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Cheerleader's Snapchat F-Bomb Rant Spurs Free Speech Case; White House Hammering Out Details Of Likely Biden-Putin Summit; Biden Doubles His Goal Of 100 Million Shots In First 100 Days. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired April 27, 2021 - 07:30   ET

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

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[07:30:32]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has authorized U.S. embassies to fly the LGBTQ pride flag on their official flagpoles around Pride Month in June. This reverses a policy from the Trump administration, which had outlawed the practice.

Blinken said at his confirmation hearing in January that standing up for and defending the rights of LGBTQI people is something that the department is going to take on and take on immediately. And he's in line with where most Americans stand on the issue. Support for LGBTQ rights is at an all-time high with 76 percent of Americans favoring laws protecting against discrimination.

But Trump ally Newt Gingrich sees the flag as a threat to his spotless moral core.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH (R), FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: If you listed every idiotic thing that the Biden administration has done in the first 100 days, you'd begin to realize whether it's threatening everybody who believes in the Second Amendment, or it's attacking everybody who believes in right to life, or it is attacking people of traditional values who are appalled that this administration would fly the gay flag at American embassies all over the world.

I mean, you just go down item by item and it's almost like you have a checklist of what can we do that will really, truly infuriate traditional Americans.

And I've never seen anything like it and I -- somebody asked me this afternoon and I told them I couldn't imagine any administration which had been this deliberately anti-American and this deliberately committed to infuriating the majority of the American people. Literally, in over 200 years of history, I can't think of a single administration that has been this radical and this hostile.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: So there's a lot going on here. But first, the idea that the pride flag would infuriate the majority of the American people. Remember, 76 percent support non-discrimination laws, including more than 60 percent of Republicans. So, Gingrich is way off on his math.

As for his moral compass, what about the Confederate battle flag?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRICH: I have a very strong opinion and it's up to the people of South Carolina.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So that was 2011. He still held that view in 2015. So a flag that symbolizes people's right to love one another, bad. But a flag that glorifies an era when they enslaved one another, have at it.

And on that line, the thrice-married confessed adulterer doesn't just claim the pride flag is a threat to what he calls traditional values, he suggests it's an agenda that is the most hostile thing a president has ever done to the people -- ever -- in more than 200 years of history. Really?

Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act. Andrew Jackson pushed tens of thousands of Native Americans from their homes in a forced march which killed thousands. Woodrow Wilson enforced horribly racist Jim Crow laws on African-Americans. Franklin Roosevelt interred more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.

But flying the pride flag at embassies? In 200 years he can't think of anything worse? Maybe he's not thinking at all.

It's possible -- just possible that Gingrich has an issue with perspective, a verbal tic, or both. In other words, his most-ever-in- history cup runneth over.

Raphael Warnock.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRICH: He is the most radical major party candidate for the Senate I think ever in American history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Nancy Pelosi.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRICH: She is the most dangerous Speaker of the House we've had probably in American history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Hillary Clinton. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRICH: Hillary Clinton, if she wins, will mean the end of America as we've known it, literally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Barack Obama.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRICH: The most radical president in American history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Ever in history, literally, except they can't all be.

And then there is this notable omission, particularly because Gingrich laments, quote, "infuriating a majority of the American people."

You know what the majority of the American people did recently, elect Joe Biden. But Newt's friend, the former president, tried to overturn that election, which historically speaking, is pretty radical and hostile, unless you're Newt Gingrich.

[07:35:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRICH: Objective fact is I believe Trump probably did actually carry Georgia. I believe that the election process is a mess.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: A mess. It seems when it comes to selective historical outrage, Gingrich is more than willing to let his fraud flag fly.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: That is some kind of verbal tic there, isn't it?

BERMAN: There were a lot of f's there. I was very concerned about hitting the f's at the end there.

KEILAR: Yes, there were. Yes, I wonder what else is going to be --

BERMAN: Most ever in history. It's like -- honest to God, it's always the most -- and he considers himself a historian. They can't all be the most ever in history.

KEILAR: No, definitely not.

I've learned having verbal tics -- what mine are from having a 2-year- old because he repeats mine. And apparently, I say hmmm and I say oh, man. But not the worst-ever in history, so there you go.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a potentially landmark free speech case over whether schools can police students' comments outside the classroom. This is a case that concerns Brandi Levy who was 14 years old at the time of the incidence that is in question here.

Brandi was told that she couldn't move up to the varsity cheerleading squad from the J.V. squad at the end of her freshman year and she posted a photo on Snapchat venting. There was a caption on there. It said, "F school. F softball. F cheer. F everything."

And she was there with one of her fellow students flipping the camera off. This was a photo that was shared to about 250 of her followers and it ended up reaching her cheerleading coaches. Someone showed it to one of them.

They decided to suspend Brandi from cheerleading for a year, saying that she violated team rules. Well, Brandi's parents appealed to the school district, and when the decision stood they reached out to the ACLU who helped them sue the school district.

Joining us now is one Brandi Levy's attorneys, Vic Walczak. He is the legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. Vic, thank you so much for joining us.

I know a lot of people are going to be watching this case to see what this means for the free speech of students. Why was it so important to Brandi Levy's parents to sue over this decision?

VIC WALCZAK, ATTORNEY FOR BRANDI LEVY, LEGAL DIRECTOR, ACLU OF PENNSYLVANIA (via Cisco Webex): Yes, thank you, Brianna, for having us.

You know, while this is just an expression of frustration that I think all of us can relate to -- you know, punctuated with some F-bombs for emphasis -- what the court is going to decide in this case and what's really at stake is the free speech rights of 50 million young people who go to public schools. And it's -- you know, it's not just about whether or not you can have a profane rant on a weekend, but it's about whether schools are going to be able to punish kids for saying things that are controversial, unpopular, or even just critical of the school.

KEILAR: So there are -- when you look at previous cases, there are certain issues that come up. For instance, where did the speech occur? Was it something that can be construed as on-campus or is it close to campus? Is the speech disruptive to the school community?

Let me ask you this. How is the effect of what Brandi Levy said different, whether she posted that Snap while she was at a convenience store or, say, she posted that snap while she was at, say, a pep rally? Because the school alleges that this is something that was disruptive to the other cheerleaders on the squad and to the school community.

WALCZAK: Yes. So you've used some key buzzwords there from earlier decisions. And so, 50 years ago, the Supreme Court said that schools could

regulate what students say in school simply to make sure that they can provide a decent place for kids to learn. So, for instance, you can't drop F-bombs if you're in school. You can't speak out of turn, whether you're in class or you're cheering at a pep rally.

But it's really important and the court, thus far, has confined that extra authority that schools have to within the school environment. So it's the playground, it's sporting events, it's debate club, programs on the road. But it's really important for kids to have full free speech rights someplace in their lives and that someplace has to be when they're outside the authority of the school.

And there's another really important factor. When kids go to school, the parents kind of turn over responsibility to the school. I mean, the schools have to take care of the kids. But once the kids leave school, the parents have primary responsibility and under the Constitution, the right to direct their children's upbringing.

[07:40:00]

So, you know, that -- maintaining that distinction between schools having power to regulate in school and limiting that power out of school is really, really important not just for students' free speech rights but also for parents' rights and their children.

KEILAR: Vic, we are going to be watching this very carefully because, as you are aware, the school district says it needs to police that language to create a safe learning environment. And obviously, when people read what you're saying, I think a lot of people kind of see the points that both sides are making. So we'll see where the court comes down on this.

Vic, thanks for being with us.

WALCZAK: Thanks for having me.

BERMAN: So, a private school in Florida sending a warning to its staff. Get vaccinated against coronavirus and it could cost you your job.

KEILAR: Plus, President Biden and Vladimir Putin close to a deal to hold a summit in Europe. When it could happen and where the negotiations stand right now.

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[07:45:10]

KEILAR: Sources tell CNN the White House is hammering out the details of a European summit between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which could happen as soon as early summer.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand is live in Washington with more. Natasha, welcome aboard. It is great to see you. Tell us what's happening here.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Hey, Brianna. Thank you so much.

Yes. So the White House is continuing to hammer out the details of this potentially highly consequential summit that is going to be taking place tentatively this summer between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Now the details, of course, are still being hammered out. We don't know when exactly this is going to take place or even where at this point. But the Russians have signaled a willingness to meet with President Biden to discuss areas of mutual interest.

And, of course, the Ukrainians are very concerned about a potential meeting right now because if you'll recall, the Russians have been acting very aggressively on the border with their massive Russian military buildup there and in Crimea.

So they are hoping that before President Biden actually sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin that they will get a chance to sit down with Biden. The president of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky, will be able to sit down with Biden and kind of work out talks so that they are on the same page with regard to Russia.

So right now, obviously, the summit would be very high stakes. It would come after President Biden's meetings with NATO and G7 officials in Europe. That is what we're being told -- is that any summit with Vladimir Putin would only take place after meeting with allies. But again, details still pretty unclear at this early stage.

BERMAN: That's really interesting, Natasha, that the sequencing here is an important part of the U.S. thinking.

You mentioned Ukraine's concerns. Would a meeting with Vladimir Putin be conditions-based? Would the United States require Russia, for instance, to remove more of its troops from the Ukrainian border before meeting?

BERTRAND: It's a great question and we really haven't gotten a lot of answers from the White House on this.

One big concern looming over a potential summit, of course, is the health of Alexey Navalny, who is a leading Russian opposition figure who is in jail and his health has been deteriorating rapidly. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, did say that there would be consequences if Alexey Navalny were to die in prison, but he would not go as far as to say that a potential summit would actually be canceled if he did die.

So there are still some questions about whether Russian aggression if it were to continue would impact the prospects for that summit.

But in one sign that the summit is likely to occur, we are told that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is actually being dispatched to Ukraine early next month to meet with his counterparts in the hopes that it might ease Ukrainian anxiety over a potential Biden-Putin summit.

BERMAN: Natasha Bertrand, we're big fans of your reporting. Great to have you onboard at CNN. Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

BERTRAND: Thank you.

BERMAN: Protesters in North Carolina demanding transparency. They want to see the bodycam video of police shooting and killing Andrew Brown. Brown's family joins us live, ahead.

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[07:52:35]

BERMAN: President Biden set to mark his first 100 days in office with an address to Congress tomorrow night. Among the themes he is likely to drive, his administration's response to coronavirus and his success at getting hundreds of millions of shots into the arms of the American people.

CNN's Gloria Borger with more now on how it all happened.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF ZIENTS, BIDEN WHITE HOUSE COVID-19 RESPONSE COORDINATOR: From day one, it's been about urgency. Overwhelm the problem. We're at war with the virus.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): For the last 100 days, how to get vaccines into the arms of hundreds of millions of Americans and convince the hesitant to get a shot has been an immense historic undertaking, and also personal for those on the front lines.

ZIENTS: I'm worried that people have lost loved ones. People continue to lose loved ones. People's lives have been upturned. You know, this is hard and people are tired, which means that there's a tendency to let down our guard, which we can't do.

DR. LEANA WEN, VISITING PROFESSOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: If you had told us 100 days into President Biden's tenure that it would be open season for every adult American that wants a vaccine to be able to get one, I think we would have all said that's really incredible.

BORGER (voice-over): A country with the highest number of confirmed deaths worldwide now vaccinating at a speed more than four times faster than the world average.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The progress we've made has been stunning.

BORGER (voice-over): Donald Trump's Operation Warp Speed developed the vaccine.

PAUL MANGO, TRUMP HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SENIOR OFFICIAL: It turned out to be the most significant medical discovery and manufacturing achievement in American history.

BORGER (voice-over): Nothing short of a miracle. DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: Do you realize what a dire situation we would be in if we did those vaccine trials and oh my God, they were 20 percent effective instead of 90-plus percent effective?

DONALD TRUMP, THEN-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Operation Warp Speed --

BORGER (voice-over): But in the beginning, the transition did not move at warp speed.

TRUMP: You know, we want Georgia --

BORGER (voice-over): President Trump was preoccupied with finding votes, not shots.

FAUCI: There was much more of a concentration of the president on reelection and a dissociation from the fact that we were having an epidemic.

GOV. LARRY HOGAN (R), MARYLAND: I was somewhat critical --

BORGER (voice-over): And governors were left wondering who would be running the show.

HOGAN: I raised the issue to Mike Pence several times about hey, you know, regardless of whatever stuff the president is saying, we've got this vaccine thing that we've got to make sure that these guys know what's going on as soon as they get it. And he assured me that was going to be the case.

BORGER (voice-over): And then --

[07:55:00]

ZIENTS: There was no plan to get shots into arms.

BORGER (on camera): No plan?

ZIENTS: There was no plan. Those early doses of Moderna and Pfizer were being drop-shipped to states and there were just not enough places for people to get vaccinated.

BORGER (on camera): They say that you were using their playbook on vaccine distribution.

ZIENTS: I just think that's just not true.

MANGO: I have to say it's frustrating when they spend all of their time disparaging what we did. They say we didn't have a plan?

BORGER (on camera): Yes.

MANGO: We had 65 plans.

BORGER (voice-over): Localized, not centralized.

MANGO: We had the fundamental belief that local leaders understood their counties, their townships, their states, their islands at a greater level of detail than we ever could.

FAUCI: It's complicated. There was not really a well-articulated long-range playbook to get the vast majority of the people vaccinated. That's where I think the full-court press of the Biden administration really, really stepped up to the plate and did it well.

JOHN ROBERTS, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES: Congratulations, Mr. President.

BORGER (voice-over): The new president inherited a surging pandemic -- more than 3,000 deaths a day, only about 15 million vaccinated.

HOGAN: At the very beginning, the frustration was huge demand and no supply. And so the anger and frustration everywhere across the country was why can't I get an appointment for a vaccine.

BORGER: Biden became the national vaccine pitchman, setting targets --

ZIENTS: And he ultimately decides.

BORGER (voice-over): -- and announcing every milestone himself -- eager to show any momentum, starting with what looked like an attainable goal.

BIDEN: A hundred million shots in the first 100 days.

HOGAN: We were already doing more than a million a day at that point. So if he did absolutely nothing, we would have done 100 million the first 100 days, even if he didn't show up.

BORGER (voice-over): But he did show up, repeatedly.

BIDEN: One hundred million more Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson. The vaccine supply for every American adult by the end of May. By my 100th day in office, I've administered 200 million shots.

BORGER (on camera): I heard early on the president was very impatient.

FAUCI: He is, he is, and that -- that's the truth, he's impatient. Like, OK, is this is best we can do? He asks specific questions. Well, what about this and why aren't we doing this, and are we doing the best in that?

BORGER (voice-over): Biden could not control the delays due to winter storms or governors who eased restrictions. And he abided by the decision from the FDA and CDC to temporarily pause the Johnson & Johnson vaccine -- a move that some saw as overcautious and confusing.

BIDEN: These checks are providing a heck of a lot of needed relief --

BORGER (voice-over): The president did jumpstart a substantial federal response -- a $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

BIDEN: America's coming back.

BORDER (voice-over): Deployment of active-duty military and FEMA, a federal pharmacy program, a network of community health centers to increase vaccine access and equity.

DR. MARCELLA NUNEZ-SMITH, CHAIR, BIDEN COVID-19 HEALTH EQUITY TASK FORCE: We have to always start with access, making sure that people can get vaccinated in places where they are comfortable and where they trust the people who are vaccinating them.

BORGER (voice-over): Many in communities of color are skeptical.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What about the side effects?

BORGER (voice-over): Vaccinations of younger people and those in rural areas are lagging. And with the number of overall daily vaccinations wavering, appealing to the hesitant is crucial.

NUNEZ-SMITH: We always will meet people where they are. We always have to make sure that messages are tailored, so that's about saying what are your particular concerns?

PROTESTERS: We want to be free!

BORGER (voice-over): And politics, as always, comes into play.

BORGER (on camera): Fifty percent of Republican men say they are not likely to take the vaccine. What would you say to them?

HOGAN: I would say that's absolutely crazy because the -- you know, the people that say hey, we want to get rid of these masks, we want to open up all the businesses, the only way we ever get life back to normal is if we get enough people to get that vaccine.

BORGER (voice-over): So why not explain the rewards of vaccination earlier?

WEN: If what we're saying to them is get vaccinated, it's great -- this is such a safe and effective vaccine but, by the way, you can't really change much of your daily activities -- I don't think that people understand what's in it for them.

BORGER (voice-over): And why not open schools sooner?

WEN: I think this was a major mistake at the very beginning was to not prioritize teachers for vaccination.

BORGER (voice-over): The administration's answer has always been the same. Let the science lead.

ZIENTS: I think it's another example where we followed the science. The CDC put out guidance as to how to make sure to open schools safely and keep them open safely.

BORGER (voice-over): Now a new phase in the effort, an immense get out the vax P.R. campaign -- a T.V. blitz.

T.V. PSA: With vaccines, we can trust --

BORGER (voice-over): Celebrities getting jabs.

DOLLY PARTON, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Vaccine, vaccine.

FAUCI: It really is kind of a race between getting vaccinated and the virus trying to essentially surge up again. Every day that goes by you get closer and closer to that virus really not being able to do anything. Because when you get an overwhelming majority of the population vaccinated, the virus has no place to go.

BORGER (voice-over): The country is at a tipping point.