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CNN This Morning
Biden Mocks Trump Grift, Even Bannon Says "I Can't Do This Anymore"; National Archives Releases 13,000+ Documents On JFK's Assassination; Bill To Protect Pregnant Workers From Discrimination Stalled. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired December 16, 2022 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:30:00]
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: I mean --
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, POLITICAL ANCHOR, SPECTRUM NEWS: I know. That's right.
LEMON: -- what the -- what is this? Has he lost -- NFT --
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, it -- it's another cheesy grift -- him trying to monetize his hardcore supporters. It shows how fundamentally unseriously he's taking this run for president and how unseriously he takes anything except himself. And even that turns into a cartoon version.
This is just more nonsense. And if this is the big reveal some folks need, let's just be clear. It's not that he got bad advice, it's that he is bad advice and he did this to himself.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Can we listen to what Steve Bannon said about it --
AVLON: Yes.
COLLINS: -- because I think this will kind of encapsulate the reaction from even Trump's allies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: I can't do this anymore. He's one of the greatest presidents in history, but I've got to tell -- whoever -- what business partner enabling the comms team and anybody at Mar-a-Lago -- and I love the folks down there -- but we're at war. They ought to be fired today.
You came out with something that's so important, which I still don't think gets to the heart of it. And hey, you don't have three harder cores than Cortez, Bannon, and (INAUDIBLE).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: (Laughing).
COLLINS: I mean --
LEMON: Ha, ha, ha.
COLLINS: -- if you've got those three criticizing you --
LOUIS: When you've lost Steve Bannon -- look, Steve Bannon has been sentenced to prison. He's supposed to spend time behind bars for defending Trump and so disrespecting or -- the charge is contempt of Congress. He refused to give any information to the January 6 committee.
This is somebody who battled for Trump over and over and over again. And when he says -- you know, he sounded to me like he was just kind of thinking out loud -- I can't -- I can't keep doing this. Because this has nothing to do with any cause whatsoever -- not even winning power. Not even --
AVLON: Yes.
LOUIS: -- winning the race. I mean, this is somebody who declared for president in, what, mid-November. Has he done any events? No, he has not done one single event.
AVLON: But he has put out superhero trading cards of himself --
LEMON: Yes. But everyone thought --
AVLON: -- which is not -- which is crazy man.
LEMON: -- that this would be something where he would announce an event. I mean, but seriously, this is -- this is a grift, right?
AVLON: Yes, of course.
LEMON: He's raising money, once again, from people who, quite frankly, don't have a lot of money, right? And they are sending money to him.
LOUIS: Him personally, not his campaign account.
LEMON: Yes.
AVLON: Yes, yes, yes.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: That's a good point.
AVLON: He will fleece -- he will fleece his fans until everybody's off the stage.
LEMON: So when is enough enough? When do people say I'm done?
LOUIS: Well, you know, I would suggest, by the way, while we perhaps are talking to some of these folks, maybe send the $99 to your local soup kitchen or some people who need it in this holiday season.
People are -- I think are going to have to grow up at some point. I mean, Trump and Trumpism, and what he means to this country was always about how do you react to this person with the vulgarity and the obscenity, and the different things that Trump brings to the table. Are you going to accept it? Are you going to fund it? Are you going to look the other way? Or are you going to maybe just opt out, which is maybe the easiest thing to do at this point?
AVLON: This is somebody who --
LEMON: I'm your favorite president, hopefully, and I've got a fancy new announcement.
AVLON: Put aside that hype.
LOUIS: Greater than George Washington.
AVLON: This ain't none of that.
And when you hear Bannon say one of the greatest presidents in American history, this guy is going to be in the bottom five if he's lucky.
This is a guy who tried to overturn democracy and now he's trying to grasp onto power and still has a lot of hardcore supporters. And here he's just fleecing them with trading cards of himself as a superhero. It is just -- it is another cheesy grift. That's how (INAUDIBLE) the dude is.
LEMON: Are you going to buy some, Poppy?
AVLON: Yes.
HARLOW: Are you kidding?
LEMON: Wallpaper?
HARLOW: That's my only addition to this segment -- are you kidding. I can't even --
AVLON: You cannot be serious. You're the John McEnroe of this conversation.
HARLOW: Exactly.
LEMON: I mean -- but I wonder what -- I do wonder what -- when you said are you kidding, I do wonder what people who live in the rest of the country, right -- all the --
AVLON: Yes.
LEMON: -- big part -- "bringing the world home" is our tagline here.
AVLON: Yes.
LEMON: I wonder what they think of this? I really do.
HARLOW: This isn't about New York. I'm a Minnesota girl and I'm just like this is just beyond.
LEMON: Well, I wonder what your family --
HARLOW: Yes, yes.
LEMON: -- is thinking, you know?
HARLOW: We'll ask.
LEMON: Yes.
AVLON: Yes. I mean, it's -- look, some people say it's just Trump being Trump and it's more sort of cartoon nonsense. But again, this is a time when there are serious things going on and this is a person who is fundamentally --
COLLINS: Yes.
AVLON: -- he's just beclowning himself again. And some of his hardcore supporters are realizing that there's no there there.
HARLOW: Beclowning?
AVLON: Beclowning.
LEMON: Beclowning.
HARLOW: OK.
LEMON: Beclowning.
COLLINS: And I think the concern is --
AVLON: We can conjugate that later.
COLLINS: -- his campaign -- it's precisely what you said. He isn't really -- it was yesterday -- a month yesterday that he had announced he's running. They haven't planned any rallies. They haven't announced any events. That's what people were hoping this was going to be.
AVLON: Right.
COLLINS: An outlying of what his campaign is going to look like.
LOUIS: Right.
COLLINS: Even his own advisers want to see that and we're not seeing it.
LOUIS: Well, let me -- look, well, here we are five years after the fact, after he came down the escalator, still making the same mistake, thinking that there's -- that this fits somehow in the frame of normal politics.
LEMON: I think we've spent -- we've wasted --
HARLOW: Yes.
LEMON: -- enough time.
AVLON: Yes. But yes --
HARLOW: We've got to -- we've got to jump.
AVLON: -- we should be talking about the things that actually need to get done in Washington. Right now, there are people doing serious business that will help people's lives.
HARLOW: Let's talk about a bill --
LEMON: Yes.
HARLOW: -- next --
LEMON: By the way --
HARLOW: -- on that front.
LEMON: -- Biden is winning, Trump. So you better get it together.
Thank you, Errol. Thank you, John.
AVLON: Take care, guys.
LEMON: Fifty-nine years later, what we could learn from the release of thousands of documents related to the JFK assassination.
[07:35:03]
COLLINS: And CNN is live in El Paso, Texas as border officials are bracing for more of a massive surge in migrants crossing the border. Here's what they're expecting this weekend.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are a number of people who are choosing not to cross just yet. They say they are waiting until next week to figure out what happens with Title 42 to figure out if they will cross. And they're doing that because they don't to risk being deported.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: What would it mean if Donald Trump was reelected president?
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): I don't think it'll happen. The American people have gotten wise to him.
GANGEL: They're not --
SCHUMER: It took a little while --
GANGEL: Yes.
SCHUMER: -- but they did.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): I don't think that we should talk about him while we're eating.
SCHUMER: (Laughing).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: I cannot wait to see this whole interview that Jamie Gangel did.
Welcome back to CNN THIS MORNING.
Coming up, we have more of Jamie's sit-down interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. What they're saying about a Biden reelection over really good Chinese food, as you can see.
[07:40:00]
And the Senate buying themselves some time in passing a stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown for another week.
Plus, our very own Donie O'Sullivan, one of the journalists banned by Elon Musk from Twitter overnight -- what he will tell us. What he thinks about all of this crackdown on free speech.
LEMON: Now to this fascinating story this morning. Nearly six decades after his assassination, the National Archives just released more than 13,000 documents related to JFK's assassination. The release of the previously classified documents is the second of two document dumps ordered last year by President Biden.
CNN correspondent Mr. Tom Foreman has the details for us. Tom, good morning to you. What's in the documents?
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A lot. This was a huge volume of documents -- 13,000. This is like 11 copies of War and Peace all being dumped at once.
What's in it mainly, though, seems to be a lot of minutia -- a lot of little details about all the endless, endless leads that authorities were looking at, at this time. So there's information about how they were wiretapping the Soviet Embassy down in Mexico, and about how they were following phone calls that came in from nowhere about almost nothing. A huge, huge amount.
What's also striking about this as you read through it is that there is no sign -- I say read through it. I'm nowhere getting through all these pages. It's going to take a long time. There's no sign that there is any really big revelation in here. This really is about filling in all the little gaps because remember, this is the tail end of a huge amount of information that's been released over a long period of time -- roughly five million pages overall.
And I just did the math a while ago. If you wanted to read all the pages that the federal government has on the Kennedy assassination, start reading now and never stop. One page a minute and you'll be done in a little over nine years.
LEMON: Oh my goodness.
HARLOW: Oh.
COLLINS: Great.
FOREMAN: Yes, that's a lot of paper.
COLLINS: We'll get started now.
You know, what stood out to me about this is that this is something that was an effort in the Trump administration and an effort in the Biden administration. It's kind of releasing -- there's no smoking guns in it, but it still is important for all of these documents to be out there for historians and for the archives to be able to look through what they looked at with these five million pages.
FOREMAN: Oh, yes. If you're -- if you're somebody who lives for this sort of research, I mean, this is really a treasure trove -- constantly, lots of information.
One of the big questions people said is why has it taken so long to dump it. Well, when you look at it you see that this is something that the intelligence community is very sensitive about people knowing some of their methods and knowing some of the things they have done -- some of the context they've had even many, many years later which, of course, conspiracy theorists look at and say aha, that's the whole point. You don't want us to know what you are up to. This will fuel that fire as well.
LEMON: Tom Foreman, what did you say? In nine years -- how long?
HARLOW: Nine years.
LEMON: I hear you.
FOREMAN: Yes. I'll be -- I'll be busy. I'll be busy for a while.
HARLOW: Thank you.
COLLINS: We'll bring you back.
LEMON: Appreciate it, Tom. Thank you. Have a great weekend. We'll see you soon.
FOREMAN: You're welcome. HARLOW: So, we're going to talk about a bill next to protect pregnant workers from discrimination with broad bipartisan support, but it is stalled in Congress. Hear why.
(COMMERCIAL)
[07:47:17]
HARLOW: Welcome back to CNN THIS MORNING.
Groups across the political and ideological spectrum are urging the Senate to pass the Pregnancy (sic) Workers Fairness Act before they leave for recess. This is a bill that has already passed the House by a wide margin. It would require businesses to make what they -- what are deemed reasonable accommodations for employees who are pregnant, have given birth, or have related medical conditions.
And this bill has really broad bipartisan support. It is sponsored by senators on the left and the right. It is supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, by labor unions, by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and many of the nation's leading employers.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy told Politico last month, quote, "The clock is ticking. This is a bipartisan bill that is pro-mothers, pro- healthy pregnancies, pro-workers. Let's get it through the Senate by the end of the year." But when it came up for a procedural vote to advance in the Senate last week, it was blocked.
So in a new CNN opinion piece titled "We disagree about abortion, but with one voice support this urgently needed law," four legal and historical scholars on opposite sides of the abortion debate came together to urge Congress to pass it. And they write, "Without this bill, employers can discriminate against pregnant workers who need common-sense help, denying them exemptions from heavy lifting, as well as bathroom breaks or water breaks -- sometimes at the cost of their jobs and health."
So joining us now to talk about this, Mary Zeigler, professor of law at UC Davis. And Reve Siegel, professor of law at Yale Law School. I should note I was a student in Professor Siegel's constitutional law class. So thank you both very much for being here.
Professor Siegel, let me begin with you. I think all our viewers will say but I thought that pregnancy discrimination at work was illegal already. Why isn't the current Pregnancy Discrimination Act enough?
REVA SIEGEL, NICHOLAS DEB. KATZENBACH PROFESSOR, YALE LAW SCHOOL (via Webex by Cisco): So, first of all, Poppy, thanks for having us on.
I think that it's important that we managed to pass the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978 and it's done important work in beginning to shift norms. But the way the courts have interpreted it, they -- both the act is understood to essentially provide same treatment and nothing more.
And oftentimes it's the case that employees have difficulty coming up with evidence that there's a comparator -- someone who is similarly situated to them and the ability or inability to work. And courts don't buy it.
Also, there's concern that the act doesn't provide for even modest accommodations -- reasonable accommodations in the workplace -- at least as courts have interpreted it.
And so, it can leave working pregnant people high and dry and out of a job. And often -- too often, it has done. Often, it's as if the act even weren't there. And that's the reason that's the impetus for the act here.
[07:50:06]
HARLOW: So, Professor Zeigler, I had read a stat that two-thirds of pregnant women actually lose their discrimination cases in court, and I think that's because of what Professor Siegel was saying how this is interpreted often. How federal law is interpreted.
Can you explain what a reasonable accommodation actually is? What this bill would change if you -- if it can make it through?
MARY ZEIGLER, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UC DAVIS (via Webex by Cisco): Yes. The model for the bill -- we already have the Americans With Disabilities Act and a lot of viewers are familiar with that if they have family members with disabilities. This would be kind of extending similar logic to pregnant workers, right?
So, employers wouldn't have to do anything that's an undue hardship for them financially or otherwise. But accommodations that are reasonable and doable for the employer would be available for that pregnant worker.
And I think what's important, too, is not just that those pregnant workers would be able to get accommodations but that requests for accommodations would no longer be serving as a basis for termination. One of the more kind of talking things that we see now is that employers will use requests for accommodation as a -- as an excuse to terminate.
So we're seeing this not just that employees are losing accommodations that they need sometimes to avoid things like negative pregnancy outcomes like miscarriage, but also that employers are using that sometimes as an excuse to get rid of employees who are doing a good job at work.
So this is sort of extending disability protections to pregnant workers that we think they deserve.
HARLOW: What's interesting, Professor Siegel, is where the hang up seems to be -- even though this is supported by so many groups with so many different perspectives, including the U.S. Conference of Bishops, the Chamber of Commerce, et cetera -- is abortion.
And I want you to listen to Republican Sen. Tillis, who blocked this from progressing, about his concern. Here he is. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I absolutely want to make sure that those sort of reasonable accommodations are accounted for. However, in its current form, this legislation before us would give federal bureaucrats at the EEOC authority to mandate that employers nationwide provide accommodations such as leave to obtain abortions.
Unlike Title VII and the Americans With Disabilities Act, this legislation contains no exemptions for religious organizations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: I know this is still in the works but on the abortion concern, I wonder what your response is?
SIEGEL: Well, I guess I have two responses. One, it really goes to the merits of where we stand which is, I guess I'd say, especially in the months after the Dobbs decision. It's absolutely crucial that we get this done and we find a way to get it done. And the reason that all of us got together -- that is to say on both sides of the aisle -- to emphasize this legislation is that it's critical that we find a path through.
And the way in which the bill was drafted was a kind of -- it already has some language providing for exclusions along lines of abortion that was sufficient even for the U.S. Conference of Bishops.
HARLOW: Yes.
SIEGEL: So I'm not going to get into the weeds, but it's already -- there's language in there.
Secondly, we have the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on the books as a backstop. And thirdly, there's already some kind of negotiations in the works, the details of which I don't really -- can't know. And I would think to certain (INAUDIBLE) on the show. But I don't want people to lose sight of the prize that we can't turn everything into a debate about abortion.
People who care about this issue do care about making sure that working people have the ability to hang onto their jobs if pregnant. That has to be the core issue.
HARLOW: And finally to you, Professor Zeigler. This is something also echoed in this recent piece in the National Review by conservative attorney Rachel Morrison who, essentially, said the same thing that Tillis is saying. She writes, "It's almost certain related medical conditions will be interpreted to include abortion."
Just a final word to address that and your concern if this doesn't pass.
ZEIGLER: Well, I think one of the reasons we wrote the piece is that the kind of the word on the street is that it's kind of now or never with this bill given that it has -- doesn't have a lot of support allegedly among incoming House Republicans.
And I'd just reinforce something Professor Siegel said, which is that one, I hope whatever impasse is addressed. I don't think that abortion should be a justification for taking away protections for pregnant workers at a time when if the Dobbs decision has an effect, more people will be pregnant, right? More people will be facing termination and discrimination.
So I think this is a time when people in Congress need to figure this out because this is something that Americans overwhelmingly support. Americans who disagree on abortion overwhelming support.
[07:55:00]
And so, while I agree with Professor Siegel that I don't particularly find these religious liberty concerns to be that pressing given the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and given the negotiations that are ongoing, I think what's important to remember is that pregnant workers deserve these protections and we need to find a way to get this done before their recess.
HARLOW: Yes. I think it's eye-opening to a lot of people who assume that those protections were airtight, and they're not.
So, thank you both for writing this and getting together with folks who disagree with you to write this for cnn.com. We appreciate it and we'll track it very closely. Thank you.
SIEGEL: Poppy, we hope America --
ZEIGLER: Thanks for having us.
SIEGEL: -- finds a way to do this together, you know? It's for moms.
HARLOW: There you go. Thank you, professors -- Kaitlan.
COLLINS: We love the moms.
Ahead, we have more on the suspension of several prominent journalists on Twitter overnight. One of those is CNN's Donie O'Sullivan. How could anyone ban Donie? Joins us live, next. We'll talk about the real implications of this decision.
(COMMERCIAL)
