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CNN This Morning

Reporting Indicates Special Counsel Jack Smith Investigating Meeting among Former President Trump and His Attorneys and Advisers on Possible Ways to Overturn 2020 Presidential Election; Biden Administration's Message on State of U.S. Economy Not Resonating with Voters According to Polling; Twitter Threatens To Sue Meta Over "Threads"; Meta Launches Threads To Take On Twitter; NASA Researchers Spending Year Living In Mars-Like Habitat. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 07, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Threads surpassed 50 million signups in its first 24 hours. We break down the accusations by Elon Musk's lawyer.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Also, we're about to get the jobs report for last month. Economists predicting a 30th straight month of solid job gains. Could it mean more interests rate hikes are on the way?

This hour of CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

We begin this hour with that CNN exclusive reporting. We have now learned that Special Counsel Jack Smith's team of investigators are really focused on a now famous Oval Office meeting just weeks before the January 6th insurrection, a meeting that devolved into a screaming match between White House lawyers and a group of outside advisers who were pushing extreme ideas to try to keep Donald Trump in power. Prosecutors have been specifically asking witnesses about those outsiders, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, the attorney Sidney Powell, and former CEO of Overstock Patrick Byrne.

BLACKWELL: They floated ideas like having the military seize voting machines in key states that Trump lost, invoking martial law, and appointing Sidney Powell as a special counsel to investigate supposed voter fraud. Rudy Giuliani was also in that meeting. Prosecutors recently questioned him about it when he voluntarily sat down for a lengthy two-day interview with investigators. And we know that Trump's White House lawyers, they pushed back hard on those wild ideas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAT CIPOLLONE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: I don't think any of these people were providing the president with good advice. And so I didn't understand how they had gotten in.

ERIC HERSCHMANN, FORMER TRUMP ADVISER: What they were proposing, I thought was nuts.

SIDNEY POWELL, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: Cipollone and Herschmann and whoever the other guy was showed nothing but contempt and disdain of the president. If it had been me sitting in his chair, I would have fired all of them that night and had them escorted out of the building.

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: I'm going to categorically describe it as you guys are not tough enough, or maybe I put it another way. You're a bunch of --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: So after that meeting ended, Trump sent out this tweet calling on his supporters to gather in D.C. on January 6th for the big protest. He told them, "Be there, will be wild."

Let's bring in Katelyn Polantz. Katelyn, learning a lot. What are you learning?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Victor and Poppy, this meeting is infamous, and it's been well known, but now it is one of the things that prosecutors really are making sure that they understand from a lot of different perspectives. They are talking to several witnesses about it according to reporting from a large team of us led by Kaitlan Collins.

And we are hearing from our sources, Rudy Giuliani was asked about this when he sat in for a voluntary interview with the special counsel's office recently. And this meeting so infamous because it is when outsiders are, Sidney Powell, Patrick Byrne, and Michael Flynn had the ear of Donald Trump. They had a one-on-one with him in this late-night, free-wheeling conversation in the White House. They eventually ended up in the residence of the president.

And people like Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel, came running because they were so alarmed at what was hang there. And what happens in this meeting with Donald Trump is that people like Powell, Flynn, Patrick Byrne, are trying to convince Donald Trump that, yes, they believe there were votes that were flipped by voting machines. Of course, that is not true. That is not what happened. But they are trying to tell Trump you can seize voting machines because you're the president. You can appoint a special counsel to take over and look into this no matter what your advisors in the administration are saying.

And at that point in time, that is when people like Pat Cipollone and others say to Trump directly, there is no fraud. This is not something that you can continue pushing. And when the House January 6th investigators looked at this, they framed this meeting as essentially the moment where from then on Donald Trump could make a choice. Did he want to continue leaning into these false accusations of election fraud, or did he want to accept that he lost? Obviously, accepting that he lost was not what happened after this meeting.

HARLOW: Not what happened at all. Katelyn, thanks very much for the reporting.

BLACKWELL: Joining us now, CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers, CNN political commentator Geoff Duncan, and CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig. I'm starting with you, senior legal analyst. What does all of this mean in the larger context of where Jack Smith is going?

ELIE HONIG, SENIOR CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So first of all, for a while I think the big question we were all asking is, are they only looking at the false electors scheme, the submission of those pieces of paper saying we are the duly elected Trump electors in these states when they were not. Or are they looking more broadly. And I think this answers our question. They're looking at all of it, essentially.

[08:05:02]

And in terms of where are we in this investigation, if I had to put together a checklist as a prosecutor, which you do sometimes with an investigation, in my view they are basically very close to or at the end. They've spoken with all the key players, some highly placed, Mike Pence, Mark Meadows. Some not big names but important witnesses potentially, state level officials, they've subpoenaed documents. So it feels to me like they are at or near the thumbs up, thumbs down decision point here.

HARLOW: Geoff, you have a really interesting CNN op-ed this weekend. You lay our three things that you believe all Republican candidates, I think it's just candidates, I mean, if it's voters, too, but must do. And the key thing here is be unwilling to support a convicted felon. You also say -- I know. We laugh, but that is not --

GEOFF DUNCAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: These are no-brainers.

HARLOW: It's laughable, but it, like, could happen.

DUNCAN Right. If you want to see Donald Trump win, then you just keep repeating crazy. But if you want a Republican to beat Joe Biden, which should be easy task with the current polling, then you've just got to focus on the things that I think most Americans care about, right. Like, for example, we ought to all agree that the 2020 election wasn't rigged. That's pretty easy. We ought to agree that we shouldn't nominate a convicted felon.

HARLOW: And then you make a point about Ukraine?

DUNCAN: And when we talk about Ukraine. We ought to with a full- throated answer say that we support Ukraine. Certainly, we want fiscal responsibility around our spending. These are three things that not only we should agree as Republicans, but we should see as they help us attract the middle because the pathway to the White House is the middle. If we don't win the middle, we have no chance to beat Joe Biden.

BLACKWELL: You said that there is some silliness around the loyalty pledge, that these are the three things that these candidates should pledge. But is there one candidate who fits all of that?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No. In fact, this is one of the weakest Republican fields that we've seen in very long period of time. We were just laughing off air, but the top three candidates from Morning Consult just recently were Donald Trump, who we believe to be a very weak candidate. He can still be president of the United States. I don't want Democrats to be just overly confident. Number two is Ron DeSantis, and you see him cratering. I compare Ron DeSantis to Icarus. He's somebody who just simply --

HARLOW: Flew too close to the sun?

SELLERS: Exactly. And you see his wings melting away.

And then the third, you have Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running third right now. And when you think about this field, and you look at that, there is nothing intimidating about the Republican field. And our job is message and get Joe out on the campaign trail, which he's doing now.

HARLOW: To that point, Jennifer Rubin has a really interesting column this in "The Washington Post," and it has to do with your former boss. I'm going to ask you about it, Governor Kemp. And she basically says what Bakari said about DeSantis just did not work. Actually, she called him unlikable, mockable, and devoid of interpersonal skills, those are her words. But she says if Republicans -- Jennifer Rubin -- if Republicans were betting on him to get rid of Trump, they should dock up with a come up with a plan b, and therefore she invokes the names of Governor Kemp Youngkin. Should your former boss run?

DUNCAN: Yes, this isn't rocket science. Brian Kemp ran the state of Georgia with a conservative thesis, and he had a huge win in the election. He beat David Perdue, by the way, Donald Trump's best friend, by 52 points in a primary, and then he came and beat Stacey Abrams, who was well-funded and had the highest name I.D. It's a winning strategy. Brian Kemp put on display what conservative leadership looks like. And he did it in a non-hateful way. He is conservative but not angry.

And so that, to me, is the model. If Brian Kemp wants to run for president, I will certainly be there to help him.

HONIG: One potential wrinkle with Governor Kemp is, he looks like he is going to be a witness in Fani Willis's case, if she brings a case. He's not a defendant. He didn't do anything wrong. But a witness, and he is going to have to do the dance that we see a lot of GOP contenders doing.

SELLERS: If Brian Kemp runs for president of the United States, he is actually talented enough to make inroads and to well in that field and do well in a conservative primary and actually strike a little fear in the hearts of Democrats.

BLACKWELL: Something you said, though, I want to go back to, you said that the job now is to get the message out about Bidenomics, if we are using that term now. We had Congressman Clyburn on yesterday. The president was in South Carolina. His criticism was, if there was one to pull from it, that the White House is not doing that work well enough to get the message to the voters, which is why we see in the polls people don't feel good about the economy.

SELLERS: I think by tangible metrics you see Bidenomics working. But when you go in the barbershops, where apparently we have been recently, because we both look --

HARLOW: Looking good, guys.

SELLERS: Zoom in, whatever you got to do, producers.

(LAUGHTER)

SELLERS: But when you talk to those individuals, when you talk to the people who are just real world individuals, our friends, they don't necessarily feel it. And that's why you have to have Kamala Harris on "The Rickey Smiley Morning Show," you got to have her on Gospel Radio, you've got to have Joe Biden out, you've got to have him in the barbershops, because this race, frankly, is going to be won in Milwaukee, Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia. That's where this race for president is going to be won.

And we have to make sure that we are doing that work now instead of rolling out surrogates next Labor Day saying please go rally these voters.

HARLOW: And right now you have -- and this may sound offensive but it's just fact -- two old white guys at the front in each party, OK.

[08:10:02]

The "Politico" headline, I think, said it all -- Bakari is laughing.

(LAUGHTER)

HARLOW: "The GOP field is more diverse than ever. The GOP isn't heralding the achievement." This is a -- can we show? I don't know if we have an image to show. But this is a more diverse than ever GOP field, and do you agree they are not heralding that?

DUNCAN: In a normal cycle this would be so applauded across all spectrums, all corners of the country. We have a series of candidates that are so good in so many different things, and we would be truly running of any process. The only way I can explain Donald Trump right now is Stockholm syndrome. It's like this guy kidnaps the Republican Party in 2016, mistreats us, abuses us, and then gets convicted or arrested, and now his own victims are coming back defend him. Right, that's what's going on here. And until we break that negative trajectory of the Republican Party, we are not going see the true talent that we've got sitting on the bench ready to take on. We should be able to run anybody but Donald Trump that's currently a candidate for president as a Republican and beat Joe Biden handily.

SELLERS: You think about Brian Kemp and Tim Scott, for example. That's a ticket that is formidable. That's a ticket that Democrats have to buckle up and begin to think about. But listen, what they are doing right now doesn't strike fear in anybody's heart.

BLACKWELL: Shout out to Jeh Johnson for keeping the beard tight. I'm sure he will appreciate that love. Bakari, Geoff, Elie, thank you very much. Stick around. We have got more to talk about. HARLOW: Twitter threatening to sue Meta over its new Threads app just

as Mark Zuckerberg touts more than 40 million signups for the Twitter competitor. What Twitter is alleging next.

BLACKWELL: It's been 100 days since "Wall Street Journal" reporter Evan Gershkovich was detained in Russia. His family just spoke to the "Journal" about how they are coping. We'll bring you that interview just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Twitter is threatening to sue Facebook parent company Meta, over its brand-new social media platform known as Threads. The company owned by Musk is or Elon Musk is accusing Meta of hiring its former employees to help create the app, which works in a similar way to Twitter. But Meta rejects the claim saying in a Thread, that no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee that's just not a thing. Joining us now Audie Cornish, CNN Anchor and Host of the Assignment Podcast. Audie, good to see you. So, what is this about. These are the essentially having now created accounts on both of them, they're the same. Does this threat of a lawsuit slow Meta at all?

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Well, obviously, Meta has really ramped up its sort of effort to find a way into this space. The problem is it's not the only one. There's this conversation about the Fediverse, there's Bluesky, there's Spill. There have been a number of apps that have stepped up into what they consider the breach that Elon Musk has created with the way he has quote unquote, run Twitter over the last what, two, three years.

So, it's left an opening and it'll be interesting to see whether the legal part of this goes anywhere. The background to it is there's like a weird spat going on between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, which, you know, I think people are jokingly, maybe not jokingly talking about them getting in some sort of fistfight. So, this is one of those situations where you have overlapping Venn Diagram of personal, technology and businesspeople who are kind of puffing up their chest at each other.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And billions, billions, billions, billionaires.

CORNISH: Billions at stake.

HARLOW: Audie, you have a really fascinating whole story coming up, this Sunday. We'll play a little bit of it in a moment, but it's about social media and kids and parents and major worries and mental health. How does Threads tie into how Meta is addressing this mental health aspect of it all?

CORNISH: Well, the movement to sue social media companies over harms, whether they be eating disorders or bullying, or sexual exploitation. Really accelerated after Frances Haugen a few years ago, released the Facebook paper. She was an ex-Facebook employee. And she said that the company had done its own internal research and understood that there were social harms that could come from kind of overuse of social media.

Fast forward to now, and you have Threads, which if you dig into its settings have these efforts at its quote unquote, Family Center, that allows parents to supervise teen accounts. It has content moderation, the ability to hide certain words. You're seeing reflected in this new launch, kind of the long-term effort, in part because the company is under public pressure to do so.

BLACKWELL: Let's play a clip of the episode, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper focusing on some of these families that are suing the social media companies because of the Mental Health Impact, let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What Tammy (PH) didn't know at the time, was that Selena (PH) had figured out, how to block her mother from seeing her online life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She had saved her fingerprint and I didn't know she had saved it in my phone. So, like if I fall asleep or whatever she would use her fingerprint to get in and change the setting.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Once the pandemic had started, she was posting more, she became more recluse, she was focused on how many likes she has, how many followers she has, how many followers she's losing, who's messaging her?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: During the pandemic, when Selena school and social life moved online. She was regularly messaging with people on these apps. Some she knew, some she did not.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There were adults that would reach out, which I was not aware of, until not too long ago. Men, they knew she was a minor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: All right, there have been variations of these stories we've heard for some time. What's the -- what would you tell people about what's coming on Sunday night, the most impactful part of what you learned?

CORNISH: I think that I learned that it's very easy to look at parents and say, take away a kid's phone, don't let them open accounts. But right now, both the kids and the tech companies are way ahead of us in terms of understanding this technology and how to manipulate it. And so, the question is, if the government isn't going to get involved, and the companies are best served by the widest possible engagement.

Meaning they're best served by you having multiple accounts, by a kid opening multiple accounts, that that engagement is meaningful to them. What effort will they'll really be to do any of the other kinds of quote unquote, reforms or even figure those out? Should they verify the identity of people who open accounts? No more sort of anonymity, right? What kind of information should they take in to understand whether or not a child is using the platform.

[08:20:19]

And then, the most fundamental thing to all of the internet, which is algorithmic recommendation. The internet serves you up more of what you want. And if you start to want things that are detrimental to you or others, you end up in a kind of bear hug spiraling out of a plane. Where you just go down this rabbit hole that the algorithm draws you in deeper.

Is there anything you can really do about that, given the fundamental nature of algorithmic recommendation, in terms of its architecture built into the internet? So, it's like a lot of things tied in all at once, it's a knot. And the people raising the biggest, hardest questions about this, our kids and their families.

BLACKWELL: Audie Cornish, such a timely report, we'll be looking forward to it. Thank you so much.

CORNISH: Thanks for having me.

BLACKWELL: And we want you to watch out for this new report on the dark side of social media. Be sure to tune in to The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, it airs Sunday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN. Back with us Bakari, Geoff and Elie, all of you parents, and the only person at the table who is not a parent. This must be -- I can't find an adjective to describe how frightening this must be for parents. Because you give your kids a phone, because in many ways, it's a necessity now. And you hope that they don't go down this rabbit hole.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. You can't not give them a phone. I mean, we tried to hold that as long as possible. But it's just a reality of life. Now, Audie says something that really resonated with me, that I never thought about before. She said parents are always going to be behind the kids in the social media companies. I mean, she's exactly right, you know, I can barely figure out the most rudimentary functions. And so, where can we hope to have some sort of whether it's regulation or some hope of keeping our kids from the kind of harms that I think she just powerfully laid out?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think that there's two terrifying aspects. One, I have an 18-year-old and that's just terrifying. I mean, she's going to Howard in August and that's just terrifying.

HARLOW: Bravo.

SELLERS: On its -- on its own, and then I have four-and-a-half-year- old twins. And so, you know, just watching them grow up under the, you know, under the auspices of just the comment section. Let alone all the other dangers that lurk out there. And then, you have Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg who haven't proven themselves to show that they actually care about the users.

HARLOW: Both fathers.

SELLERS: Both fathers, who haven't proven themselves to show that they care about the user. And I think that's a fundamental problem as well. So, from a very personal level, you're scared about what your children may encounter or who may be reaching out. And as a criminal defense lawyer, I represent some of these people, you see it -- you see it up close and personal. But then you look at the people who govern, I mean, we were running from, we're literally running from Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, that is -- I mean -- I mean that, what is that 2 percent moat versus regular? I mean, it doesn't, there's not much of a difference. And that just on a political level just frightens me.

GEOFF DUNCAN (R), FORMER LT. GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA: This is a hot topic in our House. We've got the whole spectrum, we've got a 21-year-old in college, unnamed drop two at UGA. We've got a 17-year-old in high school, and we've got a 12-year-old going into seventh grade. So, we got the whole spectrum. And you know, my wife and I talk a lot about, you know, what are the regulations of the family rules of operating procedures. And at the end of the day, we just feel like we have to parent through it, right?

And that's we got to do to the best of our ability to make sure we're talking to our kids, make sure they understand the kind of the consequences to doing too much online or saying too much or engaging. But one of the things we found to be helpful is that the three kids' kind of please themselves to some extent, right? Like we're watching, but all my kids follow each other on social media. So, if somebody's putting something out or retweeting or TikTok around, it's all above my paygrade. You know, we hear about it and, you know, you've got friends, but it's a complicated scenario as a parent, right? To try to parent through some of this stuff.

HARLOW: Certainly, yes. Through on this.

SELLERS: My twins are buy one get one free today because --

HONIG: If you want -- if you want one.

BLACKWELL: You give them.

SELLERS: Yes, sure.

DUNCAN: I've got a seventh grader in Atlanta that would love to spend some time with --

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKWELL: Everybody is always trying to just hand off and give to me.

SELLERS: -- Uncle Victor.

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKWELL: I will pass.

DUNCAN: Writers have great weekend (INAUDIBLE)

HARLOW: Just living a good life, guys.

BLACKWELL: No, no.

HARLOW: He got to go to dinner last night.

BLACKWELL: It is free.

HARLOW: Thank you all very, very much, really guys, on the Politics and on the parenting and we're all facing those challenges at home. How do we figure this stuff out, right? Later this hour, this is exciting. We're going to talk to a NASA scientist about their new Mars habitat, where for scientists we're just literally locked. I'm not exaggerating here locked in it for the next year. They will undergo tests and try to solve some simulated problems, better prepare for the real man, woman mission to Mars. But one of the challenges is how to communicate, and this is where Victor gets -- he's very interested in this part, part?

BLACKWELL: I am.

HARLOW: 22 minutes.

BLACKWELL: 22 minutes at times for messages to be received on the red planet. So, we've got this clock up now. Imagine right now, you send a text that says, hey, big head it will take 22 minutes to get to the person on Mars.

[08:25:14]

HARLOW: They're going to cue me in on this joke in the break. The Labor Department will release June jobs numbers in just a few minutes. We'll tell you what they say ahead.

BLACKWELL: And Britney Spears says that she was slapped by a security guard for the NBA's number one draft pick. Their different accounts of what happened. We have that for you.

HARLOW: OK.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: A Lyft driver who survived the Taliban taking over his country of Afghanistan has been killed in Washington D.C. 31-year-old Nasrat Ahmad Yar was found inside his car unconscious and shot late Monday night. A GoFundMe, they say that he was working an extra shift at the time. Ahmad Yar was a former Afghan interpreter who served alongside the U.S. Army Special Forces in Afghanistan for a decade. He brought his family to the U.S. in 2021 after the Afghan government collapsed. The GoFundMe says that he was the sole provider for his wife.