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CNN Tonight
New Video Shows Police Responding To Gunman At Louisville Bank; Tennessee GOP Governor Calls On State Lawmakers To Toughen Gun Restrictions; Whole Foods Closes San Francisco Flagship For Staff Safety; Two Americans Speak Out On Being Kidnapped By Mexican Cartel; Is Honking Freedom Of Speech; Rep. Jim Jordan Sued by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired April 11, 2023 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:02]
SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: These are multibillion dollar corporations. When they make a strategic marketing move like this, there's tons of data behind it that shows it's likely to support their business, to Harry's point.
But the other thing is calculate the risk. We've seen so many brands take risks with their marketing campaigns. And sometimes they step in it. Think about Pepsi and Kendall Jenner. But then sometimes it works out to be really effective. I think the Eminem's controversy earlier this year, the joke was on Tucker Carlson and a bunch of other conservatives when they came out and sort of spelling that commercial on its head.
And so I think if you're a brand like Bud Light, you look at this campaign and you say, this is going to target positively the customers that we want to target. If we face backlash we will survive it. And who are we facing backlash from? Honestly, it's people who I assume, a year or two down the road, if they're stopping at a gas station and they're thirsty for beer, they're going to still buy the beer.
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Okay. But to be fair here, like there are some real serious issues here. You had a Florida legislator this week calling transgender people mutants and demons. And you have Kid Rock shooting beer cans because he's upset that they have someone who's transgender as a part of their, you know, marketing campaign.
What's happening is transgender people already feel targeted. They already face an outsized amount of violence. And here we are again ginning something up for what for what? For what? What is the endgame here? People exist. They should be able to exist in their bodies the way they are. And instead, you're hearing these horrible things about transgender people, and they are going to be targets of violence the more this sort of thing happens. That is the fear here.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, we'll see. I mean, the question is just, of course, about what it means, you know, for everyone going forward in the community overall. Everyone thank you so much. Sara Fischer, Abby Phillip, Harry Enten, Sara Sidner. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Alisyn Camerota is up next.
And, Alisyn, I hear that you have something new that is happening tonight at 11:00. What can you tell us?
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Okay. So, it's a panel of four of our fabulous reporters. They're going to share their scoops with us tonight, and they're going to give us tomorrow's news tonight, because they have insight into what's happening tomorrow. So, everybody tune in at 11:00 tonight, East Coast time.
COLLINS: All right, can't wait to watch. Thanks, Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Okay, Kaitlan, great to see you.
Good evening, everyone. I'm Alisyn Camerota. Welcome to CNN Tonight.
One day after the mass shooting at the bank in Louisville, Kentucky, police releasing body cam video and images of the shooter, a 25-year- old bank employee. He killed five people with an AR-15 style rifle that he bought legally.
And tonight, we show you video of the confrontation with police. One rookie officer still fighting for his life.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's shooting straight through these windows right towards the officer. When Bill depletes (ph) somehow to be able get there and pull them down from the stairs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: As always here, we're looking for solutions to this uniquely American nightmare. The governor of Tennessee says he has a plan for preventing more deranged people from getting guns, so we'll look at that.
Plus, what's happening in San Francisco? This week, a huge flagship, Whole Foods, announced that it would have to shut down to ensure the safety of their employees. Our panel dives into that crime wave.
And is honking your horn free speech? We'll tell you about the California woman who ended up in court for honking her horn and how that turned out.
But let's bring in our panelists. We have with us tonight Josh Barro, who's the host of the Very Serious Podcast, we have Linette Lopez, Columnist for the Insider, Coleman Hughes is the host of Conversations with Coleman Podcast, and Mosheh Oinounou is the founder of Mo News. Also joining us is retired NYPD Sergeant and Detective Felipe Rodriguez. Everyone, great to have you here tonight. Thanks so much for being here. Sergeant Rodriguez, I want to start with you, because we see the body cam video. It's been at least tonight of what happened in the bank. And, once again, we see the incredible bravery of the police who showed up within minutes and who ran towards the gunfire, who ran towards the active shooter. So, let me just play this for you. And you can tell me what you see happening here in this video.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think I got him down. I think he's down. You're (INAUDIBLE) now. Yes, get down to the stairs. I think he's down. Yes, suspect down. Get the officer.
[22:05:00]
I know, he's down, get the officer.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAMEROTA: Sergeant, it's so powerful to see what we're asking our police officers to do in cities across the country every single week, and even with that bravery, and even though they arrived three minutes later, there were still five people killed.
FELIPE RODRIGUEZ, PROFESSOR, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Well, if we see and we analyze the use of force, we really have to give credit to these offices. The way they went in there from the moment that they arrive, and they will be sieged by gunfire. You know, you see the rookie officer being guided in by his field training officer and basically telling him where to set up. And the moment they even arrived with the car they hit -- you know, gunfire is heading their way. So, it actually shows that they're in an ambush situation.
And one of the things that we learned tactically is when we're being ambushed, we have two separate time and space. So, we see that tactical retreat that they do. They set up immediately. They pull out their heavy weapons, the AR-15s, and you have a brand new rookie police officer with ten days and here he is engaging in this violent, you know, bank robbery that we have multiple homicides. And at the end of the day, you see the way the officer had to pull out and it's almost very rare, but they quickly reassessed themselves. They went in there and try to handle the situation.
And here they are, they are gunned, the rookie police officer with a standard nine millimeter, and you have a gunman with an AR-15 that has high velocity rounds and he is able to shoot at a greater distance. I just feel bad for the training, you know, officer from the other department there because from that department, at the end of the day, he lost one of his trainees. And for him, that's got to be something that, you know, is going to be very difficult for him to deal with.
CAMEROTA: Yes. I mean, Sergeant, we feel bad for everyone involved. But as you say, they're outgunned. How do police -- what do police want to have happened about all of the guns and the AR-15-style rifles that are on the streets? RODRIGUEZ: What I tell people is we need to reach some sort of common sense, you know? And I understand, you know, as a police officer, I know I have to uphold the Constitution and the values, and I do, but we have to have a common sense approach on the federal level. The way we have it now, we have so many hodgepodge, different laws. You know, you go to New York and you have one firearm with ten rounds and now you're violating the law. You know, you go to another state. You're good with ten rounds. You travel over to the state of New Jersey, you have hollow points, now you become a criminal.
So, we really need on a national level to recognize that we need common sense gun laws, and it needs to be put in place and rapidly because the shootings are becoming -- it's an epidemic.
CAMEROTA: Sergeant, stand by, if you would. I want to bring in my panel. Josh, your thoughts tonight?
JOSH BARRO, HOST, VERY SERIOUS PODCAST: I mean, obviously it's tragic, as these things are, even though they happen over and over again. I mean, you know, the U.S. has really outsized level of gun death compared to other advanced countries in the world. The vast majority of those gun deaths occur with handguns and a majority of them are suicides. And so the problem that we have is tremendous compared to these other countries, it also generally does not look in the way it looks that looks on television.
And so you can have -- we can have measures, like red flag laws that will affect very high-profile things that we see, like maybe the shooting that we saw in Tennessee maybe would have been affected by red flag law, maybe not. You can prohibit certain kinds of firearms and that will produce benefits of the margin. But, by and large, if you have a country where you were generally able to own a handgun, if you wish to handgun, you're an adult, and you have a tremendous number of guns out there in circulation, you're going to have a higher rate of gun deaths, both homicides and suicides than you have another country.
So, the sort of the toolkit that we end up talking about in response to these shootings is basically tinkering around the edges of a very large problem that could only be addressed into a much greater extent if we had a complete change in the political culture in this country and, frankly, a change in the Constitution. I don't think either of those are likely.
CAMEROTA: Well, let's talk about what the governor of Tennessee is proposing, because he wants to see something done. And so I find it hard to believe that red flag laws wouldn't have stopped this because this person was at least in the bank sending an email saying he was feeling suicidal. I mean, that's what the dispatcher knew about. And so here is what the governor of Tennessee where the school shooting was is suggesting now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. BILL LEE (R-TN): First, I'm asking the General Assembly to bring forth a new order of protection law. Our current law is proven ineffective in many circumstances, especially with regard to domestic violence. But this new, stronger order protection law will provide the broader population cover safety from those who are in danger to themselves or to the population.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:10:09]
CAMEROTA: So, Linette, what he's talking about is that, currently, for domestic violence, people who have been, I guess, arrested for domestic violence there in that state, they have to relinquish their guns basically voluntarily to a third party, not even to police . They have to relinquish them to a third party. But he's suggesting what I think is called red flag laws in other states.
LINETTE LOPEZ, COLUMNIST, INSIDER: Yes. He's not using the word gun in anything that he says. So, I think now we're starting to see the development of kind of a Republican way of talking about tinkering around the edges, a kind of way of talking about gun control that doesn't use the word gun. And so maybe if we have this kind of language and we talk to each other in that way, we will make some headway. But I think for those on the left who really want to see gun control safety protection, that kind of language is not going to be enough. But it is better than Republicans just kind of having nothing to say about this, which is where we've been.
MOSHEH OINOUNOU, FOUNDER, MO NEWS: It's actually one of those phrases is already being phased out by some on the left, gun control. Gun reform is the word they're using, right? And already to some Republicans, red flag laws is gun confiscation. Among those Republicans is the speaker of the Tennessee legislature, Cameron Sexton. So, notably was with the governor last week when he was announcing school security measures, not with him today.
CAMEROTA: So, do we think that's why he -- meaning he doesn't support him today, or he's not standing with him?
OINOUNOU: right. So far, he has been a critic of red flag laws, which they're not calling red flag laws. But, effectively, they're red flag loss. So, it's notable, you have a Republican here with a super majority Republican legislature faces an uphill climb talking to Tennessee residents today. They're saying, well, this is something. They're hopeful. They're skeptical. But, ultimately, you know, it is notable that you had a Republican here, and in both cases by Kentucky, Tennessee, both governors personally impacted. The governor of Tennessee and his wife were supposed to have dinner with one of the teachers killed at the school two weeks ago, and we know that the Kentucky governor lost two friends in the shooting.
LOPEZ: Yes. I mean, you know, if you don't have red flag laws, the gun confiscation thing is a little after the fact. So, I think most Americans would see that as kind of just chilling, you know? It's not really going to help in some of these cases.
COLEMAN HUGHES, HOST, CONVERSATIONS WITH COLEMAN PODCAST: Ultimately, whatever we want to call them, whether we call them red flag laws or not, there's no path to reducing these mass shootings without making it more difficult for some subset of people to get guns, right? I don't think -- we saw -- we've seen now twice in a row very clean, by the book police responses that have not stopped people from getting killed. Maybe they've reduced the number, but they haven't stopped it.
The notion that having security guards located on every possible side of a mass shooting, first of all, it's probably unfeasible. Second of all, even if it could be done, I don't think we could expect security guards to put their lives on the line reliably.
CAMEROTA: We've already seen it. There were security guards at the Buffalo supermarket. I mean, there have been security guards at mass shootings, and it doesn't stop them.
HUGHES: Right. So, there's just no way around the fact that it has to become harder for certain people to get guns. We call that may be an issue of branding, and it is important, but that's the core.
BARRO: The limitation of the red flag law approach is that you can't perfectly predict in advance who's going to commit crimes. So, either you know you can in certain other countries. If you're in Japan, then you have no presumptive right to own a gun. And so if there is a suspicion that you are someone who should not own a gun, the government can take it away from you. In the United States, that's not constitutional. It's also not consistent with political public opinion. And so then you have the burden on the government in some way or another to show that somebody is dangerous.
You're not always going to maybe be able to make that showing about someone who, in fact, is dangerous.
CAMEROTA: True. But sometimes you can.
BARRO: Sometimes you can and it will help at the margin (ph).
CAMEROTA: Because they shoot off warning signs, as wee. In most of these cases, people have said something to their parents that's really worrisome, or to their friends, or they posted something online or to their coworkers. They often shoot off warning signs first.
BARRO: Right. But there are a lot of things about a lot of people that you can call warning signs. I mean, like one in three Americans has a mental health diagnosis. When you when you come up with criteria like that, you end up either being overbroad, or because you can't legally be overbroad, then it becomes quite easy for some people who really shouldn't own a gun, they'll be able to meet whatever the standard is under the law, and they still will be able to own a gun. That's the difficulty of any regime where you're basically trying to predict in advance who's going to commit a crime.
HUGHES: Even if it's too narrow, I would argue, you know, reducing -- if we were able to reduce these high-profile mass shootings by 10, 20 percent, I think that would be that would be something.
BARRO: No, I agree. I'm in favor of red flag laws. I'm not opposed to them. I'm just trying to set expectations about exactly the extent to which this will change the climate of gun violence in the United States.
OINOUNOU: I mean, you have a good point. Massachusetts, we're looking at the numbers in 2021, Massachusetts only used it eight times. In New Mexico, only used 12 times. In Chicago, a handful of times in a place like Chicago. So, ultimately, maybe deaths were prevented in those cases, but we're really only talking about, you know, on two hands.
[22:15:04]
CAMEROTA: All right. Thank you all very much for this conversation. Sergeant, thank you very much.
Now to this, open air drug markets, a tech executive stabbed to death, now a huge Whole Foods is shutting down because of crime. What's going on in San Francisco? That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: The Whole Foods market in one San Francisco neighborhood closing its doors over worries about worker safety, that city struggling to deal with a wave of open drug use and crime. The company is shutting down its flagship location in the mid market part of the city after just one year.
In a statement, the store says, quote, to ensure the safety of our team members, we have made the difficult decision to close the Trinity store for the time being. All team members will be transferred to one of our nearby locations.
My panel is back with me. So, Mosh, motion what's happening in San Francisco?
OINOUOU: It's a combination of several issues. You have an opioid crisis, you have a mental health crisis, you have crime, you have housing affordability and you have a lack of office occupancy, so sort of abandoned areas during the day. Add that all up as mushrooming issues, now stack that on top of San Francisco Police Department that is way below initial staffing levels, was told basically during George Floyd, you're doing a bad job. So, a lot of them, basically, their times responding to crime have gone down, a whole bunch of factors there.
[22:20:02]
They have recruitment issues, and lot of them are just not really policing the same way they were. So, add that all up and you have a major problem on your hands. It's a comprehensive problem, and it's not just one issue.
CAMEROTA: Coleman, according to the San Francisco standard, this Whole Foods store previously had to reduce its operating hours last year because of theft, and it had to change its bathrooms after employees found syringes and pipes in there. I also read that they wouldn't allow -- they couldn't let customers use those hand baskets because they have started a year ago with 250 of them, and they've all been stolen. So, you had to shop without a hand basket. HUGHES: Incredible. Look, this is happening in a lot of places. To some extent, it's happening in New York, and I'm going to tell you something. You may not believe me, but it's true. My local pharmacy, every single toothpaste is behind glass.
CAMEROTA: Every single tube of toothpaste?
HUGHES: Every single tube of toothpaste is behind glass. So, I cannot go to my local pharmacy and buy toothpaste without calling the clerk over to unlock it.
CAMEROTA: Why is that so top secret? Why is that toothpaste --
HUGHES: That's what I asked them. I asked, why is all the toothpaste -- and not just the toothpaste, but that's the most annoying to me, because that's something I have to buy all the time. I brush my teeth a lot. So, I asked them, and he just said two words, people steal. That's it.
BARRO: People steal it and they resell it on Amazon marketplace. You can take the stuff used --
CAMEROTA: Toothpaste?
BARRO: Yes, or any other consumer products. I mean, like if you order toothpaste or deodorant from Amazon, sometimes coming from Amazon.com, but sometimes it's coming from a marketplace seller who is selling as a third party on that platform, and there is a significant problem with things that are stolen from retail stores. They get diverted and then resold online. So, that's -- it's not that people are stealing toothpaste because they need to brush their teeth. They're stealing toothpaste and detergent and things like this, so that so that they can resell them.
This particular area in San Francisco, I mean, this is -- it's right by the Tenderloin. This area has always been a problem, and it was sort of up and coming prior to COVID. And then the combination of factors that Mosh describes their particularly -- I mean, this is not very far from the Twitter headquarters. It is an area where there had been a lot of offices going in, a lot of new residences going in, and it is really been hit hard by COVID with people just not being on the ground in the city and the way the way they were. So, I'm sure in addition to the conditions in the store being horrible, the customer base that was supposed to be there was just not around the store in the way that it was supposed to be.
And so it's not surprising to me that this is a particular location where Whole Foods would not thrive and they choose to close. I actually have a friend who was on a business trip to San Francisco just a few weeks ago. He was staying about a ten-minute walk from this whole foods store. He walked to it. He said the walk was so horrifying that he took an Uber back from Whole Foods because the neighborhood was in such bad condition. So, there's lots of these problems but this is this is probably one of the worst neighborhoods in the country in terms of this kind of deterioration of the places where you might have thought to locate a Whole Foods just a few years ago. LOPEZ: I have a question, though. Where is civil society in San Francisco? Where are the community leaders? Where are the wealthy billionaires, like in New York City, when we had our crisis in the 1970s and '80s, like we had a bunch of rich people who got together and tried to figure out how to fix the city, like where is that? Where are the tech barons? Why is Elon Musk on Twitter instead of helping San Francisco? You know what I mean? Like where is that kind of civic pride.
And I guess I think to kind of the ethos of Silicon Valley and like they let Silicon Valley Bank, their community bank, collapse, so I guess the city doesn't really matter much either.
CAMEROTA: Well, what's the answer to that? Does anybody know the answer to that? Where is everybody helping San Francisco? Why is it in shambles?
HUGHES: Well, look, isn't the more fundamental question -- I mean, look, that's a question. But isn't the more fundamental question when we're talking about crime, where are the cops, right? If the cops are diminished by a large percent, as we saw in Minneapolis, right, you saw hundreds of cops retiring, crime goes up. And as you said, the time in responding to 911 calls goes up, criminals notice that. That has an effect on people's incentives, right? That is the fundamental question.
I don't think -- I understand there's lots of other factors but we can't ignore this central factor of the cops are the first responders to crime. And when you defang them, when you defund them, when you diminish them, this is what happens.
OINOUNOU: One person there described policing in San Francisco similar to now being a firefighter, whereas there's policing that isn't necessarily always reactive and then they become reactive. We're not going to do anything because we're getting trouble and stuff. So, we're going to just wait for stuff to happen and then maybe we'll get to it because you guys don't like us anyway.
BARRO: But these are public employees. They work for us. It's their job to act proactively. And I understand there are police officers who felt disrespected. They're legally entitled to retire. You need to find somebody who can work in these departments who is willing to do that job. And I think, partly, that's a problem for liberals.
Matt Yglesias had a really interesting piece about this, this week, that you know you had Teach for America and you had this whole effort to get people to enter the public education system because of this idea that it was not working properly and it needed new personnel. You could have something like that for policing. If the people who were the incumbent police at the San Francisco Police Department don't feel like waking up in the morning and doing their jobs, you need to find and hire somebody else to do that.
That might be expensive. I mean, if you want to change the conditions of policing to make it more restrictive, easier to fire or punish police who do their jobs badly, that might make it less appealing job. [22:25:06]
You might need to pay more in order to attract people to that job, but somebody needs to do that. And if the incumbents in the department aren't willing to do that, you need to hire somebody else who will.
CAMEROTA: And I do think that the mayor has pivoted from 2020 when there was talk about let's redirect funds to mental health services, et cetera, to now, asking the board of supervisors for millions and millions of dollars to beef up the ranks, because I think they're down something like 500 officers in San Francisco.
So, they do need more cops and they do recognize that they have a problem and they are looking for money to beef it up. I don't know if they would pay them anymore. But I think that they -- in other words, I don't think that this is -- right now, they're not operating under the defund the police, have them back off, but they're trying to catch up.
OINOUNOU: Right. But it's done damage, right? That messaging did damage. And so it's going to take a while. And I don't think it's just an issue of quantity but quality of policing and quality of training. And then, ultimately, to Cameron's point about toothpaste being locked up, well, in many cases, certain -- sorry, Coleman, apologies. Ultimately, that's been decriminalized. You know, you can steal to a certain number now without facing any sort of real penalty. Well, that has ramifications, right?
CAMEROTA: Yes. I mean, that one, that is the quality of life issues that everyone is talking about, and it is amazing that San Francisco, this gem of a city --
LOPEZ: Full of young people, lots of talent, and it's just allowed to rot. I don't understand it. Where are you?
CAMEROTA: Yes, excellent questions. Thank you all very much.
Okay. Ahead, a terrifying firsthand account of that deadly kidnapping of four Americans in Mexico last month, Anderson Cooper just spoke with the two survivors in a CNN exclusive that we will play you, next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- diablo man, red plastic mask.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: They put masks on?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, was putting the guns to our head telling us not to look up, things like that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:30:00] CAMEROTA: Tonight, a CNN exclusive. Anderson Cooper, speaking with the two Americans who survived that harrowing kidnapping by a Mexican cartel. They were kidnapped along with two friends who were shot and killed. Here are some of their stories.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LATAVIA WASHINGTON MCGEE, AMERICAN KIDNAPPED IN MEXICO: We heard a car beat the horn and pulled around us. Zindell was in the backseat. He said don't stop. He saw a gun.
ERIC WILLAMS, AMERICAN KIDNAPPED IN MEXICO: We drove through a few streets and corners until we got back on the main street, and that's when the gang shooting started. Zindell and Shaeed, they jumped out to run and they were gunned down. There was a (inaudible) window beating on her window with a little gun, probably a 9-millimeter. And I jumped out of the driver's side. And when I jumped out on the driver's side, that's when I was shot in both legs.
MCGEE: He was on the ground for maybe like 10 minutes. After they took everything from us and I guess whoever told them to bring, just go ahead and bring us with them, that's when they loaded us on the back of the truck.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: My panel is back with me. Josh, can you imagine how terrifying? I mean, this is Mexico that we're talking about?
JOSH BARRO, HOST, VERY SERIOUS PODCAST: Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean it's -- the conditions in some of these border towns in Mexico is just horrible with the cartel violence and then the failure of the Mexican government essentially to start control over much of its territory. You know, I wouldn't go there.
CAMEROTA: Yeah. I mean, we shouldn't as we have now learned because it was apparently a mistaken identity. They thought that they were a rival drug cartel or something. And so, they, I mean, basically what it sounds like, I listened to all of Anderson's interview.
It sounds like they got lost. They were trying to go to, I think she was there for some sort of cosmetic procedure. They were trying to go to a doctor where she'd been before. They got turned around. They got lost and then suddenly they were surrounded by this drug cartel, and they basically started shooting opening fire on them.
MOSHEH OINOUNOU, FOUNDER, MO NEWS: Yeah, there are six states in Mexico that the State Department has put on a travel advisory list saying that is on par with Syria or going to Iraq or Afghanistan. And so that's the issue. Effectively, the cartels managed the territory. You know, we should note as we speak here tonight, the former head of the equivalent of the Mexican FBI sits in American prison tonight because of his involvement with the cartels.
So, this is cartel territory and, you know, ultimately, the cartels have said, you know, we apologize. Oh, these were road guys, but ultimately this is the situation we're dealing with just a mile away from the U.S. border.
LINETTE LOPEZ, COLUMNIST, INSIDER: So, is this who we have to treat with when we're dealing with the lives of American citizens? We got to go to the cartel and not the Mexican government, not AMLO, their president. Not -- so we have these faceless, nameless criminals that we have to deal with and that's it?
CAMEROTA: I mean, it worked. It worked because they, it turns out, they -- when they realized that they had Americans, they too, were spooked, but not before terrorizing the Americans. So, they did want to give the Americans back and they knew that they were in trouble for having killed two of them, but it sounds really harrowing. Here is -- so, Eric is the one who was in the wheelchair and he was shot twice, I believe, in the leg. Here is what they decided to do with his injuries, the Mexican cartel.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: They put my leg on a two by four and then they stitched it up.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: They just stitched it up?
WILLIAMS: Right.
COOPER: Did they give you --
WILLIAMS: No pain medicine or nothing. They just stitched it up. And it might have not even been later that same day, all the stitches bust out.
COOPER: Did they check to see if the bullet was still inside or anything like that?
WILLIAMS: No, sir. After they stitched it, they took some, like, I guess gauze and they put the two by four board under there, and they were wrapping it around like that, and I was telling them the two by four was hitting me in the back of my leg and it was killing me. So, they took away the two by four.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: I mean, this was obviously after they had already watched their friends be killed, and then that's how they're treated. It is really amazing that that these two actually survived. Coleman, your thoughts.
[22:35:02]
COLEMAN HUGHES, HOST, CONVERSATIONS WITH COLEMAN PODCAST: Well, it's incredible they are able to talk about it so bravely and I really just commend their bravery and I'm glad that they survived it. I mean, I think we like to think of Mexico as, you know, fun place to vacation. You go to Cancun or you go to Mexico City and you have the street cart food that is famously good.
CAMEROTA: And it is great.
HUGHES: And all those things are great. And then in other parts of the country, it's a failed state. So, it's a place of extremes and we have to realize that.
CAMEROTA: There's one more really disturbing clip that I can play for you. So, they were basically kept for four days and they were threatened also with sexual violence and deviance, and here is how they said that they got out of that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: You're a woman in custody with cartel gunmen. Were they threatening to you in violence and sexual violence? I mean --
MCGEE: Yeah, they said all of that stuff, all of it.
COOPER: They did.
WILLIAMS: They're trying to make us have sex with each other but --
MCGEE: And he told him we were brothers and sisters.
WILLIAMS: We brother and sister and that she was pregnant.
COOPER: Wait a minute. They tried to make you have sex with each other. What did they say to you?
WILLIAMS: They was like, what are you all? We said brothers and sisters. And they were like, have sex with each other. I was like no, these are my brothers. I'm pregnant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: That's warped.
LOPEZ: Super warped and, you know, I hope that it makes Americans consider why immigrants come to this country from Mexico. Have a little more sympathy and empathy for those who take great personal risk to get to the United States of America and just want to work and be safe. I think that this is a story that should really make us consider the push region -- reasons why we have immigrants here and why we have an immigration situation. It's not all our situation. It's also because we have neighbors in need, and we should be considerate of.
HUGHES: By the same token, I agree. By the same token, it should make us consider that the fears that Donald Trump and Republicans have about who is coming over. You know, that's who they're -- the depraved people they're talking about, that's who they're worried about coming over, right, so.
CAMEROTA: But isn't it the depraved victims that are coming over?
HUGHES: Right, but it's -- it may also be depraved people, maybe a small part of the population as well. It's like, this is -- it brings out both sides of the immigration debate here, is what I'm saying.
LOPEZ: Sure, but I'm sure that members of the cartel, I mean, I know that it is an extremely violent program, but there are millions and millions of people crossing the border. There are children crossing the border. I'm sure children are not the violent deviant criminals. There are a lot of women.
HUGHES: You know that's not what I'm saying.
LOPEZ: You know. You know.
HUGHES: You know that's not what I'm saying.
LOPEZ: Yeah, but --
HUGHES: You're saying people who live on border towns they see a story like this and they think we have to have an immigration policy that separates out the problems of failed state Mexico and only brings in the rest of Mexico, which is the vast majority of Mexico to your point.
BARRO: The bulk of the people trying to cross the U.S. border illegally from Mexico and are not Mexicans anymore. This is, I mean, the situation, I mean, this situation exists and their situation down in Central America and Guatemala where there's a different set of push factors that are there. But by and large, it's not Mexican people that we're seeing trying to enter the United States through Mexico now.
LOPEZ: Yeah, but a lot of the same push factors exist. The cartels running the Central American countries, and especially, we're seeing a lot of immigration from Haiti actually, from that border, and Haiti is a straight up failed state, like it is the same situation that you're seeing in Mexico, but even worse. So, I understand, you know, there are --
CAMEROTA: I take it before you end the violence that it brings home in very graphic terms, the violence that people are subjected to in their lives if you live in one of these communities of what you're, you know, who you are encountering and what they're doing to you. Thank you all very much. Make sure you stick around at the top of the hour because we're going to dive deep into several stories with our panel of reporters.
We have Alayna Treene with us. She's learning all about the back- channel communications, keeping Donald Trump in the loop on Republican investigations, okay. But first, here we're going to talk about is honking a free speech violation, honking your horn. One California driver decided to make the court decide after she was ticketed for honking in solidarity with protesters. Was that free speech? We'll tell you what they ruled, next.
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[22:40:00]
CAMEROTA: All right. How many of you have honked your horn in celebration or honked your horn in anger? Is that considered free speech? Apparently not in California. A federal appeals court ruling against a woman who honked her horn in protest of Congressman Darrell Issa and his support of former President Trump.
She said she was exercising her freedom of speech. The court said she was a danger. My panel is back along with CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers. Why can't I honk my horn, Jen, at anybody I want to?
JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, California has a law that's a public safety focus law that says you can only honk your horn if it's reasonably necessary for a traffic related issue, right? If someone is cutting you off, if someone's going to hit you if you need to warn somebody. Otherwise, they don't want people honking because if everyone's talking all the time then no one will pay attention when there's actually a need for someone to listen to the honk.
So, there's this law on the books, and she honked in support of some protest, 14 times, and she got a ticket.
[22:44:55]
CAMEROTA: I mean, don't we all honk, like when you see protesters and they have their posters standing on a bridge aren't we always like honk, honk if you support them, like you're with them? Isn't that -- isn't that freedom of speech?
LOPEZ: How much is this ticket?
RODGERS: Oh, I don't know, but she didn't pay it. She didn't end up paying it. So, she --
LOPEZ: I would just pay the ticket like.
RODGERS: She didn't even have to pay the ticket because the cop didn't show up. She sued because she said this law is unconstitutional. I mean, this issue with the court was about the constitutionality of this law. So, they say, is it expressive and they said yes. You know, you're expressing as you say, Alisyn, you're expressing something when you honk that way. So, it goes into the kind of free speech, First Amendment rubric of jurisprudence, right?
But then they say, is it content neutral or content based? Are you saying you can honk expressively to support progressive causes but not conservative causes. No, it's not. It says if its public safety related to the driving, you can do it. If not, you can't. So, it goes under a specific level of scrutiny. They say if the government has an important interest, which here is public safety and what they're doing, the law is reasonably tailored to meet that interest, then it passes. That's it.
BARRO: Isn't there a selective prosecution (inaudible). People honk their horns all the time for all sorts of reasons that are not specifically about public safety and are almost never -- never ticketed for that. This was in the context of a protest. Isn't it likely that she was picked on for her views? RODGERS: So, in this instance, the court explicitly said there was no allegation of that here. You are right. If she said they pulled me over because I said that I was supporting this particular viewpoint and they pulled me over because they didn't like it, it would be in a different level of scrutiny, maybe a different outcome. But here, they said nothing like that.
CAMEROTA: Here's why they were angry because she honked 14 times.
BARRO: Yeah.
CAMEROTA: So, that's the lawsuit. She honked 14 times. Is that excessive?
HUGHES: It's excessive. If you lived in that neighborhood, I think you'd think it's excessive, right. And you'd want that to end. And look, I think the state of California is allowed to have a law like this, right? I think -- I mean, if you think of a different example that might be similar, it's like, can you ban fireworks, right? What if I said if you hate Trump put up a flare, right? Could you ban that?
Well, I think you could ban that, right, because that might be speech or expression in the same way that honking is, right? The bottom line is like if you can ban honking or fireworks, I think you should be able to ban it.
CAMEROTA: Here's what honking 14 times sounds like. Go.
(HONKING)
LOPEZ: No, don't do it.
CAMEROTA: Oh, it's horrible. That's only four times.
RODGERS: That's only four.
CAMEROTA: That's only four. Yeah, never mind. We only get it 10 times. So, I mean, Linette, what happened to go flash and flip of the middle finger? Doesn't that just work in every situation?
LOPEZ: I -- it can. It's very expressive if you're looking and it's, you know, it actually at least stands for a word, which is speech, whereas honking is just honking. It's like banging pots and pans. That to me, this is a question of noise pollution, right?
CAMEROTA: Right. And the flip of the finger is quieter.
LOPEZ: It's quieter and it's subtle.
CAMEROTA: Yes, as subtle as a New Jersey skyline.
LOPEZ: That's what I -- that's what I love. And you know, California is a state that is basically legislated around cars around the fact that three is tons of cars on the street and that everyone drives everywhere all the time. So, if you had everyone honking all the time, imagine the noise pollution. I understand the law. I would have just played the ticket because if I
wanted to honk 14 times, I would already know that I'm like going to get my money's worth. So, you know, I kind of understand where she's coming from, but the state of California has a point here, too.
CAMEROTA: I don't know. I'm sure I've honked 14 times.
BARRO: She was honking in support though. The middle finger wouldn't have worked. It would have expressed the wrong viewpoint.
HUGHES: What did you -- what did you honk 14 times at?
CAMEROTA: Like if I'm going over, like, it's Fourth of July or whatever in my town, and I'm going over and there's people like waving flags, I'm like honk, honk, honk.
HUGHES: Okay. Well, that's Fourth of July and you get away with it because there's so much noise from the fireworks already.
BARRO: Well, now it's not content neutral anymore. You've come up with a rule that's no longer constitutional. You're allowing people to honk only to express certain ideas.
HUGHES: Not certain ideas, but in certain context where there's already noise, so no one would care. There's so much noise no one would care.
LOPEZ: AS a resident of Brooklyn surrounded by New York and New Jersey, I am surrounded by people who would revolt if their right to beep was taken away, so, I cannot even imagine a world where people are silenced.
BARRO: You still have signs up that said no honking in the area around the Lincoln Tunnel. It was a Giuliani era thing where they're like with -- they decided they wouldn't let you block the box anymore and you weren't allowed to honk for reasons other than like someone was about to take your car. And you know, I live in Manhattan. I would like less street noise as well, but they don't seem to do that anymore.
CAMEROTA: California is going that direction. California is following a page from Giuliani. Very interesting. Thank you all very much. Okay, so, GOP Congressman Jim Jordan now in legal hot water with the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg. We'll explain, next.
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[22:50:00]
CAMEROTA: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is suing Congressman Jim Jordan, the Republican Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Bragg accuses Jordan of trying to interfere in the criminal case against former President Trump through what he calls, quote, a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack. We'll have much more of this developing story in a few minutes at the top of the hour. So, coming up, some of our best reporters are here to share the scoops
that they've been working on including new details on Dominion's lawsuit against Fox and why so many of us are driving trucks instead of electric vehicles nowadays. All of that and more. We'll be right back.
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[22:55:00]
CAMEROTA: Welcome back to "CNN Tonight." This hour, we're talking with some of our favorite reporters about their scoops on the stories they are covering this week. Tonight, we've got Alayna Treene, Rahel Solomon, Sarah Fisher and Eva McKend. Ladies, thank you so much for being here. Really looking forward to talking to all of you.
So, let's start here. The Manhattan District Attorney who indicted former President Trump, now suing GOP Congressman Jim Jordan. The legal tension between the D.A. and the House Judiciary Committee Chair started shortly after Donald Trump announced that he expected to be arrested.
Jordan wants documents and insight into the hush money investigation and last week issued a subpoena for the former senior prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz. But the district attorney is blasting the effort as harassment and retaliation for prosecuting Donald Trump.
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