Return to Transcripts main page
CNN This Morning
DeSantis Aims To End Birthright Citizenship; Putin To Law Enforcement: You Stopped A Civil War; United CEO Blames FAA For Unprecedented Delays. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired June 27, 2023 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:30:00]
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: 2024 race.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Also, former congresswoman Liz Cheney issuing a warning to stop, as she says -- these are her words -- "electing idiots." That's ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARLOW: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the campaign trail outlining his border security plan that includes a vow to end birthright citizenship, of course, enshrined in the Constitution. It grants U.S. citizenship to anyone born within the U.S.
While visiting the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas yesterday, DeSantis said, quote, "Dangling the prize of citizenship to the future offspring of illegal immigrants is a major driver of illegal migration. It is also inconsistent with the original understanding of the 14th Amendment, and we will force the courts and Congress to finally address this failed policy."
Let's get right to hoovalon -- Margaret Hoover and John Avlon.
John, you were itching to say that you think --
MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, HOST, PBS "FIRING LINE": He's in here now.
HARLOW: -- DeSantis is correct --
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST AND ANCHOR: No.
HARLOW: -- in this reading of the 14th Amendment.
AVLON: I am not going to go --
HARLOW: I know.
AVLON: But the chance to nerd out with you on the 14th Amendment -- I mean, bring it on.
HOOVER: Good morning. HARLOW: Morning.
AVLON: So many good side shots.
HOOVER: Good morning, America.
AVLON: Good morning.
MATTINGLY: I was, like, I need another coffee. And then I was, like, no, I don't. My energy is coming right from this.
[07:35:02]
AVLON: There you go. That's what -- my gift to you.
HARLOW: That's quite a statement DeSantis made.
AVLON: It is. But look, this is going to right-wing -- you know, like catechism lately, but the idea that birthright citizenship is not what it seems to be or says in the U.S. Constitution. It's obviously a reaction against illegal immigration and this phenomenon of sort of birth tourism that can occur. But you run right into the Constitution and it's that hostility to the 14th Amendment that actually is --
HARLOW: Oh.
HOOVER: It's promising the moon, right? You can't just promise --
HARLOW: Trump ran on this.
HOOVER: -- (INAUDIBLE). I mean, Trump ran on all kinds of promises that he couldn't deliver, right?
MATTINGLY: And won.
HOOVER: You can't just amend. Didn't he amend the Constitution?
MATTINGLY: So why wouldn't this continue to do that?
HOOVER: Is there a border wall? Are the classified documents more secure now? I'm just curious.
MATTINGLY: But to that point, though, does that -- you know, if you listened to DeSantis yesterday and looked through his plans, you look at the billboards behind him -- "No excuses. Build the wall." Does that serve as an actual political avenue for him? Trump promised to do all this and couldn't. I'm going to do it, even though he won't.
HOOVER: Obviously, he sees that's his lane. You cannot win in a Republican primary by running to the right of Trump. You aren't going to get the further right people from Donald Trump. They -- Donald Trump has a certain portion of the base locked up and they are with him.
You can't also be more pro-life than Donald Trump who, by the way, got rid of Roe v. Wade, right -- HARLOW: Ron DeSantis --
HOOVER: -- which he obviously did. He --
HARLOW: Ron DeSantis went to a pretty good law school named Harvard.
HOOVER: Heard of it.
HARLOW: What did you say?
AVLON: Heard of it.
HOOVER: Heard of it.
HARLOW: Heard of it.
He understands these things. It's fair to say Trump didn't build as much of the wall at all as he said he was going to. But making this argument that saying the 14th Amendment doesn't say what it says is just --
AVLON: Well, this is --
HARLOW: -- funny.
AVLON: -- partly a dog whistle deal, right? I mean, the 14th -- the controversy --
HOOVER: Yes.
AVLON: -- on the far-right around the 14th Amendment also has to do with the other things it granted -- namely, citizenship to former --
HOOVER: Formerly enslaved people.
AVLON: Enslaved people, right.
HOOVER: Formerly enslaved, yeah -- Americans.
AVLON: Exactly.
So -- and look, in terms of birthright citizenship there also is a whole cycle way back in the day about Russians going to Trump-owned properties in Florida for this purpose. There's a certain physician heal thyself.
But the problem is the dog whistle. Yes, is he too smart to know he's not going to rewrite the Constitution? Yes. But the purpose is the dog whistle to a certain segment of the base, and that's -- we're a long way from constitutional conservatives, folks.
MATTINGLY: Can I ask you guys before I let you go, Liz Cheney spoke last night. She's always so subtle in her (INAUDIBLE). I want you to take a listen to something she said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LIZ CHENEY, (R) FORMER WYOMING CONGRESSWOMAN: What we've done in our politics is create a situation where we're electing idiots and --
(APPLAUSE)
CHENEY: And so, I don't look at it through the lens of, like, is this what I should do or what I shouldn't do? I look at it through the lens of how do we elect serious people. And I think electing serious people can't be partisan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTINGLY: Yes.
HOOVER: Yes. Well --
MATTINGLY: Amen.
HOOVER: Yes, she's right. And probably what she would have gotten to in the next breath is why are we electing idiots? And part of the problem is we have this closed partisan primary process, particularly on the Republican side. It's on the left, too. And I know -- my husband gets so happy when I say that because he's been saying it for 15 years.
But if you look at the Republicans who survived in the last election and how voted to convict Donald Trump -- who did not vote --
AVLON: Yes.
HOOVER: -- for Brett Kavanaugh --
HARLOW: Yes.
HOOVER: -- Lisa Murkowski, for example, or the two House Republicans who survived that voted to convict -- or that voted to impeach -- all of them came from states that have passed some kind of voting reform. Some kind of electoral reform that allows for the primary process to play to a broader group of Americans; not a closed ideological extreme base of a party.
AVLON: Independent voters, again, right? That opens the possibility --
HOOVER: No, they're Republicans --
AVLON: No, no.
HOOVER: -- but they're regular Republicans --
AVLON: But, no -- wait.
HOOVER: -- not extreme Republicans.
AVLON: But that -- who have to -- it's about the incentives. MATTINGLY: You thought she co-opted your entire share of the case.
AVLON: She did and --
MATTINGLY: It turns out you were wrong. She still has a smarter angle through it.
AVLON: Apparently I was one step too far.
MATTINGLY: Yes.
AVLON: But I mean -- but the real deal here is about a screwed up incentive structure and that's what she's calling out. If politicians have to hold on to their jobs by playing to the base -- an extreme wing of the case -- yes, you've got idiots.
HARLOW: Well --
MATTINGLY: Pretty clear.
HARLOW: -- there's that. She is so subtle, always, Liz Cheney.
MATTINGLY: Always, always.
HARLOW: Thank you both. Please come back more often.
MATTINGLY: Thanks to you, guys.
HOOVER: We'd love to.
HARLOW: You are a ray of -- she's, especially, a ray of sunshine for us
AVLON: She is.
MATTINGLY: Avlon, you're OK, too.
HOOVER: If I'm happy I will tear up -- golden pears (PH).
MATTINGLY: All right. A new development this morning out of Russia --
HARLOW: He thinks they're lemons.
MATTINGLY: I do not. My wife said they were lemons. I said they're pears.
HARLOW: I don't know. They -- yes.
MATTINGLY: I thought they were.
HOOVER: Obviously.
MATTINGLY: I knew they were -- I knew they were pears. Get out of here.
All right. On serious news, new developments this morning out of Russia in the wake of that short-lived rebellion against Vladimir Putin.
HARLOW: We are joined by an American who has long been in Putin's crosshairs and escaped a Russian plot to kill him. Bill Browder is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:43:51]
MATTINGLY: We're following several new developments this morning out of Russia. President Vladimir Putin, just moments ago, addressing law enforcement involved in this weekend's armed rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group, telling the troops that they, quote, "stopped a civil war."
Russia also announced it is dropping charges against the Wagner Group and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, and that the mercenaries are preparing to hand over heavy military equipment to Russian troops.
Joining us now is Bill Browder, a longtime Putin critic who was once the largest foreign investor in Russia and is now one of the Kremlin and President Putin's significant enemies. Putin has singled him out multiple times, including in 2018 as he stood next to then-President Trump in Helsinki. Browder is also the author of "Freezing Order: The True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath." Bill, thanks so much for joining us.
I think I actually want to start there because throughout the course of this weekend and in the days since I have constantly wondered when is the crackdown happening. There is no way that Yevgeny Prigozhin can be allowed to just go to Belarus or go to Africa, or wherever he might want to go. That seems like an inevitability. Is it?
[07:45:00]
BILL BROWDER, PUTIN CRITIC ON RUSSIA'S WANTED LIST, CEO, HERMITAGE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, HEAD, GLOBAL MAGNITSKY JUSTICE CAMPAIGN, AUTHOR, "FREEZING ORDER: THE TRUE STORY OF MONEY LAUNDERING, MURDER, AND SURVIVING VLADIMIR PUTIN'S WRATH" (via Webex by Cisco): Yes. Well, I mean, basically, Putin can't stand -- he can't tolerate being disrespected.
This is -- the psychology of Russian leadership is like the psychology of a prison yard. In order for Putin to have been the leader for 23 years he's had to be the -- seemed to be the meanest guy in the prison yard. The one who would cause damage to anybody who even looked at him the wrong way. And Yevgeny Prigozhin didn't just look at him the wrong way; he disrespected him in the most massive humiliating way.
And so, it's not just a question of what happens to Prigozhin but it's a question of what happens to all the other people who either didn't immediately declare loyalty to Putin during that day, or who kept quiet, or who perhaps were even working on the other side.
In my opinion, the only way that Putin can stay in power is for him to reassert his authority. And the only way he can do that is to become extremely aggressive, dangerous, and violent towards all sorts of people who he doesn't believe are loyal to him. And so, I think there's going to be a huge, sort of, purge, crackdown, whatever you want to call it of the elite -- of the government, of the military, and of the oligarchs for Putin to reestablish his authority.
MATTINGLY: What would challenge his power? I mean, obviously, we saw Prigozhin but we haven't seen any of the kind of inner circle or close advisers to President Putin side with Prigozhin or kind of speak out of turn to some degree at this point. Why would this be such a threat to his power if no one else is standing up right now?
BROWDER: Well, because what -- the only reason that Putin has been able to stay in power is that everyone is scared of him.
And what this showed is that you can basically -- a group of, I think it was 8,000, men could drive along the highway and take over Rostov and a major military base, and then drive to the next town, Voronezh, and nobody stopped them. Nobody shot at them. Nobody said anything. In fact, the people took selfies with them and hugged them.
And so, if Putin can't exert his power by just existing then all of a sudden, other people are going to say look, this is a very profitable job to have to be the president of Russia. You can -- you can get hundreds of billions of dollars if you do this job. There's a huge incentive for anybody to have a go at him and if it looks like he's weak they will have a go.
And so, that is the -- it's the psychology of a prison yard there where unless he can become -- he can be seen again as the scariest, most brutal guy, his days are numbered.
MATTINGLY: I was struck yesterday. Former ambassador John Bolton told my colleague Poppy don't underestimate the possibility that Putin can turn this to his advantage. Do you think that's overstating his 23 years of ability to do such things given what we saw over the course of the last four days?
BROWDER: Well, what I know about Putin is that he -- he's slow to react to things. Stuff happens and then a day, a week, a month might even go by. But I guarantee you that Putin is now sitting there and saying OK, how do we get control over the situation? And he can use this situation to organize and justify a massive crackdown, and it wouldn't be unusual.
We saw the same thing with Erdogan in Turkey where there was a coup attempt made against him. What did he do with that? He arrested everybody in sight. I mean, like, literally -- like, 50,000 people went to jail in Turkey -- people who he didn't trust.
And I -- I'm almost certain that Putin will do that. And if he does do that -- if he -- if he takes this coup as his -- as a sort of impetus to even crack down further, then he may very well end up even with more control over the Russian situation than he had before. But it could also go the other way and that -- and that's why we're in this period of really dramatic uncertainty.
MATTINGLY: Yes, and that's the new dynamic, no question about that.
Bill Browder, your perspective is invaluable. Thank you, as always, sir.
HARLOW: Always an invaluable perspective to have from him, for sure.
OK. Ahead, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students last fall. We have those details.
MATTINGLY: Plus, a new study finds that human action has caused the Earth's axis to shift. We'll tell you why.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:53:32]
MATTINGLY: Welcome back.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students. In a court filing yesterday they pointed to aggravating factors, calling the killings, quote, "...especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity."
Bryan Kohberger is facing four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. Investigators accuse him of stabbing the students to death in an off-campus home in November. Kohberger has pleaded not guilty.
Last week, his attorney said he had no connection to the victims and claimed investigators found DNA from three other men at the scene.
HARLOW: Meantime, United Airlines' CEO Scott Kirby is blaming the FAA for the major delays and cancellations last weekend. CNN has learned that Kirby sent an internal memo to his staff pointing to the FAA's air traffic controller staffing problems after United canceled hundreds of flights and delayed almost 2,000 on Saturday and Sunday.
Kirby said the FAA reduced arrival rates at a major hub of theirs -- that is Newark Liberty International Airport -- and that led to problems. Quote, "The FAA frankly failed us this weekend. It led to massive delays, cancellations, diversions, as well as crews and aircraft out of position, and that put everyone behind the eight ball."
Now, Kirby says he plans to meet with the FAA and the Department of Transportation to try to prevent this from happening again. The FAA, in response, has said they will always collaborate with anyone seriously willing to join us to solve a problem.
MATTINGLY: Also this morning, for decades, humans have been pumping so much groundwater that it's actually causing the Earth's axis to shift. It doesn't seem great. That's according to a new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research Letters.
[07:55:06]
Researchers used computer models and other data and found that persistent extraction of groundwater for more than a decade has shifted the Earth's rotation to the east at a rate of about 1.7 inches a year. Now, scientists say the wandering axis could add to sea levels rising and affect climate on a global scale over time.
HARLOW: Well, coming up, we're going to be joined by our very own Erin Burnett. She just spoke with the Ukrainian foreign minister in Ukraine in the wake of the weekend revolt inside of Russia. How Ukraine plans to capitalize. Erin joins us live, next, from Ukraine.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I just found -- isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know.
STAFFER: Mm-hmm.
TRUMP: Except it is, like, highly confidential.
STAFFER: Yeah. (Laughter)
TRUMP: Secret. This is secret information
STAFFER: (Laughter)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Well, good morning, everyone. It is the top of the hour. We're so glad you're with us. Phil Mattingly by my side.
And it's striking to hear. It's one thing to read the words of a former president. It's another thing to hear it.
