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New Day

Democracy at Risk, Voting, Insurrection Denial, Lies, Gridlock; Journalist Recounts What He Witnessed at QAnon Conference. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired June 02, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Under his own name without restriction.

[07:00:03]

His memorabilia, his writings, paintings, photographs, artwork or music created by him.

So Hinckley created a YouTube channel spotlighting his singing while playing the guitar. He's posted five videos of his singing with a few original songs and covers of Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. Here is an example.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We all are striving to be free here, live in harmony. This is the majesty of love. When every --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CASAREZ: As of this morning, the YouTube channel has more than 87,000 views and more than 6,400 subscribers. Hinckley receives mental health treatment and medication as ordered by the court and has monthly appointments with the forensic outpatient department.

Now, the order requires Hinckley to share his passwords with these monitors plus any feedback he receives from the postings of his music in order to assist him his mental processing to the responses. The order states that if clinically indicated the professional's monitoring can terminate everything and they would immediately have to alert the court.

And, John, do you want to know the irony in all of this? Courts around the country, they do not want people profiting from their crimes. There's even laws all around the country. But John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. Look, I wonder what the families of Ronald Reagan, Jim Brady, Tim McCarthy, the Secret Service agent who were shot, and not mention Jodie Foster.

CASAREZ: Lives before changed forever.

BERMAN: I wonder what they think about this. Jean Casarez, thank you so much for that reporting.

CASAREZ: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: New Day continues right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Brianna Keilar alongside John Berman on this New Day.

Delusional and dangerous, new reports that former President Trump is plotting a return to power this summer.

BERMAN: The Republican National Committee threatening to boycott future presidential debates. Why they're demanding that change now.

KEILAR: And the special election overnight giving Democrats a little more breathing room in the House.

BERMAN: And this isn't exactly what they meant by the right to bear arms, one state offering guns to people who roll up their sleeves to get vaccinated.

KEILAR: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Wednesday, June 2nd.

And this morning, the assault on democracy is becoming more clear than ever, an attack from multiple sides, putting the promise of a democratically-elected American government at risk.

President Biden announced that he has asked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the administration's efforts to preserve voting rights. The announcement came just after Texas Democrats begged for federal legislation after making last ditch attempt to temporarily kill a bill that would enact some of the most restrictive voting regulations in the nation.

14 states now have enacted 22 laws making it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center. There are 61 additional bills moving through 18 state legislatures. Republicans, state lawmakers say that those rules are needed because voters have lost trust in elections, but that lost of trust is being whipped up by disinformation. It is disinformation about conspiracy theories like those supported by QAnon and about voter fraud.

And the biggest most concerning piece, the big lie, pushed by supporters of Donald Trump that he won the 2020 election even though President Joe Biden overwhelmingly won the popular vote and the Electoral College and now new reporting that even the person who started those lies, Donald Trump, is saying that he would be back in office. We'll have more on that in just a second.

BERMAN: House Democrats are now trying to figure out their options to investigate the most serious domestic attack on the Capitol since the civil war. That's after Senate Republicans blocked the creation of an independent bipartisan commission to examine the origin of that day's violence. This is just an example of the gridlock holding up legislation in Congress and just about issue, including infrastructure.

Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito headed to the White House again today to meet with the president one on one to try to find a bipartisan path forward, but with a 50-50 balance in the Senate and 60 votes needed to get anything to the floor, compromise looks hard to find, even harder when the acknowledged leader of the Republican Party, the former president, is calling the current administration illegitimate and saying he will be back in office this summer.

The New York Times Maggie Haberman says, quote, Trump has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he'll get reinstated by August.

New York Times Reporter Maggie Haberman joins us now. She's a Washington Correspondent for The Times and a CNN Political Analyst.

[07:05:00]

Maggie, I have to say, when you wrote that, my eyes popped. I was stunned. The former president is telling people he expects to be reinstated by August. What's going on here?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: So, John, what he's doing is echoing things that are being said by Sidney Powell, who was his lawyer, although, he distanced himself from her at certain points over the final months of the administration. But she was helping advice him on these efforts to overturn the election last year. This is being said by Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, who has been pushing this for some time. He is echoing what they're saying.

The difference between them saying it and Donald Trump saying is one is the former president, one is a possible future party nominee. Even given all of his legal troubles, if he ran for president again, he would still have a very good shot at the nomination.

And this is something that some of his supports will hear and take seriously when he says it. There is no legal mechanism by which this can happen. There are people who are telling him things are possible that are not possible, which is exactly what we saw happen after the November 3rd election last year, which was all the lead-up to January 6th as we know and what we saw in the attack on the Capitol. And so there is a dangerous component about this conversation that's going on.

And I think one thing that is jarring about our current news environment, John, is that there is a separation between what literally and this sort of choose your own adventure of news has gotten worse progressively over time.

Democrats who support Joe Biden don't want to hear anything about Donald Trump, and because Donald Trump is not on Twitter anymore, they think, therefore, he doesn't really exist, except he does really exist strongly in this right-wing ecosystem. It is true he's not on Twitter. It's true he's not on Facebook. He can't direct followers the same way he did. He's also going to start appearing publicly again. And so the public really needs to be aware this is something that he has been saying to a number of people.

And the other thing he's been doing, John, I should just note, he has been trying, as he spent a long time doing during 2017, trying to get advisers to fire Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, because he didn't want to do it himself. He has been trying to get conservative writers to publish in a more mainstream way that this election was, quote/unquote, stolen from him, his repeated false claim about that, to try to legitimize it, to try to get people to call attention to this. These things may not matter. They also could have consequences.

KEILAR: You mentioned Sidney Powell, the president's former lawyer, Maggie, that he's echoing what she's saying. This is what she said at a QAnon conference over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNEY POWELL, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: There are cases where elections have been overturned but there's never been one at the presidential level, which everybody jumped to point out. That doesn't mean that it can't be done.

It should be that he can simply be he reinstated, that a new inauguration date is set and Biden is told to move out of the White House and President Trump should be moved back in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: So of note here, Sidney Powell is, at this moment, being sued for defamation to the tune of $1.3 billion, and you can't make this up because her legal team is arguing, quote, no reasonable person would believe her lies about the election. Now, that said, a lot of people, whether you want to say the reasonable or not, do believe it. How coordinated is this considering we're hearing the former president say it, we're hearing it at a conference like this?

HABERMAN: Look. I think that the idea of it being a plot, I think, is overstating the level of strategy here and, again, doability. Remember, this is not something for which there's a provision in the Constitution. It's really important to note, this is not how this works.

That having been said, in terms of the ability to ignite supporters of the former president, particularly the QAnon network, particularly people in a certain segment of the internet, it is real.

And so is Trump regurgitating what he's hearing from Lindell and what he's hearing Sidney Powell say and some others say? I think that is what this is. He has been told by a number of advisers that he has to stop focusing on this. It is part of why he's so laser-focused on these, quote/unquote, audits in Arizona. And he's been trying to get them in other states because he thinks they're going to overturn the elections. One of the things that he has said to a couple of people is -- and a part of this he has said publicly -- is if you catch somebody stealing a Tiffany Diamond, you have to give the diamond back. And then in another iteration, it's he can't understand why Mitch McConnell doesn't support this because McConnell become majority leader once these races are all overturned. That just tells you about where this is going.

I just want to, again, make clear, none of that is happening and none of that is possible, but this is the kind of thing that he is trying to flush into the conservative media ecosystem, and he is saying to his supporters, and I expect it to get more intense the more he is under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney and the state attorney general in New York and the threat of indictment over the coming months.

[07:10:05]

BERMAN: Look. It's madness. It's my word, not yours. It's also dangerous. I mean, we saw an insurrection on January 6th based on lies. This is just pure madness.

And, Maggie, I've been surprised over the last 24 hours or so at how you've been attacked for even reporting this. I can't figure out why people are upset. And the reason this is important is this is a guy who was the leader of the Republican Party right now, acknowledged by most in the Republican Party. So you have the leader in the party, a former president, saying something that can only, I would think, lead to incite violence, and if not incite violence, at least obscure everything else that party is currently doing.

HABERMAN: The word you used, incitement, John, is important. I mean, this basically, as one person put it to me yesterday privately, this is an ongoing incitement, and I think that there's a valid reason to use that term. Why people are attacking me for reporting the news, this has always been a bit of a mystery. But regardless, as I said before, I think people are in their own media ecosystems.

And I think that there are a lot of people around Biden and a lot of people who support Biden who want to pretend and say if you call Trump the former guy and if you don't say his name, that the only thing that would matter is if you give him attention. He's the former president. He is in control of the Republican Party to a big extent.

People in that party are having a big debate that I would say is parallel to what we saw in 2015, which was how do you deal with Trump, who, according to Republican leaders at the time, for the most part, had no chance of becoming a Republican nominee and, obviously, that didn't work out. Ignoring him was not the answer in 2015. Will it be the answer now? I guess we're going to find out. But he still does have control over a segment of the party, and I think what a former president and possible future nominee as unlikely as that is at the moment, is saying is newsworthy.

BERMAN: Yes. Look, and there are people, Republicans flocking to Mar- a-Lago to kiss the ring of a guy who is saying that he expects to be president again by August, which is madness, and that's really truly why it matters so much. Maggie Haberman, really interesting reporting, we appreciate you joining us this morning.

HABERMAN: Thanks, guys.

BERMAN: And, look, this is very much connected. This morning, there's a dire warning from more than 100 leaders of democracy. This group has expressed deep concern about the state of American democracy and the threat of legitimacy of U.S. elections.

This is what they wrote, quote, our entire democracy is at risk. History will judge what we do at this moment.

Joining me now is one of those scholars, Pippa Norris, she's professor of political science at Harvard University. Professor, thank you so much for being with us. Why?

PIPPA NORRIS, POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: A pleasure, John.

BERMAN: Why do you write this?

NORRIS: Well, scholars as you know don't agree on many things, but these are people who have study democracy around the world that looked at Latin America, that looked at Central and Eastern Europe, that looked at Asia. And, really, what they're saying is that there's always chatter and concern about democracy and it's very difficult to imagine American democracy will decline. But it has happened around the world.

Increasingly, what we find is democratic breakdown. Think about countries like Hungary or Turkey, think about Poland or Venezuela, Philippines, and so on. And we also know that in America, there are real weaknesses in the institutions which have been there long- standing. It's not something that started in 2016. Think about, for example, Florida in 2000. Think about the issues with money and politics, gerrymandering, and issues of disinformation.

So put this together, and what the scholars are saying, and it's 100 scholars from all over the country, very distinguished, is that there are signs just like there were before 9/11. There was chatter on the internet and people were concerned, but we were asleep at the wheel. Just like the 6th of January, people were concerned about tissues of the rally and demonstrations and could it turn violent, but, again, we weren't really that much prepared for it.

So democracy might very much be able to decline, and the signs that we've emphasized earlier, the number of bills which are being looked at in different states, currently for the 2021 legislative session, almost 400 bills are being looked at which might restrict voting rights across America in 48 states. So, we should be very concerned.

BERMAN: What are the hallmarks of democratic decline or disintegration, which you've seen historically or in your studies around the world that now exists here in the United States? NORRIS: So, one of the most fundamental things is there should always be disagreement about public policy. People should have different views about economy, about where we should work with foreign policy.

The problem is if the politicians and if the public no longer agrees on the rules of the game -- and that's about legitimacy. You have to believe that things are free and fair in elections, that you have to have a voice, and that there's equal rights for everybody.

[07:15:05]

There are fundamental issues of democracy, which there has to be a consensus on. There should be impartial courts, not partisan courts. There should be checks and balances in the legislature that counteract the powers of the executive.

And these are things which, again, were fundamental to American values. They were part of how America was founded. And you could argue that they're built in. It's the DNA of America. But, increasingly, what we can see is that that faith in democracy and in the legitimacy of the government has been eroded.

And the things you were talking about earlier, the way the former president is pushing back on the idea that it was an illegitimate election, again, this has been going on ever since the November ballots were cast, ever since counts, ever since the courts went through it and said basically there was no fraud, and yet you get that constant drumbeat in the media and so on.

BERMAN: You have to agree on the rules of the game and there are those trying to break the rules of the game right now. That's one example right there, what the former president is saying, the election was illegitimate.

Now, you look at one thing you think could be fixed in your mind to change that, and that's the filibuster in the Senate. Why is it so important, again, according to you all, 100, to get rid of the filibuster?

NORRIS: Well, essentially, right now, the Republican Party has no incentive to change. That's to say, lawmakers both at the state level and in federal level are going to get re-elected. They're going to get re-elected by appealing to their base, through both gerrymandering, which means there's very safe districts for them, and then also because of the role of party primaries, which, again, means a small turns out, the most faithful Republicans, the core group, and they're very much in Donald Trump's camp.

So we need to change those rules. And the problem is we can't change either gerrymandering or issues of primaries, or voting rights, which are being push back, unless we get rid of the filibuster in the Senate.

And let's emphasize, the filibuster is not part of the Constitution. It was never there originally. It's not even part of law. What it is is a rule that the Senate has brought in. And both parties have an interest in keeping the filibuster. For when they're in opposition, it provides a check on the power of the party at the White House and the party, the largest party in the Senate, but it produces gridlock.

We've seen that throughout the Obama years and we're seeing that now very much through Biden because of the close balance.

Now, if you get rid of the filibuster, what does it mean? It means, essentially, the Democrats can then pass what's known as HR-1, For the People's Act, that is trying to reduce gerrymandering, partisan gerrymandering, trying to weaken the role of dark money in politics and it's trying to strengthen voting rights. And if you can do that, then I think some confidence in how the process works will be restored.

And, by the way, the bill will also increase election security, something which the Republicans have always emphasized is very much a problem.

So you have to get rid of the filibuster, that's step one. It's a nuclear option, but it has to be done. And then you can pass a sustained reform. And if you don't do that, the midterm elections, we're going to get more problems and then that will lead to further problems, I think, in 2024.

BERMAN: A dire warning, to say the least. Professor Pippa Norris, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

NORRIS: Thank you.

KEILAR: Breaking overnight, Democrats holding on to a House seat and breathing a sigh of relief. New Mexico Democrat Melanie Stansbury winning a special election in a landslide last night to fill a seat vacated by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. It was seen as a possible bellwether for the midterms.

So, let's bring in CNN Political Director David Chalian for more on this. We always wonder if these are bellwethers. It takes a while before we find out if they were. But I wonder what you're thinking.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, I think that you said Democrats are breathing easier today because of that margin, right? This is a district that Joe Biden won by some 23 points. Expectations that were being set yesterday by both Democrats and Republicans were saying, hey, Democrats are clearly going to win, it's a Democratic seat, but the margin is going to be much closer than it has any right being, and that's a sign for a big Republican year next year in the midterms. That didn't happen.

And so, again, this is a district Democrats should have won. They put money in their to make sure they were going to win it. But the fact that it's that wide of a margin as it is suggests that at least this one district, the argument that the Republican was making about crime on the rise and supporting the breathe act in Congress which the Democrat does, it didn't get enough traction to make this closer than the district is, naturally (ph). KEILAR: Okay. Let's talk about a new portfolio for the vice president, for Kamala Harris. She essentially is now kind of the voting rights czar, I guess we could say. I wonder if this is an upgrade from she was obviously in charge of really the root causes that was later supposed to be of the border --

CHALIAN: Still is, she still has that assignment.

[07:20:01]

KEILAR: -- still is of the border issue, but Republicans really went to town on that and targeted her because of this. Is this sort of a better gig?

CHALIAN: I don't know. I keep thinking every time --

KEILAR: Is she getting the thankless jobs?

CHALIAN: -- every time the president announces a new task for Vice President Harris, I'm always like, she must be like, thanks a lot, guy. Here is somebody who obviously ran for president once, no doubt has a desire to run for president again. And she's being given really important big issues like immigration and voting rights, but also they're really tough issues to actually accomplish something.

I mean, right now the votes in the Senate aren't there for this S-1 bill, the For the People Act. Joe Manchin has said he's not for it. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have said they refuse to get rid of the filibuster, which right now seems like perhaps the only path that that could possibly get through. So, okay, Vice President Harris, over to you, turn around that dynamic, get this done.

The one good thing, of course, is that it is such a high priority for the Democratic base that it allows the vice president to sort of be the sort of champion of this issue that they care about a ton. And, I mean, all Americans should care about voting rights, obviously, but I mean, getting this legislation through or finding some compromise. And so, for that, she'll have a high-profile role. So, yes, it might be a little bit of an upgrade from immigration but she still has that on her plate too.

KEILAR: I wonder, win or lose, if it animates Democrats in a way that you could say, it's not too bad, but I will also what goes around, comes around. I remember covering the White House and Obama tasking Joe Biden with guns, which was important but kind of a thankless job that never went anywhere. And I've sort of seen that play out now, Vice President Harris on the receiving end of that.

We've heard from the chair of the RNC, Ronna Romney McDaniel, threatening to tell Republican candidates that they should boycott the presidential debates unless some serious changes are made. So what changes are we talking about? Among her demands, rules disqualifying journalists with bias, as she puts it.

CHALIAN: Right. Well, one of the things that the Republicans, you may recall from last fall, got very worked up about is that Steve Scully then with C-Span was named one of the moderators, and decades ago, he had history working for Joe Biden. And so one of the things they put in there is like, as a basic principle, you should never select a moderator who's worked for one of the candidates that are going to be on the debate stage.

But they also talk about the RNC does in this letter that went overnight to the commission on presidential debates, the timing of these debates, that they should happen prior to all the early voting. That starts -- you know, Brianna, early voting starts in like early September these days.

So they want to move the calendar up, and they don't want to see any debates happening in the final 45 days long after people have the ballots in hand already. The whole idea is, from their perspective, to try to educate the public about these candidates before they have ballots in hand and before they are making their voting decisions.

And then they have complaints about the partisan makeup of members of the actual board. This is all about the general election in 2024. But here's the thing. People don't realize this. Parties have the right to set the rules of how their nomination is awarded.

And so if the RNC is saying here, part of the rule to get the Republican nomination for president in 2024 is perhaps you have to sign a pledge that you're not going to participate in commission on presidential debates. If they don't change their ways, that would be a significant break decades of tradition of this organization hosting these debates.

KEILAR: That's a very good point about how the party can influence, whether these participants are going to join in.

It's always great to see you, David Chalian, thank you.

Next, we're going to speak with a journalist who went to the QAnon conference over the weekend, fascinating.

BERMAN: Russian hackers strike again, this time targeting the food chain. What we know about this latest cyber attack.

KEILAR: And one state upping the ante when it comes to vaccine perks, offering cash, trucks and guns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here.

LT. GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN (RET.), FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: No reason. I mean, it should happen here, no reason. That's right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: It should happen here, that's right. Former National Security Adviser and Trump ally General Michael Flynn, he now claims that he wasn't endorsing a Myanmar-style coup. Flynn made the comments at an event in Dallas on Sunday that was attended by prominent peddlers of the QAnon conspiracy theory and the big lie.

With me now is a journalist who was in the room when Flynn made those comments, Steven Monacelli. He's the publisher of Protean Magazine. Steve, thanks so much for being with us.

As I said, General Flynn denies he was endorsing the idea of a Myanmar-style coup, a military coup in the United States. He denies it, but you were in the room. What's the larger context of what was going on in the room at that time?

STEVEN MONACELLI, PUBLISHER PROTEAN MAGAZINE: Well, I think we have to consider those comments within the context of a few things, most importantly the very presentation that led up to that question and answer.

There was a slide that was shown during that presentation which featured a statement that is cribbed from a popular Q post, a Q drop, as they call them. And, essentially, the phrase was the military is the only way.

Now, comparing that next to the atmosphere at the auction that I witnessed the night before where they were selling revolutionary- themed war portraits of folks like Flynn, where Doug Billings, who had shared the stage with Flynn, described them as Flynn shooting some of the first shots in the revolutionary war, I think we have to consider those comments within that context as well as the cheering that the crowd obviously did in reaction to his response.

I don't know if we can really trust his walkback, particularly considering the general pattern that some in the movement have of saying one thing to their followers or fellow-adherence and then another thing to the public or critics.

For example, the hosts of the event who go by QAnon John and Q-Queen Amy on telegram explicitly tried to deny the connection to the QAnon movement despite the fact that very popular phrases, like where we go one, we go.