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Russia's War On Ukraine Looms Over Biden's European Trip; Sweden And Ukraine Membership On The Table At NATO Summit; Marine Taken Into Custody After 14-Year-Old Girl Found At Camp Pendleton; Lawmakers Return To Capitol Hill This Week; Former GOP Congressman Joins Hunter Biden Legal Team; Ukraine Residents Refuse To Leave Town Amid Shelling; Military Vets Fight A Silent Battle Against PTSD; New Series Features The History Of Black Television. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired July 09, 2023 - 18:00   ET

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

[18:00:49]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington. Good evening.

We begin this hour with President Biden in London kicking off a week- long visit to Europe with some very big foreign policy challenges on his plate. He'll be making stops in Great Britain and Finland but also on the itinerary is the centerpiece of this trip, the NATO summit in Lithuania. It will take place as the war in Ukraine grinds on past the 500-day mark with no end in sight and amid calls for Kyiv to be granted membership in the NATO alliance.

CNN's Arlette Saenz joins us now from London.

Arlette, there's a lot riding on this trip, isn't there?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there certainly is, Jim, and President Biden is now here in London where tomorrow he will meet with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak before heading to Windsor Castle for a meeting with King Charles. But really the hallmark moment of this, the week-long trip to Europe will be that NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. President Biden is heading into that summit hoping to once again shore up support and assistance for Ukraine as it faces this long slog of a war against Russia.

Now the president recently approved sending over cluster munitions to Ukraine. A controversial piece of ammunition that many countries have been firmly opposed to, but the president said was necessary given the current counteroffensive that Ukraine is encountering with Russia. But also at the top of the agenda at this NATO summit will be the discussion of a possible pathway forward for Ukraine to join the NATO alliance at some point down the road.

There are some allies who want to see a more concrete timetable for when that joining of Ukraine to NATO might happen. But President Biden said in an interview with our colleague Fareed Zakaria that right now is not the moment for Ukraine to join NATO, citing the ongoing war with Russia, and also further reforms that Ukraine will need to make in order to join the alliance. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think it's ready for membership in NATO. But here's the deal. I spent, as you know, a great deal of time trying to hold NATO together because I believe Putin has had an overwhelming objective from the time he launched 185,000 troops into Ukraine, and that was to break NATO. He was confident, in my view and many in the intelligence community, he was confident he could break NATO.

So holding NATO together is really critical. I don't think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now at this moment in the middle of a war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now another issue that will be discussed at this NATO summit is Sweden's bid to join the alliance. That is currently being blocked by Turkish President Erdogan who is frustrated and believes that Sweden is harboring groups that Turkey identifies as terrorist groups.

Now President Biden has said he is hopeful Sweden could eventually join the alliance and get that approval, and today he held a phone call about an hour long with Erdogan as the president flew on Air Force One here to London. National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said that they not only discussed that Sweden desire to join NATO, but they also discussed the prospect of selling F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

That is something that Turkey has been wanting for some time but there are lawmakers up on Capitol Hill on both sides of the aisle who have said that they would block any plan to sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey unless Turkey were to agree to allow Sweden into the alliance. So these are all issues that will be discussed, both Ukraine's future in NATO and Sweden's future in NATO as the president head to Vilnius on Tuesday.

ACOSTA: All right. It's going to be a very busy trip for you, Arlette. Arlette Saenz live for us in London. Thanks. I really appreciate it.

A lot is riding on the president's trip including the future of the NATO alliance and whether countries like Sweden and Ukraine should become members of NATO.

Joining us now for more analysis on this is CNN military analyst retired general, Wesley Clark. He's a former NATO Supreme Allied commander.

General, what do you think about this issue of admitting Sweden into NATO?

[18:05:04]

It sounds as though from listening to our Fareed Zakaria's conversation with President Biden that the president is trying to craft some kind of a deal to get Erdogan to green light Sweden joining the NATO alliance. Do you think that NATO will get over this hurdle and Sweden will be admitted?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: Sounds like we -- the president believes he can do that. It sounds like the F-16s are on the table, and this may be the leverage that we need to -- and may be what Turkey is looking for and why they're withholding support right now. So there's going to be some closed-door meetings, but I think this is greater than a 50-50 chance.

ACOSTA: And President Biden says the war with Russia must end before NATO can consider allowing Ukraine to join the alliance. You were the NATO Supreme Allied commander. You've got some credibility on this issue.

General, does the president have it right there, do you think?

CLARK: You know, I understand why he's saying it, but, Jim, this in essence gives Russia a veto over future memberships of nations in NATO. This is a war that was started by Russia. It will be continued by Russia and if Russia doesn't want Ukraine in NATO, and that's what they said, that's the reason they went to war, then as long as they keep fighting Ukraine will never have been in NATO.

So I would have reversed it. I would have said that what we need to do is set a date in the future, say 2024, where Ukraine will be admitted to NATO, get the conditions right for it, and then put the onus on Russia. If Russia doesn't want Ukraine in NATO then let's pull those troops out and let's work out a different security arrangement. But I think we have the -- we could have the upper hand on the leverage if we play it right.

I was just in Europe. Most of the European countries that I visited, I talked to leaders, people close to those leaders with the exception of Germany, they're looking for U.S. leadership to have a positive stance on bringing Ukraine into the alliance, and at the very least setting a firm date for NATO to produce the conditions under which Ukraine would join.

If that condition is the end of conflict, that's a sly way of telling the Ukrainians to sort of give up on your aim of kicking Russia out because as of now the United States and NATO are not providing Ukraine what it really needs to conduct this offensive. We certainly wouldn't conduct the offensive without air power, without long-range missiles and without very sophisticated electronic warfare to kill the Soviet jamming, but that's not happening.

Ukraine doesn't have those. We haven't provided it. So we've got Ukraine fighting a sort of 1970s war on their side against some very sophisticated Russian EW, and against a pretty solid-looking Russian defense and especially miles of minefields to go through. You can't get through that unless you win the counterpart battle, you can't win that battle unless you have overwhelming power.

And, Jim, just a historical -- when we landed in Normandy in 1944 we were stuck, we couldn't break out of the bridgehead until late July. We amassed 2,000 bombers. 2,000 bombers to bomb a tiny slice of the road at a place called Saint-Lo. Took two days to deliver all the ordnance, another three days of fighting, and then the German defense fell apart in France. But that's what it took.

ACOSTA: Right.

CLARK: Ukraine can't do that.

ACOSTA: Yes. Well, and that leads me to my next question, General, which is, what do you make of President Biden's decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine. We've seen some prominent Democrats over the last couple of days voice their disagreement with that. We had Bill Richardson on yesterday, the former U.N. ambassador, he said he was against this on moral grounds. What is your sense of it? Should the Ukrainians have this kind of weaponry?

CLARK: Well, the Ukrainians are being attacked by the use of cluster bombs and cluster munitions by the Russians. And this is their own country. They have the sovereign right to pick what weapons they need. These dual purpose ICM will be very effective in fighting the counter fire fight.

But, Jim, in addition, all the production of the West is insufficient to keep up with the demands that the Ukrainians have for regular 155 ammunition. So we have several million of these rounds, they're in storage or waiting to be demilitarized or destroyed. It was a pragmatic decision, it was a necessary military decision, and I think it's not an immoral decision for the Ukrainians to try to defend their own territory when they're being attacked with these kinds of weapons, to use them in return against the Russians. It's their sovereign land. They've made that decision.

[18:10:09]

ACOSTA: All right. General Wesley Clark, as always, we appreciate it. We'll be watching this NATO summit. I know you will as well. Thanks again for the insights.

CLARK: Thank you.

ACOSTA: All right. The U.S. Military is claiming responsibility for killing a top ISIS leader in Syria on Friday. The U.S. Central Command says the drone strike was conducted in the country's eastern region. CENTCOM's commander says the MQ-9 Reaper drones were harassed by a Russian aircraft earlier that day. This is video of that incident. Officials say U.S. drones involved in the anti-ISIS mission in Syria have been harassed by Russian aircraft three times in the last week.

And in Somalia, the U.S.-Africa Command says 10 members of the Al- Shabaab terrorist group were killed in self-defense air strikes overnight. Officials say Al-Shabaab is the largest and most active al Qaeda network in the world. According to initial assessments there were no reports of civilian casualties.

Coming up, a U.S. Marine is in custody after a missing 14-year-old girl was found in the barracks at Camp Pendleton. Details on that investigation ahead. Plus Congress is back tomorrow and the budget is again front and center as the two parties are miles apart with a big deadline fast approaching. And later, why Threads' massive popularity could cause Twitter to unspool.

You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:15:34]

ACOSTA: Tonight, an urgent manhunt is underway after a mass shooting in downtown Cleveland. This video is where officials say a gunman shot and wounded nine people overnight and then fled the scene. Police are now offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to an arrest.

In California, a U.S. Marine is in custody after a 14-year-old girl was found at a military base near San Diego. The girl turned up at the barracks in Camp Pendleton more than two weeks after she was reported missing.

CNN's Camila Bernal joins us now with the latest on the investigation.

Camila, what can you tell us about this? This does not sound good.

CAMILA BERNAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim. What we learned is that the Marine was taken into custody for questioning because this 14-year-old girl, as you mentioned, was found at the barracks at Camp Pendleton. This happened on June 28th and all of this is according to a statement from the Marine Corps. And I want to read part of that statement. Here is what they're saying.

"This command takes this matter and all allegations very seriously. The incident is under investigation and we will continue to cooperate with NCIS and appropriate authorities." Now the NCIS is the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and they declined to comment on this case saying that it was because of respect of the investigative process.

But we did reach out to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department and what they're saying is that the 14-year-old girl was reported missing on June 13th, and they say it was her grandma who reported her missing and she told authorities that the girl had run away on June 9th. She said this wasn't the first time that she ran away, but she usually came back home quickly. So the deputies put in the information into many of the missing persons databases.

And it was on June 28th that the girl was found by military police at the base, and so after she was found, she was interviewed by detectives and she was offered resources. She was reunited with her grandmother but again this is now all in the hands of NCIS, so we are waiting for the results of that investigation.

Of course, there are still a lot of questions as to how this happened and why so we will have to wait for the NCIS -- Jim.

ACOSTA: Yes. Absolutely. What a scary situation for that little girl.

All right, Camila Bernal, thank you very much. Still ahead, he once advised the January 6th Committee, now Denver

Riggleman is advising Hunter Biden's legal team and he joins me ahead to talk about it. There he is, standing by. We'll talk to him in a few moments. Stay with us.

You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:22:35]

ACOSTA: Congress is back in session this week after the July 4th break. The Senate gavels in on Monday, the House on Tuesday, but CNN has learned that lawmakers have been working through the recess to reach a compromise on spending.

For more let's bring in CNN's Alayna Treene.

Alayna, the deadline for U.S. government spending is coming up. Give us an update.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is. It's coming up at the end of September. September 30th is when they need to reach a deal on budget negotiations, and this is really the top priority from when they return from recess this week. These spending negotiations, I mean, both parties are very fall apart. Some of the far-right members of the House specifically are pushing for spending levels to be cut to levels that a lot of members in Congress don't want them to be.

And really it's going to be a huge test of Kevin McCarthy's leadership capabilities, as we've seen before it's another test for McCarthy to see if he can keep his slim Republican majority in line. We did hear from Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer on this at a press conference this morning. Let's listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans are working together on the Appropriations Committee to fund the government. They've come to an agreement on a whole bunch of the different subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee and hopefully we can have a bipartisan agreement that avoids a shutdown.

There are some on the hard right who say they want to shut down, but we hope cooler and saner heads will prevail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: So that's really what they're trying to do here exactly what Schumer said is avoid a government shutdown which at this point seems potentially possible and they're really careening toward these spending fights and so I think these next few weeks would be critical for them to see if they can hash out some sort of agreement here, Jim.

ACOSTA: And what are some of the other agenda items that will be looked at? TREENE: Well, a big talk right now within, particularly the House

Republican conference has been on their impeachment efforts. I mean, before Republicans broke for their July 4th recess there was a lot of chatter and threatening to impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland. That was after IRS whistleblowers made allegations that the Justice Department was improperly interfering in the investigation into Hunter Biden.

And so we're probably going to hear a lot more about that, and also just the House investigations in general. I think the big picture with this is that Republicans have had the majority in the House since January. They're really leaning in on these investigations now, particularly before they know that all of the oxygen in Washington is going to be focused on the 2024 presidential election.

[18:25:03]

And so they want to try and message against Democrats as much as possible before that election cycle ramps up -- Jim.

ACOSTA: All right. That's coming soon, will be here quickly.

Alayna Treene, thank you very much.

GOP discontent continues to grow over the Hunter Biden plea deal. Two IRS whistleblowers have claimed that the Justice Department slow- walked the criminal probe, blocked their efforts to get search warrants and subpoenas, and blocked prosecutors from filing felony charges.

Joining us with more on this is former Republican congressman Denver Riggleman, who is working with Hunter Biden's legal team.

Congressman, welcome. Appreciate it. You're well known for your work on the January 6th Committee. We've talked about that in the past, talking about something different this time around. Why did you decide to take on this case and work with the Hunter Biden legal team and what's your role here?

DENVER RIGGLEMAN, ADVISING HUNTER BIDEN'S LEGAL TEAM: It's been interesting. My role is really the same as it was with the committee. It was really technical and analytical support based on computer forensics and phone forensics. And by the way, I've been doing this since late last year so we've been tracking data on what everybody has been saying over the past two years, which has been really interesting.

But why did I really take this? It's because, you know, I do hate bullies, but I also found out, you know, as the Hunter Biden legal team reached out to me, that a lot of the people that have been pushing this are the same people that pushed the J-6 conspiracy theories. And once I saw that some of the same techniques were being used, you know, and that you had the Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, you know, and Peter Navarro's, you know, staff all involved in pushing the Hunter Biden laptop data, I got very curious. I love 1's and zeros, I love forensics, and I think we have the best

team in the world. When we saw that the Hunter Biden laptop data dissemination was so similar to what was happening on January 6th, and it's the same people, I needed to jump in and so I came in late last year.

ACOSTA: And so I guess the question is as you did for the House Select Committee on the January 6th investigation, you're assessing data, what kinds of things are you looking at? Are you looking at the laptop, for example, that has been talked about so much? Are there other types of data? What can you give us insights into?

RIGGLEMAN: Yes. And there are some things I can't talk about because unlike the grifters out there pushing data, I actually have to have transparency and verification, right, and data to stand up in a court of law, but I can tell you this. What we want to look at first is the data that's out that's purported to be Hunter Biden's laptop. We wanted to see if there was any forensic format or any forensic validity to it, and there was none.

Jim, I think what surprised that, if you're looking at data from 4Chan or from a site like Marco Polo, you have to have forensic validity. And I am shocked that anybody in Congress would use that data or any journalist would even use those sources because what we found out, and we do have the data, we have the 1's and zeroes. We have the facts based, you know, analysis based on the 1's and zeroes that we have, we found these are very same folks.

We have videos. We have them self-identifying. They're manipulating the data. We have people using words like Steve Bannon, like editorial creativity, and we have specific instances of fabrication manipulation of the data. So what I would warn Congress and warn any journalist out there is that the data that's in the public sphere right now has no relation to any forensic copy that's attached to a Hunter Biden laptop.

And it looks like to us that most of the data is curated. It is almost like mixed tape, multiple data sources that's gone through the hands of 30 or 40 people. And so, again, you know, if the two main teams are Rudy Giuliani running the Russian-Ukrainian data and Steve Bannon under Lao, you know, a Chinese -- you know, an individual Chinese national that's been arrested, I don't think you should be actually looking at those sources because you have felons and people that have been disbarred that are really running this Hunter Biden fiasco.

And, you know, that's really why I was drawn to the case because I just wanted to see what the data was and for us, you know, for us it's the 1's and zeroes. We can just go right in and we can plow through it and we can see what's true and what's Memorex. And what we found out is that a lot of the things that they say aren't validated or ridiculous, and we've even found cases of fabricating data.

ACOSTA: And Denver, I mean, what about these whistleblowers, these IRS whistleblowers claiming that the Justice Department slow-walked the criminal probe? Are you going to be getting into any of that? Do you have evidence to refute that? What is the legal team saying about that?

RIGGLEMAN: Yes. Well, it just seem like a lot of the other so-called whistleblowers, I don't even know if you want to define them as that. It seems like they're always wrong, either, you know, witnesses turn up missing or dead or somehow the data just disappears into twilight or people can't even spell words correctly or actually go through how a laptop is broken down and any type of notes.

There's no background information as it comes to what a WhatsApp message is or what the forensic validity of that is. So that's my job, right, is to break that kind of stuff down. But for me I think what individuals need to realize out there is that the truth does matter and when you have an invasion of privacy like this, and this amount of data that's been stolen, or (INAUDIBLE). And an impressive ecosystem for people to make money. I think it's absolutely an abomination.

[18:30:00]

We already know that Hunter Biden did very bad things. The thing is that, you know, if it's just to flank an election, that's an awful thing that you actually want to use. So I'll say this, for any type of whistleblower, you've got to have proof, you've got to have validity. And now that we know that there's even text messages that were made up, I think, Jim, in May 24th and 25th of 2018, we have text messages that were actually made up, fabricated between the United States Secret Service agents that were reported by "The New York Post." They said they had forensic validity. That was just B.S.

And I just think either -- here's the thing. Either these individuals, the whistleblowers haven't been trained properly. They're credulous, right, credulous idiots, other liars or they're grifters or some kind of combination of all that above. But I think that's what gets to me is that again we're seeing the same exact people peddling this type of information that were really the masterminds of J-6, and I think that's something that -- as only person who's seen the J-6 data and the Hunter Biden data, I think I do have a unique perspective and the background and the trust where people will know what I'm saying is true.

ACOSTA: All right. Well, we'll see how all this develops and we'll bring you back to talk about the Hunter Biden case as some of this plays out.

I do want to ask you about some of these questions regarding former President Donald Trump. What do you think of what Trump has been saying out on the campaign trail in recent days that as these indictments come in, his poll numbers go up? As somebody who worked on the January 6th Committee did you ever think you would see something like that? And does it mean that perhaps the Justice Department spent too much time on these cases, and that these cases are coming up producing indictments right in the election cycle as it's getting under way?

RIGGLEMAN: I always thought this was a counterterrorism case. I always thought that we should have been looking at this in a way where command and control was the most important thing we should have been looking at. Who was talking to who, right? And with all the data that we have, the millions of lines of data that we had, we had a pretty good idea who was in charge. We could cluster them and see them.

And I think what Donald Trump has realized after these years, what, we're in 2023 now, right? We're looking at July of 2023, we're now two and a half years removed from January 6th and I think that he believes that there is going to be no accountability at this point for what happened on January 6th. I know we have the classified docs, but it goes to the fact that we're in a new world, right? And I think that everybody has to look at the sourcing and the people that are saying these things and I think that Trump really is maybe the presumptive nominee.

I think he knows that, and I think a lot of individuals out there who thought that maybe this would just go away, it's not. We need to nip this in the bud and we need to look at January 6th for what it is, we need to look at disinformation for what it is, and we need to get back to truth. We need to get back to 1's and zeroes. And I hope we can and I'm going to do the best. I'm just one guy, Jim, with a great forensics team, the best in the world, and I'll do the best I can.

But I think Trump is feeling pretty confident because I believe he can pass himself off as a political prisoner at this point. I think that's what we have. A political pariah.

ACOSTA: All right. Denver Riggleman, we'll talk to you again in the future on all of this. Thank so much for your time. We appreciate it.

RIGGLEMAN: Thanks, Jim.

ACOSTA: All right. Thank you.

Coming up, after more than 500 days of brutal war, CNN talks with Ukrainians refusing to leave despite living in some of the most battered cities.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Five hundred days of war have left this town and so many others a wasteland of wreckage and rubble. Despite that, some people refuse to leave.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[18:37:21]

ACOSTA: Just six miles from Russian lines the town of Siversk in eastern Ukraine has been battered. But some Ukrainians are refusing to leave.

Here's CNN's Ben Wedeman with their story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) WEDEMAN (voice-over): A small flashlight is all that illuminates the cellar Olha calls her home. Her bedroom a cramped, windowless storage space.

I'd like to live under normal conditions, says Olha, a retired school teacher. Retired, I'm 78 years old. She's been living like this since shortly after the war came to her town of Siversk. Battered to smithereens by months of Russian bombardment.

(On-camera): Five hundred days of war have left this town and so many others a wasteland of wreckage and rubble. Despite that, some people refuse to leave.

(Voice-over): We met 70-year-old Nina last March when she told us happier days seemed a world away.

What do we feel, she asks. Pain. Pain. When you see something destroyed you tear up. We cry. We cry. Summer has improved her mood. I showed Nina and her friend Valentina pictures of the potatoes I grow back home in Italy. Prompting Nina to show off her tiny garden of herbs and onions. Still, emotions flood back when I asked what she hopes for the most. We're waiting for the day, she says, the minute when the war ends.

On this day Siversk was quiet. All we heard was the occasional faint thud of distant shelling. Russian lines are six miles away, yet the air of tranquility is deceptive.

It's not quiet, insists Valentina. They were firing all night long. Those who remain are an eclectic group like Sasha (PH), an aging rocker, a great fan of '70s classics.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bee Gees.

WEDEMAN (on-camera): Bee Gees. All right. "Staying Alive."

(Voice-over): Olexandar never goes anywhere without his dog Malish. Does he have high hopes for Ukraine's counteroffensive? No. Putin, he tells me, will keep pushing ahead even if he has to kill every last Ukrainian. Russians are like a bear. They sit and wait and then.

Olha has the task of distributing loaves of bread to her neighbors brought in by volunteers.

[18:40:02]

The powerful will do when they will do. Here the priority is staying alive.

Ben Wedeman, CNN, Siversk, eastern Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: And a veteran's fight does not end on the battlefield. In fact, it's sometimes just the beginning. The V.A. estimates that 7 percent of veterans returning home will experience post-traumatic stress disorder at some point in their lives.

And joining us now to discuss this all too often silent battle service members face is Kelsi Sheren. She served in the Canadian military on the front lines of the war in Afghanistan documenting her journey, battling PTSD in the new book, "Brass and Unity: One Woman's Journey Through the Hell of Afghanistan and Back." It comes out this Tuesday.

Kelsi, great to meet you. Thanks so much for your service, what you've done for Canada, for NATO, and as I like to tell people, we have a lot of Canadian viewers, too. So it's good to talk to a Canadian especially after everything that you've done and been through. You were deployed to Afghanistan at the age of 19, if I have that right. And what was it like being on the front lines at that age and what has this journey been like for you that you documented in this book?

KELSI SHEREN (RET.), CANADIAN ARMY ARTILLERY GUNNER: Yes, so for me -- number one, thank you for having me. It's nice to have a Canadian in an American set.

ACOSTA: Yes.

SHEREN: But for me, I served with the Americans and the British as well so I got an overarching kind of look at what it looked like to serve along NATO. I joined the military really young and ultimately my goal was to go and help individuals. Ultimately I wanted to help women and children, and so to be on the front lines with a bunch of other individuals fighting the good fight and trying to help others was really all I ever wanted to do. I never thought long term, I never thought afterwards. I just wanted to serve my country.

ACOSTA: And when you returned home, can you describe what it was like? You received a PTSD diagnosis. Do you know how this happened? Was it just the accumulative effect of being over there? Was it one particular incident?

SHEREN: No. So for me unfortunately I was on an operation with the British, on a foot operation that went very sideways and we did end up losing quite a few people. There was a moment where the switch had flipped in my mind if you will, and part of my brain stopped functioning. After that I was sent back to Kandahar and spoke with many doctors, and at that point they deemed me with post-traumatic stress disorder and decided to send me home about three weeks early before the end of my deployment.

ACOSTA: And tomorrow for the first time you'll be meeting a family from Afghanistan that you helped relocate to New York after U.S. and NATO forces pulled out from the country nearly two years ago. What's that going to be like?

SHEREN: Well, to be honest, it's going to be a shock to the system. I got pulled into the Afghan pullout like so many Americans and Canadians did. Unfortunately Canada decided to abandon a ton of Canadians that are still stuck in the country and due to the American support and the British I was able to then use signal and backchanneling and a lot of other ways and we were able to pull a family of nine, one being the high-ranking female member of the Afghan government and her family.

A bunch of them were living in New York now and the rest are in Ottawa, Ontario, and I'm going to be meeting with the little boy and the mother and the husband tomorrow night.

ACOSTA: And tell me, why did you write this book? You just had to get it out, is that -- and has it been therapeutic?

SHEREN: Well, that's really what it is. I started my company and my journey as a form of art therapy, right? It was not because I was looking to be another Navy SEAL with a book. I'm not a special operator, I'm just a woman and a mother that served overseas and have a different perspective like so many. And I was tired of hearing all of these stories just about men and husbands and drinking and alcoholism and abuse and PTSD and trauma, and I wanted to show that there are mothers and wives and women out there that are fighting on these front lines doing the same types of things.

And I wanted to show others that you can go through this journey, but it doesn't have to be everything. It doesn't have to be the thing that happened to you. You can overcome it. You can get better, you can heal and you can grow, and when you use tools like journalling and art therapy and CBT and other forms of psychedelics and those types, you can heal. You can truly get better. And it is important and imperative for us to share our stories or we're going to end up like the rest of the veterans of our generation where nobody knows our stories and we don't learn from our own history.

We have to put them on paper. And it helps me heal and I'm hoping that this book will not only be a tool for me to continue to heal but for people who don't -- who have family members who don't understand what others are going through, who are struggling with PTSD and can't understand why they react the way they react, or struggle with certain things they do, this is the book for you. Give this book to them or you read it.

ACOSTA: Yes.

SHEREN: So that you can understand what is going on.

ACOSTA: And we don't do a good job treating veterans with PTSD in this country. I mean, that's just obvious. This has been an ongoing problem. Is it the same situation in Canada?

SHEREN: Just as bad if not worse. We now have MAID being offered to Canadian veterans in lieu of treatment which is medical assisted in dying. So we are no longer really offering veterans full support. We are saying here is the easy way out and we're doing it to vulnerable individuals.

ACOSTA: And so what is it going to take to change things?

SHEREN: You have to break the system a little bit.

ACOSTA: Yes.

SHEREN: You've got to get loud so this is why I'm here getting loud.

ACOSTA: Yes. You're getting loud. OK. And Canadians are so polite, and so when you do it --

SHEREN: We try.

[18:45:02]

ACOSTA: As we Americans like to say, when you do it, it makes a huge difference.

SHEREN: Thank you.

ACOSTA: Well, Kelsi, thank you very much for sharing your book with us, your story with us, best of luck to you. Please keep us posted on how your journey continues.

SHEREN: Thank you. Thank you so much.

ACOSTA: Thanks for your time.

SHEREN: Thanks for having me.

ACOSTA: Great to talking to you. Appreciate it.

Coming up, he has spent years fighting for democracy in Hong Kong. Now the Hong Kong police have placed a bounty on him, that activist joins me ahead and we'll talk to him in just a little bit.

You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ACOSTA: Today we are in the midst of a golden age of black television, but we have arrived there as a result of an 80-year struggle for black artists to be seen and heard on television.

[18:50:02]

Now the new CNN Original Series "SEE IT LOUD: THE HISTORY OF BLACK TELEVISION" celebrates the creators who have brought black TV to life, and it looks at the impact it's had on American culture. Here is a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I think about the history of black television, I really think about progress.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For the longest time, we were footnotes in history.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is so important for us to have African- American representation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We talked about things that nobody in this country was willing to have a discussion about.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was like, Martin, can you believe they call us icons?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That was one of the first times I saw myself in the sci-fi genre.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That show was so successful. It launched Bravo Network.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tyler Perry who owns a studio. In 1950 you could never have imagined it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was an era to be as loud as possible and as black as possible.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are the story.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: And joining us now is comedian and actress from HBO's "Insecure" Amanda Seales. CNN and HBO are owned by the same parent company, just a note there.

Your show "Insecure" created by Issa Rae looks at a group of friends, four young black women.

AMANDA SEALES, COMEDIAN, ACTRESS, "INSECURE": Issa Rae.

ACOSTA: Issa Rae, excuse me. As they try to navigate the challenges of careers, relationships and life in general. It helped usher in a new era of black TV that featured a new generation of characters, creator's stories. Tell us, what attracted you to this project?

SEALES: I think on a basic level it was a new show, and it was featuring black characters, and it was a comedy. You know, it's interesting. In your introduction, you said we're in a golden age of black television. And I really -- I always shirk that assertion because we're at a time where we're seeing less black shows and diversity than ever.

So I just want to point out that I think that's very not the reality and I think as we're seeing the amount of shows that are being canceled and not supported by major networks that are actually telling diverse stories, that we can't lie to ourselves in that way. But at the time of "Insecure" coming out, it was also like on the tail-end of what had really been a boom within the Web space of black shows.

And, you know, this show was coming off the heels of Issa's original very successful show on the Web, "Upper Black Girl," so it was an opportunity to also be a part of just the continuation of something that had already been successful.

ACOSTA: And "Insecure" was certainly groundbreaking. It also echoed earlier shows about young black single women like "Living Single," "Girlfriends." Did those shows inspire you at all? SEALES: Jim, have you ever seen an episode of "Insecure"?

ACOSTA: I have not. But I have seen "Living Single."

SEALES: OK. Well, they're different. But yes, I mean, I think especially having been born in 1981 --

ACOSTA: I'll check it out.

SEALES: You know, the real golden age for me of black television was the '90s where you had shows like "Living Single" and "A Different World" and "The Cosby Show," and "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "Martin" which were so uniquely different in their representation of black life. And as a comedian, you know, we haven't really gotten the opportunity to see black women comedians really given star status in the same way that we've seen black male comedians.

But black women comedic actresses during the '90s, especially on shows like "Living Single" were thriving and really served as great influences for someone like me.

ACOSTA: And what else are you watching these days? I mean, what else would you like to lift up as a show that, you know, this is what you're into right now?

(CROSSTALK)

ACOSTA: How would you like to see the industry change?

SEALES: I'd love to see the industry be representative of the nation. I'd love there to be an opportunity for black creatives to be supported in telling their own stories versus just telling stories that make white executives feel seen. I think that for those of us in America who fall into the, quote-unquote, "people of color" or minority category, especially as creatives, you know, so much of our ability to navigate has been in terms of our ability to understand the -- particularly like white American experience, you know, which is why like -- I mean, a lot of people can name all the characters on "Friends," no matter their race, nation or creed, but may not be able to name all the characters on "Living Single."

[18:55:09]

That's because like these are the things that have been made mainstream and that you kind of have to know to be in the mix. So that's one of the ways I would love to see the industry change. I mean, when we see four black women heads of DEI removed from network positions in one day, it lets us know that we've got a lot of work to do.

ACOSTA: Absolutely. Well, Amanda Seales, thanks so much for your time. We really appreciate it.

SEALES: I'm pretty sure this interview went in a different direction than you planned. All right. Thanks, guys.

ACOSTA: Take care.

Be sure to tune in. The all-new CNN Original Series "SEE IT LOUD: THE HISTORY OF BLACK TELEVISION" premieres tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific only on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ACOSTA: You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington. Good evening.