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Brittney Griner Freed In Exchange For Convicted Arms Dealer; Biden Speaks On WNBA Star Brittney Griner's Release. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired December 08, 2022 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

JONATHAN FRANKS, WORKED TO GET TREVOR REED FREED: It's cold comfort for the Whelan family and I still just feel sick to my stomach while being absolutely thrilled for Brittney Griner because as you know, Don, I was on your other show frequently. I -- I've been terribly worried about her.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: I wonder if this is maybe some hope for Paul Whelan, though.

HARLOW: I hope so.

LEMON: Maybe for his family. Yes.

HARLOW: I hope so.

FRANKS: I'm sure hope so. And I think you've got to remember what the Russian propaganda on Paul Whelan is, that he's almost like the greatest spy of all time. So that may complicate the negotiations. I don't know. I wasn't a part of them. But I know, you know, the reads are heartbroken this morning as well that Paul is not back. And, you know, we're just -- we're all praying for the Whelans and just absolutely overjoyed for the Griners.

HARLOW: Yes.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, we know, you know, when it comes to Paul Whelan, I -- we do expect President Biden will have to address that. He'll get asked about that when he speaks to reporters about Brittney Griner's release.

Let's also bring in Nick Paton Walsh. Nick, you know, you interviewed Viktor Bout, inside prison. And these are tough decisions for any U.S. president to make. Biden was asked about this when Trevor Reed was released. Tell us more about Viktor Bout who you know, had this nickname, "Merchant of Death," he was this notorious arms dealer who was convicted. And this obviously is going to involve commuting his sentence.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes, certainly. Look, there's an extraordinary disparity between all the denials from Moscow, about how this man is not one of the largest arms dealers in history, particularly in the '90s. And the massive efforts they've put in over decades now, to try and get him back to Russia.

A lot of this feeds into his activities in the '90s. I've seen videos of him with notorious figures in Africa, and there's been a weight of evidence accusing him of being one of the most significant figures trading arms around conflicts in the '90s and in the early 2000s, all of which he has denied.

But still, we've seen this persistent bid for Russia to provide him legal aid to keep them out of American hands. The original sting that caught him in Bangkok was, in fact, DEA agents pretending to be Colombian rebels, asking him if he would sell them weapons that could potentially be used to harm Americans. That's what got him arrested in Thailand and eventually, after a long legal struggle extradited to the United States.

But major theory about Viktor Bout is perhaps he knows people close to Vladimir Putin, in his time in Africa when maybe they served in Africa too, and that maybe the Americans wanted to put pressure on him for better information. Or maybe to, they wanted a broader sense of global justice, about the arms dealing that he's been accused of proliferating across conflicts around the world.

Here's more of what we know about him.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH (voice-over): He's the Lord of War, according to this fictional movie starring Nicolas Cage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Say what you like about warlords and dictators, they always pay their bills on time.

WALSH (voice-over): Or the "Merchant of Death" per book about his alleged life. But despite much evidence, Viktor Bout has always denied being one of the biggest arms dealers of the '90s, fueling civil wars and bolstering Moscow's interests. But he still never really wanted to be a nobody.

(on-camera): Why did the Americans want you so badly?

VIKTOR BOUT, RENEGADE RUSSIAN ARMS TRAFFICKER: Go and ask them, go and ask the Bush administration, the Obama administration, go and ask Mrs. Clinton (INAUDIBLE) explain why they need me. I don't know. I have no clue.

WALSH (on-camera): Mr. Bout, Mr. Bout, good morning.

(voice-over): He gave me his last interview in a Thai jail 13 years ago, when he denied the worst charges against him.

BOUT: This is a lie and just bullshit. And I never supplied arms as such at all and especially didn't have any deal with Al Qaeda.

WALSH (voice-over): In a noisy packed visiting area as he sat behind the glass, the bit I remember most was his mother interrupting.

BOUT (through translation): Thanks mom. We're trying to talk. Why do you come here every five minutes?

WALSH (voice-over): And that he admitted he had worked for the Russian government.

BOUT: I don't want to say now this or that.

WALSH (on-camera): Did you work for the Russian government?

BOUT: Sometimes, yes. We did the flights.

WALSH (voice-over): In the end, he was not superhuman, and arrested in Thailand after a U.S. sting operation. And while his decades of life in the shadows had left him full of faced, he was always just a pilot courier, he insisted, even as he was led into this Bangkok courtroom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today in Manhattan Federal Court, accused arms dealer Viktor Bout begins to face American justice.

WALSH (voice-over): The U.S. sting was complex over many months and countries catching him, offering weapons to U.S. agents pretending to be Colombian terrorists. He was eventually extradited to face a New York trial for conspiring to kill Americans. It saw him sentenced to 25 years in prison in a medium security facility in Illinois.

There, he told me in emails he was in good spirits, brushing up on his many languages. And in 2019, very glad when his wife and daughter visited. But he was slowly edging towards the end of his sentence. Perhaps a reason his role in a swap was more appealing. But the biggest mystery about Bout was why the U.S. wanted him so fiercely.

[08:35:06]

Yes, he had allegedly dealt arms to a lot of bad people across Africa and the '90s. But that was known and exposed. Observers searched for another weightier reason and wondered if he had served alongside any Kremlin insiders in his long past overseas. That remains a huge question mark.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH: Now, I spent a lot of time talking to Bout to get him to agree to an on-camera interview all those years ago. And I have to say, it's remarkable to say this about somebody who's accused of such diabolical acts. But this is a very intelligent, very charming man with a long list of historical figures globally, that he's had personal relationships with.

So clearly somebody who was a big player to some degree, even though he says he was just a businessman with a lot of aircraft, and somebody of enormous value to the Russian government, the exact reason for which still a secret.

COLLINS: Yes. LEMON: OK.

COLLINS: And of course, remember one of the charges, as you noted there, Nick, is he was convicted on attempting to kill Americans.

HARLOW: Yes, that's right. That's right.

LEMON: All right. Thank you very much for that.

I want to bring it now CNN's Van Jones. Van Jones, we just want to -- because people may just be waking up and tuning in to this WNBA star Brittney Griner on a plane back to the United States --

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Coming home.

LEMON: -- free coming home.

JONES: Yes.

LEMON: This exchange, we're told, wait was happened at the Abu Dhabi airport. You see there on your screen the podium at the White House. The President expected to speak, supposed to start at 8:30, is a little bit late, but he's going to speak. And we're told that there may be some family members there.

JONES: Yes.

LEMON: The President and the Vice President on the call when this happened and making this decision. What do you make of this?

JONES: It is huge, it is huge. First of all, that's a decade defining image. When you saw her wife sitting there, Kamala Harris is there, the President is there, such a human image, and yet, it just shows this President got it done. He cared enough about this individual person to get her home.

It was shocking I think for young Americans to see an icon like that snatched, locked up, treated like garbage, and just nine years, 10 years for bringing some cannabis oil --

HARLOW: Medically prescribed.

JONES: -- medically prescribed. So, these are decades of finding images. I guarantee you, they're going to be young people, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now who will remember this moment because she is an icon. And it's really, really extraordinary.

And people going to talk about, oh, well, this other guy, he's so terrible. Now, there's a lot of terrible people in the world. There's a lot of terrible people in Russia. But what you don't have and what you can't allow to happen to have a black female icon treated like garbage and American do nothing about it. Something was done about it and people are going to be proud about that.

LEMON: Yes. We got a two-minute warning from the White House. So expect the President expected to step up to that podium in just about two minutes now.

JONES: You know, also give credit to black women. Black women rallied for this, fought for this. I mean, and again, some of the male athletes were getting jammed up. If this was LeBron James, you guys would be shutting down everything. You know what, the male athletes said you are correct, but this was a galvanized grassroots movement, led by black women that brought in -- finally the White House -- the U.S. government to rescue a sister from injustice.

And, you know, you think about other black women who you've seen in handcuffs, Angela Davis, like those images of black woman handcuffs, emerging triumphant. That's this today, a black woman who was chained, shackled, mistreated, emerging triumphant, and when she lands today, it's going to have the eyes of planet Earth on her.

LEMON: You're reading my mind. So what happens? What does this mean in terms of the the elevating, right, probably the WNBA and attention, elevating attention to black women, elevating attention to, you know, people who are -- it is enormously implications.

JONES: That there's going to be a cultural shockwave that goes out because, first of all, she never has to touch another basketball. She will be an icon in this country for the rest of her life. But if she does go back into the basketball court, the WNBA goes through the roof. And so, I think people are waking up, they're rubbing their eyes. What's going on? You will remember this for decades.

COLLINS: Yes, it's huge. And of course, the conditions that she's been living through. There's President --

LEMON: There's the President of the United States is entering the room with Brittney Griner's wife and the Vice President. And let's listen the to President.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, good morning, folks. And it is a good morning.

Moments ago, standing together with her wife, Cherelle, in the Oval Office, I spoke with Brittney Griner. She's safe. She's on a plane. She's on her way home. After months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances, Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, and she should have been there all along.

This is a day we've worked toward for a long time. We never stopped pushing for her release. It took painstaking and intense negotiations, and I want to thank all the hardworking public servants across my administration who worked tirelessly to secure her release.

I also want to thank the UAE for helping us facilitate Brittney's return, because that's where she landed.

[08:40:05]

These past few months have been hell for Brittney and for Cherelle, and her entire family, and all her teammates back home. People all across the country have learned about Brittney's story, advocated for her release, stood with her throughout this terrible ordeal. And I know that support meant a lot to her family.

I'm glad to be able to say that Brittney is in good spirits. She -- she's relieved to finally be heading home. And the fact remains that she's lost months of her life, experienced a needless trauma, and she deserves space, privacy, and time with her loved ones to recover and heal from her time being wrongfully detained.

Brittney is an incomparable athlete, a two-time Olympic Gold medalist for Team USA. She endured mistreatment and a show -- at a show trial in Russia with characteristic grit and incredible dignity. She represents the best America -- the best about America -- just across the board, everything about her.

She wrote to me back in July. She didn't ask for special treatment, even though we've been working on her release from the day one. She requested a simple, quote, "Please don't forget about me and the other American detainees. Please do all you can to bring us home."

We never forgot about Brittney. And we've not forgotten about Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for years. This was not a choice of which American to bring home. We brought home Trevor Reed when we had a chance earlier this year. Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul's case differently than Brittney's. And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul's release, we are not giving up. We will never give up.

We remain in close touch with Paul's family, the Whelan family. And my thoughts and prayers are with them today. They have to have such mixed emotions today. And we'll keep negotiating in good faith for Paul's release. I guarantee that. I say that to the family, I guarantee you.

And I urge Russia to do the same to ensure that Paul's health and humane treatment are maintained until we can -- are able to bring him home. I don't want any American to sit wrongfully detained in one extra day if we can bring that person home.

My administration has now brought home dozens of Americans who were wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad, many of whom had been held since before I took office. And today we also remember the other Americans that are being held hostage and wrongfully detained in Russia or anywhere else in the world.

Reuniting these Americans with their loved ones remains a priority, a priority for my administration and every person in my administration involved in this. And we're going to continue to work to bring home every American who continues to endure such an injustice.

We also want to prevent any more American families from suffering this pain and separation. And I strongly urge, I strongly urge all Americans to take precautions, including reviewing the State Department's travel advisories before they travel overseas, which now includes warnings about the risk of being wrongfully detained by a foreign government. Make no mistake about it, this work is not easy. Negotiations are always difficult. There are never any guarantees. But it's my job as President of the United States to make the hard calls and protect American citizens everywhere in the world. Anywhere in the world. And I'm proud that, today, we have made one more family whole again.

So, welcome home, Brittney.

And now I'd like invite Cherelle to say a few words to you all. Of course, she's not excited at all about this. Cherelle, it's all yours, kiddo. Congratulations again.

CHERELLE GRINER, WIFE OF BRITTNEY GRINER: Thank you. Thank you.

So, over the last nine months, you all have been so privy to one of the darkest moments of my life. And so, today, I'm just standing here overwhelmed with emotions. But the most important emotion that I have right now is just sincere gratitude for President Biden and his entire administration.

He just mentioned this work is not easy, and it has not been. There's been so many hands involved, and so I'd like to take a moment to just specifically mention a few, Vice President Harris, Secretary Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Josh Geltzer from the National Security Council. Roger Carstens and Fletcher Schoen from the Hostage Envoy's Office. A special thank you to Governor Richardson and Mickey. The Mercury players, the WNBPA for your advocacy.

And also, you guys may not know this, but my family has been tremendously supported by the Wasserman agency, BG's agent, Lindsay Colas, has just been amazing for me and my family throughout this process.

[08:45:02]

So, today, my family is whole. But as you all are aware, there's so many other families who are not whole, and so BG is not here to say this, but I will gladly speak on her behalf and say that BG and I will remain committed to the work of getting every American home, including Paul, whose family is in our hearts today as we celebrate BG being home. We do understand that there are still people out here who are enduring what I endured the last nine months of missing tremendously their loved ones.

So, thank you, everybody, for your support. And today is just a happy day for me and my family. So, I'm going to smile right now. Thank you.

BIDEN: Thank you. Thank you all very much.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, what do you say to the Whelan family, who says this is a catastrophe for Paul?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When will Brittney be back in the U.S.? When will she land?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is Russia got in return, Mr. President? BIDEN: In the next twenty-four hours.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What do you say to the Whelan family, who says this is a catastrophe for Paul, Mr. President?

BIDEN: We're speaking to them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How soon will he be home?

LEMON: All right, the President getting bombarded with questions there at the end of that press conference. But there you heard the President the United States, Brittney Griner's wife in the Vice President of the United States and this is a moment that we will all remember as Van Jones just alluded to. It is a happy moment for the United States.

The President started by thanking everyone involved for their hard work, the UAE, of course, he thanked the wife there that said it was important. And Poppy pointed this out that Brittney Griner is in good spirits. He asked to give her space and time mentioning her two-time Olympic gold medal wins.

And he said that he wrote her back in July. She wrote him, excuse me, back in July asking for help with her but also for others who had been detained as well. And he said it wasn't a choice about what American to bring home that this was the right move at this time, mentioning Paul Whelan as well saying that the United States will never give up.

And as the President of the United States, it was his job to secure, bringing home people who were unlawfully detained. It was a priority for the United States, and that he would do that. But I want to just finish up before I bring in Abby Phillip here because Brittney Griner's wife Cherelle was there speaking and she said that Americans, people around the world witnessed them in the darkest moments of their life. And she said this has not been easy.

She thank the president. She thanked Tony Blinken. She thanked Jake Sullivan, and she said, today my family is whole and BG and I will remain committed to bringing other people home as well.

Abby Phillip has been in contact and interviewed the wife of Brittney Griner and speaking -- listen, she is happy. This is an amazing moment for her. So talk to us about your conversations. And what you notice as this was happening as she was speaking there at the White House.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR & SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, I've spoken to Cherelle many times over the last several months. And obviously, she's overjoyed by this moment. It's been incredibly difficult. And for the reasons that you can imagine for all of these families, this type of situation is unbearable.

But in this case, it was clear to Cherelle, she told me that that her wife was being used as a political pawn. I think she feared for what would happen to a black lesbian woman in Russia. She feared what would happen in the context of the the Ukraine war, how Russia could seek to use Brittney Griner to meet other ends in the global sort of conflicts that were unfolding. And so it's a huge relief. But as you can see there, there is a lot of I think on the other side of it, you know, I -- guilt is probably not the best word, but a feeling of sadness for the other families, especially for the Whelan family, who she's gotten to know over these last few months.

When I first met Cherelle, it was actually in a setting where she was being really embraced by this community of families, of wrongfully detained Americans, who basically took her under the wing. And the first thing that they told her was that she needed to continue to pressure as loudly as possible, the Biden administration, asking for a face-to-face meeting with President Biden, which she did publicly until -- in her interview with me, until she got that meeting.

And that public pressure, a lot of people around these issues have told me have really changed the paradigm around wrongfully detained Americans around the world. It's really put it front and center. It used to be that administrations wanted to deal with these issues totally in private.

But I think the Griner family, Cherelle Greiner and her agents and the WNBA, they took a different tactic making this basically front-page news for months and months and months. And I think that they believe that that made a huge difference here, making it impossible really, for President Biden to do anything else but to make this a top priority.

[08:50:04]

LEMON: Yes. Abby, thanks for that. Appreciate it.

COLLINS: And so much of this had to do with that pressure on the White House that came from these families. That's been a big aspect of this. It was with Trevor Reed's family. That was a huge -- they came up from the White House, it was pouring raining, I remember that day. And they stood out there because they wanted the attention.

HARLOW: Can I ask you that, because you're the Chief White House Correspondent, you were in those rooms asking those questions when these things happen. What struck you about what we just heard from the President?

COLLINS: I think he really wanted to talk about what a happy moment this is. And that is incredibly a big focus here of what this means, show Griner saying, you know, these have been the darkest moments of my entire life where they couldn't speak. They couldn't talk to her, but also saying, you know, Paul Whelan's family, we hear you --

HARLOW: Yes.

COLLINS: -- and saying he believed -- we'll wait to learn more about what officials say when they briefed reporters on this, what he said were totally illegitimate reasons that Russia is not bringing -- is not releasing Paul Whelan at this time.

MJ Lee, you're at the White House. You know, you're watching these remarks from President Biden. And it was that moment there at the end, when Kristen Welker shouted out, you know, the timeline. He said he believes that Brittney Griner will be back inside the United States within the next 24 hours. Obviously, she'll have to undergo a medical evaluation, big things that will have to happen to her in the aftermath. But President Biden making clear what a monumental moment this is.

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. You know, this speech was first and foremost celebratory talking about how Griner has been through hell, the President said, over the last few months, and now she's able to be reunited with her family. And when he -- Cherelle Griner take the podium even before she was able to say any words, she literally let out a huge sigh of relief. And she said, I am just so overcome with the motion.

But I think you hit the nail on the head. He made sure that the speech was also in large part about addressing Paul Whelan. He said we have not forgotten about him. We are not giving up and we are going to keep negotiating in good faith.

And I just want to give you a little bit of our reporting from this morning on sort of the backstory of why Paul Whelan wasn't included in this deal. A U.S. official telling me that they, of course, have been trying for months to make sure that Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan were both a part of this deal. This is what they ultimately wanted.

But the Russians made clear as we got into the recent days that they were only willing to negotiate for Griner, that they essentially treated the two cases very separately based on the different things that each person was accused of. Now, the U.S. administration kept pushing for Whelan to be a part of this deal. But ultimately, they got to a point where the Russians made it so clear that he could not be a part of this deal, that they were only willing to give up Brittney Griner.

And so they ultimately had to make the decision to accept this deal. This official telling me, quote, it was a choice to get Griner or nothing. And a different senior administration official told me this morning, this was the only deal we could make right now. So I think the question now is, look, if Viktor Bout wasn't enough for Paul Whelan, what is going to be enough?

That is going to be the problem and the discussion that is certainly already ongoing in the administration, because obviously, they wanted both of these people. They were not able to get both. And we heard directly, again, from the President, emphasizing repeatedly that it is a top priority for him now to turn his attention to Whelan and getting him out of Russia.

HARLOW: Absolutely. MJ, thank you very, very much for all that reporting and especially that context at the end. Because now we're going to bring in David Whelan, he is Paul's brother. David, good morning to you. Thank you for being here.

DAVID WHELAN, BROTHER OF PAUL WHELAN: Good morning.

HARLOW: Just let's begin with your reaction to the news. WHELAN: It's great news. Anytime an American comes home is wonderful news. I'm so glad for Brittney and for Cherelle. It's a wonderful day.

HARLOW: Paul has been held for four years. And the last I read and heard from you about a week ago, he was in a Russian hospital. The President said he's talked to you, as I understand yesterday, can you share what you can with us in terms of this administration's efforts to get your brother home?

WHELAN: Someone from the White House let us know, which was very kind. It's hard to process this in real time, which is what we had to do last April, when Paul was left behind before and Trevor Reed came home. And it's a great day for the families of the wrongfully detained and we feel wonderful for them.

But we do we do worry about what's involved future. I think it's become clear that the U.S. doesn't have any concessions that the Russian government wants for Paul, and so I'm not really sure -- I'm not really sure what the future holds.

LEMON: Yes. Listen, I imagine it is bittersweet, I don't know if that's the right term because you're happy for Brittney Griner's family, for her wife and for all involved. You said it's a good day for people who are wrongfully detained but then your brother is still there. So how do you navigate that? What do you think moving forward your conversations with the administration and those who are involved in trying to get your brother home? Where does that go from here?

[08:55:05]

WHELAN: It's the same thing we've been doing every day for the last what, 440 days. You know, we heard the news yesterday, I prepared my media statement to go out this morning. And we were back to work, you know, checking Russian media, looking for options that we could send on to the U.S. government suggestions.

But really, you know, it's a matter of helping Paul to survive until -- and if the U.S. government is able to find a concession that the Russian government wants and it's not magic. It's just a ton of work.

COLLINS: And, David, you are the President say, for reasons, he says are totally illegitimate. Russia is not treating the release of your brother, the same as Brittney Griner. Did anyone from the administration tell you what they believe those reasons are?

WHELAN: It's not clear to me what it is. It's probably something to do with parity. Russians are -- well Russians are Russians. The Kremlin is particularly focused, excuse me, on parody, I'm getting equal things. And so, if they have labeled Paul as a spy, it may be that they're waiting until the U.S. government captures a spy and can an offer that as a trade, that's the only thing I can imagine. So -- but it's hard to know. And it's clear that whatever it is, the U.S. government doesn't currently have it.

LEMON: You were alerted before, right? How soon will you alert about this? WHELAN: It was really gracious on the White House. They let us know yesterday, because it's hard to process all of this last time. You know, I was processing it on media an hour after we had learned and it's very difficult to go through those motions.

HARLOW: We are all thinking about you. We don't know what it's like to be in your shoes, but you are in our hearts this morning. David, thank you.

LEMON: Thank you very much, David.

WHELAN: Thank you.

LEMON: CNN's Van Jones is sitting, and Van you've been watching all of these and absorbing it and just sort of looking at each other from across the desk here just --

JONES: Yes.

LEMON: -- sort of taking in the moment. This is one of those moments you and I cover a lot of breaking news, a lot of big stories as we will remember this moment.

JONES: Yes. And I think that there's -- you can see this is kind of fraternity or sorority of pain. Even when Cherelle, the white steps forward, she's talking about Whelan, she's not just talking about herself. I mean, first of all, what a class act. She thanked everybody. I mean, she went through a list of everybody who's ever helped class act, maintains that poise. But she wouldn't leave that microphone without talking about the other people left behind.

There's a fraternity and sorority of people who are -- have loved ones who were being held in horrible conditions. We don't think about them every day, they think about them every minute. And that solidarity has not been broken. You know, I think that his brother, also class act.

HARLOW: Yes, yes.

JONES: The first thing he says is, I'm happy for the other family. You can see the heartbreak. You can see the pain. His brother has been left behind repeatedly, but he still sticks up for the one who's coming home.

So we need to be like that as a country. If they can stand together in this much pain, we should be doing the same thing. But, you know, today is going to be a joyful moment. And for all the pain, for all the criticisms, a joyful moment for the black women who led a movement to get one of their sisters home.

This was a grassroots movement. They had to push to get male athletes, to get us to take it seriously. But they have triumph. And here's the deal. If you can bring one home, you can bring to home. So I don't see this as a bad sign for Paul Whelan. I think it's a good sign for what Americans can do when we stand together.

LEMON: If I would be -- I think I would be remiss if we did not mention also the importance this place for the LGBTQ community. We've been talking about black women, this is big. So this is for the LGBTQ community, glad releasing a statement obviously just -- I'm summarizing here that they're happy and that shows the struggles and the danger that members of the LGBT community face around the world.

But when you look at what is happening with the LGBT community, specifically here in the United States, what does this say this -- does this bring attention to that and it shows us, hey, look, we're all Americans.

JONES: Brittney Griner represents everything in this country. She's female, she's LGBTQ, she's black and she's extraordinary. She's excellent. She's overcome. She's an icon. She's done everything you can do in her sport and more. And yet, she still wasn't safe. She was snatched off of a plane and treated like trash. And we didn't let it stand.

Americans came together. And I think that Biden and Kamala Harris, this is one of the things that they're going to be, I think, the most proud of. I think Americans can stand together on this one. But where we say that right now, when she comes off that plane, when she walks off that plane, when her wife hugs her, when that moment happens, that is going to be decade defining.

People will remember that and it should show us what we can do when we stand together. It can show us what we can do when we don't give up on people. We give up on too many people. We give up on each other in politics all the time. We give up on our kids, we give up on our relatives. You're blocking people on Facebook and Twitter. We get so mad and we let go of each other's hands. You grab hold of each other and look what happens.

COLLINS: And her life will never be the same again.

LEMON: Yes.

JONES: And, by the way, if she ever touched another basketball on the court, the whole world will watch.

LEMON: Will be watching.

JONES: And that will transform women's sports.

LEMON: Van, thank you. Glad you were here with us.

COLLINS: Yes.

LEMON: Thank you.

COLLINS: Such an important perspective on such big news.

CNN special coverage of this monumental moment, the release of Brittney Griner, who's now on her way back to the United States continues right now.