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New Day
Secretary of State Antony Blinken Says The Biden Administration Will Respond If Russia "Acts Aggressively". A New Jersey Man Stranded In India As The Country Is Surging In COVID-19; Former President Trump Continuing To Be Blacked From Facebook, The Oversight Board Confirmed. Officer Fanone Who Guarded The Capitol During The Riots Is Demanding He And His Fellow Officers Be Recognized For Their Actions. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired May 06, 2021 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00]
HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Last week. And this is something that I think is very interesting, that is the people who are not likely to get the vaccine are the least likely to social distance at this point versus those who've been fully vaccinated 65 percent, those partially or likely to vaccinate 73. And so this is the big divide which is if you're not likely to vaccinate you're actually far more likely to go out, which is kind of scary a little bit.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: It's like I'm not really interested in doing much to help. It's like that's the statement being made.
ENTEN: They don't believe the science. I mean, let's just state for what it is. They don't believe the science. They're willing to go out there even though they're not vaccinate basically saying, screw it, we don't care what exactly we do to hurt people.
BERMAN: Harry Enten thank you for being with us.
ENTEN: Thank you sir.
BERMAN: So coming up a Capitol police officer slamming lawmakers for whitewashing the violence he experienced first hand during the insurrection.
Plus one alleged rioter now facing charges thanks to his gossiping grandmother.
[06:30:50]
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[06:35:10]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL FANONE, CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER: I experienced a group of individuals that were trying to kill me to accomplish, you know, their goal. And I think that -- sorry Don. Man I didn't think I'd get this emotional.
I experienced the most brutal, savage, hand-to-hand combat of my entire life, let alone my policing career, which spans almost two decades.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: That was police officer Michael Fanone telling CNN last week about the emotional and the physical trauma that he and his fellow officers suffered during the insurrection on the Capitol.
Officer Fanone has now written and open letter to all elected officials in the U.S. demanding they fully recognize officers and their actions and slamming those who continue to downplay the riot.
CNN's Whitney Wild joins us now.
His is a fascinating perspective. You can see how much he is still so affected by what happened.
WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: And I think these stories are so important to tell because sometimes, you know, words seem like they're just going out into the universe with no impact. And this shows that there were real people who were impacted by these words and we can never forget that when we're talking about this January 6 riot.
Officer Fanone was beaten and electrocuted by the mob numerous times and he actually experienced a heart attack as a result of that. In this open letter he writes that he is still grappling with the effects of that day.
Writing in part, "I also struggle with the anxiety of hearing those who continue to downplay the events of that day and those who would ignore them all together with their lack of acknowledgment. The indifference shown to my colleagues and I is a disgrace."
Fanone did not name anyone directly but some members of Congress as well as former President Donald Trump have sought to minimize the viciousness of that riot. Brianna?
KEILAR: And there's a new suspect, right? A New Jersey man who is now facing charges after pretty interesting way that led to this.
WILD: The gossip circle.
KEILAR: The gossip circle.
WILD: Circles right back to the FBI.
KEILAR: It's never good. Although apparently here it was.
WILD: So here's what happened. So, his mother was actually speaking with family friend, discussing his role in the January 6 riot saying he was there. The family friend's granddaughter caught wind of this, took that information to the FBI.
And as we know, this was one of the most documented massive crimes in history. And so the FBI was able to use surveillance video and other methods to identify this person. He's now facing a list of charges, Brianna. We have not seen and has (ph) not reached out to his attorney, but his attorney declined to speak with the New Jersey outlet on Tuesday.
So this actually represents what we've seen a lot, which is gossip getting back to the FBI and then that resulting in charges. So, it's amazing people want to brag about having committed crimes, but here we are.
KEILAR: That's right. They're proud of it, it seems in some cases, you know, perhaps this one as well. Whitney thank you so much for that.
Conservatives claim that they're being silenced but right winged hosts are actually dominating American social media feeds. We'll have a fact check next.
[06:38.20]
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[06:42:20]
BERMAN: The Facebook Oversight Board confirmed that the social media company can keep blocking former President Donald Trump from using his platform for now.
Conservative critics are screaming that this about silencing conservative voices.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS FAULKNER, FOX ANCHOR: The silencing of conservatives online continues as Facebook gets the green light to keep blocking President Trump's account for now.
BILL HEMMER, FOX NEWS HOST: Given (ph) --
SANDRA SMITH, FOX NEWS HOST: What do you think the vote was?
HEMMER: -- I don't know that was. I mean, it might have been 19 nothing. I --
SMITH: I don't know.
HEMMER: -- given the woke wave in America, who thinks they're going to decide otherwise?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This story is much bigger than just one person. It's about tech oligarchs manipulating the political conversation and debate. PETE HEGSETH, FOX ANCHOR: Fox News alert, a bunch of left wing journalists, activists and lawyers don't like Trump. Didn't see that one coming.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: That was delivered really cleverly there.
Joining us now to discuss, CNN's Senior Media Reporter Oliver Darcy. Oliver, look I actually think there are very legitimate questions --
OLIVER DARCY, CNN SENIOR MEDIA REPORTER: Yes.
BERMAN: -- about the social media companies and how they deal with dangerous speech and other things going forward. However, if their goal is to silence conservative voices they've been doing a really bad job of it.
DARCY: Yes John, what you just played is actually pretty standard fair in right wing media. These conservatives believe and have believed for some time that platforms like Facebook, like Twitter are biased against them, that they hate free speech, that they're censoring conservative voices. But like you point out, the data doesn't really bear that out.
For one, there's no data that shows that these platforms are systemically biased against conservatives, but if you dig deeper in it actually shows quite the opposite. There's a list that goes out every single day from the "New York Times'" Kevin Roose and it shows the top 10 most performed -- performing links on Facebook.
And every single day if you look at that list it's dominated by right wing commentators. Folks like Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, Sean Hannity, they dominate this list. And so look, if you're not inciting insurrections, if you're not saying COVID is fake you can do quite well on these platforms as a conservative.
We talk about Trump being no longer allowed on this platform. That does not mean that Trumpism isn't allowed on this platform. It's actually doing quite well.
BERMAN: Nine out of the top 10 shared links there were from the right. So, the idea that they're being silenced on social media just doesn't bear out. The facts just simply don't bear that out. Nevertheless, after the Facebook, which again I -- look, I've got a lot of issues with Facebook. But after the Facebook decision those facts that we just talked about it didn't keep people quite on the right.
DARCY: No, and if you look at what's going on in conservative media, John, it's a lot of sanitizing of the Capitol -- the Capitol riots, the January 6 insurrection.
[06:45:00]
They don't want to talk about Trump's role in that and what happened on that day. They'd much rather portray Trump as the victim despite him using Facebook, using these platforms to incite this riot. They'd rather portray him as the victim for being booted from the platforms for the role he played.
BERMAN: Oliver Darcy great to see you. Be very close to you, not too close, but somewhat close to you. Great to see you.
So Secretary Blinken sitting down with America's critical allies in Ukraine. What he just said about the U.S. response to Russian aggression.
KEILAR: Plus a New Jersey man stranded in India as the country records the highest daily surge in coronavirus cases every. His story coming up.
[06:45:45]
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[06:49:45]
KEILAR: This morning Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterating U.S. support for Ukraine while meeting with President Zelensky and other leaders.
Blinken says the Biden administration will respond if Russia, quote, "acts aggressively."
CNN's Matthew Chance is live for us in Kiev with the latest. Matthew?
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brianna thanks very much. Well there's been a joint press conference, been under way for the past few minutes or so between Antony Blinken the U.S. Secretary of State and Volodymyr Zelensky who's the Ukrainian president.
[06:50:15]
They've, you know, sort of exchanged thanks for each other for the invitation and for actually being here. And President Zelensky extended an invitation for the U.S. President Joe Biden to come at some point in the near future to Ukraine on a state visit.
And, you know, the Secretary of State underlining the reason he's here, which you said, which is to show that there is support in the Biden administration for Ukrainian sovereignty. All of that, of course, as Ukraine faces a conflict in the east of the country where it's fighting Russian-backed rivals.
It faces a direct confrontation threat as well from Russia, which has been building up its forces toward the east of (inaudible) eastern borders in western Russia and building up its naval forces as well on the eastern seaboard of Ukraine.
Secretary Biden (sic) is saying that for the moment it seems that Russian forces have been drawing down in some areas, but they could ration up again at any time. The big question, of course when it comes to this meeting, is what kind of support. I mean, they're saying they're supporting Ukraine, but what kind of support, what level of support are the United States prepared to offer Ukraine?
Of course, the Ukrainians have got a whole list of, you know, of demands -- or not demands, but of things they would like to see from Washington. They want to see support for the country to join NATO, the Western Military Alliance. They want military technology weapons so they can fight that war and money as well. Very expensive undertaking to prosecute that very costly war in the east of the country. Brianna?
KEILAR: All right Matthew, thank you so much for that update from Ukraine for us.
The out of control rocket debris, we've been talking about this. We talked about this yesterday. Well, it is still barreling toward earth. What the Defense Department is now saying about where this headed.
BERMAN: Plus Liz Cheney refusing to go down without a fight. Her warning to Republicans as she faces a vote to remove her from leadership.
[06:52:00]
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[06:56:10]
BERMAN: So it is not yet Mother's Day weekend, but it almost is. Consider yourself reminded. You have no more excuses.
What will the weather be for this weekend? Chad Myers now joins us with a look at the forecast. Chad?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well I think we got rid of a lot of the rain over the past couple of days John. So it's going to be fairly dry and fairly nice. The Midwest will have some rain, but all of Northeast will be very, very pleasant. Temperatures right now in the 50s. This is about where we should be over the next couple of days.
This weather is brought to you by Carvana, the new way to buy a car.
So here you go. Here's the rain we're talking about. Not getting really up into the Northeast until last Sunday night, that's the good news. Below normal temperatures, open up the windows in the morning let the cool air in and then sunshine throughout the day.
It will stay below average for a lot of the weekend though. Temperatures even in New York on Sunday only 62. But with the sunshine it's going to feel better than that if you're standing there in the sun.
Farther to the south we will see the potential for some very warm weather, especially along the Gulf Coast. And if you haven't heard about this, a Chinese rocket could possibly fall on Mother's Day. Don't get excited. But this is an uncontrolled release of a rocket that's going to fall
back to earth. It's losing altitude. It's going to hit and skip off the atmosphere and eventually lose altitude and go back to the earth.
Now why don't we know where it's going to go? Because it is uncontrolled. It's just up there spinning around, moving at 18,000 miles per hour. So, if we miss it by 30 minutes, we've missed by 9,000 miles. Here's what the paths have looked like over the past couple of days. That's where they're continuing here to be from about 41 north to 41 south.
And yes, we have some big cities in there, but there's a lot of stuff to miss. A lot of oceans and a lot of empty land in between.
So, we'll watch it, but it's just kind of a wiz bang thing, an uncontrolled -- not a failure. They actually planned this to fall out of the sky. It's about 30 tons. A pretty big object (inaudible).
BERMAN: I think I have memories of that chart of path from a Grateful Dead concert in the '90s, Chad. Look, the Pentagon --
MYERS: Oh (ph) --
BERMAN: -- the Pentagon said overnight that is not going to try to shoot down this rocket --
MYERS: Correct.
BERMAN: -- as it comes back in the atmosphere. That may be because they saw a "Deep Impact" and they know from "Deep Impact" --
KEILAR: John Berman loves that movie.
BERMAN: -- that it doesn't work. No, "Armageddon" is better than "Deep Impact," but --
KEILAR: You're on the record. We know this.
BERMAN: -- they tried to shoot it down with ICBMs, an asteroid, not a rocket, and it did work. So I don't know if that influenced the decision.
MYERS: Correct. Hey John, that was fiction. I don't know if you -- you know, just balancing out fiction and non-fiction and certainly this isn't as big.
BERMAN: But there's nothing you do, right?
KEILAR: Those --
BERMAN: At this point it's going to land --
MYERS: Yes.
KEILAR: -- those orbital paths, look at that orbital path is like -- that's like a horror movie though. I mean, they've got everything covered. But I guess the point is we shouldn't be too worried, as you said. Thank God.
MYERS: Right. I mean a similar rocket fell in 2020 and it landed in the Ivory Coast area here, so it would have taken that path right there. They did find pieces of debris on the ground, didn't hit anybody or hurt anyone.
And certainly there are big enough pieces in this rocket to make it all the way to land. But look at the amount of land we have to hit and the amount of water, the Pacific Ocean is very big, let's hope it hits there. Not Hawaii --
BERMAN: Chad Myers --
MYERS: -- but in the water.
BERMAN: Chad, we appreciate it. Thanks for playing Chad. New Day continues right now.
I'm John Berman in New York alongside Brianna Keilar in Washington on this New Day. Naming names, a blistering counterattack from Congresswoman Liz Cheney urging fellow Republicans to abandon Trump to save democracy.
KEILAR: And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pledging to stop President Biden's policies at every turn. So what happened to bipartisanship?
BERMAN: At top cabinet official responding to conflict of interest claims tied to the president's $1 trillion infrastructure plan.
KEILAR: And our liberal.
