said he never accused the family of being racist when he and Meghan previously said someone had commented on their son's skin color. He also admits to being naive about the way his family would be treated.

What Meghan had to go through was similar in some part, to what could have been through very different circumstances. But then you add in the race element, which was what the press British press jumped on, straightaway. I went into this incredibly naive I had no idea that British press was so bigoted, how I was probably bigoted, before the relationship with Meghan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): The Duke of Sussex says his relationship did alter him but for the better.

HARRY: Yes, I did change. I'm really glad I changed. Because rather than getting drunk falling out of clubs taking drugs, I had now found the love of my life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Harry says he doesn't speak to his father or brother any more. He was denied a seat on the plane to Scotland with them when Queen Elizabeth died. So has he burnt bridges with the rest of her family completely? After sharing even more secrets?

HARRY: Well, they've shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile up to this point. And I'm not sure how honest he has been in bridges. Silence only allows the abuser to abuse, right? So I don't know, question are staying silent, is ever going to make things better?

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NOBILO: One of the big questions that people are asking Max, whether or not they fully sympathize with Prince Harry, or they're perhaps more skeptical is why he's chosen to try and resolve some of these issues that he's outlining in the most public way possible. Has he given any more explanation? FOSTER: And he paid for it as well, you got to remember, he's, you know, he thinks both sides have been going public. The Palace, the family has been doing it in an underhand way and identifiable way talking about sources. Some people would say the Sussex is operated like that before as well.

But now he's just saying, I'm just being very open and honest, on a platform, but she largely controls a lot of these interviews, you know, we're led by him because he had all the material in the book, and it was based on the books.

It's his view is that he's telling his truth, and they can build from here. But there's no doubt it's very damaging to the family that Camilla comments are very damaging to the royal family and the monarchy undermines the whole system. But he says he's not trying to hurt them. So this is, you know, you have to watch all of his interviews to fully understand where he's coming from. But even then you get quite confused, but it's still how he feels he's expressing himself.

NOBILO: It is difficult to reconcile the positions but like you say, that is just being human and how people feel, I suppose. Max Foster, thank you so much for joining us. Now Kyiv is dismissing Moscow's claim that Russian forces have killed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and Kramatorsk calling it propaganda.

And a CNN team on the ground has seen no indication of mass casualties in the area that the Kremlin says it has absolute trust in statements by the Russian Ministry of Defense about the validity of the strike. Meanwhile to the North, Ukraine says the Kharkiv region was targeted with a missile strike and shelling on Monday.

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NOBILO: CNN's Ben Wedeman joins us now live in Kramatorsk in Eastern Ukraine. Ben, there is reason to be very skeptical about the Russian reports about this revenge strike supposedly having killed hundreds of Ukrainians. What have you witnessed with your team on the ground?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What we've witnessed is no evidence whatsoever, Bianca, that there's any truth to the Russian claims. We're standing in front of a high school one of the hits that took place just about eight minutes, very after midnight on Sunday. And as you can see a very large crater we believe created by an S-300 surface to air missile used as a surface to surface missile. It's blown up in front of this high school.

The glass is all been shattered, but our crew went inside the building just hours after the strike. There's no evidence of any casualties whatsoever. There's no blood on the floor, there's not even any evidence anybody was in this building. They saw rows of desks and chairs blackboards on the wall, but no indication whatsoever that anybody was in that building or hurt in that strike.

We went to another location where there's another very large crater like this one in the ground right next to a garage. But yet again, no evidence that there was any large concentration of Ukrainian soldiers or much damage beyond the crater it created. Now it's widely believed that this strike was in revenge to Ukrainian strike on a vocational school in the town of Makiivka in the Donetsk grid region.

Just a few hours into the New Year, in which even the Russians concede at least 89 of their soldiers were killed. The Ukrainians claim as many as 400 Russians were killed and 300 wounded. But obviously, neither of those claims can be independently verified, but certainly what we've seen with our own eyes, and what we've heard from Ukrainian officials. Bianca, there doesn't seem to be a shred of truth in these Russian claims.

NOBILO: CNN's Ben Wedeman in Eastern Ukraine verifying and examining those Russian propaganda claims firsthand. Thank you so much. U.S. President Joe Biden is in Mexico, where he'll meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau later today.

The North American summit will last two days and this follows a visit to the U.S.-Mexican border in El Paso, Texas on Sunday. Mr. Biden met with border patrol officers, lawmakers and local officials, but did not appear to meet with any migrants. Let's go live now to Mexico City and our Priscilla Alvarez. Priscilla, tell us more about how Biden's visit has been received in El Paso.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, immigrant advocates criticize the fact that the President didn't get to see the full scope of what they call a humanitarian crisis because he didn't see migrants that we know of now. There are migrants that are living on the streets of El Paso and the President did go to a migrant respite center. But there weren't migrants there at the time.

And a senior administration official tells CNN that it was a coincidence, there just didn't happen to be any migrants there. And part of the reason to is that numbers of border crossings have dropped there. But the bigger picture here is that this has been a political problem for the administration and it's not an easy one that they can fix.

They need the assistance of Congress, which President Biden has made quite clear, in fact, saying in a border security speech last week, that Democrats and Republicans need to come together to reform the U.S. immigration system. But they also need the help of their partners to the south, primarily Mexico, where I am. So we are expecting to hear President Biden talk to Mexican President Lopez Obrador a lot about migration and what they can do to stem the flow of migration.

Of course, a lot of the initiatives that the U.S. rolls out to try to stem the flow of migration typically require some level of buy in from Mexico take last week the announcement that the administration would push back Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Cubans to Mexico, if they didn't come in through a parole program, which has been newly established again, that requires Mexico to agree.

Then what we expect to hear more on climate change, economic development and security. Fentanyl has been a big issue. That is one that is likely to come up. So the three leaders will meet later today. They'll then have the summit tomorrow where there will be more discussion.

But it is just very clear at this point that the President Biden needs the assistance of these countries as he deals with a massive migration issue across the Western Hemisphere that is landing at the U.S. doorstep.

NOBILO: Priscilla Alvarez in Mexico City thank, you.

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NOBILO: And still to come, the chaotic scenes from Brazil echo the January 6 attack on the U.S. Congress two years ago. We'll discuss the rhetoric behind what many are calling an assault on democracy.

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NOBILO: Is Brazil's democracy under the January 6 style attack, the chaotic scenes that we've seen in Brazil over the weekend when hundreds of supporters of Former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed government buildings in the capital Brasilia remind us of another event that represented a serious threat to democracy? And you can see it here. We've got it up on the wall for you.

So on the right, we're looking at the scenes from inside and outside the U.S. Capitol that happened on January 6th, United States. And obviously on the other side, we're looking at the scenes that are unfolding in Brazil just hours ago. Now Leaders from around the world including the President of the EU, the British Prime Minister and of course President Joe Biden are condemning what they're witnessing unfolding Brazil.

Biden says I condemn the assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil and goes on to say that the U.S. has full confidence in Brazil's institutions. Bolsonaro's supporters use social media to get heavy exposure of their propaganda prompting social media giant Meta to label the unrest as a "Violating Event". And to remove all content that supports those who stormed the buildings from its platforms.

To discuss let's bring in CNN's Senior Political Analyst John Avlon, and he joins us now from New York, John, great to see you. We were looking in a split screen at the January 6th, Insurrection and scenes in Brazil. Bolsonaro has been referred to as the Trump of the tropics, there are obviously similarities. But how do their grievances stack up? Do those in Brazil also reject the result of the election? Or is it more than that?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely, the echoes are unmistakable even beyond and before the attack on the Congress building and the Capitol. It is a concrete example about how disinformation can become weaponized to attack democracy to undermine faith in democracy specifically, by spreading election lies.

You've got a President who lost an election, fanning the flames with a loose affiliation of folks from that nationalist populist movement, including many Trump advisors here in the United States, including Steve Bannon, sort of saying that don't concede if you lose, don't concede the election that there was baseless accusations of electoral fraud all culminating on an attack on the Capitol after being disseminated via social media.

So it's a really it's a urgent wakeup call about how the forces that led to January 6, the United States are still very much in effect.

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NOBILO: And how is Lula da Silva responding and do you think that he and other members of his government are learning from the political wrangling and method unfolded after the January 6 insurrection in the United States? Are they taking away key lessons in terms of how they're going to respond?

AVLON: Well, I think we've already seen him touring the Capitol touring the presidential palace, surveying the damage very much in united front. Interestingly, you know, not a lot of division inside Brazil, in terms of the people saying that this is an act of terrorism. Remember the definition of terrorism being political violence. But you know this is a mob attack on a Capitol building and there must be learning from January 6 about how to deal with it.

I think we're still all getting our hands around how to deal with online disinformation? That's still very much an open area of debate. But it remains interesting to me how many self-styled nationalist populist, who present themselves as super patriots seem to be expressing their anger in ways that attack democracy and undermine the sovereignty of the nation they allegedly love?

NOBILO: John Avlon, I wish we had more time. I'd love to ask you so many more questions over here.

AVLON: You're Welcome.

NOBILO: Thank you so much,

AVLON: Thank you Bianca, be well.

NOBILO: And still to come as China reopens to the world after two years of COVID-19 restrictions. We'll take you across Asia to see how that will impact businesses across the region.

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NOBILO: After three years of COVID isolation China has reopened its borders. There were lots of hugs and joyful reunions at China's airports Sunday. Officials have been relaxing the strict COVID regulations that kept people out during the pandemic. Beijing announced last month it would drop the quarantine requirement for arrivals.

Border checkpoints with Hong Kong were also opened and all of this comes as COVID continues to spread across China. Many destinations in Asia are looking forward to welcoming back Chinese tourists. CNN's Michael Holmes reports on the economic boost, the reopening could provide to the whole reach.

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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The beaches of Bali are calling them local business owners in Indonesia, who pre pandemic catered to nearly 2 million Chinese tourists a year say they're getting ready to welcome back some of their best customers. This manager says before the Corona Virus, we had a lot of Chinese customers. Almost all of the cafes were full at least 100 to 200 customers came daily.

Across Asia restaurants, tour guides and merchants anticipating an economic boost as China reopens its borders and drops quarantine requirements after three long years, making it easier for Chinese nationals to travel abroad. According to a recent survey 76 percent of Chinese travel agencies say Southeast Asia is a top choice for Chinese tourists.

The region made all the more appealing since many Southeast Asian countries aren't requiring COVID-19 tests for Chinese travelers as other nations re-impose restrictions on China after an explosive outbreak of COVID 19 infections.

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HOLMES (voice over): Thailand is expecting 5 million Chinese visitors this year. This tuk-tuk driver says it's a chance to make more money that wonders at what cost. He says I'm concerned because the pandemic in China still hasn't subsided, but the Chinese tourists will boost our economy and people will be able to make a better living.

Australia, South Korea and Japan are some of the countries that have re-imposed entry restrictions on Chinese travelers, despite the impact on the tourism sector. One caricature artist in Tokyo says he hopes the measures won't deter them, though having them back will be an adjustment. He says we're grateful for their return, but ads he's had to downsize during the pandemic, so too many customers might be overwhelming.

South Korea is further restricting Chinese travelers by temporarily limiting short term visas and not immediately increasing flights from China. But this crate vendor in Seoul has a different message for his onetime steady customers come back. He says Chinese tourists are our main customers. So the more the merrier. Michael Holmes, CNN.

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NOBILO: Thank you for joining me here on CNN "Newsroom". I'm Bianca Nobilo in London and "World Sports" with Amanda Davies is coming up next.

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