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Zelenskyy: Mercenary Revolt Shows Putin is 'Weak'; CIA Director: Wagner Rebellion Leading to Opportunity to Recruit Spies; Manhunt Underway for Gunmen in Baltimore Shooting; Pence: I Called Arizona Governor about Election But Not to Pressure Him. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired July 03, 2023 - 06:00   ET

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

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR/BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: -- dollars to make.

[06:00:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Want to get out of here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoa, really? So wait a minute. There's an elite crew with all the best spider people in it?

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SOLOMON: "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" remains in second place, in its fifth weekend in theaters.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- mix.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aaa!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What the --?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pipe squished me all out of shape.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dang.

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SOLOMON: Disney and Pixar's "Elemental" came in third.

And that's it for us. Thank you for joining. I'm Rahel Solomon. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR/CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, everyone. I'm Phil Mattingly, here with Audie Cornish. Poppy is off today. And let's go ahead and get things started with "Five Things to Know"

for this Monday, July 3, starting with police in Baltimore now saying at least two shooters are on the run right now in Baltimore after two people were killed and 28 others were injured in a mass shooting at a block party. Most of the injured are teenagers, some as young as 13.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR/CORRESPONDENT: Ukrainian President Zelenskyy calls Putin weak and says his power is crumbling. That's in an exclusive interview from the frontlines with Erin Burnett. Hear what he says about the slow push to recapture territory occupied by Russia.

New details this morning about Donald Trump's effort to stay in office after he lost the 2020 election. The former president reportedly pressured the then-Arizona governor to overturn election results, telling him to find fraud that would help him win the state. Trump and his allies tried the same tactics in Georgia, Michigan and with other officials in Arizona.

MATTINGLY: And scorching heat and severe storms have millions of Americans on alert this holiday Monday. More than 7,500 flights have already been delayed, nearly 500 cancelled so far today.

CORNISH: And Twitter limits how many tweets users can read in a day, and the Twitterverse not happy. So why did Elon Musk do it?

CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

MATTINGLY: Good morning, everyone.

CORNISH: Good morning to you.

MATTINGLY: Two D.C. people, decamped to New York.

CORNISH: They let us in. They let us in, no passport.

MATTINGLY: I desperately want your thoughts on Twitter.

CORNISH: I have some.

MATTINGLY: I know you have some. And we're going to get that -- to that in a little bit.

But first, and importantly, new overnight, Ukraine claims it's gaining ground in its counter-offensive. A top defense official says Ukrainian forces are advancing near the captured city of Bakhmut and have retaken around 12 square miles over the past week.

This is new video of a Russian tank you can see here being destroyed near that city.

Russia unleashed another wave of drones on Ukraine overnight after striking Kyiv for the first time in nearly two weeks over the weekend. In an exclusive sit-down interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says last weekend's mercenary rebellion inside Russia shows Vladimir Putin is weak and his grip on power is crumbling. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Mr. President, you know, you recently said that you have dealt -- and I'll quote you the way -- the way it quoted, with different Putins. "It's a completely different set of traits and different periods."

Now, of course, he's faced a rebellion, an attempted coup from Yevgeny Prigozhin. Have you seen any changes in -- in how you think he's acting, in his behavior since the attempted coup?

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Yes, we see the reaction after certain Wagner steps. We see Putin's reaction. It's weak.

Firstly, we see he doesn't control everything. Wagner's moving deep into Russia, and taking certain regions shows how easy it is to do. Putin doesn't control the situation in the regions. He doesn't control the security situation.

All of us understand that his whole army is in Ukraine. Almost entire army is there. That's why it's so easy for the Wagner troops to march through Russia. Who could have stopped him?

We understand that Putin doesn't control the regional policy, and he doesn't control all those people in the regions. So all that vertical of power he used to have, just got crumbling down.

BURNETT: Do you believe he's fully in charge of the military right now. When it comes to your front line and this counteroffensive, do you believe Putin is fully in charge of the Russian military?

ZELENSKYY (through translator): I don't think he fully controls all the processes. He gives orders to the commanders. It's understood. They are scared to lose their jobs. But he doesn't understand and doesn't control the middle layer of the Russian military, nor the lower-rank officers and soldiers.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CORNISH: Also new overnight, the Kremlin claims it foiled a car-bomb assassination plot against the Russian-backed leader of Crimea. Now, in his interview with Erin Burnett, Zelenskyy said the war in Ukraine won't be over until Crimea is back under Ukrainian control.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:05:08]

ZELENSKYY (through translator): We cannot imagine Ukraine without Crimea. And while Crimea is under the Russian occupation, it means only one thing: war is not over yet.

BURNETT: To be clear, in victory, in peace, is there any scenario where Crimea is not part of Ukraine?

ZELENSKYY (through translator): It will not be victory then.

BURNETT: I know the U.S. CIA chief, Bill Burns, has come and visited you regularly. He was here recently. What did you tell him about your plans to take back territory in the counteroffensive?

ZELENSKYY (through translator): To be honest with you, I was surprised to see the information in some media, both in the U.S. and Ukrainian and European media. My communication with the CIA chief should always be behind the scenes. And the media attention, because we discuss important things, what Ukraine needs and how Ukraine is prepared to act.

We don't have any secrets from CIA, because we have good relations; and our intelligence services talk with each other. I don't know what were other contacts. I don't really remember which media I read it in.

The situation is pretty straight-forward. We have good relations with the CIA chief, and we are talking. I told him about all the important things related to the battlefield which we need.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CORNISH: And you can watch Erin's full interview with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern.

MATTINGLY: Now you heard President Zelenskyy talking about his secret face-to-face meeting with the head of the CIA. So let's bring in CNN national security reporter Natasha Bertrand.

Natasha, this was a fascinating development. It wasn't public when it happened. Our -- I think our Jim Sciutto and you have been reporting on it. Do we have any idea of what they've talked about during this sit-down?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So we have some sense from a U.S. official basically reaffirming that Bill Burns did make this trip to Kyiv, as he has many times before, including as recently that we know of in January.

And according to this U.S. official, Bill Burns reiterated the U.S.'s commitment to intelligence sharing with Zelenskyy.

Now, according to Zelenskyy himself, he did say that he shared information about the battlefield and about Ukraine's counteroffensive with Burns, as well as what Ukraine actually needs in order to be successful in that counteroffensive.

But look, Burns has been somewhat of an emissary throughout this entire war for the Biden administration, not only to Ukraine but also to Russia. And he has been taking full advantage of the trust that the president has placed in him and his deep knowledge, of course, of Russia, of Ukraine to play a really important role here. Not only in serving as kind of a diplomatic, of course, emissary between the countries, but also, of course, sharing U.S. intelligence with the Ukrainians about what they know about the Russian plans on the battlefield, for example. And just this weekend, Bill Burns, he was speaking in England, and he

said that this is actually a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the CIA in terms of recruitment just because of the level of disaffectment that they have seen by the Russians with Putin's war in Ukraine and with his leadership writ large. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL BURNS, CIA DIRECTOR: Disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership. That disaffection creates a once- in-a-generation opportunity for us at CIA. We're very much open for business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: So the U.S. has been sharing quite a bit of intelligence with the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians don't always share as much intel with the U.S. Because, of course, of that big leak that we saw of classified Pentagon documents they have been a little bit more wary to share intel with the U.S.

But the U.S. still trying to do what it can, of course, to give Ukraine the information it needs to be successful, Phil.

CORNISH: There's another Biden administration official who's traveling, Treasure Secretary Janet Yellen. She's going to China. What's the goal of this trip?

BERTRAND: Yes, so the Biden administration has been trying to kind of mend ties with the Chinese because they recognize, of course, that these are the two biggest economies in the world. And this is something that Janet Yellen has said repeatedly that while, of course, there are trade and other practices by the Chinese that the U.S. is concerned about, that there is still a need to keep those lines of communication open.

And of course, we saw the secretary of state travel to China in recent months. This is just a continuation of that attempt to really kind of rebuild communications with the Chinese.

Importantly, though, military communications are still closed. Those military channels that are so important for deconflicting potentially catastrophic situations in the -- near China and elsewhere around the world, those remain closed.

And so the Pentagon has been been trying to reopen those channels but starting, really, with the secretary of state, the treasury secretary there, trying to get to a place here where at least there could be a dialogue between the two countries, guys.

MATTINGLY: It's an important dialogue at that. Natasha Bertrand, great reporting. Thank you so much.

CORNISH: Right now, police in Baltimore are searching for at least two shooters who they say opened fire on a block party, killing two people and hurting 28. [06:10:03]

Now, most of the injured are teenagers, including two 13-year-olds. New this morning, you can see people sprinting away from the gunfire. This was early yesterday morning. This is surveillance video obtained by our affiliate WJZ.

Investigators say they don't know if the shooters were targeting anybody specific or if this is a random bout of violence, but they're still on the run this hour as we learn the names of the victims who died: 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi and 18-year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez.

CNN national correspondent Gloria Pazmino is live in Baltimore this morning.

Gloria, as we mentioned, so many of these victims were between the ages of 13 and 19. What have you learned about the shooting?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Audie. Young people caught in the cross-fire. Several teenagers had gathered here for a celebration known as Brooklyn Day.

And it was supposed to be a celebration for this community and the families that live here. But it ended in tragedy.

Now, it was shortly after midnight when police say that shots rang out, sending hundreds of people that had gathered here running for cover.

I spoke to some of those people here yesterday. They told me it was absolute chaos and panic as they ran away from the gunfire, running for their lives.

Now, an 18-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man were killed. And dozens more were injured. Twenty-eight people injured by gunfire, many of them teenagers, as young as 13 years old.

Now, Mayor Brandon Scott was here last night, yesterday, and he was pleading with this community, asking them to come forward and share any information that they might have that can help find the people that were behind Saturday night's violence.

He was also critical of gun violence, saying that this is not just a Baltimore problem, that gun violence is affecting every part of the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BRANDON SCOTT (D), BALTIMORE: We are asking again that anyone that knows anything about this mass shooting, and that's what I wanted to call it. It's a mass shooting. We want this shooting to be treated just as it happened in rural America. We want everyone to come forward and say, treat this if it was your daughter, your son, your brother, your cousin that was out here, shot at this event.

(END VIDEO CLIP) PAZMINO: Now, another important detail that we learned from police yesterday. They say they are looking for multiple individuals behind Saturday night's violence. They have not identified or named the people they're look for just yet.

But we do know they are looking for several people. They say they believe at least two were behind Saturday night's shooting -- Audie.

CORNISH: Gloria Pazmino, thank you for your reporting.

And in our next hour, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott will join us live.

MATTINGLY: Also this morning, defense forces launching a deadly raid inside the West Bank as tensions there continue to escalate.

CORNISH: And Mike Pence is responding to a CNN report that Donald Trump had him call the governor of Arizona to try and pressure him into overturning the 2020 election results. Errol Louis and Shelby Talcott will join us.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:16:54]

MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I did check in with not only Governor Ducey but other governors in states that were going through the legal process of reviewing their election results.

But there was no pressure involved, Margaret. I was -- I was calling to get an update. I passed along that information to the president. And it was no more, no less than that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: That was former Vice President Mike Pence yesterday saying he did, in fact, call then-Arizona Governor Doug Ducey after the 2020 election, but importantly, not to pressure him into finding fraud on former President Trump's behalf.

This comes after CNN reporting that Trump himself pushed Ducey to look for fraud that would help him overturn the 2020 election results. And Pence held multiple calls with the Arizona governor about the election results around the same time.

CNN national correspondent Kristen Holmes is live in Washington this morning. Kristen, what do we know about what those conversations actually entailed?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's start with the Trump conversation, because we knew that Trump and Ducey spoke. Both -- both leaders confirmed that, but we didn't know exactly what was said.

And we are learning that Ducey behind closed doors has said that Trump was trying to pressure him to find some sort of fraud to overturn the election results in the state of Arizona. As we know, he narrowly lost that state by about 11,000 votes.

Now, when it comes to the Pence conversations, we know now that Pence held multiple calls with Ducey at the time, but we are told by sources it was not to pressure him. It was to ask him if he had seen any actual indication of voter fraud and if he had, to report it appropriately.

Now, interestingly here, Phil, we know that in Georgia, this call was recorded. We now know that in Arizona, there's no recording of this call.

We also know that the special counsel, Jack Smith, who is investigating Trump's actions after the 2020 election, as well as the January 6th insurrection, has not reached out to the former governor, Doug Ducey, about this interaction.

So, interesting here. Of course, we know that Trump was putting an enormous amount of pressure on people across the country to try and find fraud to overturn the 2020 election. As we have reported multiple times, there's no indication that there was massive fraud anywhere in the country.

MATTINGLY: That's exactly right. Kristen Holmes, thanks so much.

CORNISH: So we actually have video of one of the calls the then- president made to Governor Ducey. It was November 2020. Ducey was certifying the election results when Trump appeared to call him. You'll have to listen carefully to the ring tone: it's faint. You can make it out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC: "HAIL TO THE CHIEF")

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Extremely subtle "Hail to the Chief" ring tone playing on Ducey's phone. Governor Ducey did not take that call, but later said he spoke with Trump. And he did not describe the specifics of the conversation.

So to tease this out more, we're going to bring in CNN political commentator and host of the "You Decide" podcast, Errol Louis; and "Semafor" political reporter, Shelby Talcott. Welcome to you both.

MATTINGLY: Do you Errol actually requires everyone to have "Hail to the Chief" as his ring tone on his phone? It's contractual.

[06:20:02]

CORNISH: You know, the thing that's interesting about this moment is there's obviously the ongoing reporting in Georgia, where there is an investigation.

Can you start by giving us a sense of how similar this sounds to what the investigators have been looking at there?

SHELBY TALCOTT, POLITICAL REPORTER, "SEMAFOR": I mean, obviously the big difference is there's no recording of the call, but it sounds pretty similar to me right off the bat. And we already know that Trump has pressured other officials, so it doesn't necessarily come as a surprise to me that he would have also done this to Ducey.

CORNISH: Yes, but Ducey has said that Jack Smith hasn't reached out to him yet. Is that correct? What do you know?

TALCOTT: Yes. I -- I think that's notable, and I remember in the reporting that he told a donor that it was notable at all that he was surprised that he hadn't been spoken to yet.

I do think that this investigation is ramping up quickly. And so if he hasn't been spoken to yet, he likely will be soon, particularly now that this is all public. It would -- I would think that this kind of pressures Smith even more into speaking with him.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Absolutely, now that it's out. I mean, you know, the Brad Raffensperger, you know, sort of feast of evidence is something you've got to track down every single person who made or heard or understood or interpreted that call.

It doesn't sound like this is even remotely comparable. So it may not be as high of a priority.

But certainly, if Jack Smith is as thorough as his reputation suggests, sooner or later they will get down. It's just this looks like it's not necessarily low-hanging fruit if you don't have an actual recording and if you don't have somebody in the form of Doug Ducey who's willing to maybe testify under oath as to exactly what he was told. That might, in fact, end up remaining confidential.

MATTINGLY: Shelby, you keyed on the first element that I picked up on this story, which is less that a call happened. Again, this happened repeatedly over the course of the weeks after but mostly, that Ducey had talked to a donor, according to "Washington Post," that he hadn't been called yet.

But the other thing that sticks out to me is what Trump's team responded in the "Washington Post" story. And I want to read it. It says, "A spokesman for Trump declined to questions about the call with Ducey but instead falsely declared in a statement that, quote, 'The 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen.' The spokesman said Trump should be credited for, quote, 'doing the right thing -- working to make sure that all the fraud was investigated and dealt with.'"

And this is why it sticks out to me. Is it's like is everyone just numb at this point? Like, everything about that statement is a lie. And unequivocal, unambiguous lie, based on however many -- run through the dozens of investigations and court cases like that. And they're just tossing that out there in the middle of a campaign where he is the front-runner by 30 plus points.

When you talk -- you're on the trail. When you talk to Republican voters, when you talk to primary voters, does it -- do they care at all?

TALCOTT: It's interesting, because I do think a lot of Republican voters believe the 2020 election was stolen, and that's why when you hear Trump still speak about it, right, it's 2023. He's still talking about it on the campaign trail. It resonates in a way.

And even those who don't necessarily think, believe Trump's false claims, still believe that there was enough voter fraud that it should be a concern.

So it is kind of front and center in a lot of these voter's minds, even the ones who don't necessarily want to vote for Trump. Like even the --

CORNISH: It's like table stakes, right? Just to be in the race at this point is to say at least there was some kind of fraud to be concerned about.

I want to bring us to Will Hurd, who is of Texas, I think is looking at a presidential run. And he talked about what it's like right now in the party.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILL HURD (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not going to support Donald Trump. I recognize the impact that it has on -- on, you know, my ability to get access to the debate stage. But I -- I can't lie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, he's talking about the fact that to even get on the debate stage, you have to say that you will support whoever the nominee is.

Errol, can you talk a little bit about what that means in this particular race, which is defined by being sort of for or against Trump.

LOUIS: Right, right. I mean, Donald Trump has really sort of set the table in a way that will obviously favor him. If the cost of the table stakes, as you put it, of being in the debate or having even a remote shot at the nomination is that you have to support Trump and his version of what happened in 2020, well, he's going to hold onto his lead, to say the least, and will probably end up being the nominee.

Will Hurd doesn't want to play that game. And good for him for saying that, you know, for recognizing what so many of the other candidates don't seem to recognize, which is that, if you play that game on those terms, you cannot win.

You're not going to take Donald Trump's base away from him. If he defines the race as whether or not you support me, you're not going to win that race either.

CORNISH: But it's the only way to get onto the debate stage, what does that mean? I mean, it seems like the party is structuring things as such it would make it hard for someone to operate outside it.

LOUIS: He's acting -- Donald Trump is acting like a de facto incumbent. You know, look, on the Democratic side, if you look at what President Biden has done, you know, the way they rearranged the campaign -- the primary schedule. The fact that there are really no opportunities for any significant opposition to get onto a debate stage with him.

[06:25:11]

Donald Trump is trying to do his version of that. Now, the fact that there are so many candidates suggests that people think that either he's going to go away or the base is going to suddenly desert him. I don't know if they're being realistic about that, but that's why he's got a 30-point lead at this point.

MATTINGLY: Shelby --

TALCOTT: This is going to be the world's least-signed pledge also.

CORNISH: You think people can get away without signing it?

TALCOTT: I mean, I guess I wonder if nobody signs it, are they not going to have debates?

MATTINGLY: I mean, that's the funny part, too. Is like, also -- and I think it might have been Chris Christie, is like, I guess I'll sign it, but I don't mean it. It's not binding.

TALCOTT: I don't know how you enforce it.

MATTINGLY: If you want to get on the debate stage. I feel like I ask you this every time you're here, and I apologize for the repetition. But I actually think it's important, because I know you're plugged in. Like, what are the odds Trump is actually on a debate stage?

TALCOTT: I don't think they're very high. And his argument and his team's argument is essentially, why would I give everyone else the time, right? I'm ahead by so much. And it is, in a sense, a legitimate argument.

MATTINGLY: No, it's a very savvy political move.

TALCOTT: Why would he -- why would he bother? I don't see him doing it. I see him potentially actually -- and there's been some rumors about this -- hosting his own event.

CORNISH: OK. Shelby Talcott and Errol Louis, thanks so much for being with us.

MATTINGLY: Tensions seem to be calming, at least somewhat, in France after police -- after the police killing of a teen sparked a fiery protest. We're going to take you there for updates live.

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