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New Day

Stand-up Comedian Returns to Stage Tonight After Pandemic; Players Livid after Fan Dumps Popcorn on Head of Star; Op-Ed: "I'm a Rational Jewish Person. Marjorie Taylor Greene is Nuts"; Sen. Angus King, (I) Maine, is Interviewed about January 6 Commission, Cyberattack; Today: Senate to Hold Key Vote on January 6th Commission Bill; DHS to Mandate Pipeline Companies Report Cyber breaches. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired May 27, 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]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Reopening kind of getting back to normal here. CNN has the pandemic covered from coast to coast.

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Nick Watt in Los Angeles, good news for Disneyland.

Now, the theme park has been open for almost a month now with restrictions and open only so far to residents of California. From June 15, the park will welcome anybody, everybody from anywhere.

Now, June 15 is also the date when officials here in California say that they are imagining they'll lift pretty much all the remaining COVID restrictions.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Alexandra fields in New York where the city is preparing to reopen its beaches in time for the holiday weekend. And where they're expecting crowds this summer they are also sending vaccines. The city has plans to deploy mobile vaccine units to popular beaches as well as other gathering spots like Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and Governors Island.

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Lucy Kafanov. The Las Vegas monorail is reopening for the first time since it's splendid service last year due to the pandemic. Thursday's reopening comes just in time for what's expected to be throngs of tourists visiting the city for their Memorial Day weekend holiday.

To ensure safety the monorail website states that face masks will be required at all times. Hand Sanitizer will be available at every station. And riders are encouraged to maintain social distancing when possible.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thanks for reporters around the country.

Now, another form of entertaining making its comeback, stand-up comedy. You may remember our friend comedian Gary Gulman from his HBO special "The Great Depresh." Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARY GULMAN, STAND-UP COMEDIAN: I grew up at a time the definition of manhood was so narrow, you were either Clint Eastwood, or you were Richard Simmons, there was nothing in between. There were no Paul Rudds. No kind eyed Mark Ruffalos. You had to be so hard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: And Gary Gulman joins us now complete with the COVID moustache and ponytail.

GULMAN: I was so young. I was so young back then, and my hair so short. I haven't cut it out of not wanting to get COVID by getting a haircut which is like Greek tragedy that the vanity that caused your illness your death, it would be hard to explain that. So, I haven't cut it. But I am going to cut it. And this is an homage to Frank Zappa, I believe.

BERMAN: You look exactly like Frank Zappa.

GULMAN: Right.

BERMAN: Listen, we wanted to see you because you were doing your first indoor show.

GULMAN: Yes.

BERMAN: Tonight?

GULMAN: Yes.

BERMAN: How do you feel about that?

GULMAN: I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I can't wait. And because comedy was not just my vocation, it was also my social life.

And most of my friends are comedians, that's why I just can't wait. It's been a huge hole in my life that I've filled with a lot of pastry.

BERMAN: Well, I was going to -- look, you've been very honest. And we show your HBO special about your battles, struggle with mental health over your lifetime. And so, what has the last year been like for you?

GULMAN: Yes, I mean, we spoke at the beginning.

BERMAN: Very beginning.

GULMAN: And I -- and it was so helpful, because I told you what people had to do to maintain their mental health during this. But it was a great, I guess, reinforcement of what I had done to get out of it. So, I continued to exercise and keep in touch with people, mostly it was over the phone and through Zoom. And then doing nice things for other people was very -- was very helpful. Mark Twain said if you want to cheer yourself up, cheer somebody else up. And then, I got in touch with my psychiatrist and made sure that my medicines were refillable quickly. And my therapist, I did phone and Zoom conferences. So, I did all the things necessary.

And I'm so grateful my mental health is held up and it was stable. And I think this was a, at the very least, a great test of it. But I understand that a lot of people have struggled, but I hope that things opening up and having more of this will increase the people's --

BERMAN: What was hardest for you in terms of mental health?

GULMAN: I think the hardest thing was I have such a fear of things that are out of my control.

BERMAN: How about everything, all of?

GULMAN: Yes, and everything was out of my control. And I -- and I had to -- the one thing that was so helpful was just maintaining some gratitude, some gratitude that the special got out before all this and I was able to promote it.

And I tried not to blame myself for the pandemic, because I had this feeling I said, did you really think you were going to get a special on HBO and not cause a cataclysmic tear in the -- in the karmic universe? So, I didn't blame myself entirely for it, but I'm sure I had something to do with it. Yes.

BERMAN: Well, let me ask this. I've been very, very curious about what comedy is going to look like. You know, we've had a shared experience. I mean some ways comedies about sharing experience.

[07:35:09]

GULMAN: Sure.

BERMAN: So we've had a 14 month share experience, like no other. So, is the routine tonight going forward, is this going to be pandemic related? How much will play?

GULMAN: I think that I will, as I always do, watch the other comedians who have gone before me, see what they're talking about, and then try to talk about something different. So, if they're talking a lot about the pandemic, I will try to avoid that.

But the one thing that I know is that the late night hosts did such a phenomenal job of covering this. I mean, I watched John Oliver regularly and he's just, to me, that the gold standard in late night television right now. And he just covered so many things so beautifully that I feel like they're -- if they really want to hear the insight on everything that's going on, I think there are people who are doing it better with better writers than me.

BERMAN: Listen, Gary Gulman, you're one of our favorites. I'm so excited that you're going to get back out and do your comedy. We're so excited in the last year that you've made it through with all of us, the last year.

GULMAN: Yes, I'm just so grateful. And it was so nice to hug the elderly again. I was able to see Auntie Judy (ph) and Uncle Bob (ph) yesterday, and Joanie (ph) and my mother and it just -- it feels great. It's one of those things that you take for granted, hugging old people was just something you did.

BERMAN: I had both an Aunt Judy and Uncle Bob, by the way.

GULMAN: Everyone does.

BERMAN: Plus, every Jewish kid growing up in Massachusetts has got (crosstalk).

GULMAN: The key to stand-up as being relatable. So, Auntie Judy and Uncle Bob are the perfect ones.

BERMAN: There we go. Thanks so much. Great to see you.

GULMAN: It was a pleasure. Great to see, John.

BERMAN: Brianna.

KEILAR: So much fun.

NBA players united in outrage after an incident involving Washington Wizards star Russell Westbrook. He was leaving the court with an injury during a playoff game in Philadelphia last night and a 76ers fan dumped popcorn on Westbrook's head. He had to be held back from going into the stands. That fan was escorted out of the arena shortly after this incident. Westbrook says the League has to do more to protect their players.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSSELL WESTBROOK, WASHINGTON WIZARDS GUARD: To be honest, man -- in our hand, especially for me, this amount of disrespect, the amount just of fans is doing whatever -- they want to do is just out of pocket. It's out of pocket seriously.

In the other setting, you know, I'm off on a fancy joining game and having fan of, you know, sports, I get it. But there's certain things that cost.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN's Andy Scholes is with us now.

That is terrible. That was terrible that that happened.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It certainly was, Briana. And you know, for some reason, there are a lot of fans out there that think they can just say whatever they want and do whatever they want to these players out there on the court just because they're athletes.

And you know, Russell Westbrook is superstar, he hears it plenty. And he certainly is one of the players that does not put up with it all. We've seen Westbrook confront a number of fans over the years in tunnels out there on the court that are just being flat out disrespectful. Four years ago, they're in Philly, a fan sitting courtside got injected for giving Westbrook the double burn and cursing at him.

Then a few years ago, Utah, Russell Westbrook gotten to a verbal altercation with a fan that he felt was being disrespectful. That fan got banned from going to Utah Jazz games.

So, you know, it's as Westbrook says, you know, he has a feeling that if you're not going to say something to them or do something to them in public, you have no right to do that to him if he's out there on the court.

BERMAN: Yes, look, and it's getting physical with the players, too, which is it just crosses the line. So clearly over the line, Andy, how are other players reacting?

SCHOLES: Well, Westbrook's teammate Bradley Beal, he called it disgusting after the game. Scott Brooks, the head coach of the Wizard, said that fans should be banned from coming to NBA games for the foreseeable future.

And LeBron James also tweeting about what he saw on television last night saying, "By the way, we as players want to see who threw that popcorn on Russ while he was leaving the game tonight with an injury. There's cameras all over the arena. So there's no excuse because if the shoe was on the other foot, hashtag protect our players."

But you know, guys, there's really no easy answer here for the NBA. You know, fans are closer to the players in the NBA than they are for any other sport. So, you know, you can of course, you know, kick the fans out, you can charge them with a crime, you can even ban them. But even that, I mean, you can say you're banning a fan, but there's really no way to enforce that.

BERMAN: Yes, the fans can stop being jerks. That's one thing that could happen.

SCHOLES: Yes.

BERMAN: All right, Andy, thank you so much for that.

SCHOLES: All right.

BERMAN: Coming up, a rabbi who was not holding back on the congresswoman who compared a mask mandate to the Holocaust. Why he says, "I'm a rational Jewish person. Marjorie Taylor Greene is nuts."

KEILAR: And a cartoon controversy in the race for New York mayor. Andrew Yang joins us live on what he calls a racialized caricature of him in a newspaper.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:44:02]

BERMAN: Here are five things to know for your new day, a ninth victim has died following the mass shooting at a rail yard in San Jose, California. It's the 232nd mass shooting in America this year. The 17th and just the last week.

KEILAR: And the Senate is set to vote today on a commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection despite the threat of a filibuster by Republicans.

BERMAN: President Biden is ordering U.S. intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts to investigate the origins of COVID, including specific questions for China. He wants them to report back in 90 days.

KEILAR: And Amazon shutting down a warehouse construction site in Connecticut, again, Wednesday after the discovery of an eighth noose at the location. The site had just reopened on Monday after shutting down last week when the seventh apparent news was found. The news is first started showing up in late April.

BERMAN: Tennis star Naomi Osaka and now think she will not take part in any news conferences during the French Open which begins Sunday. Osaka citing what she says is a general disregard by the media for the mental health of athletes, particularly following matches.

[07:45:07]

KEILAR: Very interesting as the country faces an outbreak of anti- Semitic violence in the wake of clashes in the Middle East, Marjorie Taylor Greene's Holocaust comment which equates mask wearing to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany continues to spark backlash. This op-ed in the Daily Beast is titled "I'm a Rational Jewish Person. Marjorie Taylor Greene is Nuts, Things that shouldn't be happening in America" is penned by a journalist who's also a rabbi and the great grandson of Holocaust victims.

Joining me now is the author of that op-ed and a columnist for The Daily Beast, Jay Michaelson.

Jay, thank you for being with us this morning.

You were -- you know, your op-ed is it's quite captivating. You use a lot of sarcasm, you know, dark sarcasm in a way to just point out how ridiculous this comparison is that she's making. Tell us about it a little bit.

JAY MICHAELSON, COLUMNIST, THE DAILY BEST, GRAND PARENTS, FAMILIES WERE KILLED IN HOLOCAUST: Well, it's funny, I started out writing this article actually trying to sort of write it straight kind of setting. Saying like, Well, here are some of the differences between being asked to wear a mask to prevent a disease and having your citizenship stripped from you and being made to live in a ghetto. But the sort of facial absurdity of that just made it impossible to kind of take it as seriously as I had originally intended.

So, yes, you know, it's dark Jewish humor to kind of make jokes out of what's actually really a travesty.

KEILAR: What you basically say is, yes, it's my ancestors who were marched by the Germans to a mass grave that they had dug themselves standing on the edge of it shot and killed to fall into those graves. Yes, that is the same. You basically say, as Marjorie Taylor Greene lamenting that people who aren't really vaccinated, aren't wearing masks who want to spread coronavirus?

I mean, this comparison really is absurd. And yet it kind of stands in this party. You've seen -- you've seen leaders speak out against it, but they're not really doing anything about her.

MICHAELSON: And they're not doing anything. And this happens all the time. And Marjorie Taylor Greene seems to be just a symptom of a much larger affliction that's particularly plaguing, I think, the right of this kind of rage and extremism and hyperbole.

And when you're -- when you have someone who's feeling that affliction, what you want to try to do is treat it, you want to try to help. But instead, Republican leaders again and again and again are inflaming that same rage and that same sense of outrageous victimhood that Marjorie Taylor Greene is displaying.

KEILAR: Do you think that her kind of comments inflame the increase in anti-Semitism we're seeing?

MICHAELSON: I don't know if they inflame the current spike in anti- Semitism. You know, it's complicated, and a lot of the new attacks are just -- are due to the flare up in the Middle East recently.

But what they really do is show just how insensitive she actually is. I mean, this is a time where I can speak from first person experience, American Jews are feeling a little bit less safe than we might have. We're hurting.

In the streets of New York, where I live, there have been attacks against innocent civilians and innocent people. And for to choose just this exact moment to make an outrageous and ridiculous comparison to the Holocaust is sort of the height of insensitivity.

KEILAR: You know, the responsibility now of carrying that message about what happened with the Holocaust just falling to the children? Of Holocaust victims and survivors, it's falling to the grandchildren, you know, it's falling to people like yourself, to have to raise awareness.

How do you -- how do you think about that, as you see these kinds of things happening, these kinds of words being thrown about in really, you know, the Congress very mainstream?

MICHAELSON: Yes, it is deeply concerning, to put it mildly. You know, I think why -- if we take a step back, and we ask, well, why did Marjorie Taylor Greene make this analogy?

She made this analogy, because we understand sort of as a society that the Holocaust, the Nazi Germany represent kind of an apex of human evil, and of the sort of total abandonment of any kind of conscience or any sense of justice. And to cheapen that, to cheapen that by saying that, well, you know, a public health rule, whether we agree with it or not, by the way, a public health rule is the same as that.

That's what's so upsetting because as you point out, the people who were themselves survivors are disappearing. And so the Holocaust risks becoming just this kind of abstract memory or this kind of touchstone that people can use whenever they want to. And that cheapens the injustice and the tragedy and the memory of all of those people who died.

KEILAR: Yes. And I think you nailed it. It's whether you agree or disagree with this guidance, right? It's such an important point.

Jay Michaelson, thank you so much for coming on.

MICHAELSON: My pleasure.

KEILAR: Coming up, counting down to today's vote on a special commission to investigate the insurrection. We'll be talking to a senator who will cast a vote here.

[07:50:00]

BERMAN: The prominent peace activist now speaking out on the heartbreaking loss of his granddaughter to gunfire.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: New CNN reporting ahead of today's Senate voted a special commission to investigate the January 6 attack. Current and former Capitol Police officers revealing their fractured relationship with some of the lawmakers they work to protect and their anger at Republican efforts to whitewash the insurrection.

One former officer telling our Whitney Wild, "They think we're like servants. I would rather work outside and the heat or the cold. I would rather have to deal with people overdosing on drugs."

Joining me now is Senator Angus King, Independent of Maine.

Senator, always a pleasure to have you on.

It's remarkable to hear how frustrated these Capitol Police officers are. Yet, it looks like this commission, the vote is going down. It looks like that this will be the first filibuster of this Senate. What does that tell you?

[07:55:12]

SEN. ANGUS KING, (I) MAINE: Well, it tells me that the Republicans don't want to look at the facts. They don't want to talk about what happened.

John, this is really all about Donald Trump telling them to jump in, they say, hell, aye. I mean, it really is a -- many of the same people who were angry, who were upset, who realized what a serious matter this was, when it occurred a couple of months ago, are now saying, well, it wasn't any big deal. And we don't really need to know about it. And we're afraid this will be a political investigation.

I mean, that -- I have to say, I kind of laugh at that. I went back this morning, there were 10 investigations of Benghazi. And the last one wound up in December of 2016. Does that ring a bell? I mean, that was right after the presidential election, talk about, you know, using investigations for political purposes.

This proposal that's coming before us today has to report by December 31 of this year, it's not designed to lap over into next year or to be used as a political weapon, it's to try to get to the bottom of the most serious attack on our democracy since the Civil War, and to understand what happened and why it happened and where the responsibility lays.

I mean, if you want to have some fun, John, look at the tape last night of Josh Hawley on the floor of the U.S. Senate talking about an investigation and declassifying information about the virus and where it came from, and all of that kind of thing. You know, that that investigation, he's all for it. And transparency is important, and we need information. But he sure as hell doesn't want information about what happened on January 6. And I think that's really bothersome.

When people are moving heaven and earth to block an investigation, you've got to ask, what is it they're afraid will be revealed.

BERMAN: I want to ask you about cybersecurity, which is something you care deeply about. We just heard the TSA is going to issue some new regulations for pipeline operators, which includes a requirement to inform of a ransomware attack, appointing a permanent cyber security liaison and some other measures there. Is that enough?

KING: No. How's that for a straightforward answer? No.

Pipelines are essential critical infrastructure. And they need to rise to the same level that the electric grid has come up with, in order to police themselves and also to be subject to what we call pen testing, penetration testing to see how good their systems are.

In New England, John, 60 percent of our electricity comes from gas pipeline, comes from gas, all of which comes from pipeline. So, you know, we can do all we can to protect the grid. But if the pipeline goes down, the electricity goes off.

So, the answer is no. TSA, is the regulatory body over pipelines almost by historical accident. I don't know whether -- you know how many people they had at TSA regulating pipelines going into this incident colonial pipeline, I think it was something like three. So, if they want to, you know, really get serious about it, OK. But I think we ought to be talking about a much more serious regime.

The solarium that I've worked on, the Commission on Cyber says we should have special obligations, or what we call critical infrastructure, systematically important critical infrastructure, which would include pipelines. And we also need to have a relationship where they have to report incidents, they work with us, and they have some liability protection. But this is a huge threat to the private sector. We have to have a new relationship.

BERMAN: Well, you asked about infrastructure writ large. And that, of course, is the President's proposal for $1.7 trillion now in infrastructure. If Republicans and some Democrats, who were working on this also, if there is a proposal that comes back and says, how about $1 trillion? To that you would say?

KING: Well, I would say that's more like that. And it depends on what they define as infrastructure and what's in it. The thing that I'm most concerned about is broadband, if that's part of the deal, and if it's a substantial investment, and if it's new money over the over and above the money that's already earmarked, or that's a bad word, I shouldn't have used that word already designated for infrastructure, OK. But the big problem, John, is going to be how it's paid for. That's the sticking point.

The Republicans are talking about user fees. That's a euphemism for gas taxes. The White House says no, those are regressive. Those fall more on low income people. The White House is talking about jiggering around with that tax cut that the republicans and the President Trump proposed.

So, the real difference is, the real argument is going to be about how it's paid for. Now, we're going to wait and see what they produce this morning. And the Presidents indicated a willingness to compromise, so I think the discussions are still alive. But the pay for, as we say around here, is the real problem.

BERMAN: Interesting though.