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CNN This Morning

Buttigieg Says, July 4 Travel Period Will Be Big Test for Airlines; Kremlin Says, No Comment on the Whereabouts of Top General Who is Apparently Missing After Rebellion; President Biden Emphatically Denies He was Present During Alleged Hunter Biden 2017 Text Message. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 29, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

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[07:00:00]

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Russia's president tried to show he's in full control.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's showing he's the man of the people, the rebellion or the mutiny has been quelled and he's back in charge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Questions are now mounting about the whereabouts of Sergey Surovikin. He reportedly hasn't been seen since Friday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If he's been arrested because he was involved with Prigozhin and Wagner, that's not good news for this general.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the worst travel experience in my lifetime.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The worry is whether airlines can handle the July 4th holiday rush.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Expect delays, expect cancelations.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just don't want to be in here anymore. I'm just so tired of this airport.

PETE BUTTIGIEG, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: There's no question that with all of these storms, it's created a lot of challenges for the system.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Biden was questioned on the White House lawn about whether he was involved or aware of a text Hunter allegedly sent to a Chinese business partner in 2017.

REPORTER: Were you involved?

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: No, I wasn't and I don't --

REPORTER: Were you? BIDEN: No.

GARY SHAPLEY, IRS AGENT WHO INVESTIGATED HUNTER BIDEN: There were certain steps we weren't allowed to take that could have led us to President Biden.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. Coast Guard now says presumed human remains have been recovered from the wreckage of the Titan submersible.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Horizon Arctic retrieved debris, in fact, large pieces of debris.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I see plenty of wiring and things like that. So, there probably is an awful lot there for them to go on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To accomplish something like this in my career, something that I'm going to remember forever, be part of history, so exciting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For him to get that is just fantastic.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Best story of the morning, and we'll get to that in a moment because our friend, Phil Mattingly, is obsessed with it. And you didn't even say to watch it.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: But everybody should be -- okay, first off, not fair, West Coast game in Oakland. Yankees haven't exactly been fun to watch over the course of the last several days. Domingo German, the pitcher who pitched the perfect game, hasn't exactly been fun to watch over the course of the last several starts. But it was awesome to wake up through this morning.

HARLOW: I love this story for so many reasons, including what motivated him to have the perfect game. He just lost his uncle two days ago. It's a great story. We'll get into all of that.

Also, a lot ahead this hour, but here's where we begin with the 4th of July holiday travel rush that is kicking off today. The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, says it could be a big test for airlines after the chaos that we have seen in recent days.

Already, we're seeing nearly 600 delays and more than 350 flight cancelations in the United States, and it's just 07:00. A.M. United Airlines says it's all hands on deck as it works to get out of a multiday scheduling meltdown, canceling more flights than any other airline since Saturday. Days of storms and other problems have left thousands of people stranded.

Let's get to our Pete Muntean at Reagan National Airport. Good morning, Pete.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy. You know, things are looking better today, although we are not out of the woods just yet. In fact, this holiday travel rush is only just beginning. The FAA says 52,000 flights are scheduled to fly today through U.S. airspace. That is the biggest number we will see going into the July 4th rush, even though United Airlines is the one that is really struggling. You mentioned it's canceled more than any other -- more flights than any other airline in the last few days, canceling 2,500 flights, delaying another 7,000.

Now, remember that United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby put a lot of the blame for this on the Federal Aviation Administration and its shortage of air traffic controllers. But Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is really swiping back at that. He does admit that there is a shortage of controllers, but he says United really needs to look at the mirror here at its own problems.

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BUTTIGIEG: United Airlines has some internal issues they need to work through. They've really been struggling this week, even relative to other U.S. airlines. But where we do agree is that there need to be more resources for air traffic control.

[07:05:00]

The staffing levels there are not at the level I want to see there. They don't leave us with a lot of cushion if you have a few people calling sick or if you have an unusual event, it really spreads the system thin, and so we need to see higher staffing levels there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: Passengers for United have been waiting in lines for hours to try and get on new flights. In some cases, they are not able to find a seat until Monday.

United Airlines just put out its first statement acknowledging this meltdown since it began last weekend. It says that pilots, flight attendants, customer service agents are all working tirelessly to try and make it so that its system can recover from this slow motion meltdown. It says that we will be ready for the holiday travel rush.

Although now is the real test. Remember, United Airlines plan to serve 5 million passengers, the most passengers it has seen over the July 4th period since 2019. TSA anticipates screening 2.8 million people alone tomorrow here and at airports across the country. That's the biggest number we have seen since the pandemic downturn, Poppy.

MATTINGLY: Hey, Pete. Poppy and I were trying to figure out we showed this video of this terrifying moment plane landing with its known landing gear up in Charlotte. As you qualify as my only pilot friend, how this actually works, like the mechanics of what happened yesterday as a pilot, what did you see? What had to have been done to actually make this happen safely?

MUNTEAN: The good news in watching that video, you can see the training of the pilots on full display. They were able to come in on one of the runways there in Charlotte without the nose landing gear down. They told air traffic control they had an unsafe indication. They did

a flyby and then went back around and came in and landed with the nose landing gear still up.

It is a testament to the engineering of the airplane, how strong it is. You can see it came down in one piece. No big deal. The crew, the pilots, the passengers, 96 of them on board this Delta flight of Boeing 717 evacuated on those emergency slides. All is well that ends well. They did a pretty picture perfect job here, although the runway had to be closed for a while, sort of compounding on those delays and cancelations we have seen in Charlotte, which is a huge hub for American Airlines.

MATTINGLY: Pete, could you do that?

MUNTEAN: I've never done it. I hope to never do.

MATTINGLY: Yes.

MUNTEAN: Maybe I could. We'll see.

MATTINGLY: He's a pretty talented pilot, folks. Thanks, Pete Muntean, it's great perspective. I appreciate it.

All right, there's a mystery in Moscow this morning. One of Russia's top generals, who reportedly knew that mercenaries were planning to launch an armed rebellion, is apparently missing. CNN has asked the Kremlin about his whereabouts. They told us, no comment.

Just yesterday, the New York Times reported that General Sergey Surovikin knew about the plot and U.S. intelligence was trying to figure out if he actually helped to plan it.

HARLOW: So, the Moscow Times is reporting that he is under arrest. They are citing Russian defense sources, but we have not been able to independently verify that. There have been reports from Russian military bloggers and other journalists that the general hasn't been seen in days and that he might be under interrogation and that he hasn't been in contact with his family.

Nick Paton Walsh joins us live this morning from Keeve with more. Nick, this general was once, for a brief period of time, but once the top commander of the war in Ukraine.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, and considered pretty competent and effective when he had that role. Sergey Surovikin was demoted and put in charge of the Air Force with a deputy role in the Ukraine war after people considered over the winter that the fight around Kherson had gone against the Kremlin.

Now, he's also one of the few commanders that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner rebellion leader, spoke complimentarily of. Now, he was last seen on Friday as this rebellion got underway, appearing somewhat uncomfortable on a video, essentially telling everyone to stand down, go back to their bases and to not continue the march on Moscow. He's not been seen since

Now, it's important to point out, too, that, for example, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of staff of Russia's war here in Ukraine, he's also not been seen in public, too. But Surovikin has been the subject of this morass now of reports suggesting in The New York Times that perhaps he had foreknowledge. I've been told by European and intelligence official that there are hints some of the Russian military establishment may have had foreknowledge, but also to reports suggesting perhaps he's been arrested, perhaps he's been interrogated.

There are other Russian commentators saying, actually, no, he's okay. The issue really, though, is until we see him healthy and in public, this speculation will continue to mount. And also, too, frankly, this suspicion will hang over Surovikin, probably indefinitely.

Now, this is the beginning, I think, of what many observers thinking would be the fallout of the weekend, that there's suspicion in the Russian military elite, in Putin's inner circle, about who knew what. Some of this perhaps planted in the western media to obviously hobble Russia's chain of command.

[07:10:05]

But this will continue to play out, the fear possibly of purges or turmoil will continue to escalate. And it's going to make command and control for the war in Ukraine, for Vladimir Putin increasingly hard.

They're doing very badly in terms of decision making so far. But if indeed what we're seeing now is generals turning on each other point, pointing the finger, disappearing, having to appear in public, looking healthy just to prove that they're okay and still in their job, that's going to be a massive distraction from the war in itself.

And remember, too, it doesn't suggest that Vladimir Putin has a strong grip on power if we have all this doubt about where his key commanders indeed are. Poppy?

HARLOW: Nick Paton Walsh live from Kyiv, thank you very much.

MATTINGLY: We're joined now by CNN Political and National Security Analyst David Sanger. He's also a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.

David, I think it's important here to take people behind the scenes in terms of what we identify in a Kremlin response versus maybe what a normal person would read.

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Right.

MATTINGLY: When the Kremlin is talking about just speculation when they're asked about the whereabouts of a general, when the Ministry of Defense is not commenting, when they're asked about a whereabouts of a prominent general, my alarm bells go up immediately. Yours?

SANGER: There is no such thing as a free no comment, because no comments frequently tell you almost as much as a comment would. So, the first thing they did in responding to The Times story written by my colleagues was that it was speculation, right? That's not exactly denial. And then they wouldn't say where he was.

So, why is this so critical to them? Because part of the Putin argument, as he has tried to recover from the weekend, has been to say, the people were behind me and my military was behind me. Well, this suggests that one of his senior generals was not and would be hard to believe that they would stage this with just one general.

HARLOW: Isn't that the key question is how many of these Russian generals, Russian military heads, knew what Prigozhin was planning?

SANGER: How many knew and how many just made sure they were out of town? I mean, the remarkable thing is that Prigozhin's force only, what, 6,000 or 7,000 of them made its way unopposed down a main highway toward Moscow and made it within, what, 125, 150 miles of the capital, having run into very little opposition, a little bit of air bombing, and they took out, it's clear that they killed a number of Russians.

HARLOW: Can I just ask you before we move on to this other story that's fascinating this morning on the Chinese spy balloon? Bianna Golodryga with us this week brought up the comparison to Erdogan in 2016 and what happens when you are challenged or threatened in this way. And you raised the question of what is more dangerous right now, a strong, paranoid Putin or a weaker, paranoid Putin?

SANGER: Right. I think the answer is a weaker, paranoid Putin, right? So, Putin was paranoid before this happened. He now has discovered he had really good reason to be paranoid. And so at this point, he's trying to do two things, I think. One is established that he's fully in control.

But, secondly, if he's feeling cornered, if he's feeling like some of his military has moved against him, and that the United States and NATO are going to take advantage of that when they all show up in Vilnius in a week-and-a-half time him for the NATO summit.

I think he is much more likely to threaten the use of his weapons to reveal the weapons that he's put in Belarus, nuclear weapons he's put in Belarus, to issue more threats than he would be if he was feeling in a strong position.

MATTINGLY: Well, issuing threats has not been something that he's been hesitant to do, to some degree. And I understand what you're saying. There are scales of an escalatory ladder in terms of the threats. Do you feel like more dangerous in a weaker position, means utilizing or delivering on those threats is more likely?

SANGER: Well, I think you'll see a bunch of steps between now and, God forbid, an actual use. He's threatened. He's never actually moved any new nuclear weapons. We haven't seen any activity that would be sort of the next thing to do to try to spook the United States.

Clearly, he feels at this point that not only is the war not going well, but it's beginning to take a toll on his own military. And he can't be seen to lose this, because if he loses, if he pulls back, maybe he'd get away with it, maybe not.

Now, you made a really good point, Poppy, about President Erdogan. We all thought in 2016 when there was a coup attempt against him --

HARLOW: Bianna's good point, but, yes.

MATTINGLY: Take it for yourself. Don't give anybody credit. This is T.V. Poppy.

SANGER: That's right.

HARLOW: A brutal business.

SANGER: It is. It's pretty cutthroat. You think the Russian military is bad, right?

[07:15:00]

So, the key issue here, I think, is that as Putin sort of heads down this road, we're going to have a lot of different moments where we're going to have to go see whether or not his activity, his actions have differed dramatically from what they what they were before. So far, he's been playing to type. We don't know that that's going to continue along the way.

HARLOW: Right. And if he follows the Erdogan playbook, more journalists in danger, being imprisoned, et cetera.

SANGER: And Erdogan survived and got re-elected.

HARLOW: Yes, just got re-elected.

MATTINGLY: We do want to ask you real quick before we let you go. I don't think we're letting you go. You're actually stuck here with us, which is great for us. The Wall Street Journal has a great piece out about the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by the U.S. had U.S. components inside of it.

SANGER: Right.

MATTINGLY: And I think your reaction was similar to mine, which is, yes, no kidding. I'm not knocking The Journal reporting. It's great reporting. But at that point, I think it underscores one of the very difficult elements that the U.S. is trying to do right now, and the whole decouple versus de-risk, how do you blacklist certain things but not other things. What was your takeaway from it?

HARLOW: Because this was with the Iranian drone as well having all these U.S. parts.

MATTINGLY: There's components in Russian weapons systems that we've been trying to block off, that they've been finding ways around.

SANGER: This is what 30 years of integrated economies bring you, right? There are U.S. components in Chinese spy balloons. There are U.S. components in Russian missiles. There are Chinese components in U.S. spy satellites. And that is because we have gone to a war world over the past 30 years where we thought it really didn't make any difference where it came from. The big difference was that you could get it reliably and at a low price.

And now, all of a sudden, post COVID as this sort of gathering cold war happens with both the Chinese and the Russians, we're suddenly saying, we can't afford to have supply chains like this. Well, we have historic connections that are going to be very hard to disentangle.

So, the White House can say that we are putting a high fence around a small yard and just blocking the most high-tech components that would go into Chinese military equipment. But the fact of the matter is you can't separate all of that out. We have American companies designing chips now to evade the Commerce Department restrictions so they can sell it to China, perfectly legal and understandable.

MATTINGLY: Yes. I want to talk about this for like three hours. You would, too. I know you would. David Sanger, stick with us.

SANGER: Thank you.

MATTINGLY: We've got a lot more to come, including my favorite story.

HARLOW: Perfection.

MATTINGLY: Perfection. Were you pointing at me?

HARLOW: Yes, perfection. Thanks, pal. I appreciate it. Every professional athlete strives for the idea of perfection. Rarely is it ever achieved. Wednesday night. Domingo German was perfect.

All right, here's why, this was absolutely awesome, Domingo German was only the 24th person ever to throw a perfect game and a Major League game, and he did it against a team that hadn't even been no hit since 1991. He owes a lot to his defense. You saw Josh Donaldson there, but especially first baseman Anthony Rizzo, saw the play right there, made that diving stop in the fifth inning to preserve the history.

Now German becomes the first Dominican born player to retire 27 straight batters in a single game, also became the fourth Yankee to do it. David Cone was the last Yankee to throw a perfect game. He did it 1999, just 88 pitches. A year before that, Boomer, David Wells pulled it off. And, of course, everyone knows Don Larson through the only World Series perfect game in 1956. It's game five against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

So, for context, here, how rare is a perfect game? Think about it this way. More than 23,000 games have been played since the last one when Seattle's Felix Hernandez did it in 2012. Since then, more than 54,000 home runs have been hit. More than 213,000 runs have been scored. There have been more than 407,000 hits. It's rare.

Let's put this in the historical conference. Now, according to Baseball-Reference, there have been more than 237,000 games played in the league's 140-plus-year history. And, again, there have only been 24 of them that have been perfect. That means it only happens once in every 9876 games.

And that, Poppy Harlow, is why it is absolutely the best story in the world today.

HARLOW: Do you know, I agree with you?

MATTINGLY: I know.

HARLOW: Oh, on this one. On most sports stories, I don't. But I love this story for so many reasons.

[07:20:00]

Someone at the table does not. David Sanger, I'm very sorry.

SANGER: Well, it was a fabulous game, but I'm a Red Sox fan. And to see this after 11 years go to the Yankees is just -- I mean, that's --

MATTINGLY: Why are we letting him talk? Should we let him talk at this at all? Shouldn't you be banned from this panel?

SANGER: I probably should, and maybe at moments.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: You can't find baseball joy in a perfect game just because of a rivalry.

SANGER: It just tells you what a narrow human being I am, but it was pretty fabulous to go watch, also from a pitcher who not had like a fabulous season.

MATTINGLY: Yes.

AVLON: No, he's gotten shelled his last two outings. He had of five ERA (ph), and it's unbelievable.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And it's really what's so mystifying to me about this is that everyone loves the New York Yankees and loves more than that New York Yankees fans. And I just think --

MATTINGLY: And as you noted, scrappy team --

LOUIS: Hard scramble.

MATTINGLY: Bootstraps.

LOUIS: Bootstrap, third place team with only 20 inning (ph) number of championships, it's the least that the universe could do for struggling Yankees fans. And my goodness --

AVLON: And I do want to point out for David Sanger's benefit, Phil Mattingly doing the Bill James breakdown of baseball, I love that just then, right? But 24 perfect games, four of them Yankees. How does that make you feel?

SANGER: That is really hard. Pedro Martinez had a lot of -- MATTINGLY: Yes.

SANGER: He actually had zero.

MATTINGLY: Yes. So, just for clarity, I was doing some quick research and statistics.

HARLOW: You guys should see his right now.

MATTINGLY: The Red Sox right now are in -- let me check the -- they're actually last place on the (INAUDIBLE). I just want to make sure.

SANGER: I had noticed that. Thanks, Phil, for pointing it out.

MATTINGLY: Yes. They're 4-6 in their last ten, the Orioles, the Blue Jays.

SANGER: I have actually just been going back to like look at how like Honus Wagner was like --

AVLON: Just polishing the (INAUDIBLE) paraphernalia.

SANGER: Thinking back to like you have to go like 1904 to find a game that started off like this way. So, I'm deciding to sink myself into history and forget about the Red Sox for the moment. MATTINGLY: That's a rational response. Connie Mac was the manager of

the game that you're talking about right now. He's like a young manager. You're in it now. I'm sorry.

HARLOW: We have to go to break. But just because you've gone way over time and the control room is not happy, we're going to send you to this break with this epic photo every hour, I said, our very own. There's the Ohio State scholar athlete.

MATTINGLY: Yes, the Ohio State. I love the wristband. I'm sorry, I do. We'll be right back, guys. Stay with us.

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[07:25:00]

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SHAPLEY: There were certain investigative steps that we weren't allowed to take that could have led us to President Biden.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you wanted to take them?

SHAPLEY: We needed to take them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you weren't allowed to take them?

SHAPLEY: That's correct.

(END VIDEO CLIP) MATTINGLY: That is Gary Shapley, a 14-year I?R?S veteran who once oversaw the investigation into President Biden's son, Hunter Biden's taxes. And that is Shapley claiming he was then blocked from pursuing leads connected to the president. Shapley told House lawmakers that Hunter Biden used his father as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying Hunter Biden.

Now, according to this whistleblower, because there was a second unnamed whistleblower and then there's Shapley, a 2017 message said, quote, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father. Those last three words are key.

President Biden yesterday denied that he was present when that text was allegedly sent. Listen,

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: President Biden, how involved were you in your son's Chinese shakedown text message? Were you sitting there? Were you involved?

BIDEN: No, I wasn't. And I don't --

REPORTER: Were you?

BIDEN: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Definitive no from the President, let's bring in Elliot Williams, CNN Legal Analyst, former federal prosecutor, and Elie Honig, our CNN Senior Legal Analyst.

Elie, let me just begin with you. There are questions here. Gary Shapley, highly regarded, worked at the IRS for more than a decade, led this investigation at one point, and he's laid out really specific allegations that need to be looked into more. My question to you is the Trump administration and Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions had this stuff too, and didn't bring charges.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Right. So, for two-plus years, in fact, the Trump administration had the Hunter Biden case, didn't bring any charges. That's important to keep in mind. Among the allegations we've heard, some of them are of no concern to me. Some of them are of legitimate concern. We've heard that there was discussion dissension within DOJ about what do we charge him with. The IRS agents allegedly wanted to charge more serious crimes. Prosecutors charge less.

MATTINGLY: They wanted felonies, some of that?

HONIG: Yes. That happens all the time. That does not bother me. That is a conversation that happens in every U.S. attorney's office every day across the country. That's part of the process. What is legitimate, though, is what we just heard from Mr. Shapley, which is if there were lines of investigation where they were told, you cannot go down there, that's an issue.

Now, if this was a special counsel scenario it's not. Special counsel is given a piece of paper when they start saying, here are the outlines of what you're doing, and we don't want them going beyond that. We don't want another Ken Starr scenario. But a normal investigation like this, you don't know where it's going to go, and your job is to follow every lead.

And so if it's proven that certain leads were cut off and it was said to this team, no, you can't look down that path, that's a real issue.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: In another universe in which the world and Congress was more functional and less polarized, this would be a perfect issue for Congress to get to the bottom of. They could have hearings, call leadership of any agency in, investigate and really look into this. The problem is that Congress itself is such a partisan body, you would not really get any sort of bipartisan agreement as to how to even conduct an investigation like that. But that's really where you'd get to the bottom of something like that.

MATTINGLY: And I think both of you can help on this. Getting inside the room of where I think the core of the dispute is right now, which is the attorney general says, I had nothing to do with any of this. I made very clear that the U.S. attorney that was overseeing this, that had been appointed by President Trump, had all of the resources and all of the ability to bring charges if he wanted to.

[07:30:00]