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Congress Continues Negotiations over Police Reform Bill; Report Indicates Lab Workers in Wuhan, China, Sought Advice Hospital in November, 2019, Just Before Coronavirus Outbreak; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) Compares Mask Mandates to Holocaust; G.O.P. Rejects Biden Counteroffer in Infrastructure Talks. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired May 24, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

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JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The ledger. The draft bill would tentatively create federal standards for no knock warrants, a ban on chokeholds except in life-threatening situations, and limits on equipment that the Department of Defense can send to state and local police departments, countering the increased militarization of the cops.

But there are still major sticking point, specifically over qualified immunity, which stops police officers from being sued by victims and families for alleged civil rights violations. Now, Republicans oppose changes to this, arguing, with some reason, that it would make it harder to recruit and retain police officers. Influential South Carolina Democrat Jim Clyburn frustrated some progressives when he argued that this issue should not stop the passage of police reform.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMES CLYBURN, (D-SC) HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP: If you don't get qualified immunity now, then we'll come back and try to get it later. But I don't want to see us throw out a good bill because we can't get a perfect bill.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Now if there's room for compromise on qualified immunity, it may be in putting the financial risk on the police departments rather than on the officers themselves. There are other key accountability reforms that should be in the bill, like a mandatory national database of serious police misconduct to stop the police hop that enables bad cops to join other departments.

But there are also questions about what can be done to require police departments to release body cam footage faster. There are roughly 18,000 police departments in the United States. We don't have a one size fits all system here. But if the federal government subsidized purchasing and updating body cameras, reducing cost to local taxpayers. That could come with conditions about releasing body cam footage faster says Delores Jones-Brown, a former prosecutor and professor at Howard University and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Quote, "Blanket claims by law enforcement that transparency would compromise a particular investigation should not be accepted as routine," she says. Body cameras protect good cops and hold bad cops accountable, but lack of transparency can enable false reports. Police reform needs to rebuild the trust that's been broken between cops and the communities they're supposed to serve and protect.

And that's why any bill should also fulfill President Biden's commitment to invest more money in police training rather than rhetoric about defunding the police. In 2020, violent crime began to rise in major cities after decades of decline, and that disproportionately punishes people in poor and urban communities while fueling fear and risking political backlash. But the fact that hope is still alive for a bipartisan police reform bill is reason to believe that maybe, just maybe, we can still reason together on Capitol Hill.

And that's your "Reality Check."

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman alongside Brianna Keilar. On this NEW DAY a new intelligence report raises new questions about when and where the coronavirus outbreak began in China. Absolute sickness, evil lunacy, Republicans in Congress, some, condemning a shocking statement from Marjorie Taylor Greene comparing mask mandates to the Holocaust.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Secrets revealed inside the security and the scares for Secret Service agents leading up to the 2020 election.

And another thrill for Phil Mickelson becoming the oldest player to win a Major. How he managed to stun the sports world.

BERMAN: Good morning to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. It is Monday, May 24th. And we begin with truly wonderful news in the fight against coronavirus. Here in the United States, the average number of new cases at its lowest point in almost a year. Look at that. Hospitalizations around 27,000 and falling, lowest point in a year. Six states report an average of less than one COVID death per day over the past week. Those are wonderful, remarkable, and welcome numbers.

In the meantime, the debate over the origins of the coronavirus is growing more intense after new revelations that several lab workers in Wuhan, China, had to seek advice at the hospital in November of 2019 just before the known virus outbreak began. The previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report could add weight to calls for the World Health Organization to more fully investigate whether the COVID virus may have escaped from the laboratory. This morning the lab director in Wuhan and the Chinese government are disputing the report. The director calls it a complete lie.

KEILAR: Let's talk about this now with CNN national security correspondent Kylie Atwood and CNN White House reporter Natasha Bertrand. OK, Natasha, first, we should be clear, we knew that this staff at this lab in Wuhan had been sickened. What's new is that we didn't know it was bad enough they had to go to the hospital.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Right. So the new detail here is just about the severity of their symptoms. And I think it's important to realize that we don't know exactly what they were sick with. And the intelligence community doesn't know that either.

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This is just another data point that they're using to raise more questions about whether there's evidence that perhaps needs to be investigated further that there was something going on at the lab that sickened these researchers. And, of course, the lab leak theory is one that the intelligence community has not entirely ruled out yet, but the intelligence just isn't there. So I think that this is a new detail about how severe their symptoms were that is going to add to the broader picture of what we know about the origins.

KEILAR: This is significant.

KYLE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is. And I think what we've been looking at for a long time is what does the world know and what does the U.S. intelligence community know? And the bottom line here is that the underlying data hasn't been provided to the world by China. And so that's been a problem with the World Health Organization's investigation into this matter. That's been a problem with what the U.S. intelligence community is able to connect.

But it is noteworthy that what we're learning today builds off of some information that former secretary of state Mike Pompeo put out just days before he left office. It was clear that he felt that this information needed to get out. And he did actually put out information saying that there were researchers at this Institute of Virology in Wuhan that had fallen sick in autumn. We're now learning that it was in November, which was before the Chinese government said there were the first people in Wuhan who came down with COVID-like symptoms.

KEILAR: So where are you U.S. officials on this? Dr. Fauci said recently he's not convinced that the virus developed naturally. Let's listen to this.

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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISER: No, I'm not convinced about that. I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened. Certainly, the people who have investigated say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: He's talking about that initial theory that this came or seemed to be the indication that this came from a wet market in Wuhan. How do you, Natasha, file what Anthony Fauci said there in kind of the broad body of things that U.S. officials have said about this?

BERTRAND: Yes, look, I think it's actually very consistent with what we've been hearing from our sources, which is that the intelligence is just very inclusive at this point. And the director of the World Health Organization actually said himself that even though that report had said there was a low likelihood that this originated in a lab, it still needed to be investigated further because they didn't have all the information that they needed to definitively rule out that lab leak theory.

And what we're hearing from sources again is that the intelligence community has very low confidence in the assessment of the origins of this virus beyond the fact that it emerged from China. That's pretty much all they know at this point. So what Fauci is saying is consistent with what the Biden administration is saying as well, which is we're going to put a lot of diplomatic weight behind a new investigation by the WHO, try to get to the bottom of this without undue influence by the Chinese government, which was part of the criticism of the first WHO investigation. And ultimately when we have enough intelligence to provide a full picture, then perhaps we will release it when we do.

KEILAR: It's tricky because, of course, the Chinese government, they don't want this, even if this is true, they don't want to admit that it's true. And that's just the way the Chinese government operates. They're not going to want to tell the truth even if this is what happened.

ATWOOD: No, they're not. And to that point, it's not all together surprising that the Chinese are now coming out and denying any validity in what we're learning is in this U.S. intelligence report. But that aside, I do think it's important to note that we're not going to get to the bottom of this until China actually does play ball. They've shown no signal that they want to do that up until this point.

And Avril Haines earlier this year, the Director of National Intelligence, to what Natasha was saying earlier, said that the U.S. still really don't know when, where, or how this virus was initially transmitted. And it's just kind of incredible, we're sitting here more than a year after this virus started to overtake the world, and there really seems to be more questions, quite frankly, as even we find little pieces, little details, there are more questions about the big picture of how this all started.

KEILAR: China, look, they were not forthcoming from the beginning on giving people the heads up so that perhaps they could get ready. They knew what they were certainly dealing with, whatever the origins were. A lot of questions.

Thank you so much to both of you for answering many of them for us.

BERMAN: So, new reporting this morning on evil lunacy. That is how Republican Liz Cheney described new statements from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, "evil lunacy," and to be completely honest, Cheney was being polite, because Taylor Greene equated mask requirements in the House to the Holocaust.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:10:01] REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, (R-GA): We can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So as we said earlier, this is not only a-historic, it's abhorrent. It's also apparently also allowable under House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who hasn't commented on it and refused to punish Greene for past anti-Semitic statements she made. Wearing a mask compared to the murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others. It is so far beyond the realm of decency, it could only possibly be made worse by comments from Marjorie Taylor Greene.

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REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, (R-GA): I stand by all of my statements. I said nothing wrong. And I think any rational Jewish person didn't like what happened in Nazi Germany, and any rational Jewish person doesn't like what's happening with overbearing mask mandates.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I assure you, no rational person regardless of his or her religion, would compare health measures or anything to the Holocaust.

KEILAR: I think it is very fair to say that no rational person would be cool with that, just like no rational person would think it's a good idea for someone to reference "Romeo and Juliet" while admitting they impregnated a minor while they were legally and adult, probably not the best way to gain support for your congressional run. But that is exactly what Wyoming State Senator Anthony Bouchard, who is currently running to unseat Liz Cheney in the House, did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY BOUCHARD, (R) WYOMING STATE SENATOR, CHENEY PRIMARY CHALLENGER: It's a story when I was young. Two teenagers, girl gets pregnant. You've heard those stories before. She was a little younger than me. So it's like the "Romeo and Juliet" story. Lot of pressure, pressure to abort a baby. I've got to tell you, I wasn't going to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: So he married that girl when she was 15. They divorced a few years later, and shortly after, she died by suicide. And yet he's still romanticizing being an 18-year-old impregnating a 14-year-old. This kind of crazy is also informing voting reforms as a number of Republican led states push for Arizona-style bogus audits of the last election, including Georgia, where a judge last week decided to allow another audit to move forward. All of this to perpetuate the big lie that the election was stolen, despite the mountains of evidence against it. BERMAN: I want to bring in Joel Rubin, executive director of the

America Jewish Congress. Joel, thanks so much for joining us. I want to talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene. I said earlier in the program, look, I'm Jewish. I'm not at all observant or religious, but that's my heritage. Marjorie Taylor Greene would certainly say that I'm Jewish. And my reaction to her is how dare she presume to speak for me as a rational person? How dare she, this person who has espoused anti- Semitic theories about Jewish space lasers causing forest fires, how dare she? What was your reaction?

JOEL RUBIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS: John, you're spot on. Look, this rational Jewish person right here believes it's time for Marjorie Taylor Greene to be expelled from Congress. This is enough. Marjorie Taylor Greene is trafficking in hate speech, she is trivializing the Holocaust, she is conducting dog whistles to the far right to raise money, to raise her political power, to bias our politics into a place of hate. And there's no place for hate in our politics, and this needs to stop right now.

BERMAN: You bring up, I think, what is the crucial point here. Marjorie Taylor Greene at this point -- well, well beyond this point, has made clear exactly who she is, and the hateful theories that she espouses. The important question now is, what is going to be done about it? What Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, going to do about it? He stood in the way of Marjorie Taylor Greene being removed from her committees. So what does he need to do now?

RUBIN: John, Kevin McCarthy has been denying and delaying and obfuscating for far too long. And we're at a point now where it must be stopped. We had a congressman about two decades ago, Jim Traficant, kicked out of Congress for corruption. I would gladly have Jim Traficant back right now in place of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Kevin McCarthy has been missing at the station, he is not showing leadership. And he needs to stand up and he needs to expel Marjorie Taylor Greene. Enough is enough. Our politics don't deserve this. This is not a left/right issue, as you pointed out. There are many members across the aisle who are upset by this. This is deeply disturbing to the American-Jewish community. This goes and goes and goes further, and now Marjorie Taylor Greene is essentially says wearing a mask, this, saving lives, is somehow equal to walking millions of innocent civilians to the gas chamber. It's just beyond the pale.

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BERMAN: I've got to let you run here, but very quickly, what does it tell you that she feels comfortable saying that out loud in this political environment? What does it tell you about her view of the political environment?

RUBIN: You know, John, with the Holocaust, we learned about many different actors and the key actor was that the people who were passive and allowed this kind of hate to go unchecked, and that's what we're learning about right now in our politics that she sees a profit from it. She is profiting from hate speech.

She's raising lots of money off of it, and she is being allowed to do it by people who are passively allowing her to get away it on her own side of the aisle in particular and her leadership. And it says that our politics right now doesn't punish people who foment hate, and that needs to stop. We need red lines in our politics.

BERMAN: John Rubin, I appreciate you being with us this morning for a rational discussion.

RUBIN: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: President Biden offering Republicans a compromise deal on infrastructure, but the two sides remain miles apart on an agreement.

KEILAR: And Belarus accused of hijacking a Ryanair flight to arrest a political opponent. Is the U.S. prepared to take action?

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): We would like bipartisanship, but I don't think we have a seriousness on the part of the Republican leadership to address the major crisis facing this country and if they're not coming forward, we've got to go forward alone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:20:01]

BERMAN: That is Senator Bernie Sanders assessing infrastructure negotiations between the White House and Congress that seem to be screeching to a halt.

On Friday, the White House dropped the price of President Biden's bill by $500 billion, but Republicans still not coming on board.

Joining me now is Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg who was part of Biden's negotiating team that presented the counterproposal to Republican lawmakers.

Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for being with us. To Bernie Sanders's point there, why isn't it time just to move on and do this with just Democrats?

PETE BUTTIGIEG, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Well, the President feels strongly that we should seek to do this in a bipartisan manner, not at any cost as he often says, inaction is not an option and you know, there's a real sense of urgency to move quickly.

But we've been having, I think, productive and honest, frank conversations with at least one group of Republican senators who put forward their idea. Of course, we started out very far apart. We've moved closer. As a matter of fact, we've moved half a trillion dollars from what the President originally proposed in their direction.

But there is still a lot of daylight between us. That's how negotiations work. We want to continue speaking with them. We will see what they come back with and whether we have something to work with or not.

BERMAN: You budged, they didn't. Doesn't that tell you where it's going?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, their original plan put forward something that was probably different than what they would have done in a business as usual context. But in our view, not nearly enough. It was about one- tenth of what we were proposing, if you really line it up in apples to apples terms.

But the way negotiation works is you look at what you could do a little bit differently. And we looked at a different scope. We looked at moving some of the numbers closer to them and that's how we got that move of about half a trillion dollars.

It is with them. We'll see what they come back with. But again, we've really not have had a lot of fundamental red lines on our side except two. One, of course, that the President is not willing to raise taxes people making less than $400,000.00 and the other that we've got to do something, the time is of the essence and this can't go on forever.

BERMAN: Well, it has been going on and there was a sense that Memorial Day was the time where you would make a decision about whether or not the Republicans were serious in negotiating with you or that you'd have to move on.

I put this question to Congressman Tim Ryan last week, which is that if Republicans aren't going to get on board with a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6th, which a lot of people consider to be low-hanging fruit, right, equal representation there, something that in theory, you would think that both parties should be able to get on board with. If they're not going to agree with that, what makes you think you're going to get them on board with major bills like infrastructure?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, the thing I've noticed about infrastructure is that every member, no matter where they're from, no matter their ideology, they go home to a district or a home state where their constituents are telling them, hey, the road I am taking to work is full of holes, the bridge is out. This airport is nowhere near the standard of the best airports in the world. Our port needs to be deep.

People are seeing and feeling the need for better infrastructure, both the traditional kind of infrastructure and people are feeling the pain around our lack of proper elder care in this country, not having broadband everywhere it needs to be. Lead pipes threatening children.

So, it is one of these issues that I think can go beyond the partisan and ideological mess that has really limited what Congress can do. Or, I'll put it another way, if there's any area of domestic policy where we could do something together, I have got to think this is that area.

BERMAN: You might be wearing road colored glasses here, pun intended, at this point. Is Memorial Day a deadline at this point? Are you willing to talk after that or are you done talking to them?

BUTTIGIEG: We continue to think there needs to be major progress by Memorial Day. Now, we get it that this is a process, right, there needs to be not only a negotiation, but then bills need to be sent through, marked up. They need to go to conference. It needs to be signed by the President. All that is not going to happen by Memorial Day, but yes, we really need to get this done this summer, which is why we continue to want to see even just in the few days between now and the holiday some real progress if we're going to pursue this path.

BERMAN: You are Transportation Secretary, which is roads and bridges, it is also airplanes. There was an airplane in Europe over Belarus that was guided down, forced to land by fighter jets. The Belarusian dictator, Lukashenko, ordered this passenger plane with more than a hundred people on board down, a dissident was removed from that plane. What message does that send to the world if a commercial airliner can be taken down, forced to land on the whims of a dictator?

BUTTIGIEG: Yes, we're extremely concerned about this and the Secretary of State has called for this to be fully investigated and for a convening of the body called ICAO. It's not an organization and I think most Americans have heard of or think about, but it might be compared to the U.N., in fact, it is part of that organization for air travel. It is the International Civil Aeronautics Organization.

So there is a call for a convening of that body, a call for more of the facts to understand exactly what happened and extreme concern not only because of how it impacted U.S. citizens on board, but just because of the basic norms that we expect, never mind politics, never mind what's going on the ground, and that what is going on in the air is safe for any civilian aircraft flying through any airspace.

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BERMAN: As Transportation Secretary, do you feel that U.S.-based airlines are safe flying over Belarus this morning?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, that's exactly what needs to be assessed right now, and we and both in terms of the international bodies we're part of and as an administration with the F.A.A. are looking at that because the main reason my department exists is safety and we've got to make sure that American citizens and everybody using the national airspace and on airlines that we relate to will know that they are safe.

BERMAN: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, thanks for joining us this morning. Appreciate it.

BUTTIGIEG: Thank you.

BERMAN: So today, the Cyber Ninjas will be back at it in Arizona, carrying out that "bogus audit," air quotes, of the 2020 election. We'll speak to one of the few reporters who has been given access to watch what's going on.

KEILAR: And a new book sheds light on the hidden work of the Secret Service and a potential security risk posed by then President Trump's golf game.

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