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Kim Kardashian Visits White House To Discuss Pardons; Secretary Of State Meets With China's Xi Amid Escalating Tensions; Colin Jost Headlines White House Correspondent's Dinner. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired April 26, 2024 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Welcome back. The Supreme Court yesterday of course is weighing the immunity case that could potentially redefine the presidency and shape the direction of our country. The nine justices three of whom were appointed by Donald Trump hearing arguments from Trump's lawyers claiming that presidents must have absolute immunity for their official acts.

One justice conservative Samuel Alito raised the possibility that without immunity, presidents could be prosecuted by their successors after a close election. And that could lead to a breakdown of democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMUEL ALITO, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: If a -- an incumbent who loses a very close hotly contested election, knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, panel is back and joining us now is Former Trump White House Attorney Jim Schultz. Jim, is that not arguing that well, we could prevent a coup by making you immune from trying to commit a coup? It doesn't -- I am so turned around.

JIM SCHULTZ, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE LAWYER: I don't think Sam Alito was making an argument there. I think Sam Alito was being somewhat professorial there. And trying to just beg the question, engage with the lawyer on this, on this and have him answer the question to kind of tee up other questions, right. You saw Elena Kagan come back and ask just the opposite. Does the -- if we have -- if we allow for blanket immunity, does that not the state was (inaudible)

HUNT: Yeah, let's watch that, let's watch that, we have that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELENA KAGAN, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: If he ordered the military to stage a coup and you're saying that's an official act -- that's immune?

JOHN SAUER, ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: I think it would depend on the circumstances, whether it was an official act.

KAGAN: Is it an official act?

SAUER: On the way you've described that hypothetical, it could well be. I just don't know, you'd have to again, it's a fact-specific, context-specific determination.

KAGAN: That answer sounds to me as though it's like, yeah, under my test, it's an official act. But that sure sounds bad, doesn't it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: It sure does sound bad.

SCHULTZ: Sure does. And I think you saw her go through that analysis. You heard, you heard some of the other justices asked specifically about what's an official act? What's not an official act? I think you're going to -- that was part of the -- and then you had all of these hypotheticals, if you will that, you know, where you had murder taking place. Is that something that's an official act?

And I think the justices really went through this kind of academic exercise. And I think they're going to come down and say, and I think, if not all of them come down and say no blanket immunity.

HUNT: Is it an academic exercise?

DAVID FRUM, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: They have to solve the problem of today, which was that we had an attempted coup d'etat by a serving president. And that to solve the problem of tomorrow which is, we do not want to have frivolous attacks on future presidents. And that's what we pay them to do.

[06:35:00]

But I think the right answer, I hope, and I hope you're right, I think the right answer is for them to say, look, there is no way that a coup d'etat is an official act, we are reserving the question of what is the immunity for official effects for later? We're not -- we don't have to get decide that question. Because it's so obvious that attempting to overthrow the Constitution of the United States is not an official act of the president.

HUNT: Yeah. I mean, Sarah, how did you see what Alito said there? Because it really read to me like he was, again, trying to say, well, if we allow absolute immunity, in the case of someone who tried to do a coup, that's what's required to dissuade future presidents from also trying to do a coup. It just seem backwards to me. SARAH LONGWELL, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yeah. I mean, look, I am not a

lawyer, just going to say real clearly. But I do a podcast with a lawyer to help understand the legal stuff. George Conway talks about this. And he actually did very much the same view that David is taking, which is that this was an exercise and kicking the tires on every hypothetical to figure.

And his point was, they didn't spend a whole lot of time on Trump's attorney basically, because they were like, this is an absurd position. We all agree, this is an absurd position. So why not just move on and then go to this other lawyer who is incredibly competent and capable. And let's run through a whole bunch of scenarios and figure out sort of how we might be thinking about this?

FRUM: Maybe to think is -- George and Jim and me, because we're all trained lawyers is the thing my wife often says to me, you're thinking like a lawyer again, I hate it when you do that. Stop it.

HUNT: Yeah. Jim?

SCHULTZ: Right. I think it said a lot that Trump's attorney sat down when he had the ability to do rebuttal, right?

HUNT: Yeah.

SCHULTZ: And I think he had had enough. He knows the justices had enough. They kind of dismissed him out of hand, and then really had, you know, the government, if you will make its argument. He did a wonderful job, though. He's one of the best lawyers in the country. By the way, he does it with no notes. There's not a note on the table when he's making his arguments.

HUNT: That's wild.

SCHULTZ: It's unbelievable.

HUNT: Yeah, Ashley?

ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Um, well look, when Kagan said it sounds kind of bad, because it is really bad. Where we're at right now? I also think what Justice Jackson and Ketanji Brown Jackson said about, I think it's, most people understand that if you commit a criminal crime that (inaudible) or Nixon, excuse me, that the reason why Nixon needed to be pardoned, is because most likely he was going to have criminal prosecution and go to jail.

And so she kind of pointed out like, we've seen this play out in a different way. I actually did not mind as I am a lawyer by training, but not by practice and the intellectual exercise, because I think this case has so -- has such implications for where we go as a country. I want every rock picked up looked under, turned over and making sure that they ask every question.

So at the end of the day, I hope they roll the way that you're suggesting that it's not blanket immunity that there can't be any well, they just kind of called it quits too early without really kicking the tires as George said.

HUNT: I had no idea I was surrounded by so many lawyers. We actually can show everyone exactly what you were talking about Ashley, let's watch that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So Jim, David has been making the argument this morning that well, it depends on making sure you don't have someone who's willing to commit a crime in the Oval Office in the first place, but that we can't rely on that.

SCHULTZ: That's right. So I do think the one thing that struck me is that they kind of went through this exercise of a subjective test, what's private, what's official, right. And I think that that, you know, that that analysis, if you will, all of those questions, especially with Amy Coney Barrett, in her questioning, they're heading down the road. It seems to send this back for some type of evidentiary hearing with a standard that's somewhat subjective rather than objective.

I think that's going to cause a lot of issues, not just because it gets the trial done. Remember (inaudible) oh, they're going to send it back. It's going to kick the trial down the road. That's horrible, because the country needs to see this trial.

Fine. But I do think it makes this, this a subjective analysis if you will, allows for this kind of long trial within the trial to make a determination as to what's official act, what's non-official act, and therefore the private acts are criminal. When they use the analogy of kind of the core function of the presidency is making appointments, right, so you can't take a bribe in order to make an appointment, right.

HUNT: Right.

SCHULTZ: So you can't appoint an attorney general for an illegal means of sending a letter that the prior Attorney General wouldn't send because it was unlawful, meaning that --

FRUM: When you sit for four years, the first question the President of the United States asked every foreign visitor was, did you stay in my hotel last night i.e. did you pay me a bribe? So it's not -- again, if these are not hypotheticals, the idea that the president was -- the Oval Office was the center of a criminal scheme for four years, it was the center of a crime.

It was a system of organized bribery if you wanted to see the president from a born (ph) country, you had to stay in this hotel. And if you didn't, you would hear about it and he would flip side.

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If you're Qatar and you didn't pay it, and you didn't have your National Day at the Trump hotel, you would lose out to the United Arab Emirates who did have their National Day at his hotel.

HUNT: Jim?

SCHULTZ: So right, you can't, you can't have situations where you have brought bribery. But you also can have situations where you're manipulating and making, you know, replacing the Attorney General of the United States, because he won't send a letter that says there was this widespread fraud.

HUNT: Right.

SCHULTZ: So you, you want a fraudulent letter to go out, you replace the Attorney General. The official act is replacing the attorney general, that's fine. You can do that whenever you want. But you can't do it for an lawful means. And that kind of -- that's the analogy with the bribery here. So I think they have to come up with some objective standard.

So you don't have this trial within the trial. I think if they do that, it'll go back to the -- it will go back to the -- to either the circuit court or the trial court. And I think we could end up, we could end up getting a trial probably not a verdict, but a trial this year.

HUNT: Which would be a whole another, if that's actually how that timeline is you are, you're getting a trial before the election, but no verdict, really remarkable scene. Jim, thank you very much for being here and I had a really long day yesterday. So we really appreciate you being with us this morning.

Coming up, USC is canceling its Commencement Ceremony amid the wave of protests at colleges across the country. CNN's Michael Smerconish has a few things to say about that. He'll join us as it does every Friday, plus a record breaking night for quarterbacks in the NFL Draft.

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HUNT: All right. 45 minutes past the hour. Here's your Morning Roundup. Kim Kardashian making a visit to the White House, the reality TV star meeting with Vice President Harris to discuss criminal justice reform and presidential pardons. Her visit comes as the Biden Administration marks Second Chance month. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this morning.

Blinken says he stressed U.S. concerns about China providing military material and technology to Russia threatening Ukrainian and European security.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: Ensuring transatlantic security is a core U.S. interest. In our discussions today, I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: And A list of celebrities will be on hand for tomorrow night's White House Correspondents Dinner here in Washington DC. SNL's Colin Jost is hosting and his better half Scarlett Johansson also expected to be on hand. Our John Berman and Sara Sidner head up CNN's special coverage which starts tomorrow night at 7 pm. Eastern.

And in sports, for the first time in NFL history, quarterbacks comprised half of the top 10 draft's picks, the bears, commanders, patriots, falcons and Vikings all using their first pick to snag a QV in round one of the draft, I guess I'm going to have to watch the Vikings every once in a while to see J.J. McCarthy.

All right now this, the University of Southern California canceling its main stage graduation after protests on campus. The University saying it would take too much time to process the expected number of guests with new safety measures. Joining me now as he started to do every Friday is Michael Smerconish, CNN Political Commentator and of course, the host of CNN's Smerconish.

Michael, always, really happy to have you, what do you make of this decision that USC has made, because this is an awful lot of kids who are not going to be able to have what is really a life moment?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, HOST, CNN'S SMERCONISH: I think its cowardice. And my heart breaks for those students. Because if you do the simple math, the class of 2024 college graduates, they were high school graduates in 2020 for the most part, which means Kasie, they did not have a high school graduation because of COVID. So they were robbed of a COVID graduation because of an act of God.

And now they're robbed of a college graduation because of the situation on campus. I thought it was a mistake when they canceled the speech by the valedictorian. They cited safety concerns then, from a distance, it looks like more of a speech concern. But I just think it's terrible. And I have to also note this, I can't help but wonder if there's some astroturfing taking place here.

I watched an interview on CNN two days ago. There was a senior citizen, who was interviewed on campus having shown up to rally in support of the students. How many of those are actually students on the USC campus? And how many are outside influencers trying to just take advantage of the situation? I'm not denying that many are students, but I question whether they all are.

HUNT: So Michael, I mean, wouldn't there be potentially other options for the administration here? And broadly, I mean, how do you see how college administrations are dealing with this thing? I absolutely take your point about astroturfing. But here you have the administration of USC basically deciding well, we can't deal with this and the Columbia University folks really struggling to deal with it.

SMERCONISH: Yeah, I acknowledge it's not easy, but there needs to be some type of a balancing act where you're accommodating speakers, so long as they're not in violation of the campus protocols and hate speech standards. But you've also got to make sure that, you know, the mainstream of the students can continue to go about their activities.

What a gorgeous day it is in the Northeast today. What a shame that Columbia students, the seniors in particular, this ought to be their final 30 days of both class and finals, enjoying the camaraderie of one another. And to have that shut down and to be told it's now going to be a hybrid situation, and many are going to go and finish remotely. I think it's horrible and it sends the wrong message, which is to say this campus can be taken over by a handful of agitators.

HUNT: You know, Michael, there's a an op-ed in today's "Wall Street Journal" from Andrew Cuomo, Former New York Governor criticizing the administration of Columbia. And kind of the way that he put it, he wrote quote, seriously the answer is for Jews to flee campus. And this kind of alludes to how you're talking about people were told we're going to learn hybrid like don't, don't be here.

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He says, imagine in the wake of 9/11 if New Yorkers had been told to vacate the city because of pro-al Qaeda protesters were disrupting daily activities, threatening violence and posing a danger. That is Columbia's approach. See you next fall, Jews. That's pretty tough. But I mean, it's that was going on here?

SMERCONISH: Yes, I think that's it's a sad but accurate sound bite. Kasie, I know you remember a couple of months ago, the hearing where three college presidents testified in front of a congressional committee and Elise Stefanik beat up on all three of them. They were tone deaf, they were legally correct in trying to explain the struggle that they face in regulating speech and protecting rights and interests.

But they were tone deaf and the way they went about it. I think you're being tone deaf today, both at Columbia and at USC. The message, the message here is, we're going to tolerate those who speak on campus in a controversial way, so long as it's not hateful. But our highest priority is making sure that the business of this university continues on and that includes class and finals and commencement.

HUNT: Michael, let's talk about the actual content of these protests for a second, because we do know there are students who are peaceful, who care about the children of Gaza, and who are there trying to speak for them. But there also is some incredibly ugly and violent rhetoric at some of these protests. Now, Former President Donald Trump is trying to capitalize on this.

And I think we can expect to see more of this going forward, which is why I want to ask you about it. Watch what President Trump said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're having protests all over. He was talking about Charlottesville. Charlottesville was a little peanut, and was nothing compared and the hate wasn't the kind of hate that you have here. This is tremendous hate. And we have a man that can't talk about it, because he doesn't understand, that he doesn't understand what's going on with our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So I think we need to be clear someone died in the Charlottesville incident, so little peanut with a deaf. That's what the president was saying there. But you also have this from Senator John Fetterman, who is a Democrat. And he wrote this on Twitter earlier this week, quote, I fully agree with the White House, the protests are anti-Semitic, unconscionable and dangerous.

Add some tiki torches in Charlottesville, are these Jewish students. What do you see here?

SMERCONISH: I see similarity between the two notwithstanding that somebody died and we pray that there's no loss of life in connection with any of the campus unrest. I have to put something else though, into the mix, which is that Harvard just did its annual study of, of young Americans 18 to 29-year-olds, and on a range of 16 different issues.

What are the most pressing problems faced by the United States? The Israeli Palestinian conflict came in at 15 of 16. Again, it's a serious issue. It's a very important issue. But I'm wondering why all of a sudden, this has lit such a fuse, and has caused such unrest from coast to coast, and I'm a little suspect of whether it's all organic.

HUNT: Very interesting. All right, Michael Smerconish, thank you so much for being with us.

SMERCONISH: Thank you, Kasie.

HUNT: I always appreciate having you. And of course, you can catch Smerconish tomorrow every Saturday at 9 am. Eastern don't miss it. Thanks, my friend. All right, in just a few hours, Former President Trump will be back in the Manhattan courtroom for his hush money criminal trial, given the multiple delays in each of his other trials.

It's actually pretty likely this case represents the only chance voters are going to have to know whether or not Donald Trump will be convicted of any crime before Election Day. Even among Republicans the possibility of their party's nominee being convicted -- our convicted felon is concerning according to polling and exit polling. That leads us to this new ad from the group Republican voters against Trump, watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was thinking about applying for a job here. I'm currently facing 88 felonies. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was wondering if that was going to be a problem.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Working with diamonds and jewelry, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're going to do a background check.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So that's the only.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're probably not?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So do you guys hire people that have been found liable for sexual assault or?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We run a full background. It won't go through.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If Trump is too big of a liability to get a job at your local mall, he is too big of a liability to be President of the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So Sarah Longwell, that's all you.

LONGWELL: Yeah, look, this was -- I've got a very talented video editor who went to the mall, and began asking people what should be very obvious questions. My favorite thing about the video is the looks on their faces, which are no, no, we wouldn't hire you. No, you can't work around jewelry. If you have any felony's, no, we won't hire you if you've been convicted in civil court of sexual assault.

And I think it underscores and the one thing we see in the focus groups a lot is just how numb the voters have become to Donald Trump's antics (ph) is not the right word because it's so much bigger than that. But there's so much that he's done. You know when he does that flood the zone with garbage, right.

[06:55:00]

And so as a result people like they can't pick out or pick these things probably wanted to underscore just how insane it is, that this guy with 88 felonies not to mention, some of which are trying to stage a coup could be reelected as President of the United States.

FRUM: It's always worth remembering. Donald Trump lost the popular vote two times. And there was not a single day of his presidency when he had even 50 percent approval in any reputable poll, Rasmussen doesn't count. And this has always been that there has been this effort around Trump to conjure up this idea of some kind of populist hero, but he's the world's most consistently unpopular populist ever. Americans have rejected him again and again. And I'm optimistic and even confident that they will do it again in 2024.

HUNT: That's the voters you were talking about, Ashley?

ALLISON: Yeah, I mean, I think this is why I've been stressing that I don't think that this election should be about Joe Biden or Donald Trump, it should just be about the type of country that you want to live in. And then once you identify those top 10 things, then you pick the person that most aligns with those values.

Because to Sarah's point, people are numb, but when you actually hear the things without a name attached to it, you come out of your corner and you make a logical choice. And that logical choice is not to vote for Donald Trump.

HUNT: So, Sarah, how much do you think this hush money trial is going to matter? Because we do have some new CNN polling that shows that people are concerned that this is -- this is a hush money trial. 28 percent of people say that a conviction here should disqualify him from the presidency. When you look at January 6, that number is up at 47 percent.

We also have some new numbers, looking at whether or not people think he's getting a fair trial here. And it really does seem to underscore that people are now just as divided over our court system. See, only 7 percent are very confident that there can be a fair verdict in Trump's hush money trial.

Now when you kind of break down those additional, you know, third to third a quarter, that's going to reflect and we can kind of see in those numbers that there is some reflection of partisan leanings in terms of what you believe about this.

LONGWELL: Yeah, I was looking at the numbers earlier. And it's basically just a Rorschach test for partisanship, right. It's like, there's like the breakdown of people who thought he was being treated too harshly, was exactly the same as people who thought he was being treated not harshly enough, right. And so, look, I think that the American people, right, we have to update our analysis.

So I've been hearing a lot of people say like, this always just helps Trump, right? This always helps Trump. And in the primary that was true, because it crowded out the other candidates being able to make their points and it rallied people to Donald Trump. We are now in a general election environment in which it is slightly different.

And you have to think about marginal voters. Now look, this case was always the least serious of all the cases. And so for this to be the only one that goes forward, that's not great. That doesn't mean that it has zero impact though. And I'll just make one last point, which is one of the things that's interesting to me that I'm hearing in the focus groups, especially from women, is that the Stormy Daniels case does remind people that Trump is really gross to women.

OK, that now was coupled with a major policy issue where women have to have trust in their leader because of the abortion issue. And I think that cross cutting can actually hurt him in the general election. FRUM: I don't think we should pull for hypothetical questions, because

people don't in fact, think about or know the answer to the question. How will I feel when the news media describes Donald Trump everyday as convicted felon Donald Trump? Would that -- is a fact not an assertion he's a convict when -- when and if he is a convicted felon?

How will I feel, you don't know the answer to that question because you don't know your future yourself.

HUNT: Allison, how do Democrats feel about this dynamic?

ALLISON: Well, I mean, I think you see the campaign going to use this as a split screen contrast, someone who is trying Joe Biden who is trying to work for the American public while the other person has spent his days in court not campaigning, because he is caught up in all of these indictments and in these court cases --

HUNT: Caught up in all this -- the morass, right.

(CROSSTALK)

ALLISON: And so, I mean.

HUNT: Yeah.

ALLISON: But I do think to-date, the messaging hasn't quite landed yet. So I do think what Sarah is saying about doing some coupling with the hush money case and abortion doing that campaign can do that. But then also outside groups like that ad was great. And I think you'll see more things like that from outside group as well.

HUNT: All right. This has been a great conversation. Thanks to all of you. And because it's Friday, we did want to leave you with this. It's a very special story. We want to wish a very happy 100, 100th birthday to Art Schallock, who is now the oldest living former major league baseball player. The Southpaw made his MLB debut way back in 1951, playing five seasons for the Yankees and my beloved Baltimore Orioles.

Recently Charlotte write to the "The Associated Press" quote, here's a game I loved, I really enjoyed it. I love the game of baseball and they pay you for it. What more can you ask for, seriously, what more can you ask for? I wish I was playing today and getting the salaries they get also fair, but that's --