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VP Harris Heads to Arizona After Abortion Ban Ruling; Today: Shohei Ohtani's Ex-Translator To Surrender; KC Chiefs Receiver Rashee Rice Bonds Out of Jail; Today: Elon Musk To Meet With Argentina's President; Robust Security Plan Ahead of Trump Trial; The Impact of O. J. Simpson's Trial Of The Century. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired April 12, 2024 - 6:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. In the wake of the Arizona Supreme Court's controversial decision to uphold a Civil War era abortion ban, Democrats are swiftly united around a simple message, Donald Trump did this. Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Tucson, Arizona today to hammer home that message. Her visit coming just a day after the Biden campaign launched a 7 figure ad buy in that battleground state to try and seize on the outcry over the court's ruling.

Our panel, is back with us now. Ashley Allison, Harris really kind of stepping out as a messenger on this. How do you view the White House decision to do that? I mean, she has definitely taken a lot of incoming. She's had a lot of criticism over how she's done the job as Vice President, but that does seem to have shifted some here as we head towards November.

ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: She is uniquely positioned to address this issue face on, and she has been doing it really since the overturning of Roe, going out, getting outside of the beltway, talking to voters, talking to physicians. She went and visited an abortion clinic.

I also think this actually highlights her experience, because a lot of these laws require state AGs to prosecute women for doing that, and she used to run the second largest Department of Justice in our country. So it really showcases what she -- how she is as a leader, what she has done in her career, and how she is able to connect with voters.

And we've seen in past election cycles, whether it's the Red wave that never manifested, whether it's in 2023 with Kentucky, Governor Beshear being able to hold on the governorship, Ohio being able to pass in a -- codify abortion into their constitution, that she played a role in those states.

And I think she'll continue to do that in battleground states like Arizona, first case in point, but also Florida and other states where we might see it on the ballot.

HUNT: Yeah. I mean, Sarah Longwell, what do you hear from voters when you talk to them about this issue in the wake of the fall of Roe?

SARAH LONGWELL, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. And I was -- it was weird the first time I heard voters saying it, but then I heard it so often, which is a lot of Republican voters say, well, look, I'm pro-Life, but I believe in a woman's right to choose.

And now that may sound like a contradiction, but what they mean is, that they personally are pro-Life, but they sort of liked the law where it was. And in fact, when I talked to -- I was just recently doing a group of two time Trump voters. Entire group identified as product-choice. And so for Republicans, they know this is a political dynamic that is terrible for them, especially if Democrats are able to put this on the ballot as a ballot initiative.

Because here's the thing about voters and abortion. When you ask people at the beginning of any focus group, hey, how do you think things are going in the country? They never bring up abortion. Almost never. It's very rare. They talk about economy. They talk about crime and inflation. And so -- but if you bring up abortion, their energy gets really intense about it. Right?

And so what you have to do, for Democrats, is increase the salience of abortion for voters. Make it more top of mind. And so the Biden campaign prosecuting this case, I think is the right way to go about it.

And then when -- in states like Arizona where it is literally on the ballot, that makes a big difference for Democrats, I think.

HUNT: Well, and especially when the conditions also increase salience --

LONGWELL: Right.

HUNT: that you point out --

LONGWELL: That's right.

HUNT: -- the existence of this law. Isaac, I mean, I think one thing that, you know, Donald Trump is trying to rewrite essentially his story on abortion. He was the person that put the justices on the court that that struck down Roe v. Wade. That was what he was promising in his campaign in 2016. Now that said, he also in 1999 said that he was product-choice.

He's in New York. I mean, I'm not sure that there are a lot of people that buy that personally this is something that Donald Trump cares a ton about. And I think my question is, for the MAGA movement, I mean, how much do they really care about it?

Like, there's lots of -- you know, there's a scene in the new, "New York Magazine" piece that Olivia Nuzzi has with Steve Bannon and Kari Lake praying together. And Kari Lake did used to seem to be a true believer on this. Now she's making calls, saying we got to overturn this. Like, is this something MAGA really cares about or are they just trying to avoid it?

ISAAC ARNSDORF, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, it's interesting. With Trump this is like the one issue that he doesn't automatically run to the to the right, run to the most extreme position on. It's like the one issue where he is very explicit about just seeing the political implications of it. And he comes out and says, like, well, we need to win elections.

And the advisers who were lobbying him to pick a number of weeks, thinking about Kellyanne Conway and Lindsey Graham, specifically, the argument they were making to him is, like, if you don't if you don't endorse 15 weeks or 16 weeks federally, you are going to get stuck and blamed with every state ban that's more severe with that. Then he rejects that advice, says leave it to the states. The next day, this Arizona decision.

[06:35:00]

HUNT: Yeah. I mean and, Sarah, how do you see that? And we've talked a little bit about this on the show, that voters -- and how do voters see Trump when he tries to kind of navigate this?

LONGWELL: Yeah. So -- I mean, this is just an underappreciated point about the way voters see Trump, which is they think of him as a cultural moderate. And, I think sometimes people are surprised when I say things like, hey, I had a whole focus group of Trump voters, and they identified as pro-choice. Doesn't surprise me that much, and it doesn't surprise Trump because Trump brought new people into the party to vote for him. They are not like Mike Pence Republicans.

And, right, nobody thinks of Trump as, like, having a sexual morality like Mike Pence would. And so, you know, on things like gay marriage and on things -- and he's -- he is good at -- Trump has a good political instincts on triangulating where voters are. And so he has been trying to say, like, hey. I gave you Republicans these three supreme court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, so you got that for me.

But also, I'm going to leave it to the states and I myself am a moderate, and I'm not going to put in a federal ban, so that I can appease these swing voters, and center right voters who don't want these things. These things, though, like what's happening in Arizona, make it hard for him to have it both ways.

ALLISON: Two things on this. One, when you said earlier that a lot of people are like, I'm pro-Life, but I think a woman should have a right to choose. There's actually a lot of Democrats that feel that way too that they believe that this is not something that government should be in your bedroom.

And so when Trump was running in 2016, it was an idea to overturn Roe. And so for so long, we've seen Republicans use abortion as a, I'm -- I can mobilize evangelicals around it. But then when it actually became the law, when Roe was overturned, people realized that's was -- that idea is not what they really wanted and is dramatically out of touch with where most Americans are regardless of party affiliation. HUNT: Ashley, to this question about, you know, Lindsey Graham, Kellyanne Conway behind the scenes telling Donald Trump you should do 15, 16 weeks national ban over being held accountable for these, you know, very draconian state bans or more draconian state bans, I should say. As a Democrat thinking about running against Trump, where would you rather he be?

ALLISON: I mean, in a policy position, I would rather him not be in it at all.

HUNT: No, no, I get that. But, I mean, like, if you're trying to run a campaign against him, like, what's going --

ALLISON: I don't think it actually matters because I think there's a contradiction in both positions. Right? So if you say, national ban, that is contradictory to where you originally said that you want it to be in the states. And so you can run a campaign on that regardless of where the weeks are.

So I don't actually think, either way, either -- where he falls on the position, he is the reason why we are here. And if he says he wants a national ban, it's contradictory. And the ads almost write them for themselves, because he has so much content on it.

LONGWELL: I don't know. I think -- I think when he comes out -- yeah, for a ban or anything that is more, I guess, on the extreme side, this is the thing about abortion. It is not that voters will vote just on abortion. It's that abortion is the entry point for them to understand how extreme a candidate is.

So back in 2022, when Democrat -- even though Republicans had higher turnout, Democrats outperformed in tons of key races. But it wasn't just because of abortion. It was because of abortion plus election denialism plus, like, Blake Masters liked the Unabomber. You know, it was like they kind of all came together to form a picture of extremism --

HUNT: Yeah.

LONGWELL: -- that a slice of voters reject. And they can -- but abortion is an easy one for them to understand, extremism through. And so, I think the more extreme position like, voters understand this law was from the Civil War before women could vote, that sounds insane.

HUNT: Yeah.

LONGWELL: Right?

ALLISON: Before the cowboy hat was invented.

HUNT: Yeah.

ALLISON: But one thing -- just one thing on this is, I agree. But every time we find ourselves with a week -- you then have an exception or you have a case that comes out that magnifies the how extreme a week -- but if you say 16 weeks, there it's why it's a good issue for Democrats to run, because there are -- the woman's body is complex. Having a child is complex, and so every case is unique in of itself, which is why you can't have a federal law that applies to all.

And there will just be case after case after case that allows Democrats to magnify the extremism regardless, I think, of where people fall.

HUNT: And the reality is that some of the later cases, women who, you know -- it would be cast as well. You want to be able to kill a baby at a certain time. It's almost so would rarely be about that.

ALLISON: Yeah.

HUNT: Instead, you've got women who are like desperate to have a healthy child. They want to protect it at all costs and they can't for some terribly tragic reason that leading to pregnancy.

You're -- just briefly, Sarah, the way you were saying it's an entry point to extremism, it just strikes me that that was ultimately what was reversed with Roe falling. Was that -- it was Republicans could say -- claim Democrats are extreme on this issue, and now it's just been straight up reversed?

[06:40:00]

LONGWELL: Yeah. When people say Republicans are like the dog that caught the car on this, what they mean is, is it used to be an issue where they could go on offense against Democrats, and that has reversed now. It is now Democrats can go on offense against Republicans saying, no, you're the extreme one. You're the one that's out of touch with the American people, and they're right about that.

HUNT: Yeah. For sure.

All right. Up next here. It was the trial of the century. Up next, how the O. J. Simpson case transformed the way we handle high profile trials today.

Plus, the federal charge against the former interpreter for baseball superstar, Shohei Ohtani.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:45:00]

HUNT: All right. 44 minutes past the hour. Here's your "Morning Roundup." The former translator for baseball star Shohei Ohtani expected to surrender to federal authorities today. Ippei Mizuhara faces bank fraud charges after allegedly stealing more than $16 million from Ohtani.

Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver, Rashee Rice, bonding out from jail after turning himself into police last night. He's facing numerous charges from a high speed race in Dallas that ended in a 6 car pileup.

Argentina's President meeting this morning with Elon Musk in Texas. He is in the United States for 4 days hoping for a cash infusion for Argentina's struggling economy. That is a serious statement that a world leader goes to someone like him for that.

There will be a robust security plan in place for Donald Trump's hush money trial next week. Sources describe it as sophisticated, multilayered, and more expansive than Trump's previous high profile cases in Manhattan.

From one high profile trial to another, O. J. Simpson, who passed away, and his trial of the century.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We, the jury, in the involved in title action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code 187(a), a felony upon Nicole Brown Simpson, human being, as charged in count one of the information.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That infamous case, do you remember where you were when that happened? Because I do. It was watched by over a 150 million people, and it spurred a media frenzy that gripped and divided the country.

CNN's Tom Foreman, reminds us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police believe that that O. J. Simpson is in that car.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For 2 hours, over 60 miles, almost 30 years ago, the low speed pursuit of an American icon became an American sensation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People were leaving their homes and their work and wherever they were, and they were racing to these overpasses.

FOREMAN (voice-over): And when the white Bronco stopped for O. J. Simpson to face murder charges over the killing of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, the country was hooked.

CARI CHAMPION, SPORTS BROADCASTER: That was our first introduction into reality TV and what it looked like, and we were obsessed.

FOREMAN (voice-over): Simpson was a superstar, a Heisman Trophy winner in college, one of the most dazzling running backs in NFL history for many black families in particular, a runaway success.

O. J. SIMPSON, AMERICAN FOOTBALL PLAYER: Nobody does it better than Hertz.

FOREMAN (voice-over): Juice was a beloved celebrity in commercials and movies.

SIMPSON: Nordberg : Hiya, buddy! The doc says I should be on my feet in a week!

SIMPSON: And yet his role as defendant eclipsed everything else.

Through 11 months of court proceedings and nonstop media coverage, the nation was captivated by daily debates over DNA evidence, police procedure, and dramatic moments made for TV.

JOHNNIE COCHRAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY OF O.J. SIMPSON: If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

FOREMAN (voice-over): When the verdict came down --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not guilty of the crime of murder.

FOREMAN (voice-over): By one estimate, 150 million people watched live.

Many splitting along racial lines over whether the ruling was just or just wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's just unfair.

FOREMAN (voice-over): A massive civil suit by the victims' families did not go as well for Simpson, and he was ordered to pay tens of millions in damages. He lost his house and Heisman, but kept hundreds of thousands in pension funds.

FRED GOLDMAN, FATHER OF ROB GOLDMAN: Our family is grateful for a verdict of responsibility, which is all we ever wanted.

FOREMAN (voice-over): Simpson had future legal problems too. In 2007, he was arrested after an armed robbery involving sports memorabilia he said was his.

SIMPSON: I am sorry. I didn't mean to steal anything from anybody, and I didn't know I was doing anything illegal.

FOREMAN (voice-over): He wound up convicted and sentenced to 33 years in prison. He was paroled in 2017. And through it all, he maintained his innocence in the murders that changed his life and American society, too.

SIMPSON: Right now, I'm at a point in my life where all I want to do is spend time with my -- as much time as I can with my, children and my friends. I've done my time.

FOREMAN (on-camera): For the families of the victims, the Browns and the Goldmans, O. J.'s continued presence in the news served as an open wound, a constant reminder to them of the justice they always felt was denied. Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HUNT: All right. Joining me now is Michael Smerconish. He is a CNN political commentator and the host of CNN's Smerconish. Michael, happy Friday. Wonderful to have you. MICHAEL SMERCONISH, Host, CNN's SMERCONISH: Hi, Kasie.

HUNT: Quite the trip down memory lane in terms of what this trial, this man meant to our culture in the 90s. You have been -- you were a trial attorney. What are -- what has been going through your mind as we have been transported back to this period in time?

SMERCONISH: Well, when you asked, do you remember where you were when the not guilty verdict came in? I don't know if you could see me shaking my head. Not only do I remember exactly where I was then, I remember where I was the night of the white Ford Bronco chase.

[06:50:00]

And for those of us of a certain age, we were transfixed. I have an embarrassing confession. I was so hooked on this trial that I remember being in L.A. and tracing the route from Rockingham to Bundy to see if it all made sense. Now those of us who were obsessed with the trial, you'll remember those references.

America has always loved a good trial. Go back to the 30s, it was Bruno Hauptmann and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, but what was different about O. J. were the cameras in the courtroom.

And, Kasie, I am such an advocate of the idea that anywhere we as citizens have a right to go watch our government function, there ought to be a right to a camera, including the Supreme Court of the United States. But ironically, the O. J. case was such a setback for my argument because the courtroom was out of control. It took, like, a year, as you just pointed out.

Judge Ito just did not rein it in. He allowed the lawyers to ride rough shot. So forever, I've been saying to people, there need to be cameras in courtroom, but don't let O. J. be your yardstick.

HUNT: That is a really interesting way to think about it. Because, yeah, you're right, it does -- it became really performative. I mean, those -- the moments where he puts the glove on -- and I am interested to know what you think about how that impacts -- I mean, in theory, it's not supposed to impact a jury. Right? But I think we all know in reality that it creates these cultural moments that can't help but influence the process somehow. How do you think about that?

SMERCONISH: It's taken me years to appreciate the jury nullification that took place in the O. J. criminal trial. I'm not defending it. I think he was guilty as sin. I thought it then. I think it now. I'm not comfortable with it, but at least I better understand the sort of score settling that that case became because of the perception of the LAPD over a period of years.

And so, yeah, it represented so much more than whether O. J. had killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Rod Goldman. And my heart broke then. I haven't thought about Fred Goldman for years or Kim Goldman, but man, I was thinking about them last night. It brought back so many memories. Dominick Dunne, a young Jeffrey Toobin sitting in that courtroom. And every night, those of us, like, tuned in to Larry King for the recap of what had happened that day in case we couldn't watch it in real time.

HUNT: I mean, it's really just remarkable. I mean, look, I was -- I'm showing my age here. I was in 5th grade, when this all played out. And my teacher, my 5th grade teacher, I presume because she felt like she absolutely couldn't miss this cultural moment, turns it on for us. We're, like, 10 years old. I'm unclear on how any of it was appropriate. But that was the sort of impact of that moment, and it's why I remember where I was.

And to this day, there's a cover band that plays here in DC that's super popular with people of a certain age like myself who grew up with nineties music called White Ford Bronco. And, again, I think I was taken a little bit aback by the -- it's not nostalgia, is not quite the right word because that implies there's, like, something positive about it. It's not that.

But it was this cultural moment that -- and, Michael, like, let's be clear. And I'm curious how you think this ties in with what we're going to see with Trump come next week in another trial that is going to be widely covered. But, obviously, without the cameras. It's likely to have a different a cultural impact than this one. But there aren't that many moments that we all experience as the same culture at the same time.

Obviously, in this case, it was a divided America. You noted the racial divide, but we still were all there watching it together.

SMERCONISH: It's true. We don't have the common experience that we had in the mid-90s. The Internet has fueled our ability to go in different directions. Like, gone are the days when we all watch Seinfeld, Cosby Show, Friends. We don't even watch the same shows anymore.

But we were all -- I mean, Tom Foreman's package said that, like, a 150 million people by some accounts were tuned in to watch that verdict. I can't think of something about which we were also obsessed. And now to have this conversation on almost the eve of a former president going on criminal trial, it will again be a Rorschach test, not divided along racial lines the way that that O. J. was.

But, you know, my god, this Trump case, it's got a relationship underlying it like the O. J. case did. It's seen in dramatically different ways by different communities like O. J. It's got characters. I mean, Michael Cohen is a character. There were Kato Kaelin characters galore in the O. J. case. So I do see similarities.

The camera is the big difference. And again, notwithstanding what went wrong in O. J., I wish there would be cameras in the courtroom on Monday.

[06:55:00]

HUNT: I mean, man, it would be remarkable if that were the case. Michael Smerconish, it's always wonderful to chat with you. Thank you very much --

SMERCONISH: Thank you, Kasie. Have a great day.

HUNT: -- for being here. And have a great show tomorrow. Everyone tune in to Smerconish.

SMERCONISH: Thank you.

HUNT: Saturdays at 9:00 a.m. is right here on CNN. See you next week, I hope.

All right. My panel is back, because all of us have only been able to talk about O. J. and a lot of these breaks. Ashley Allison, can you take us into -- I mean, he touched on how this really did divide the country in racial ways. Kind of what the meaning of this was from that perspective?

ALLISON: Yeah. I mean, I posted something on social media last night about what was your conversation in your home in 1995 when the verdict came down? And what was it last night when we found out O. J. died? And I -- my premise is that it's still rooted on race. And the issue is the reason why that case was so charged, I too got to watch the verdict in 8th grade, this is (inaudible) class, and I saw it happening.

I cheer, I was happy. I don't think I had a concept of, like, who was guilty and who was not. I was a child. You know? I probably shouldn't have been watching the case about two people being killed at the end of the day.

But it was so racially charged because of what had happened, just before with Rodney King, but also just how black Americans feel about policing. It's not like O. J. Simpson was the leader of the civil rights movement of his era, you know? He wasn't a social leader. But he represented something for the black community in that moment, in that trial, particularly because there were two white people who had been killed.

And the history around how black people have been persecuted during slavery, there were there were just so many layers. And I guess I would just close with this is that, there was racial tension then, there is racial tension now.

It might not be the backdrop of the Trump campaign, but until this country is ready to actually have an honest conversation about the racial dynamics from our origin story till today, we will always have moments like O. J. Simpson that manifest. And our country will always be divided if we don't actually deal with the issue of race.

HUNT: Yeah. Fair enough.

LONGWELL: I mean, the thing that struck me is when I thought about O. J. Simpson, who I had not thought about in a very long time --

ALLISON: Admittedly, me either. LONGWELL: Is that it reminded me about Trump. Like, there's something there's some very Trumpy early elements to this this case. Like, the way that both -- I think as a culture, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here. But as a culture, you sort of -- everybody kind of knows Trump is guilty, the way we all kind of knew that O. J. was guilty, but you didn't -- there's a lot of people invested in it being about something else beyond the guilt. Right?

Because these figures are so towering and so big that, they become stand-ins for like, they become cultural totems as opposed to just people convicted or people being accused of crimes. And also, so people want them to be innocent or want them to -- want to talk about their persecution.

And the people in the center of it, Trump and O. J. both have the ability to make themselves into victims in the moment and play off those cultural narratives.

HUNT: Well, you know, I'm looking at this. So this is a cover of "The New York Post," right? And this takes, like, what I would argue is the opposite side of what Ashley Allison was talking about. And it says real killer is dead. Right? This is how they're remembering O. J. today. Football star actor, murder liar, O. J. Simpson, 76.

I mean, this is, like, a political statement, but it's a 90s political statement. Part of me wonders if this wouldn't be reversed in today's day and age too. That the MAGA crew wouldn't have been behind O. J. Simpson. Now maybe it's, like, 17 Bridges too far. I don't know.

But the sort of the way -- and I'm just thinking a lot about how kind of our information, travels here because, I mean, Isaac, the way that Donald Trump uses the information fields that are available to him to kind of flood it in a way that convinces people, and basically convinces people you should believe this set of facts because you believe this about how the world should be. Does that make sense?

ARNSDORF: Yeah. And there won't be cameras in the courtroom, but there'll be cameras all around the courtroom. And we'll watch Trump's plane go to New York, and we'll watch Trump's motorcade go to the courthouse. And, you know, there's something very white Ford Bronco about that.

HUNT: Yeah. Sarah, do you think that the Trump trial should be televised? Do you wish it was?

LONGWELL: I hadn't thought about it, until Smerconish was just saying it. I certainly would love to see it. And I do think -- look, I think it would be bad for Trump if it was televised. I think, him sitting there and the way that he fights with the judges -- like, the reason he's been getting these big verdicts against him in these civil trials, like the, E. Jean Carroll trial is, because he's such.