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CNN This Morning

Secret Service Testify on January 6th; Anne Applebaum is Interviewed about the Revolt in Russia; Real Estate Faces Pressure. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired June 27, 2023 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: The latest on that investigation next.

Plus -

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIZ CHENEY (R-WY), FORMER CONGRESSWOMAN: What we've done in our politics is create a situation where we're electing idiots.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Well, saying exactly what she thinks. That is former Congresswoman Liz Cheney weighing in on the current state of politics and whether she will run as an independent to take on Donald Trump.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTINGLY: Welcome back.

This morning we heard that audio central to the prosecution's case on Donald Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents. But the special counsel, Jack Smith, is also investigating the former president for his alleged role in the January 6th insurrection. A new report by NBC News says that five or six Secret Service agents have testified before the January 6th grand jury.

I want to bring back in Elie Honig and Adam Kinzinger.

Elie, I think it's easy to forget that there's another piece of what the special counsel is working on related to January 6th. There's several different elements that people have been trying to pin down. What's your read of things based on who is testifying?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: So, nobody has access to the president's movements like Secret Service.

[06:35:01]

So, they could have really valuable information. Important to know, there actually is precedent for this. Back in Ken Starr's investigation after White Water, he wanted to talk to Bill Clinton's Secret Service agents. It was actually resisted in court. And there was a ruling that came out saying, no, this is fair game. So there is no Secret Service/presidential privilege here.

HARLOW: One thing we don't know that NBC points out is the proximity of these about six or so Secret Service agents to the president on that day. But the big question is, Cassidy Hutchinson famously testified before your committee, the January 6th committee, that she heard secondhand that Trump wanted Secret Service agents to drive him to the Capitol. She also recounted an episode she heard about secondhand that the president, in "The Beast," tried to grab the car's steering wheel and then reached for the clavicles of the driver, right? Trump has denied all of that.

But this is what you would assume they're looking to corroborate?

ADAM KINZINGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, because if he -- if he's sitting there -- the law expert would know better, but if he's sitting there saying, we want to go down to the Capitol, that shows intent. It shows desire. It wasn't just like a one-off where he said it on stage and he's like, no, I'm really going to go back to the White House. He - because everything we heard is, he was angry and he wanted to go.

I think this is a pretty big deal. And as a guy that, you know, spent a lot of time working on the January 6th stuff, I personally think this is, as important as the classify document case is, I think accountability for this is even more important, even if it's not the president but it's second tier folks. We can't have failed insurrections in this country. We just can't do it.

MATTINGLY: Yes.

HONIG: That's a great point. I mean we're all so focused on Mar-a-Lago because it's been indicted evidence (ph) in court. But Adam makes a perfect point there, which is, January 6th is a bigger deal and DOJ has not done anything about January 6th aboveground level as of yet.

MATTINGLY: Perfect. Was it a perfect point?

HONIG: It was a - it was a 9.5 out of 10 point.

MATTINGLY: I mean, come on. He was a congressman.

KINZINGER: Thanks, man. That's very nice.

MATTINGLY: We don't have to build him up. He had staff doing that.

HARLOW: No one is - no one is -

HONIG: He's very good.

HARLOW: No one is perfect here, gentlemen. Sorry to break it do you.

Adam Kinzinger, Elie Honig, thank you. Stay close.

KINZINGER: You bet.

MATTINGLY: All right, happening right now, Russian President Vladimir Putin is addressing his troops after that weekend rebellion. But our next guest says Putin is caught in his own trap of disengaged citizens.

Stay tuned.

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[06:41:26]

HARLOW: Moments ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed his military at the Kremlin after last weekend's armed rebellion. He is telling his troops, quote, you acted clearly in a well-coordinated matter, by deed you proved your loyalty to the people of Russia and to the military oath, you showed responsibility for the fate of the motherland and its future. That is what Putin just said.

There's little doubt, though, that as the Wagner group marched towards Moscow, they met hardly any resistance.

MATTINGLY: And when they arrived at Rostov-on-Don, nobody shot at them. You can see them on the street. Their yellow cups of coffee. You saw street sweepers active and social media stars to some degree.

According to our next guest, after spending years of cultivating public apathy, Putin found Russians indifferent. Some degree to his fate. Anne Applebaum writes in "The Atlantic," this was the most remarkable aspect of the whole day. Nobody seemed to mind, particularly, that a brutal new warlord had arrived to replace the existing regime. Not the security services, not the army, and not the general public.

Anne Applebaum joins us. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and staff writer for "The Atlantic."

And, Anne, I love this piece because throughout the course of the last 72 to 90 hours I've been waiting for our colleagues on the ground, or on social media, to see a level of panic or concern or fear or uprising to some degree amongst the Russian people. And you never saw it. And I kept wondering why until I read your story, your column, and it started to click a little bit.

What were you thinking through as you wrote this?

ANNE APPLEBAUM, STAFF WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": I was thinking about the way in which Putin-ist propaganda and public communications works. For decades now, two decades, since he - since he originally came to power, Putin has mastered the art of sending conflicting messages. You know, one message one day. A confusing event happens and he'll offer multiple explanations. Different TV channels will make different kinds of speculations.

When the - when the Malaysian plane crashed over eastern Ukraine in 2014, they had literally dozens of explanations. And one of the effects of this kind of fire hose of falsehoods, as it's been called, is that people don't really believe in anything. People don't believe the news. They don't belief the rumors. They have no idea what's true and what's not true. And that, of course, leads to apathy because if you don't know what's true, then there's nothing really you can do about it.

And we really saw that in action in Rostov on Saturday when the Wagner group arrived in town and were taking over. They walked into the southern military district. They, you know, bought coffee at the -- what used to be the McDonald's across the street, and nobody stopped them. And people didn't seem to mind. On the contrary, they were cheering and clapping when they left. And this is because, you know, one - one war lord with (ph) the other one. What's the difference? Putin doesn't have cadres of enthusiastic supporters. And we saw that on Saturday.

HARLOW: Anne, here's an example of Russian state media trying to spin it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I'm sincerely grateful to our president for his exceptional strength and wisdom. There are all these screams that someone is being replaced or removed. I can assure you, no one is getting replaced. The president does not respond to ultimatums.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: And, look, you wrote in your piece that, I agree, was just really helped us get a lens into what is happening right now. The side effect of apathy was on display of, if no one cares about anything, that means they don't care about their supreme leader, his ideology or his war.

Speak more to that.

APPLEBAUM: Yes. Well, I mean, you will hear now -- they're now realizing what happened and they will now try and make up for it.

[06:45:04]

And Putin is making these, you know, pompous speeches and the television will say, yes, yes, we all support him. But we did suddenly have a vision into the true Russia on Saturday.

You know, one of the extraordinary things about Russia is that you can't really do opinion polling. So I have a friend who does it there and, you know, nine out of 10 people who you call up will hang up the phone. So any polls that you've seen reflect only 10 percent of the - the 10 percent who will talk to an opinion pollster. And -- but even - even without that it's pretty clear that faded support for the war means very little. You know, people don't want to sign up for it, and they don't, and they don't want to fight in it, and they don't, and they don't create enthusiastic rallies around it and they don't celebrate the dead and they don't have funerals the way the Ukrainians do. You can see there's no emotional attachment to this war.

And that is actually a problem for Putin. You know, he has to keep prosecuting an increasingly costly -- costly in terms of money and lives, terrible military conflict and people just aren't that excited about it.

MATTINGLY: And, real quick, before we let you go, President Putin has been speaking to his military officials, to law enforcement as well. And in his remarks just now, he applauded them for the process of stopping a civil war. That type of language, I think we've all been watching his words very closely, listening to everything he says, trying to read the tea leaves, which is probably, to some degree, a fool's errand. But his framing of the potential for a civil war that was stopped by whatever deal that was made, what do you make of that?

APPLEBAUM: So, he was the first person to use the term civil war. And he used it on Saturday morning when he talked about 1917 and so on.

MATTINGLY: Yes.

APPLEBAUM: And, you know, my guess is that he's now trying to retrospectively act as if some great deed was done by the army, by the military and the security services, where, as we know, what happened was the opposite. Nobody stopped them. Actually, the Wagner group shot down a few Russian helicopters and an airplane, which is extraordinary. And now he needs to somehow give, you know, retrospective glory to the army that actually didn't do anything. I mean this is part of that propaganda game that I was talking about.

HARLOW: Anne Applebaum, thank you. Your reporting since Saturday on this has been extraordinary. Really appreciate you coming on.

All right, turning back to the United States, there's been a lot of talk about how is this economy, et cetera. But a lot of experts are focused on commercial real estate taking a hit, forcing jobs and employers to rethink office space. What this could mean for the broader economy. That's next.

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[06:51:46]

MATTINGLY: Well, after decades of booming growth, the commercial real estate industry has run into a brick wall. Building values are plummeting, offices remain empty and now rising interest rates could pressure the industry -- could pressure the industry even further.

CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich is here with more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): They're statuesque, vast and staggering, and they're empty. Skyscrapers and office buildings, once stacked high with businesses, are experiencing high vacancy rates in the U.S., nearly 19 percent, 5.5 percent higher than before the pandemic. STEVEN DURELS, EVP AND DIRECTOR OF LEASING, SL GREEN REALTY CORP.: I

think it's a very unique moment. Nothing like any disruptive marketplace that I've experienced over the past 40 years.

YURKEVICH: The pandemic emptied offices around the country. Today, the number of people returning to in-person work is less than 50 percent in ten major metro areas, forcing companies to rethink physical office space. Half of the biggest global companies say they'll need less real estate in the next three years, leaving landlords with loans to pay in a bind.

YURKEVICH (on camera): Because if there's no tenant, you're not making money.

DURELS: Right.

YURKEVICH: What do you do?

DURELS: There's no recouping, you know, lost income for down time.

YURKEVICH (voice over): Steven Durels runs the leasing at SL Green, New York City's largest commercial landlord. With more than 30 million square feet of space to rent, the collapsing demand for office space means their tenant vacancy rate shot up from 3 percent pre-pandemic to 10 percent today. That calls for some creativity.

AMANDA WEISENTHAL, HEAD OF SALES AND PRODUCTION, BACKLOT: You can build a set in here. You can have a fight scene in here.

YURKEVICH: SL Green is now working with Backlot, a company that connects landlords at 332 buildings across New York and New Jersey, with film and TV companies. This episode of "Law & Order" was filmed in this vacant office in midtown Manhattan. "The Watcher" on Netflix, in these east side offices.

WEISENTHAL: I think people are starting to look holistically at how they can support a revenue stream.

YURKEVICH: This year SL Green says it will earn $3 million from film and TV shoots.

DURELS: It's really helped mitigate the loss of income during the down time periods.

YURKEVICH: Empty office buildings could be turned into residential, a big need. This project in Washington, D.C., once an office building, is being turned into apartments. But that's not an easy, quick fix process. Less than 1 percent of apartments nationwide are converted from commercial properties.

And across the river in Arlington, Virginia, the city is trying to get ahead of its empty office space problem at 22 percent.

RYAN TOUHILL, DIRECTOR, ARLINGTON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: I'm sitting right today in Northeastern's D.C. campus. Last year, university was not allowed to take up space in an office building. YURKEVICH: Thanks to new city zoning laws, that's now possible, along

with seven new types of commercial businesses, like animal boarding, hydroponic farms and pickleball. It's already happening in south Jersey. This 22,000 square foot pickleball facility was a vacant Burlington Coat Factory in a strip mall. Regional mall vacancy is at a record high.

[06:55:02]

YURKEVICH (on camera): Were there a lot of options like this on the market?

ANDREW PESSANO, CO-OWNER, PROSHOT PICKLEBALL: Yes, I think we had more opportunity than we thought there would be in the market.

YURKEVICH: Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in America. So, does that mean that the sport needs to find places to play quickly?

PESSANO: The greatest threat to the growth of pickleball is the lack of facility.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

YURKEVICH: And, obviously, pickleball is a great way to draw people into commercial spaces. This is also happening in Connecticut. The largest indoor pickleball facility will open in an old off Fifth - so that's an old Saks Fifth Avenue.

And we spoke to landlords about what they feel like is going to bring businesses and people back into the office, parks. So, things like outdoor space, better food options, better things to do on your free moments at work.

It's a tough time for commercial real estate. All the banks are saying something different. These are the lenders, right?

HARLOW: What are they saying?

YURKEVICH: So, you have someone like a Bank of America saying that this is going to be the worst situation since the financial crisis. You have Morgan Stanley saying that this is going to be manageable. You have other banks saying that this is something we need to wait and see. A recession could, obviously, make this worse. No one's really on the same page right now about what this is going to look like.

But at least what we're seeing in major cities, for example, like a San Francisco, this is a ripple effect. You have the offices leaving, you have the retail leaving, and then you have fewer people in those cities, living in those cities.

MATTINGLY: Always nice when there's consensus amongst the experts.

YURKEVICH: Yes.

MATTINGLY: That was a great piece. Vanessa Yurkevich, thanks so much.

HARLOW: Yes, a great piece. I'm here for the pickleball.

All right, the tape that is key evidence in former President Trump's federal indictment. CNN was the first news organization to obtain it. Hear Trump in his own words speaking about classified documents ahead.

MATTINGLY: And, later today, Trump's aide, Walt Nauta, set to be arraigned on charges that he helped Trump hide documents that the Justice Department wanted back. Our analysts are here to break it all down, coming up next.

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