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SpaceX Launches 4 Astronauts Towards International Space Station; Compromise Sought on Police Reform in Congress; Tim Scott to Deliver Response to President Biden's Address; Bush Says He Wrote in Condoleezza Rice in 2020 Election; Cruz Falsely Claims GOP Never Considered Supreme Court Power Grab. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired April 23, 2021 - 06:00   ET

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

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. We're getting shots of the crew in orbit. I'm looking for that zero g indicator. Can't seem to see it in this shot, but we have a minute to go until we have spacecraft separation.

[06:00:30]

Dragon traveling at nearly 17,000 miles per hour at an altitude of 124 miles.

Again, the four-person crew of Endeavor is in orbit right now. Less than 30 seconds until we have spacecraft separation.

Ten seconds to spacecraft separation. We should hear words from the core here in Mission Control Hawthorne once we have successful separation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: SpaceX, have a great rest of your trip. Let them know you're safe. Thanks for flying. Falcon 9. See you, Flight Crew Two.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks very much. We're glad to be back in space for all of us. And we'll send our regards to Crew One when we get there, thanks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely stunning views from both inside the cabin, seeing the excitement of our four-person crew inside Endeavor, and watching Endeavor drift away from the camera on the second stage as the Earth passes by on an orbital sunrise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Endeavor --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Endeavor you cut out a little bit there. If the question was if you're go to open visors, you are go to open visors at this time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Copy. Thanks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, 13.5 minutes past liftoff, the crew is in orbit traveling at nearly 17,000 miles an hour. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, Gary, I don't know about you, but that was a

great countdown. Everything sounded great, right on time, actually a little ahead of time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- dehumidifier activation and service section Draco checkouts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got a good orbit out of Falcon 9 and first stage landed on the drone ship, and we're in the sunlight over the Atlantic Ocean with the Dragon spacecraft. All in all a great day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think everybody is jealous of the crew in orbit right now, John. These views, even just from the cameras are absolutely stunning. It was great to see our crew members get into orbit. They already performed successful checkouts of the 12 service station Dracos around Dragon, and the next milestone will be the deployment of the nose cone. That will be about a five-minute process, but that will expose the forward bulkhead Dracos and prepare them for check-out.

There's a phase burn. There's five major burns that are needed to get the Crew Dragon up to the rendezvous with the International Space Station over the next 23 hours.

And so that first phase burn is coming up real soon in about 35 minutes. Actually, less than 35 minutes.

And Jessie (ph), I don't know if you can see the zero g indicator, but I was told it's a penguin. I'm trying to look for it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm looking for it, too. Keep an eye on that left-hand screen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Meanwhile, the Dragon is configured for a nose cone deployment. Stand by for when that sequence starts.

[06:05:09]

The nose cone itself opens just beyond 90 degrees, about 105 degrees to expose the forward bulkhead Dracos. There's four bulkhead Dracos. Four of them at the very top of the Dragon will do the bulk of the work when it comes to firing the Draco engines for minutes at a time to increase the Dragon's speed, altitude and phasing to catch up with the International Space Station, again, over the next 23 hours.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Look what we can do. Look what we can do. A great morning for humanity, a tough morning for those who are flat earthers. We just witnessed the launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, the latest NASA mission. Four astronauts, two American and one Japanese and one French, now on their way. And we can hear them. They're going to the International Space Station.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. CNN innovation and space reporter, Rachel Crane, is live at the Kennedy Space Center; and also with us, CNN aviation analyst and pilot, Miles O'Brien; and Michio Kaku, who is professor of theoretical physics at city -- City University of New York, also author of "The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything."

All right, Rachel, let's start with you here. This has been very exciting, but just explain to us exactly what we've been watching.

RACHEL CRANE, CNN INNOVATION AND SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, today was an incredible day here at Kennedy Space Center. This was the third crewed mission of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft. And it was pretty historic here today because this Falcon 9, the rocket that Spacecraft Endeavor flew on, it had all kinds of scorch marks and soot on it before it took off today. That's because it flew back in November with Crew One, so it was a flight-proven rocket.

Also, the spacecraft that flew today, Endeavor, it too had already flown to space. It took that historic flight nearly a year ago for Demo Tow with Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley taking that first crewed flight on Crew Dragon to the International Space Station.

So that had never been done before, a flight-proven system, the Falcon 9 booster as well as the spacecraft having already flown to space. And of course, NASA, SpaceX, they had to do thousands of checks to ensure that it was, in fact, safe for the crew to board and fly today.

But as we all saw, today's countdown went off without a hitch. It was a gorgeous day here at Kennedy Space Center. And those astronauts on board, we've already gotten to hear their voices and see them in Spacecraft Endeavor. They're making their way to the International Space Station right now, traveling over 17,000 miles an hour. They'll rendezvous with ISS in about 24 hours.

But, you know, they're very busy on that journey to the International Space Station. There's about five burns that will take place in order to get them -- get them to rendezvous just precisely right.

Also, they have to sleep on board. We've just gotten -- we've just seen that the zero g indicator is a little penguin. That's sort of a tradition that the astronauts that are on board, that they decide what that zero g indicator is going to be. We don't know the story behind the penguin yet, but with Demo Two, with Bob and Doug, it was a little sequined dinosaur. I don't know if you'll remember, the last one, it was a baby Yoda.

So and as you know, today it's a multinational crew that is onboard. We have two NASA astronauts, Megan McArthur, who's in fact, the wife of Bob Behnken, who took that Demo Two flight. She's actually sitting in the same seat that her husband flew in on Demo Two. Shane Kimbrough, he is the commander. We also have a JAXA astronaut on board, as well as an ESA astronaut on board, as well, Thomas Pesquet and Aki Hoshide. So multinational crew.

And something that's unique. Everyone -- There's always a lot of interest in the food, astronaut food. And I have to tell you guys that I had the opportunity to taste some of the food that Thomas is bringing up with him. When you have a multinational crew, they have the opportunity to bring some of their -- their own cuisine on board, you know, these specialty meals that are made. They're not eating them every day. But I have to tell you, I have -- I have the little packets right here. Thomas is bringing beef bourguignon. Beef bourguignon is going on board right now that Crew Dragon. So they're having some very fancy meals. Also a crepe suzette. I tasted them both, and I've got to tell you guys, they were not bad. It was pretty tasty. So they're getting some fancy meals, for sure.

KEILAR: Crepes in a bag.

BERMAN: Well, we've come a long way since Tang. I don't think there's any doubt about that.

Miles, you were with me we watched the first manned SpaceX launch together. This, as Rachel said, is the third with a used rocket and a used capsule, or as NASA likes to say, previously owned. How significant is this moment?

[06:10:07]

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it's a cream puff, of course, John. No question about it. But it's significant for that very fact you just mentioned.

You know, the shuttle program was supposed to be reusable. And in some respects it was, but it never really delivered on the promise of reusability in a way that made the cost of getting to space cheaper. It was a finnicky vehicle. Yes, the orbiter came back, but it required all kinds of work to get back to space. Sure, the solid rocket boosters could be reused, but they had to be fished out of the water; and that was a very difficult and time-consuming process.

Elon Musk and SpaceX are proving reusability in a way that truly drives down the cost of access to space. So that's really a big deal, because it opens up lower Earth orbit to all kinds of enterprises we've been hoping for for a long time. That is to say those of us who like space, and makes it accessible in a way that we couldn't imagine.

It used to be that the back of the napkin cost of getting anything to space, John, was $10,000 a pound. Well, Elon Musk is driving that cost down, and it's really exciting to see it.

BERMAN: Professor, you actually talk about the cost, and it's really interesting. Right? It's what, like one pound that you carry into space is your weight in gold? I'm bad at math. What's the equation there, and what's the significance of that?

MICHIO KAKU, PROFESSOR OF THEORETICAL PHYSICS, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK: Well, yes, it's $10,000 per pound to put you in near earth orbit. That is your weight approximately in gold.

And that's the reason why, back in the 1960s, the moon program faltered. It consumed 5 percent -- 5 percent -- of the entire federal budget. Five percent of every dollar you paid in income tax went to the space program. That was unsustainable.

That's why this is a game changer, because it's going to drop the cost of space travel by a factor of maybe two, maybe five, opening up -- opening up outer space for commercial ventures, for mom-and-pop space tours and maybe even you and me. And so this is a game changer. We're entering a new era.

Now, if you were to take a car and junk it after just one use, cars would be very expensive. But that's what we do to rockets. We dump them in the ocean after one shot, but reusable rockets, as was mentioned, is a game changer. It's going to drive down the cost and open up the heavens for commercial ventures, for space tourism, and for you and me.

KEILAR: Miles, this is the new era as the professor is showing there, this new era of space travel. Crew Two, this Crew Two mission, is this better? I mean, cost-wise, clearly it is. Writ large, is this better?

O'BRIEN: Yes, it is. Among other things worth pointing out here, Brianna, is it's a lot safer. You know, we lost two crews in the shuttle era, and there was no realistic way for them to get out of a spacecraft in an emergency.

This particular craft with the capsule sitting right on top of the stack, good place for it to be, nothing can hit it on the way up, no debris from other parts of the rocket. But it also has an escape tower, so it can separate itself from the rocket itself on the way to space to allow the crew to get back safely.

So that ejection, that crew escape capability is a hugely significant difference. The idea of separating the human beings from the cargo is a good idea. The shuttle idea was let's put it all in one thing. We'll make a giant space truck. We'll put the payloads in the back, put the crew in the front. In the end, they were trying to do too many things at once, and it ultimately made for an unsafe way to get to space.

So it's cheaper. It's reliable, and ultimately, it's safer, which is, you know, in the end the most important thing.

KEILAR: Yes, it's huge. So important. Miles, always wonderful to watch these with you.

Rachel, thank you so much.

And Professor Kaku, we appreciate your expertise, as well.

Protests erupting overnight in another state after the shooting death of a black man by police.

BERMAN: Plus, the fate of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine being decided today after isolated incidents of blood clots.

And after he criticized the current Republican Party, George W. Bush reveals who he voted for in the election. You're going to be surprised about who it was.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: I'm John Berman alongside Brianna Keilar on this NEW DAY. Breaking overnight, protests erupting in another state after the

shooting death of a black man by police. Now a demand to see the body camera video.

Plus, just hours from now, the FDA will decide the fate of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after its rollout is halted due to blood clots.

KEILAR: And we're just now learning who George W. Bush voted for in 2020, and it is not either of the two candidates that you were thinking of.

Also, a Pennsylvania Republican who sought out voter fraud, found it, carried out by Republicans.

BERMAN: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world and, frankly, those above the world this morning, since we've been watching the launch of the SpaceX capsule. It's Friday, April 23, and overnight protesters gathering in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, demanding the release of body camera footage of the fatal shooting of 40-year-old Andrew Brown Jr.

[06:20:06]

Officials say a sheriff's deputy shot and killed Brown while serving him a search warrant. Brown was shot in his car not far from his home. Neighbors tell CNN that deputies fired on the vehicle while Brown was driving. It's not clear whether deputies fired on the car before or after it began to move.

So far police are refusing to release body cam footage. They claim it is not public record and cannot be shown without a court order.

KEILAR: And new details this morning about the moments leading up to the fatal police shooting of 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant. According to a woman who was caring for the teenager in the foster system, Bryant and two others were arguing about a messy home shortly before getting into the fight that preceded the shooting.

CNN spoke to Bryant's biological mother.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAULA BRYANT, MOTHER OF MA'KHIA BRYANT: She was taken from me. She was taken from me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What would you like people to know about your daughter?

BRYANT: I want the world to know that Ma'Khia was beautiful. She was humble. She loved to look after people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Of course, all these cases are different. They all have their unique issues. But they all raise questions about policing in America. And the question this morning, will Congress take action? A bipartisan group of lawmakers say progress is being made on a police

reform bill, with Republican Senator Tim Scott taking the lead and trying to push a compromise with Democrats over the issue of qualified immunity for officers accused of excessive force, whether or not they can be sued. It's a major sticking point.

Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Scott will deliver the Republican rebuttal to President Biden's joint address to Congress next week.

Joining us now is CNN's political director, David Chalian. He's also the host of the "CNN Political Briefing" podcast. David, great to see you. Welcome to NEW DAY.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Good morning.

BERMAN: We changed the show just for you. We're so glad to have you here. Listen --

CHALIAN: I love it. I love the new look.

BERMAN: Tim Scott delivering the Republican response, Tim Scott in the center of these key discussions over policing reform. What are we seeing and why?

CHALIAN: Those things are connected, I think. Think about the week we just had in America after the year we just had in America as it relates to policing issues, racial inequities in so many facets of American life.

And so, having the sole African-American Republican in the Senate be the one to deliver the response to president -- to the president's address next week makes a lot of sense in terms of what McConnell and McCarthy are trying to put forward as a path forward in the post-Trump era for the Republican Party.

But remember, the reason I think it's sort of politically savvy, Tim Scott, he is -- he was an ally of President Trump for much of President Trump's term. You'll remember his star turn at the Republican Convention. So in no way does this pick sort of get the ire up of the Trump forces in the Republican Party, and yet, it allows McConnell and McCarthy to understand the moment that this speech will take place in.

KEILAR: We also learned, as we've been hearing from George W. Bush here recently, that he wrote in Condoleezza Rice in 2020. So this is a revelation that he offered up, and also along with some rare criticism of the Republican Party. What does this say about where the party is?

CHALIAN: Right. I don't think it should surprise any of us that anybody in the Bush family did not vote for Donald Trump. We saw this back in 2016, as well. But putting in Condoleezza Rice's name and then revealing that publicly, those are two different things.

And George Bush is on a mission right now to try and influence the future of the Republican Party. He's got this book that he's out there doing portraits of immigrants, and he's very much committed to this notion of trying to tone down the rhetoric inside the immigration debate in this country, Brianna.

And when he's been on this book tour, he's had probably some of the harshest words for the Republican Party I've heard to date. In the same interview in "People" magazine where he says he wrote in Condoleezza Rice in the election in 2020.

He also started backtracking a little bit on that criticism of calling the Republican Party made up of isolationists and protectionists and nativists. He said he perhaps painted with too broad a stroke. He was referring to the loudest voices.

But John, you probably -- you observed George W. Bush better than anyone I know. I mean, this is -- this is some of the most sort of raw political talk I've heard from him in his post-presidency.

[06:25:03]

BERMAN: That is -- It's as far as he has gone in criticizing his own party in the most blunt language.

And as far as Condoleezza Rice goes, that strikes me as doing something because you know you're going to be asked about it later on, and you want a better answer than, I'm not going to tell you, right? And you can't vote for the Democrat, because you're still a member of the Bush family, so you want to find an answer that works for you politically going forward.

Let's talk a little more about Texans in the news, David. Senator Ted Cruz, he's criticizing this longshot effort that's going to go nowhere by some Democratic lawmakers to increase the size of the Supreme Court from nine to 13 justices. But listen to what he's saying here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): You didn't see Republicans, when we had control of the Senate, try to rig the game. You didn't see us try to pack the court. There was nothing that would have prevented Republicans from doing what they're doing other than respect for the rule of law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You didn't see them try to rig the game, David. You saw them rig the game. Actually, like literally block a nomination for months and months. And not only that, right, I mean, Ted Cruz is on the record praising comments at the time about how a court can work efficiently without nine members without confirming, at that point, Merrick Garland. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRUZ: There is certainly long historical precedent for a Supreme Court with fewer justices. You know, I would note recently, Justice Breyer observed that -- that the vacancy is not impacting the ability of the court to do its job. And so those are debates we're going to have. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Just based on the years -- the years have been tough on Ted Cruz, first of all. Second of all, I mean, clearly, this is just hypocritical, beyond hypocritical. On its face hypocritical.

CRUZ: Right. I mean, if you're looking for consistency in political rhetoric from Ted Cruz, you're going to have a hard time finding it when it comes, especially, to this conversation.

To go out and hold a press conference and just slam the Democrats for trying to play politics as he sees it with the makeup of the Supreme Court, acting like that wasn't what Republicans were just doing. It boggles the mind sometimes that it's either they forget that video tape exists or that they said it in front of cameras, and that it's recorded.

But as plain as you just made it, John, obviously Ted Cruz believed you could manipulate the court. You could change the numbers on the court and not have an impact, because he just told us so.

KEILAR: Yes, they clearly think that maybe it just doesn't matter that they've been seeing -- seeing -- saying something else before. Perhaps they're right. I think, you know, time will tell on that.

CHALIAN: That's right.

KEILAR: Josh Hawley, David, was the only senator who voted no on the bipartisan anti-Asian hate crimes bill that passed. It passed 94 to 1 yesterday. And this is how he explained his vote in a tweet.

He said the bill "turns the federal government into the speech police." He, of course, is the only one who sees it this way, in such a way that it would be, you know, a net negative to vote for this. What's going on here?

CHALIAN: What's going on here is that Josh Hawley is trying to plot his political future. He has a potential -- you know, an eye on a potential presidential run.

He has been the senator that has voted against more of the Biden cabinet nominees than any other senator in the United States Senate. He has decided a path to no to anything. Right? Coming from the Democrats. Seems to be where he thinks he's going to meet with the most political success inside a Republican primary, right?

And so, being the singular, sole senator to stand even something against -- that has near unanimous support in the Senate of a bill to stop this anti-Asian hate in America, even that, he thinks will serve him well politically by being a wall of opposition to anything that is sort of coming from the Democrats.

KEILAR: Yes. We will see if there's anything that he will vote for. David Chalian, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

CHALIAN: Sure. My pleasure. KEILAR: It's great to see you.

A Pennsylvania Republican who wanted to overturn his state's election results says that he found a few cases of fraud after all. Here's the thing, though. They were committed by Republicans.

Plus, a veteran Tasered by police inside his young daughter's hospital room. We'll have his story coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)