Return to Transcripts main page

CNN This Morning

Congress Voting on Legislation to Avert Rail Strike; Congressional Progressives Object to Lack of Sick Days in Rail Labor Legislation; U.S. Soccer Team Beats Iran in World Cup Match; Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes Convicted of Seditious Conspiracy for Actions Related to January 6th Insurrection. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 30, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:00:45]

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the morning to you. Or I could just say good morning.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Are you Irish?

LEMON: I know. Did I just become Irish all of a sudden? It is Wednesday, November 30th. Welcome to CNN this morning, and we have a lot to get to. So this is the game-winning goal sending the U.S. to the knockout rounds for the first time in eight years. We're going to speak to Walker Zimmerman. He's a star defender on the team. That is straight ahead.

COLLINS: Oh, my God, he is the star. Also this morning, the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, as you see him there, he has been convicted of seditious conspiracy. His ex-wife, she was also once an Oath Keepers member. She is going to join us live to talk about what that landmark verdict from yesterday means.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Also, in a new interview, Twitter's former head of trust and safety says the company is less safe under Elon Musk.

COLLINS: But first we're going to start this morning with what is happening on Capitol Hill. You see all the lawmakers there meeting with President Biden, Democrats and Republicans coming together and preparing to act to pass legislation that would avert a nationwide rail strike next week. President Biden called on the top leaders to come together as he is scrambling to keep them from walking off the job, something he said could be devastating to the economy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I asked the four top leaders in Congress if they would be willing to come in to talk about what we're going to do between now and Christmas in terms of legislation, and there's a lot to do, including resolving the train strike, what we're doing now, and Congress I think has to act to prevent it. It's not an easy call, but I think we have to do it. The economy is at risk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Melanie Zanona is live for CNN THIS MORNING on Capitol Hill. Melanie, it's not often you see Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and President Biden all in one room together. But he had a pretty unmistakable message here, even if it's coming from a president who promised to be the most pro-union president.

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Yes, that's absolutely right. I think there's a general understanding that Biden ultimately decided that the economic risk was too great. But the deal that he is asking Congress to codify is running into some resistance from both the right and the left. On the right you have some Republicans who are just wary of getting involved in a dispute involving private companies, and then on the left, you have some progressives who don't like that this deal does not include 15 days of paid sick leave. So that is why in the House they have decided on this two vote system today in order to appease progressives without jeopardizing the deal's chances of passage in the Senate.

First, they're going to vote on the deal, which, as a reminder, includes a 24 percent increase in pay and it also includes a cap on health care premiums. And then they're going to have a second separate vote on just adding paid sick leave. Then all of that will head to the Senate. It's unclear if the Senate is going to take up the paid sick league portion, but you do have Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer vowing to get this deal done. Of course, it's a matter of timing. Every senator needs to be in agreement. And Congress is trying to act fast, but that's always easier said than done around here, Kaitlan.

COLLINS: Of course. And that paid sick leave is crucial. Melanie, thank you so much for that update.

HARLOW: It was a moment. Do you want to do the goal thing, Don?

LEMON: No.

(LAUGHTER)

HARLOW: All morning he's been saying goal. It's the moment American soccer fans have been waiting for since 2014. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's making a big run. He snuck in behind, in the middle -- scores!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: The moment the U.S. beat Iran in the World Cup yesterday to advance to the knockout round thanks to that goal by Christian Pulisic. It didn't come easy for the U.S. Iran threatened to score late in the game, nearly ruining team U.S. chances to move on. With ice in his veins, one U.S. defender made sure he and his teammates would be playing on Saturday. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does Cameron Carter-Vickers get enough? No, I think he goes down far too easy here. There's a hand on the shoulder for sure, but I think Teramy (ph) is trying to play for the penalty, because Cameron Carter-Vickers --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Joining us now from Doha is Walker Zimmerman. He is the defender on the U.S. men's national team. Congratulations to you guys. Even the president stopped what he was doing to let a whole factory in Michigan know that you guys had won. So congratulations and thanks for being with us this morning.

[08:05:05]

WALKER ZIMMERMAN, DEFENDER, U.S. MEN'S NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM: Thank you very much. We're extremely excited, and thanks for having me this morning.

HARLOW: You guys really set out to change how the world sees U.S. soccer. Do you think you've done that so far?

ZIMMERMAN: I hope so, but we're not finished yet. And so I think the narrative continues. We're still going to try and do that and accomplish our goal of winning the World Cup. And I think if we're able to do that, we're going to inspire a lot of young players, a lot of young Americans to pick up the spot and hopefully make them proud.

COLLINS: OK, Walker, you're going very humble, though, because all morning we have been talking about Christian and his goal. But there was this moment, it felt like it was happening in slow motion, where the ball had slipped past the goalkeeper, it was going to this open net and then you entered. What was going through your mind in that moment?

ZIMMERMAN: I knew there was only a few minutes left. Nine minutes of stoppage time is a long time. And just trying to stay focused and just be in the moment, and always prepared for the worst. And so as the ball went through towards the goal, I was able to anticipate something happening and was in a good spot to make a play late and help keep that clean sheet that helped us get to the next round.

COLLINS: Did it kind of feel like redemption at all for you?

ZIMMERMAN: A little bit. It's more of just doing your job. And that's what was expected of me to come in and make a difference and try and see out the game and to be able to contribute in that way and serve that role. It was awesome. And I'm just happy I got to contribute.

LEMON: You guys are in a bubble, as well you should be, but there's a lot going on, right, a lot of people paying attention for different reasons that have to do with rights and all of that, but you have America back home cheering you on. Are you aware of that or are you just focused on the game, or are you aware of the other things that have happened?

ZIMMERMAN: I think we're definitely aware of importance and different things and issues that are coming about within each game. But at the same time, it's not distracting us from our goal or shifting our focus away from what we're trying to achieve. So we're aware, but at the same time --

LEMON: Walker, we're losing you a little bit.

HARLOW: I think he came back. You can hear us OK?

ZIMMERMAN: Yes, I can hear you guys. Want me to repeat that?

HARLOW: We got it. And can you just talk a little bit about what we saw at the end of the game, some of your teammates and you guys embracing some of the Iranian players and what means in this moment, especially given the human rights violations across Iran?

ZIMMERMAN: A hundred percent. You know, we know first and foremost as competitors what it's like to lose. We also know the stakes of a World Cup, and then on top of that everything that they're dealing with emotionally. And so we just congratulated them on their effort and empathized with them and let them know that we were proud of the way they competed on the field in the game last night.

COLLINS: And Walker, a big question everyone has is how Christian Pulisic is doing. He got injured as he scored that goal. What's the latest that you've heard from your teammate?

ZIMMERMAN: -- spirits, and it was great seeing him at the hotel.

HARLOW: All right, we got the great spirits.

COLLINS: He saw him at the hotel.

LEMON: That was it.

COLLINS: Everyone is watching to see if he's going to be in the game.

LEMON: He said he's going to be there from his hospital bed. So we'll see.

Walker Zimmermann, are thanks to you. I know he can't hear right, but good luck.

COLLINS: Huge thanks.

LEMON: Congratulations, of course. Oh, there he is. Thank you, Walker. I don't know if you're still there. No, he's gone.

OK, so we're going to move on and talk about a historic verdict on a charge rarely brought to trial in the U.S. The leader of the Oath Keepers Stewart Rhodes has been found guilty by a Washington D.C. jury of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol Hill. Rhodes was also one of the five Oath Keeper defendants to be convicted of disrupting an official proceeding, which on its own could carry a 20-year prison sentence. Prosecutors argue that Rhodes stood outside the capital on January 6th acting like a general as his followers reached the building.

So joining us now is Tasha Adams. She is Stewart Rhodes's ex-wife who helped him start the Oath Keepers more than a decade ago. She has since left the group and has condemned Rhodes and the Oath Keepers for their involvement on January 6th This is her first interview, by the way, her first TV interview, I should say, since the verdict. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you joining us this morning. How are you doing, Tasha?

TASHA ADAMS, EX-WIFE OF STEWART RHODES, HELPED HIM START OATH KEEPERS: Amazing. The best I've done in a long time.

LEMON: What's your reaction to your ex-husband being convicted on these charges, especially the historic one of seditious conspiracy?

[08:10:01]

ADAMS: That was the big one. That's the one I was really worried about. I'm so relieved. I don't even know how to put into word the difference between the way the world feels now and the way the world felt to me yesterday, 3:00 my time, except to describe it as like being in a really noisy room for days, weeks, months on end, and then it's just suddenly quiet. It's like the absence of fear is the best way I can put it.

LEMON: Why were you so skeptical that they would find him guilty, because I know you have said that he has never faced any consequences for his actions his entire life?

ADAMS: Yes, he has been able to get away with everything. I wasn't even able to get a restraining order against him. Just simple, simple things. He was given 50 percent custody, which had he been acquitted, he could have shown up here in Montana and just taken my kids. And it seemed to me he seemed all powerful, that there was nothing I could ever do. Even when we finally did get out, the police told me to go home to him, sent me back home to my husband. It seemed impossible that he could lose. And though I saw the evidence against him, I knew logically it was a pretty good case, but emotionally he just seemed unbeatable. But that's not the case.

COLLINS: The two of you, you have six children together, when you talk about your concerns about what that would look like. One thing that you said that stood out to me after the verdict came down is that you were concerned he might try to seek a pardon if Trump is reelected?

ADAMS: That's the shadow over all of this. I know that's what he is mentally doing right now is he is regrouping. I'm not even sure it would have to be Trump. I think maybe a potential DeSantis presidency there's still the potential for pardon there. I know it's slight. I know that Trump could have pardoned him before, and he didn't. But there's that slight shadow. I know that that is what Stewart is doing right. He's already, mentally he's already on the next step. HARLOW: You know the power that he has over others, right, the power

to persuade, the power to inspire, the power to compel. Do you believe that this conviction on such a charge that has such a high bar to reach conviction on will deter some of those followers?

ADAMS: I think some. My fear is that these criminal charges, it's hard to imagine, but they don't really hurt him on the extreme right. And it's one of the reasons I feel sometimes compelled to just talk about the more personal side of him, the abuse, the misusing of funds. We talked about it a lot because a lot of people look at it like, well, he misused funds but it's extremist money, so what. But it does hurt him on the right, and that does keep him from potentially rising again in an appeal scenario or a pardon in those cases. So I think that's one of the reasons I feel like I need to talk about the more personal side of him and all the damage he's caused to everyone, not just criminally.

LEMON: Tasha, do you feel safe? That's what I should have asked you because you talked about your kids. Do you feel safe?

ADAMS: I do. Of course, there's some concern with some of his followers. I do get messages. I did get some last night, I've dishonored my husband, this is all my fault. I'm pretty used to everything being my fault. So that didn't faze me too much. The FBI has been great. They check in on me, ask me, double-check, is there anything -- have you been getting bad messages?

And it's really the first time I've been able to breathe easy in years, maybe decades, to tell you the truth.

LEMON: Tasha, thank you. We're glad that you're safe, and thank you so much for appearing.

ADAMS: Thank you.

COLLINS: Wow. All right. Speaking of feeling safe, what that looks like online, threats that Tasha was talking about she's getting, Twitter's former head of trust and safety is speaking out in a remarkable new interview, saying that he no longer believes Twitter is safe under Elon Musk under initially saying he did think so. Kara Swisher, who conducted that interview, will join us live.

HARLOW: Also, the lava flow of Mauna Loa volcano coming within four miles of the main highway on Hawaii's Big Island. Now authorities are raising health concerns.

[08:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: OK. So, the man who was in charge of trust and safety at Twitter until just a few weeks ago is now voicing his top concerns for the social media company. His name is Yoel Roth. He left the company earlier this month. He had made the case in New York -- in the New York Times op-aid (PH) -- op-ed that Twitter was actually becoming safer under Elon Musk's leadership, but now his stance has changed. I'm going to listen to what he told a journalist and our pal here, Kara Swisher. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KARA SWISHER, HOST OF "ON WITH KARA SWISHER" PODCAST: One point you tweeted that Twitter was actually safer under Elon. Do you feel -- still feel that way?

YOEL ROTH, FORMER HEAD OF TRUST & SAFETY, TWITTER: I don't. We -- you know, it's funny in the in the days shortly after the acquisition, a bunch of things happened. But one of them predictably because it's the internet, was that a trolling campaign emerged. And a number of trolls you could sort of watch the organization happen on 4chan. So, this is all happening in public. They were like, let's go to Twitter and test the new limits of Elon Musk. Twitter's challenge going forward is not, you know, can the platform build machine learning? Sure, they can. But are there enough people who understand the emergent malicious campaigns that happen on the service, and understand it well enough to guide product strategy and policy direction? And I don't think that there are enough people left at the company who can do that work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, joining us now, Kara Swisher, the host of "On With Kara Swisher" and the host of Pivot Podcast. Kara, thank you. It was a fascinated -- fascinating conversation. You kept me up late listening to it last night. He was Twitter's former head of trust and safety. Did -- are the alarm bell sounding for you? What did you get out of that?

[08:20:16]

SWISHER: Well, I've already been worried about that. But when you cut people who've been doing this for a while, and they'll make complaints that it was a problem before, and it certainly was. Keeping ahead of this thing is like being a trash man in Trashville. You know what I mean? That's the problem. And so, when you cut a lot of people have experience because it's a combination of machine learning, as he said, and also people, that's a real problem that people don't understand the science, how people gather. A lot of this is experienced in battling it. And it changes every day because these malevolent actors change their tactics all of the time.

HARLOW: What was the breaking point for him, though, Kara, because Don mentioned he wrote that piece just weeks ago, knowing who Elon Musk was, and knowing his erratic behavior, even in the purchase of this company. So, what happened behind the walls of Twitter that made him break?

SWISHER: Well, that was actually a tweet. He didn't say that in the New York Times. But one of the things that's interesting is that he was putting out -- he was talking about that trolling campaign that happened right after Elon took over. And they were testing the limits. And he was -- they fixed it, they actually were able to push that back. But what he's talking about is the constant amounts of people leaving at the same time that they're letting people that -- in fact, it's just Elon letting people back on the -- on the platform without a whole lot of oversight.

And so, his worry became, he had a list that he had, redline list. One was not to lie for Elon, he didn't cross that one. But one of the ones that he was worried about is that decisions were made by fiat by one person. And that was his biggest worry, that is what's happening without a lot of consideration. And when the Twitter Blue debacle happened, where he just decided against the recommendations of his team, and then everything happened that they said would happen, I think that was enough for him. That this guy was going to make decisions based on his own decisions without any kind of input.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, because he actually wrote initially in The Times that Musk empowered his team to more -- move more aggressively to remove hate speech. I found that fascinating. You also asked him about the decision around Hunter Biden's laptop and the story from the New York Post and how Twitter responded to that. This is what he told you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Do remember the uncertainty of the -- of the whole story, we didn't know what to believe, we didn't know what was true. There was -- there was smoke. And ultimately, for me, it didn't reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter. But it set off every single one of my finely-tuned AAPT 28 hack and leak campaign alarm.

SWISHER: Right. So, it looked possibly a problem then.

ROTH: Everything about it looked like a hack and leak and smelled like a hack and leak.

SWISHER: You did not -- you did not want to do that.

ROTH: But it didn't get there for me. When you feel a responsibility to protect the integrity of the conversations on a platform from foreign governments expending their resources to interfering an election, there were lots of reasons why the entire industry was on alert and was nervous --

SWISHER: But a mistake.

ROTH: And again, for me, even with all of those factors, it didn't get there, for me.

SWISHER: And so, it was a mistake.

ROTH: In my opinion, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: That's pretty significant, Kara, to say it was a mistake.

SWISHER: Yes, well, they didn't already. Actually, Jack Dorsey did. And so, he was reiterating that for him that he did -- what happened was he got targeted by the right-wing as being the one who made the decision. He didn't. He actually didn't want to remove it. And pretty viciously. And so he -- his point was that they were all on alert to this having happened before, and that they should have been very careful. I would agree with them, they made a mistake. And so, that's what he was saying, they should have not done it. It wasn't life threatening, necessarily. But it was -- so, they should have waited to see how it turned out. And that's what he said, it's a mistake they made. And lots of -- lots of news organizations and media companies. And this is a media company make mistakes. And that's what he was saying.

LEMON: I was just going to say that because there have been heads -- as you know, recently heads of news organizations saying, talking about why they didn't cover the Hunter Biden story in a way that was acceptable to some. And they said it just -- it didn't get there for them. There was a lot of misinformation, and it looked like a hack. And considering the -- who the players were, Rudy Giuliani, the guy at the computer store, and so on and so forth.

SWISHER: Yes, yes. For sure. No -- by no means no massive -- let me just say, a conspiracy theory that he was saying that too. It was just a mistake they made because they were on alert from what happened in 2016 and all of the hacked e-mails and things.

COLLINS: It's a fascinating interview, Kara. Thank you so much for joining us on it.

LEMON: Kara, thank you.

SWISHER: Thanks.

LEMON: Be sure to -- you can listen to the full interview Thursday morning on Kara's podcast. It's called "On With Kara Swisher." And just ahead, South Dakota's Governor banning TikTok from all government devices. We're going to tell you why she is doing it. That's next.

HARLOW: And two little girls reunited with their parents after going missing in the woods.

[08:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: All right. For the five things to know this morning, let's get to CNN's Brynn Gingras. What do we need to know?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, guys, good morning. There's a big update out of Idaho. The University of Idaho will hold a candlelight vigil tonight to honor the four students who were found stabbed to death. This, as tensions and fears continue to mount in that community. Investigators removed the remaining cars at that residence Tuesday. Officials say they have received an uptick in 911 calls.

[08:30:00]