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President Biden to Meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin; Vice President Harris Criticized for Her Answers to Questions on Immigration; George P. Bush Embraces Former President Trump during Campaign for Texas Attorney General; Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) is Interviewed About Why Black Caucus Won't Let Him Into Group. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired June 10, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I don't have the magical super power to get in Louie Gohmert's head, so I don't know if he was trying to make some point that we can't move the moon so we can't affect climate change somehow. But what's your takeaway.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, DIRECTOR, HAYDEN PLANETARIUM AT AMNH, NYC: OK, so first, let us be clear, when he says BLM, he's referring to the Bureau of Land Management, not the Black Lives Matter movement, I presume. That's first.

Second, I don't see -- it sounds a little crazy, but what he's speaking of is something called geoengineering. It's doing large-scale things that have large-scale consequences. We already kind do that. We change the direction of rivers. We dam rivers for our service. We build islands where there was just water before. That's all geoengineering. And we're also geoengineering by warming the planet.

So if he wants to think of a geoengineering solution that could help it, I don't have a problem with that, even if it's a little out there. And people have thought about maybe putting sparkly, reflective particles above the clouds that reflect away more sunlight. That would be easier than changing earth's orbit. So I don't have a problem with people thinking about that.

I would rather, though, you address the source of the problem rather than after the fact attempt to solve it, because by then it could be too late and your solution might not work.

BERMAN: Neil deGrasse Tyson, humoring me, humoring Congressman Louie Gohmert. We appreciate you being with us this morning to share this moment. Thank you, sir.

TYSON: Excellent. Thank you very much.

BERMAN: NEW DAY continues right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: He had head cosmic ballet.

BERMAN: Right? I needed a cold shower.

KEILAR: Wonderful. I am Brianna Keilar alongside John Berman. On this NEW DAY, President Biden sending the message that America is back, but days before their face-to-face summit, Vladimir Putin is sending a message of his own.

Plus, a black Republican claims he's getting the cold shoulder from the Congressional Black Caucus. We're going to ask him why he says he's blocked from the group.

BERMAN: The NFL pushing players to get COVID shots. What should they tell the stars who are still on the fence about vaccines?

And this one goes to 11. Concerts are making a comeback in a big way this summer.

KEILAR: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Thursday, June 10th. We do go to 11 here as well, right? President Biden is in England this morning. He is already setting the tone for next week's high stakes meet with Vladimir Putin. Today he's going to sit down with the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Tomorrow, he will attend the G-7 summit. And President Biden began his first trip abroad by telling hundreds of American service members that the future of the world depends on restoring America's longstanding alliances.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States is back, and democracies of the world are standing together to tackle the toughest challenges and the issues that matter most to our future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The president also vowed to stand up to adversaries like China and Russia, and he made it clear that he plans to tell the Russian president, quote, what I want him to know.

BERMAN: Vladimir Putin is sending a message of his own to President Biden, pouring gas on the already tense summit awaiting the two men. Russia's courts labeled supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny as extremists, banning them from running for office and threatening to arrest them. That's a ruling that essentially makes them outlaws. The Biden State Department calls the move disturbing.

It's just the latest provocation by the Kremlin in recent weeks and months. The fallout continues from the SolarWinds attack, one of the largest cyberbreaches in history that targeted the U.S. government and Fortune 500 companies. Russia is blamed. And recently a cyberattack on a U.S. pipeline sparked a gas shortage up and down the east coast for weeks. That attack also believed to have originated from Russia.

Keep in mind a U.S. intelligence report this year found that Russia interfered again in the 2020 election, including efforts to influence Trump associates. Also, Russian troops amassed near the Ukrainian border earlier this year, leading to fears of a possible invasion. When Belarus essentially hijacked a passenger jet to get an activist on board down on the ground, Putin, of course, endorsed the behavior by inviting his counterpart to yacht with him. Russia continues to provoke the American military by flying jets in what the U.S. calls unsafe and dangerous ways. And the Kremlin even made moves beyond earth, set to pull out of the International Space Station which the U.S. says will lead to a space race.

KEILAR: And joining us now, Susan Page, who is the Washington bureau chief for "USA Today." Thank you so much. It's wonderful to see you this morning. We actually just spoke with Kate Bedingfield, who is the White House's communications director. She was live from England talking with us.

[08:05:01]

And she says that the summit is still on, despite what Putin is doing. We also spoke to the chief of staff for Alexei Navalny who said this should go on. Talking is better than not talking.

SUSAN PAGE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "USA TODAY": This is part of an internal debate in the administration before this meeting was set because there are some who argued this is rewarding bad behavior to give Putin the honor of a meeting with the new American president. President Biden's view in these internal deliberations was that it is better to have a relationship than not. That is his attitude toward Putin. It's his attitude also toward our traditional allies with whom our ties have gotten somewhat frayed over the last four years. That is a characteristic of Biden's approach to foreign policy.

BERMAN: Jim Sciutto and both Clarissa Ward asked the same question, is what will the metric for success of this summit be? And I'm not sure we know the answer to that yet, but it is worth watching. I want to ask this to you, because you were the moderator of the vice presidential debate. So you saw Kamala Harris up close, actually, dealing with questions in an impromptu way. There's been criticism of her first overseas trip to Guatemala and Mexico, and CNN has reports there are administration officials who were perplexed by how she answered questions that they felt she should have known were coming about why and when she was going to visit the U.S./Mexico border. What do you see going on here?

PAGE: I think it was a surprise given her performance in that debate. She was totally prepared. She was prepared to respond when Mike Pence interrupted her with the, I am speaking response. She was prepared with a dodge over the question about whether the Biden team support packing the Supreme Court.

But in this case, a totally predictable question about when and whether she will go to the border. And she dismissed it in a way that was not really responsive, that was not satisfactory. She had to clean it up later by saying, of course, she will go to the border. That was not only an expected question, it is an appropriate question. The reason officials make trips, like Biden's trip now or the trip that Vice President Harris just made, is because there is a value to seeing what's going on on the ground. So I think it was a surprise, not a fatal mistake, but a sign that she

has a learning curve in this new job, also a sign that she is a lightning rod for conservative criticism of this administration.

BERMAN: I want to ask you about a photo that emerged overnight of the number three House Republican, the new number three House Republican, Elise Stefanik. There she is in Bedminster -- I believe it's Bedminster -- with the former President Donald Trump. Why is this picture significant? She's only the conference chair of the House Republicans because the Republicans voted out Liz Cheney because she was too obsessed with Donald Trump? Should my irony meter be going off here? Liz Cheney is looking to the past too much, and there's a picture with Elise Stefanik with Donald Trump.

PAGE: The message of Liz Cheney's ouster was not only that they didn't want -- Republicans do not want to talk about the debate that Donald Trump continues to fuel over the election. She was ousted because Donald Trump continues to be the face and the voice of the Republican Party. There is no Republican who is more powerful in shaping the direction of this party than the former president.

BERMAN: They say they want to talk about the future. That's a picture that tells you what they think the future is.

PAGE: Donald Trump is part of the future, and that may be good for Republicans in some way and it may be damaging for Republicans in some way. But that is reality.

KEILAR: There's a race for Texas attorney general that is fascinating us, which is something you wouldn't always hear us say as we're looking with a national political idea in mind here. But George P. Bush, the son of Jeb, is running. And, of course, his family has a lot of history when it comes to Trump. Trump has insulted his father. He's even in a way insulted his mother. So let's listen to what he had to say about really what that means in this run.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE P. BUSH, (R) CANDIDATE FOR TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL: I'm all about America first. Trump is the center of the Republican Party. I am my own man. I support him. We're just like any American family in that we have our differences of opinion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: I would just like to say, this isn't a difference of opinion, right? Trump retweeted and then deleted something about how Jeb Bush must love illegals because his wife is Mexican, or Mexican American.

PAGE: No one disliked Donald Trump more than George P. Bush's grandmother, Barbara Bush. I know that from interviewing her for the book I did. I interviewed George P. Bush as well about what his grandmother thought about his efforts to have a relationship with Donald Trump. And he made a similar point. He said that he has his own politics. This is a different landscape than the landscape in which his father operated. So definitely, if we were talking about the power of Donald Trump and

the Republican Party, here is the leading dynasty traditionally in modern American politics, the Bush family, and yet here Donald Trump has a relationship with George P. Bush even after the very damaging words he said about his father and mother.

[08:10:09]

KEILAR: Is this family upset over this, or is this just politics. And we say blood is thicker than water, but maybe not thicker than Kool- Aid when it comes to Donald Trump here. Are they upset? Is this copacetic?

PAGE: I think that the Bush family is very sophisticated about politics and aware about some of the compromises that you make to be successful in politics. George H.W. Bush did things in politics that were seen as pretty hard-edged, and so did George W. Bush. So I'm not saying this is no strain in the family, but I don't think this is rending the family apart.

BERMAN: But I wouldn't assume there's not some personal hurt here, while they may understand the politics.

PAGE: Yes, I'm sure that's true.

BERMAN: All right, Susan, thanks so much. Great to see you.

PAGE: Thank you.

KEILAR: Up next, a black Republican who says the Congressional Black Caucus is rejecting his request to join.

BERMAN: Plus, why warm summer weather in the weeks ahead has police worried across the country.

And Dr. Sanjay Gupta with what NFL players and fans should know about COVID vaccines.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: A black Republican congressman from Florida says he is being denied entry into the Congressional Black Caucus because he is a Republican. In a statement to CNN, the CBC didn't comment directly on the situation, but said this, "The Congressional Black Caucus remains committed to fighting for issues that support black communities, including the police accountability bill, protecting voting rights and a jobs bill that helps our communities.

[08:15:17]

We will work with those who share our values and priorities for the constituents that we serve.

We are joined now by Republican Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida.

Sir, thanks for being with us. REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): Pleasure to be with you.

KEILAR: All right. So, you heard that statement from the CBC, and what's implicit but pretty clear here is that in that statement, they're basically saying they don't think you share their values and priorities for the constituents they serve. And I wonder what your reaction is to that.

DONALDS: My reaction is pretty simple. First, you know, I heard about this report yesterday when "BuzzFeed", I think, is the one that broke the article. We've not really heard much from the CBC since they asked me when I came in as a new member in the 117th whether I would join or not.

It's important for your viewers to understand that when I served in Florida's legislature, I was a part of the Legislative Black Caucus for four years. I've actually been to a couple of the CBC conferences in Washington, D.C.

I'm a poor kid from Brooklyn, New York. I'm 42 years old. I've been able to be successful in my life.

So whether it's talking about jobs or, yes, even voting rights or anything the CBC wants to talk about, I have a perspective being a 42- year-old black man who has come up in America after a lot of the battles through the civil rights movement, that I think is actually would be helpful and a helpful perspective to the CBC.

Whether they want to take advantage of that is really up to them but it's something that I've actually expressed interest in joining. I think having a wider range of discussions from all sides of the political framework is important. Not just for Black America but all America.

KEILAR: You have questioned the election, the veracity of the election. The 2020 election was verifiably secure but this questioning of the election, which many Republicans have done, is the basis, really, for all of the bills that we have seen across so many states that if passed will effectively reduce voting access of Black Americans.

Do you think that that is something that might be incongruent with the mission of the CBC?

DONALDS: Well, first of all, what's going -- whatever has gone on with the 2020 election, it has nothing to do with this at all.

Number two, I would say, if you look at the bills that have been passed in Florida, Georgia, actually Black Americans and all Americans, whether you live in those states, have more access to the ballot, not less. Those are the facts because I've read both bills.

And number three, again, I'll say it like I said before. I'm 42 years old. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I come from a single parent household. I know what it is to grow up coming out of the inner city in today's

America because I've done it. I think those perspectives are helpful. Whether the CBC wants to take advantage of that is up to them.

I'm here to tell you and your viewers and, frankly, the entire country, that I'm willing to be a part of that conversation, because it is important as we navigate our country forward, that we have people who have all kind of political perspectives, not just one.

KEILAR: You say that actually this will increase access for voters of color, for African-Americans. I mean, that's just not true. There have been analyses, multiple done, including by the "Houston Chronicle" looking at the bill specifically in Texas, including by "The Washington Post" looking at these bills writ large. They're not going to increase access for voters of color. They're going to decrease access.

Furthermore, you have defended President Trump for -- you said he's done enough when it comes to rebuffing ideas about white supremacy, but I do want to listen to some of his prominent comments on the subject of race to get your perspective.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: Blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt about it either.

Who would you like me to condemn?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.

When people proudly have their Confederate flags, they're not taking about racism. They love their flag. It represents the South.

What do you prefer, blacks for Trump or African-Americans for Trump?

George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So, will George Washington now lose his status?

Look at my African-American over here. Look at him. Are you the greatest? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag to say, get that son of a bitch off the field right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Do you think that your defense of a person that said things like that might be incongruent with the mission of the CBC?

DONALDS: First of all, whatever the president said in the past has nothing to do with this discussion at all. I think --

KEILAR: Well, you've defended -- you've defended him.

DONALDS: Please don't cut me off.

[08:20:00]

I didn't -- I have not cut you off in this interview. Please do not do that to me. Thank you.

As a black man in America, I'm allowed to have my own thoughts on who I choose to support and who I choose not to support. I think that it's important whether you're talking about the Congressional Black Caucus or the Florida State Legislative Black Caucus or the National Caucus of State Black Legislators, organizations I have been a part of in the past.

My support of President Trump has been consistent, but at the same time, I've had the ability to advocate for issues, ideas, proposals and funding that have helped the black community in my state.

You are talking to somebody who my first three years in college was at Florida A&M, an HBCU. So, whether my support -- my support for President Trump, whether it's for or against, is irrelevant. That has nothing to do with this discussion.

This is whether the ideology of somebody who is conservative is welcome in the Congressional Black Caucus. It's really that simple. So to bring up President Trump to make this about him does not matter. It's irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the situation at hand.

KEILAR: Well, I ask you because --

DONALDS: The question is whether the CBC will let me join.

KEILAR: Mia Love, for instance, there have been Republicans who have been members of the CBC. There have been people with very -- you know, when it comes to traditional Republican fiscal conservative views and a lot of traditional Republican views, they have been allowed in the CBC. Now, I will certainly grant you there have not been that many of them.

There have also been a number of African-American Republicans who have said, no, they don't want to be in the CBC when they've been invited.

So there have been Republicans in the CBC. And so I think that's why I'm asking you about this because it does appear to be relevant.

I hear you saying that Trump is a thing of the past. Facts would differ with that assessment. He's very much the present of the Republican Party. And based on what so many members of the Republican Party have said and including some of your positions when it comes to, you know, this idea of perpetuating the illegitimacy of elections that were legitimate, he appears to be part of the Republican future.

Do you think that that might -- can you address that because that does seem to be at the root of the issue that the CBC seems to have with you which is of concern to you because you do have perspectives that you would like to bring to the CBC?

DONALDS: That's not really a question for me to ask. It's for the members of the CBC to address. It's their organization. It's their caucus. If that's a problem for them, they should come on CNN and address that with you.

All I'm saying is that I have expressed interest in joining. I've been very consistent in that. Friends of mine who are Democrats from the Florida legislature have asked me if I would join. I've told them, yeah, but I'm waiting to hear from the CBC. If that's their position, they should state that as opposed to just saying no comment.

And understand, I'm not trying to challenge them or make this an issue. Like I said, my office didn't ask for this article to be written. It was written by reporters and it came out and I'm here with you today.

But if my positions and my support of President Trump is a problem for them, let them state that on the record.

As far as I'm concerned, I do have policy ideas. I have a business background. I'm here in politics today. I want to contribute.

I think my ideas, whether it's voting or access to education or growing economy would help Black America as well as all America, and I want to be a part of that conversation.

If they choose not to hear my voice, I can't help that.

KEILAR: In their statement they seem to make it clear it's an issue of values, right? You're talking about policies. They're talking about values.

So I hear you saying maybe you want the CBC to be more clear about what the issue is. I think it's pretty clear what the issue is.

So why can't we discuss that? There seems to be -- sorry. Go on.

DONALDS: My apologies. I cut you off. Finish your answer. My apologies.

KEILAR: No, please, sir.

DONALDS: Well, no, I mean, look, if that's what it is, then I would say, we're members of Congress. Let's sit down and have a meeting and discussion. I have no problem going into the CBC meeting and having this robust discussion as members of Congress. That's something I always do.

My door is always open. Have any conversation no matter how easy or how hard and difficult. If that's their position, I would prefer to hear it directly.

You know, the thing that I find to be a little off-putting is that it drops in some article that they have no comment but this is their concerns. Let's have that conversation. We can do it in the speaker's lobby. We can do it on the House floor.

We can do it in anybody's office. They can come to my congressional office, or we can do it in any meeting room in Washington, D.C., at any time.

I'm here. I'm open to talk. I'm willing to talk. I have different perspectives when it comes to public policy, but I think when it comes to, quote/unquote, values, the values that I espouse is making sure that all Americans have the ability to thrive and prosper and Black Americans have an opportunity to do that as well. That's where I am, and that's where I stand on.

KEILAR: Well, Congressman, they have certainly heard you loud and clear through this interview.

[08:25:02]

So we appreciate you joining us this morning, Congressman Byron Donald.

DONALDS: Thanks for having me.

KEILAR: And up next, NFL stars speaking out on their refusal to get a COVID vaccine. This is something we're seeing.

BERMAN: Plus, the former White House counsel under Donald Trump says the former president asked him to do, quote, some crazy bleep. His testimony ahead.

KEILAR: He didn't say bleep, did he?

BERMAN: He did not say bleep.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: The NFL season is starting up again in September, which is -- that's fun to say, right? It's wonderful to say. It's getting back to normal.

But here's the thing. The league does not require players to be vaccinated. So those who are vaccinated will largely return to pre- pandemic normal at work. That's not enough to convince some players, including Carolina Panthers quarterback Sam Darnold.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM DARNOLD, QUARTERBACK, CAROLINA PANTHERS: I haven't been vaccinated yet. Still got to think about, you know, all those certain things that go into it. Again, it's everyone's choice whether they want to get vaccinated or not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Washington defensive end Montez Sweats said this after his team's coach invited.

[08:30:00]