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Award-Winning Political Journalist Edward-Isaac Dovere Discusses His New Book; Testing Positive After Vaccinated: What Yankees Outbreak Means; Chicago Mayor Only Granting Interviews To Black And Brown Reporters. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired May 20, 2021 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:30:00]
PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR (via Cisco Webex): I think they've laid down a marker for what will be a shift inside the Democratic Party.
It's worth remembering that during the -- from the 1950s to the 1970s to the 1980s, even people like Ronald Reagan regularly conditioned American military to Israel on changes to Israeli behavior when they thought that Israeli behavior was violating American values or American interests.
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is pushing this interest back -- issue back to the floor and I think it will eventually become a mainstream Democratic position that U.S. money should not be used, for instance, to demolish housing and homes or to imprison Palestinian children. It's just not consistent with the principles that progressive Democrats believe in.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Peter Beinart, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
BEINART: Thank you.
KEILAR: Police are calling her a hero. An 11-year-old girl fighting off an attacker at a bus stop.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And a new book revealing what first lady Jill Biden thought about Kamala Harris -- her debate attacks. It involves a certain "f" word -- as if there are many different "f" words. I'll just acknowledge that for a second.
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[07:35:08]
KEILAR: A new book is shedding light on the moment when then-Sen. Kamala Harris attacked Joe Biden for his record on bussing during the Democratic debates.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I do not believe you are a racist and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground. But I also believe -- and it is personal and it was actually very -- it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.
Do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose bussing in America?
JOE BIDEN (D), THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well --
HARRIS: Do you agree?
BIDEN: -- I did not oppose bussing in America. What I opposed is bussing ordered by the Department of Education. That's what I opposed. I did not oppose --
HARRIS: Well, there's a failure of states to integrate --
BIDEN: No, but --
HARRIS: -- public schools in America. I was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley, California public schools almost two decades after Brown v. Board of Education.
BIDEN: Because your City Council made that decision. It was a local decision.
HARRIS: So that's where the federal government must step in.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: According to the book, "Biden leaned over to Pete Buttigieg at the podium to his right. They barely knew other each, but Biden was looking for someone to share the moment with. 'Well,' he said, 'That was some f-ing B.S.'"
And Jill Biden, the future first lady, following suit by telling a group of supporters a week later, quote, "With what he cares about, what he fights for, what he's committed to, you get up there and call him a racist without basis? Go "f" yourself."
Joining us now, Edward-Isaac Dovere, who is a staff writer for "The Atlantic" and the author of this book. It's new and it's titled "Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump." That is coming out next Tuesday.
I mean, not surprisingly here, Isaac, Jill Biden took this personally.
EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC, AUTHOR, "BATTLE FOR THE SOUL: INSIDE THE DEMOCRATS' CAMPAIGNS TO DEFEAT TRUMP": Yes, and thanks for having me, Brianna.
This was obviously probably the biggest moment of the primary campaign. It was something that Jill Biden and Joe Biden took very personally. They were very angry about it and that comes across, obviously, in the language that I report them having in the book.
But it was throughout and it lasted for a long time. It lasted through when they were deciding what the running mate process was going to look like. It was -- it left a mark.
And they have gotten over it since, obviously. They've been elected and they're serving together and working together well. But at that moment, it was incredibly, incredibly rough.
BERMAN: This book has a ton of headlines in it. And, yes, what you just reported there I think maybe the splashiest because of all the potty mouths involved there.
But to me, some of the most deeply interesting stuff that I hadn't read before was about former President Obama. Lots of new stuff there, including how he went from trying to project cool about Trump's election to kind of disbelief pretty quickly, Isaac.
DOVERE: Yes. And by the way, if you're interested in cursing, there are a lot of people cursing in the book in lots of ways. There are a lot of --
BERMAN: Thank God.
DOVERE: -- passionate moments during the Trump years among Democrats, including from President Obama himself.
What I think you see in the way that President Obama reacted to President Trump's election and then to his presidency is a process that was going on for Democrats overall of at first thinking OK, well, maybe this will be OK -- we won't have so much to object to -- to very quickly changing and getting more and more worried about it.
You see, for example, in the book there's a quote from Ben Rhodes, one of Obama's closest advisers, who says that Trump's election made him feel -- made Obama feel like there was more racism in the country than he had actually realized and that he had to deal with it more.
He -- Rhodes said to me that Obama had been like Jackie Robinson, knowing that people were heckling him but ignoring it. And he then -- once he saw what Trump was like, even during the transition, had gotten much darker about it and was no longer able to ignore it in that same way.
KEILAR: It's almost like -- it's like a moment of personal crisis. I think that's part of what makes it so interesting in the wake of Trump's election.
One of the things that you report in this book is that President Obama initially wanted retired Adm. Bill McRaven to run for the presidency. Is that right?
DOVERE: Well look, there -- the Democrats were, from very early on in the Trump presidency, thinking who is going to run in 2020. Who is going to run against him? And there's a moment where Obama is with a couple of aides on a small
plane -- private plane -- and it's in December of 2017. And they're sort of playing a game like a lot of people were. OK, who do you think it could be?
And Obama says OK, who do you want it to be in your head, who do you want it to be in heart, and who do you think could win? And his choice for his head is Bill McRaven, the commander of the Navy SEAL raid that killed bin Laden. The choice in his heart is Joe Biden. And then, the who can win, he doesn't know.
[07:40:06]
Obviously, McRaven didn't run, but there were a lot of people who were thinking maybe he would -- he would be an interesting candidate. He, for health reasons, pulled back from even some of the work that he was doing.
But, Biden was always in Obama's heart and somebody that he loved, but he was skeptical throughout how Biden would do as a candidate.
BERMAN: Look, I was genuinely surprised in your reporting. It's always great when you can read these books and be surprised by things you just didn't know.
I did not know how politically active Barack Obama was behind the scenes during the Trump presidency and how many different things he was sort of involved in.
So you write that after Trump fired Jeff Sessions as attorney general, Obama reached out to George W. Bush about putting out a statement in support of the Mueller investigation -- or at least their teams talked. I mean, what exactly went on here?
DOVERE: Well, you have to remember that moment, right? It's right after the Democrats do really well in the midterms in 2018 and then Trump fires Jeff Sessions -- there is a panic. How far is this going to go? Is this going to be another Saturday Night Massacre? And already, Obama and his team had been concerned about the path that this might take and they thought do we have to protect Mueller?
And an idea started being talked about among some of Obama's advisers to maybe say OK, get a letter together -- a statement together with George Bush and say here's a Republican president and here's Democratic president. We both had hired this guy to be FBI director. Obama had extended his term. He started under Bush and hired under Bush. And to put a statement like that together.
It never got to the level of Obama calling Bush actually for it but there was some testing of the waters among the Obama folks with Bush folks to see if they'd be interested. There was not interest. Bush has been very clear that he doesn't want to be involved in politics or anything else, and that was the sense that he gave them then.
KEILAR: You also report -- and, of course, look, a lot of Democrats attribute Biden's primary win in South Carolina to the fact that he was endorsed by Congressman Jim Clyburn, right?
DOVERE: Yes.
KEILAR: Such a key endorsement there.
DOVERE: Definitely.
KEILAR: But you write that he nearly didn't get it. I want to read part of this.
"Clyburn was ready, but then came the fourth- and fifth-place finishes and word came back to the PAC from one of the people working with Clyburn: 'He's not going to try to rehab a corpse.'"
DOVERE: Yes.
KEILAR: He -- did he think of endorsing someone else, and how did he come, ultimately, to his decision?
DOVERE: Well, you have to remember that Joe Biden is the president now. It worked out for him in the end.
And so, we can forget how bad things were in January and February of 2020 when he -- it was a disastrous finish in the Iowa caucuses. It was worse in the New Hampshire primary. It was so bad in the New Hampshire primary that he let New Hampshire early and went to South Carolina. So he wasn't there on the night when the votes were actually being counted.
Jim Clyburn was looking at this. He likes Biden. He's always like Biden personally.
He thought that Biden was the best choice to beat Trump and had the best chance of doing it. But he looked at those results and he thought I can't -- even though I want to endorse him, I can't put my weight behind him if he's not going to be there himself.
It was Biden's finish in the Nevada caucuses where he came in second -- far back from Bernie Sanders but still a strong enough finish -- that convinced Clyburn there is a way back here that made Clyburn come out and come out forcefully for Biden.
There was some interest in looking at other options because Clyburn was pretty clear that he did not think that --
KEILAR: Like who? Any -- like who?
DOVERE: Well, it's in the book. There was some feeling that --
KEILAR: Read the book to find out.
DOVERE: There was one particular meeting that happened in there. But what you see with Clyburn is a very deliberate move to be important and to have a role here, which he definitely did. You see all the way to the -- to Biden's inauguration. George Bush, himself, said to Clyburn that he was the one who made the difference in getting Biden elected.
BERMAN: And again, there are new things in this book. If people read this book they will learn stuff they simply did not know.
We talked -- again, the biggest headlines may be about Vice President Kamala Harris, who was Biden's second choice here. And in the end -- and I was really struck by this, reading that Obama actually played a little bit of a role here in helping tip the scales towards Kamala Harris.
DOVERE: Yes. And to go back to what we were talking about with Kamala Harris in the beginning, one of the things that Biden was thinking about very much in picking his running mate was that he wanted to have the relationship with his running mate that he had with Barack Obama. They grew very close. Their families grew close over the years in the administration together -- those eight years -- and he wanted to recreate that.
The reason why the debate moment mattered is because Biden -- he had sort of moved on from it and forgiven Harris for it, but he was worried that might stand in the way of getting that kind of close relationship that he wanted.
[07:45:00]
And so, one of the conversation strands that he was having was with Obama, who was an adviser to him throughout the primaries and then definitely through the general election and in the running mate process.
And Obama says to him at one point you have to remember we didn't start out all that close. And, in fact, if you go back to 2009 at this point in the Obama-Biden White House, they were not getting along that well but it grew over time to a brotherly relationship. So that was Obama's piece of that.
But as far as other candidates, Biden was very drawn to Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and connected with her personally. He connected with her politically. They sort of lined up in a lot of ways.
And he had her -- it leaked a little bit at the time that she flew out secretly to meet with him at his beach house in Delaware. She was one of the rare candidates who there was an in-person interview with for the running mate process.
BERMAN: So interesting.
Michelle Obama -- she spoke at the convention as it were -- the virtual convention -- but not much else on the campaign trail. Why?
DOVERE: Well, not anything else at all, actually, right?
BERMAN: Right.
DOVERE: It was a very powerful speech. It was a recorded speech if you remember, that had been taped about a week earlier.
She was in a deep funk about the Trump presidency. She was depressed about what it meant for America. She was depressed about the possibility that Trump might be reelected. And it was so much that she was turning down requests to show up on the trail.
Democrats, for years -- and I've reported on this before when she was first lady -- have been always desperate to have her out on the trail. She is a powerful, powerful surrogate. And she was not there because she felt like she couldn't bring herself to do it.
BERMAN: As I said, chock full of new information. The book, "Battle for the Soul" is out. Go get it. Order your copy.
Isaac, wonderful work. Thanks so much for joining us and humoring us this morning talking about all these nuggets. Thank you.
DOVERE: Thanks to both of you for having me.
KEILAR: He really does have the goods in this book. Isaac, thanks for being with us.
DOVERE: Thank you.
BERMAN: All right.
Actress Salma Hayek revealing in a new interview that she nearly died from COVID. Her harrowing survival story, next.
KEILAR: Plus, experts say a coronavirus outbreak in the fully vaccinated Yankees clubhouse is actually proof of the vaccine's effectiveness. Dr. Sanjay Gupta will explain.
BERMAN: And Chicago's mayor is vowing to only take interviews, for a time, from Black and brown reporters. We'll discuss.
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[07:51:46]
KEILAR: Now here are five things to know to start your new day.
President Biden has formed a task force to reunite children seized at the border under the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy. At least 391 migrant children remain separated from their families this morning. That is down from 445 because just last month, 54 children were reunited with their families.
BERMAN: Chilling surveillance video captures the moment an 11-year- old girl in Florida saved her own life by fighting off a man trying to kidnap her from her bus stop. The victim says this is her second encounter with him. The suspect is being held on bond.
KEILAR: And for the first time, Colonial Pipeline's CEO admits to authorizing a $4 million ransom to cyber hacks that -- cyber hackers that forced the company to shut down its operations causing chaos at gas stations across the southeast. Joseph Blount telling "The Wall Street Journal" that making this payment was the right thing to do for the country.
BERMAN: Actress Salma Hayek revealing she had a near-fatal case of COVID. She tells "Variety" she got the virus early on and spent seven weeks in self-isolation. At one point, she was put on oxygen. Hayek refused to go to the hospital for treatment, telling her doctor she would rather die at home.
KEILAR: And a royal jab. Prince William revealing he received his first dose of the COVID vaccine. The prince contracted COVID himself last year.
BERMAN: All right. Very sadly, New York Yankees pitcher Corey Kluber tossed a no-hitter last night. It is the sixth no-hitter in the Majors this year. See what happens when you un-juice the baseball?
In recent days, though, the Yankees have been in the news for other reasons. At least nine Yankees players and staff have tested positive for coronavirus despite being vaccinated. But as Dr. Sanjay Gupta tells us, that is proof positive the vaccines are actually working.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AARON BOONE, MANAGER, NEW YORK YANKEES: I just wanted to share that we've had another positive test.
MLB ANNOUNCER: Judge, he scores.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nine members of the Yankees organization have tested positive for COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. But these so-called breakthrough cases don't necessarily mean game over.
DR. COSTI SIFRI, INFECTIOUS DISEASE PHYSICIAN AND HOSPITAL EPIDEMIOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: The Johnson & Johnson vaccine does work. It's preventing serious infections in those staff and players with the Yankees, so the vaccine has done its job.
GUPTA (voice-over): Dr. Costi Sifri, an infectious disease physician at the University of Virginia, says breakthrough cases, which are infections after full vaccination, are to be expected.
SIFRI: Those infections that occur -- these so-called breakthrough infections, importantly were for the most part, very mild infections -- mild to moderate infections.
GUPTA (voice-over): Expected but still uncommon, according to CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: Finally, we know that in the rare event that people get infected after a vaccine, the resulting infection is more like to have a lower viral load, be shorter in duration, and likely less risky of transmission to others. GUPTA (voice-over): As of late April, the CDC had reported fewer than 10,000 breakthrough cases, and that was out of 95 million fully vaccinated Americans.
[07:55:03]
In fact, the reason the Yankees cases were caught was because the Utah lab that was once used to test for doping by MLB players now only tests for COVID-19. They can even identify which variants are actually causing those infections.
GUPTA (on camera): You call it the alternative variant analysis. What does that mean exactly?
DR. DANIEL EICHNER, PRESIDENT, THE SPORTS MEDICINE RESEARCH AND TESTING LABORATORY: Through our variant analysis program, that will specifically look for the certain region on the virus that we know that mutations are indicative of -- the different variants that are known.
BRIAN CASHMAN, GENERAL MANAGER, NEW YORK YANKEES: Ultimately, I believe the variant that we're dealing with is -- has been pretty aggressive.
GUPTA (voice-over): Understanding which variants are circulating in the United States is especially critical now that many Americans are taking off their masks.
SIFRI: I think this cluster of positive tests is predictable as you ease social distancing and mask-wearing and this is probably at the core of why some people feel -- felt very uncomfortable or uneasy with CDC's relaxed guidance.
GUPTA (voice-over): Variant or not, Sifri still believes that what's important to remember is the vaccine is saving lives. And as the country opens back you can expect to see breakthrough cases as part of our post-pandemic world.
SIFRI: These vaccines have converted what was once a deadly disease for nearly 600,000 people in the United States to something that is a mild infection at best.
GUPTA (voice-over): Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: Our thanks to Sanjay for that.
So, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot facing criticism for her decision to grant one-on-one interviews with only minority journalists to commemorate her second anniversary in office.
In a letter to City Hall -- Chicago City Hall reporter, she wrote, "There are only a handful of beat reporters of color in the City Hall press corps. There are zero women of color assigned to the City Hall beat -- zero. I find this unacceptable and I hope you do, too. It is impossible for this glaring lack of diversity not to be reflected in the daily coverage of government, politics, and city life every single day."
Joining me now is Lynn Sweet. She is the Washington bureau chief for the "Chicago Sun-Times" and a longtime member of the Chicago Press Corps.
So what's going on here, Lynn?
LYNN SWEET, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES (via Cisco Webex): Well, John, I just want to say from the beginning, I am not troubled by this. I've been part of the Chicago press corps for a long, long time and Lori Lightfoot did not say anything that we did not know.
So what's going on, John? For one day, she's trying to shake everybody up and shine a spotlight on the lack of diversity in the City Hall press corps.
John, I mean, I keep a foot in City Hall politics as well as covering Washington and the White House. Now, I can, within an hour, be on the phone with someone from Capitol Hill, the White House, and City Hall, so I know what Lightfoot's talking about. Chicago is a very diverse city when newsrooms are not.
BERMAN: So, Gregory Pratt, who is with the "Chicago Tribune" -- this is how he responded. He says, "I am a Latino reporter at the Chicago Tribune whose interview request was granted for today. However, I asked the mayor's office to lift its condition on others and when they said no, we respectfully canceled. Politicians don't get to choose who covers them."
He's basically saying if they're going to do this I'm not playing.
SWEET: I respect Gregory. He is a regular in City Hall. He's there every day.
But I respectfully want to point out that big newsmakers pick who they want to talk to for one-on-one interviews all the time. I only live in the real world, John, as you do, and we know that when you're a big newsmaker with many interview requests you pick and choose.
Today marks the second anniversary of Lori Lightfoot being mayor. That's why this is coming to a head today. So she had a bunch of interview requests, so she did pick and choose. And some of the outlets that she is talking to today are community outlets that don't have the resources to staff City Hall every day like the big legacy outlets do -- and what's wrong with that?
And by the way --
BERMAN: Well, some people are playing it -- so, you know, some people are playing it basically as no whites allowed. That's how it's being portrayed, as you can imagine, on an entire cable network.
SWEET: Absolutely, and I see what's happening and I see how the right-wing press is playing this. But everybody take a deep breath. That's not what is happening.
If I had a question for Lori Lightfoot and I was in Chicago today, she's having a press conference in a few hours. John, if anyone at CNN wants to go ask her something, you could do it -- show up.
Do you know Lori Lightfoot has press conferences that anybody could go to three times a week usually, at least? She's got a bunch coming up. She's done a bunch this week.
BERMAN: Lynn Sweet, appreciate you joining us this morning. Always great to talk to someone who's got so much experience in so many places. Thank you so much.
SWEET: Thank you, John.
BERMAN: NEW DAY continues right now.
KEILAR: Hello, I'm Brianna Keilar.
