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New Day
Carville on Wokeness in Democratic Party; Kamau Bell Looks at Defund the Police; Delta Goes to Full Capacity; Risks of Vaccine Hesitancy. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired April 30, 2021 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[08:30:59]
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: James Carville, of course, the legendary political strategist who told Bill Clinton, quote, it's the economy, stupid, now he's telling today's Democrats they have a problem with, quote, wokeness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I don't want to help rewrite dictionaries, I want to help rewrite laws. And the way that we help President Biden do that is by talking about things that are relevant to people in a way that they can understand it in a clear, distinct and certain voice.
And I believe that. And I'm at a place in life where I can say it while other people are terrified to say it.
They watch people that get fired for the most trivial offenses of retweeting a piece of academic research or something like that.
It's just faculty lounge jargon. And it's counterproductive. It gives the aura of cosmopolitan smugness to the rest of the country, that somehow or another we think we're smarter and better than other people and we're going to lecture them. Well, we are -- people agree with us on the issues, they like our tax plans, they like to believe in -- they think climate is an issue, they think that racial inequality and inequality, as I do, is a terrible issue in American politics. But the way that you solve that is through power.
Acquire political power in the form of congressional seats, Senate seats, presidencies, governors, state legislatures, that's the way it's done. And it's not going to get done attacking 68 percent of the people that are going to vote in a national election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Joining us now, W. Kamau Bell, host of CNN's "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA," about to kick off a much-awaited new season. We can't wait for that. We'll talk about that in a second, Kamau.
What do you make of what James Carville is saying?
W. KAMAU BELL, CNN HOST AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA": Well, how do I say this? I have white in-laws and white family members because of my wife. So I've heard that kind of talk before. Pass the gravy, grandpa, it's OK.
I think we are -- what he is saying is that the world is moving in a way that he was not expecting it to. What he used to thinks of as liberal and progressive has shifted, and that's frustrating him, which I understand, it literally happens to all of us.
But that -- the whole idea of, if things had worked the way he wanted them to, if we had gotten the racial justice we wanted, we wouldn't be here right now. And the communities who are most impacted by the lack of racial justice are always coming up with new techniques to move the ball forward. So I think that is what is happening there.
KEILAR: So, exciting season ahead. And in the first episode, Kamau, you dive into this polarizing issue of defunding the police.
Let's look at a clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BELL: Wait a minute, why don't we take some of that money back and, like, give it to people who are, you know, qualified to deal with those issues without killing folks in the process? And, at the same time, why don't we put money back in the system that builds long-term, sustainable public safety and build an economy for everyone. That's Defund 101.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, if this was a business --
BELL: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we're giving 50 percent of our budget to one department that was failing across the board and killing people while they did so --
BELL: Yes. Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, we would defund them immediately.
BELL: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Defund the police means we're taking money away from this current system where it's failing and investing in other systems that we think will succeed.
BELL: Sure.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It strips all that away and says, just look at the numbers.
BELL: I just think it's sort of beautiful. My dad would be happy to hear this -- he's a numbers guy -- that the accountants will save us. Maybe the anti-racist accountants will save us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: I love accountant humor. It definitely lands there.
So, you know, it's very interesting to see you break this down because it does become this very -- this debate over yes to police or no to police.
BELL: Well, and it also becomes a thing that people get caught up in the phrase, defund the police, in the same way that James Carville is caught up in wokeness and don't actually investigate what that thing is trying to accomplish. So, for me, all this episode is, is trying to explain it to people so that at least when you have the conversation, if you want to debate it, you will actually know what defund the police means.
BERMAN: Kamau, I'm such a fan of your show. Everyone always says, oh, we have to have the discussion about x.
[08:35:01]
You know, we need to be talking about y. But you actually do it, right? And you do it in a way that I think people can relate to, and it's super important, and it's just interesting. And it's great to see you. Come back.
BELL: Thank you. I will. I will. As long as they let me, yes.
KEILAR: Open invite.
BERMAN: "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA" with W. Kamau Bell returns Sunday at 10:00 p.m. right here on CNN.
KEILAR: Nearly 400 people have been charged in the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and there are many who have been caught or identified in pretty bizarre ways.
According to reporting by CNN's Marshal Cohen (ph), who has been compiling a trove of court documents from DOJ, the following people have either pleaded not guilty or haven't yet entered a plea, and many of them only charged with misdemeanors.
But, here we go, the bizarre and unique ways that riot suspects have been caught.
One wore his work badge in the Capitol.
Another, a 6'6" Olympic swimmer spotted in a Team USA jacket with an Olympic patch. That gave him away.
And one guy's wife bragged on FaceBook about how he stormed the Capitol.
Then another called a tip line about something that he witnessed at the crime scene. New Jersey cops recognized a woman who often attends protests at the
state house there.
And another one told his ex-girlfriend that she was a, quote, moron for believing Joe Biden won the election, and then she went and turned him in.
Another was recognized by one of her colleagues from the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder, where they were both staffers.
One guy's neck and face tattoos did him in.
One suspect made incriminating texts in a group chat.
And a former cop, who is now a financial advisor, was turned in by one of his clients.
Family members gave up one guy from Florida because they were worried about his QAnon postings.
Someone watching CNN saw a friend in video footage.
High school friends of another one turned him in after seeing his Instagram story that he posted from within the Capitol.
All of these people have either pleaded not guilty or haven't yet entered a plea, many of them only charged again with misdemeanors.
It is worth noting, one last suspect. This guy literally, yes, he wore an "I was there" t-shirt when he was arrested. A souvenir for the road.
BERMAN: I kind of have two things to say about this.
KEILAR: What's that?
BERMAN: Number one, the Venn diagram between Mensa members and people at the insurrection, I'm not sure there's a lot of, you know, interaction there in that Venn diagram.
KEILAR: No, but it -- true. And it also just speaks to, I think, the mindset of folks who were there thinking that they weren't doing anything wrong, that they would be welcomed, that this wasn't going to be seen as a crime and there was nothing the matter with it.
BERMAN: That's the second thing I was going to say. And, actually, that's the more important thing. They don't think there's anything wrong with what they did, and that speaks volumes.
KEILAR: Yes. They're probably surprised they're facing the ramifications of it, quite frankly.
BERMAN: Coming up, new signs that the airlines are about to put the pandemic behind them, and a lot of Republicans refuse to get the vaccine. What does that mean for the rest of us?
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[08:41:59]
KEILAR: It is the end of a pandemic era policy for U.S. airlines. Today is the last day that any major carrier will keep its middle seats empty.
CNN's Pete Muntean has more from Reagan National Airport.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The newest changes to pandemic air travel will make it look more like before the pandemic. Delta Air Lines will resume selling middle seats starting Saturday, a move made by all other major carriers months ago.
RANJAN GOSWAMI, VICE PRESIDENT, IN-FLIGHT FIELD OPERATIONS, DELTA AIR LINES: It is safe to get back out there, to go out into the world and see folks in your life.
MUNTEAN: Ranjan Goswami heads Delta's in-flight operations. Its latest estimate, almost 75 percent of Delta passengers have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
MUNTEAN: The vaccination rate is really helping. We know our customers are feeling confident about it or they wouldn't be booking in such large numbers.
MUNTEAN: Airlines said they could not continue capping capacity without a serious increase in fares. But the latest modelling from the CDC says leaving middle seats empty reduces the risk of coronavirus exposure by as much as 57 percent. but the airline industry slammed the modelling for not considering vaccines or the impact of masks, now mandated on planes by the Biden administration.
Harvard University found masks and heavily filtered air on board makes coronavirus transmission rates very low, regardless of where you sit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the many things together at the same time do greatly reduce the risk of air travel, and in particular, provides a safe opportunity for people given the ventilation, given the wearing of masks, given the disinfection on the planes, given the individual and personal hygiene attention that does allow for that middle seat to be occupied.
MUNTEAN: Industry groups think flying will look more like normal as more people get vaccinated. Some airlines are now bringing back in- flight food and drink service, something flight attendants fear could blur the message.
SARA NELSON, ASSOCIATION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS: As these policies are going away and we're seeing fuller aircraft, it is more important than ever that we are vigilant about those mask policies.
MUNTEAN: New ideas to bring passengers back are coming from all corners of the aviation industry. Plane maker Airbus envisions a future of seats arranged in pandemic-friendly pods. This design from the University of Cincinnati imagines a productivity class, part plane, part coffee house.
ALEJANDRO LOZANO ROBLEDO, UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI: I'm excited, you know, to see the future of where some of these ideas might take us and what the industry might go in the future. So every crisis can also be an opportunity.
MUNTEAN: Delta says capping capacity on board cost it $100 million in March. That's when spring break air travel started to surge. And the numbers remain high. The TSA screened more than a million and a half people at airports across the country just yesterday, near that pandemic record.
[08:45:01]
John.
BERMAN: Pete Muntean, terrific reporting on all of this, as always.
I have to say, like, the filled middle seat, pandemic aside, you know, never a welcome thing. But thank you for that.
A brand new CNN poll shows 44 percent of Republicans will not try to get the coronavirus vaccine. So what's behind the resistance and what does it mean for the whole population?
John Avlon with a "Reality Check."
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right.
Look, while there's still no cure for COVID, the good news is that over 237 million vaccine doses have been given out in America. The bad news is that there's no cure for stupid, which is another way of saying that over a quarter of Americans have decided not to get a shot. And what's worse is that most of these folks are much more willing to return to regular activity. Yep, they're refusing to get vaccines but can't wait to mingle in close crowds.
Now, on the one hand, the people they're most likely to hurt are themselves, so you might say if they want to compete for the Darwin Awards, that's up to them. But we're trying to stamp out a pandemic here, one that's killed more than 575,000 Americans. And it's not over yet. So their denial will have real costs for the rest of us, beyond the predictable Ted Nugent trajectory of denial and diagnosis.
Now, it might not surprise you to learn these folks are far from confident in the government health officials and far less likely to have a college degree. The anti-science impulse breaks down along partisan lines as well with 44 percent of Republicans saying they're not going to get the vaccine, that's compared to 28 percent of independents and just 8 percent of Democrats.
Look, politics -- pandemics don't care about partisan politics, people. But I've got to say that opposing mask mandates and refusing to get a vaccine is a special kind of self-defeating stupid. So where are people getting this stuff? We know the anti-vaxer
conspiracy theories have been proliferating online, but it doesn't help that when people with major platforms feed that beast. Like Spotify's $100 million man, Joe Rogan. He played footsie with anti-vax impulses by saying that healthy, young people shouldn't get the vaccine, despite the fact that more young people are being hospitalized with these new variants.
Yesterday, Rogan attempted some clean-up with the, don't listen to me, I'm just an entertainer defense.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE ROGAN: I'm not a doctor. I'm not a respected source of information, even for me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: That sounded a lot like Fox News lawyers who convinced a judge that Tucker Carlson's audience doesn't actually expect to hear facts from him.
Here's the thing, you're responsible for what you say when the microphone's on. And the more people who refuse to get the vaccine, the more likely it is we won't be able to get the virus completely under control.
Yes, we've made real progress. Many places are getting back to something resembling normal, precisely because the vaccines are working.
But we're not out of the woods yet. And declaring mission accomplished before the job is done is a recipe for disaster. Just look at the horror show in India right now. In January, Prime Minister Modi declared victory over COVID and persisted with large political rallies. Now that country is in crisis with mutant variants ravaging the countries, one model predicting close to a million deaths by August.
So don't get complacent. Listen to science, not superstition. If you want life to return to normal, do your part and get a vaccine.
And that's your "Reality Check."
KEILAR: John Avlon, thank you so much for that.
AVLON: You got it.
KEILAR: Next, what a year this week has been.
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[08:52:40]
BERMAN: From raids, to rants, what a year this week has been. Let's recap. President Joe Biden spends his 100th day in office.
KEILAR: He marks it by giving his first joint address to Congress with history playing out in the seats behind him.
BERMAN: He proposes nearly $2 trillion more in spending, a proposal that would transform America.
KEILAR: A Republican senator delivers the rebuttal saying the U.S. is not a racist country.
BERMAN: Apocalyptic scenes out of India where coronavirus is exposing, leaving people to die in the streets.
KEILAR: And back home, states resume the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after a pause.
BERMAN: A pause likely adding to hesitancy among America as supply start to outweigh demand.
KEILAR: It's not helped by celebrities like Joe Rogan, who calls himself a moron for using anti-vax rhetoric on his podcast.
BERMAN: Vaccine passports becoming real as inoculated Americans will be allowed to take European vacation this summer.
KEILAR: And the CDC says, if you're vaccinated, don't worry about the masks outdoors.
BERMAN: America's comeback is confirmed as the economy grew at its best pace in nearly 20 years.
KEILAR: And the FBI raiding Rudy Giuliani's home and his office, escalating the criminal investigation into Donald Trump's former attorney.
BERMAN: The number of arrests from the Capitol insurrection crossing 400.
KEILAR: The Justice Department releasing new video of the attack on the officer who later died after the riots.
BERMAN: One of the officers who survived condemned right wingers who are trying to whitewash what happened.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OFFICER MICHAEL FRANONE, DEFENDED THE CAPITOL ON JANUARY 6TH: I want people to understand that, you know, thousands of rioters came to the Capitol hell bent on violence and destruction and murder.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Now lawyers for the guy who sat at Nancy Pelosi's desk say that he called her a b-atch (ph) instead of a bitch, as if there's a difference. BERMAN: The man accused of trying to kidnap Michigan's governor now face weapons of mass destruction charges.
KEILAR: Another black man is killed by police as his family fights to get the body camera video released.
BERMAN: Three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery while he was jogging now face hate crime charges.
KEILAR: And the bad blood intensifies between Republicans and Liz Cheney as she mulls a presidential run.
BERMAN: The riot amplifying blatant lies about Kamala Harris, books and hamburgers.
KEILAR: And Vladimir Putin's foe, Alexey Navalny, appearing in court for the first time since nearly dying of a hunger strike.
BERMAN: Israel facing several nights of rocket fire from Gaza.
[08:55:02]
KEILAR: Word of a potential energy attack on U.S. soil near the White House.
BERMAN: The scandal surrounding Andrew Cuomo intensifies as "The New York Times" reports his aides went to greater lengths to hide nursing home deaths.
KEILAR: And the recall efforts around Gavin Newsom in California get enough signatures.
BERMAN: James Carville says the Democrats have a wokeness problem.
KEILAR: The census numbers reveal the second slowest rate of population growth ever.
And a cheerleaders "f" bomb rant lands her before the Supreme Court.
BERMAN: Oscar ratings hit a new low while the Patriots once again win, win, win, drafting a terrific quarterback without giving up a single draft pick.
KEILAR: And no one's more excited about that than John Berman.
Billionaires battling middle school style as Elon Musk trolls Jeff Bezos for losing out on a space contract, saying he, quote, can't get it up.
And that is the week that was. Whoo.
BERMAN: Yes, what a year this week has been, truly.
KEILAR: Right? Oh, my goodness.
BERMAN: So, as the vaccine rollout continues and parts of the U.S. loosen restrictions, in some communities school re-openings are still in flux. As a result, many parents remain in a difficult position. That's where CNN Hero Jennifer Maddox steps in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNIFER MADDOX, CNN HERO: We don't want them making the choice, me earning a living versus my child getting an education. What type of choice is that?
Good morning.
If they have to go back to work, we are available for them to bring their kids everyday so that they can go to work.
That one's yours.
We provide them with a safe space, making sure they are online every morning, on-time, making sure that they are in class, they're engaged and able to complete their assignments.
OK. There we go.
We try to make sure that our doors stayed open, that we were constantly staying involved and connected with the young people because they were really struggling trying to cope through COVID.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: To see the full story on Jennifer's work, go to cnnheroes.com.
KEILAR: Such important work indeed.
And CNN's coverage continues, next.
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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Friday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto. Poppy has the day off.
Two of former President Trump's closest allies involved now in two major federal investigations, And this morning, news on both.
In a letter obtained by "The Daily Beast," Joel Greenberg, a central figure in the ongoing investigation into Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, writes that Gaetz paid for sex with multiple women, note this, including with a minor who was 17 years old at the time.
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