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8 Shootings in Phoenix Suburb as Gunman Targets People at Random; Attack Conspiracies Keep Falling Apart as Facts, Reality Set In; Trump's Hand-Picked Justices Deliver Him Multiple Defeats; Polls: How Liberal are Democratic Voters? Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired June 18, 2021 - 06:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Brianna Keilar, alongside John Berman on this NEW DAY. A shooting spree across Arizona. One person killed and more than a dozen hurt as cities across the country see a sharp rise in crime.

[06:00:00]

And violent and visceral new evidence released from January 6th, showing the harrowing attack on police trying to defend the Capitol.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The Supreme Court decidedly upholds Obamacare again. The conservative majority delivering another defeat for Republicans and the former president.

And an historic milestone. Juneteenth, marking the end of slavery in the U.S., now the newest federal holiday. It is sending some companies scrambling.

KEILAR: Good morning to viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Friday, June 18, and we begin with an apparently random and deadly shooting rampage in Arizona.

Four people were shot. One was killed. Nine others injured in the chaos. Eight shooting incidents in all in the suburbs of Phoenix.

BERMAN: It comes as gun violence spikes across the country. Already this year, there have been at least 281 mass shootings in the United States.

CNN's Kyung Lah live for us in Arizona this morning with the latest on this string of shootings overnight. Kyung, what have you learned?

KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

It's so alarming, because for 90 minutes, the northwest suburbs of Phoenix, and this is an area with a lot of retirees. It is an outlying suburb, traditionally known as really safe; was gripped with concern as someone was just driving around, say police, in random drive-by shootings, just basically, taking shots at people.

There were multiple scenes, according to police. In all, there would be four people shot, a total of about a dozen people who would be hurt, either in resultant car crashes, some shrapnel, and one person was unfortunately killed as police started to get these first reports. They then quickly started to piece everything together.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SGT. BRANDON SHEFFERT, PEORIA POLICE: From there on, what we've realized is that the same suspect vehicle which has been identified as a white SUV was involved in at least eight other incidents at this time. So that's eight separate incidents. That doesn't talk about the people involved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAH: We don't know very much about the people involved or the people who were hurt. We also don't know very much about the suspect or the motivation. We can tell you that the suspect was arrested, arrested peacefully after a firefighter recognized the suspect vehicle from reports and then police were able to take this man into custody -- John.

BERMAN: All right, Kyung, thank you so much for being there for us. A horrifying night, another horrifying day in this country. Appreciate it.

KEILAR: There's some new body cam -- new police body cam video from the Capitol insurrection that has just been released by the Justice Department. And this is footage that was used in the case against Thomas Webster. He's a former Marine. He's a retired New York City police officer who's accused of participating in the January 6th riot.

And we must warn you that the audio in this footage has not been censored.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fuck Mike Pence!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fuck that!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fuck! Come on! Take this thing off! Take this thing off!

(SHOUTING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Beating officers with a flagpole.

You see that video with your own eyes. You see that horror with your own eyes. It makes it all the more stunning that some Republicans and some deranged entertainers keep developing new and provably false ways to say the insurrection did not happen.

What stands in the way of their attempt to whitewash January 6? Reality.

First, the claim that the Capitol attack was just a tour, which is how Republican Andrew Clyde of Georgia describes it, a normal tourist visit. That assumes your idea of a normal tourist visit to the Capitol involves breaking and climbing through a window, rifling through lawmakers' desks, ransacking offices, and beating law enforcement officers.

By the way, it was Clyde who barricaded the door to these "tourists."

[06:05:02]

KEILAR: No. 2, rioters not armed. In the last 24 hours, the Justice Department charging a rioter with unlawfully bringing a semi-automatic hand gun on the Capitol grounds. Rioters also used bear spray. They used flag poles, as you saw there, baseball bats, all of these things to viciously attack police.

BERMAN: No. 3, January 6th was a peaceful protest. Another offensively absurd claim, easily disproved with, you know, pictures. See above. Rioters used bear spray, flagpoles, baseball bats, to viciously attack police.

KEILAR: And No. 4, a myth the FBI orchestrated the deadly assault on January 6. FOX's B.S. ringmaster Tucker Carlson this week breathing air into this false flag conspiracy theory that originated from a right-wing website that has been flagged by social media for being B.S.

This conspiracy theory is based on references to unindicted co- conspirators and several indictments against Capitol rioters. Legal analysts, including our own Elie Honig and anyone you will talk to of any sort of merit have called this legally impossible.

BERMAN: No. 5, Trump will be reinstated. First it was March. Now it's August, a theory that Trump himself is pushing to allies. This is, A, absurd; B, impossible; and, C, dangerous, and could provoke even more violence.

KEILAR: And No. 6, conspiracy theory here. Members of left-wing extremist group Antifa infiltrated Capitol rioters. Here's what FBI Director Chris Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee about this in March.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Is there any evidence at all that it was planned or organized or carried out by groups like Antifa or Black Lives Matter?

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: We have not seen any evidence to that effect thus far.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: No. 7, the theory that fake Trump supporters attended the rally. Here's FBI Director -- Director Christopher Wray at the same March Senate hearing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Do you have any evidence that the Capitol attack was organized by, quote, "fake Trump protesters"?

WRAY: We have not seen evidence of that at this stage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And lastly, "Don't call it an insurrection." Republican Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who is among a group of Republican lawmakers who this week voted against a measure to award Congressional Gold Medals to members of the Capitol Police and the D.C. Metropolitan Police for their bravery, telling "The Hill," quote, "If they just wanted to give the police recognition, they could have done it without trying to make it partisan, without sticking that in there."

Now, by "that," he means the truth. The word "insurrection," defined by Merriam-Webster as "an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government."

Here's mere of the harrowing video of that day. What else would you call it?

BERMAN: All right. Joining us now is Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman. He's now a strategist with the Network Contagion Research Institute, an organization that works to identify political extremism and curb the spread of disinformation on the Internet.

Congressman, thanks so much for being with us. You told me that everything we just laid out there, particularly the false flag FBI stuff, is akin to September 11th trutherism. Just as dangerous, you say, but also -- and this is what scares me -- you think effective.

DENVER RIGGLEMAN, STRATEGIST, NETWORK CONTAGION RESEARCH INSTITUTE: It is, very effective. You know, I deployed in 9/11. I left about 10 days, John, right after 9/11 happened. I remember coming back, in about 2003, 2004, when I was in NSA, we saw a lot of the 9/11 trutherism type of theories come out.

And when I saw the FBI thing from Tucker Carlson, and now I'm starting to see DHS is starting to be mentioned with the FBI in some of these conspiracy theories, it's the exact same playbook. And that to make up that it's a false flag, that there's some kind of internal thing going on in the government. That it's actors that came from the outside and implanted people on the inside.

So obviously, this isn't real. And this is to go out to the American people or specific groups. And in this case, it's going after MAGA.

So I did a Facebook search this morning. And this is January 6, FBI goes after MAGA. Some people say, Legitimate questions. We have to find out. Right? And when you see these type of things, even on Facebook this morning, and you do these searches, that should scare the hell out of people. Right? That this is something that's very effective. I think it will be used in 2022. I think it will be used for fundraising also.

KEILAR: And it's not just the FBI. Right? You see that now this idea that the conspiracy theory about who was behind this, that it actually goes beyond the FBI?

RIGGLEMAN: It does. And that's why I was sort of shocked this morning. And I thought, I'll just do some searches on social media. And I said FBI in sort of cahoots with DHS. I think what you're going to see is now this is going to be an entire law enforcement false flag. They said the Antifa false flag that we saw.

And John and Brianna, you saw at the beginning how they were talking about those questions in the March hearing. We knew three to four days afterwards that there were about seven white nationalist groups that were involved. This was not Antifa. This wasn't the FBI. This isn't DHS. This isn't Bionan (ph).

[06:10:05]

This was far-right activists. This was groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, right? And those are the type of individuals there, and QAnon believers. That's who sieged the Capitol.

BERMAN: Congressman, what do FOX entertainers, what do some Republican members of Congress, what do they get out of spreading this crap?

RIGGLEMAN: You win your primary. And, you know, when you look at polling and you look at fundraising, and you look at this type of hyperbolic language, it's very effective in raising money. And if you look across the spectrum, even the first quarter, you see a Marjorie Taylor Greene raising $3.2 million. You see a Matt Gaetz raising $1.8 million. This is very effective for the base.

And you know, I was talking to Brianna before we went on air. Said it's even people in my district. I was looking at Republican committees, and they're automatically saying there's legitimate questions here. We have to answer these questions.

Was the FBI involved? And these are the same committees that Republicans have to answer to. So if the base is believing this, and you think that's how you win an election, the truth doesn't matter. And that's what I've been screaming about is that facts have to matter as representatives for the American people.

KEILAR: When you look at this, and it's really a system of disinformation that is enabling this, but what is the biggest culprit? Is it, you know, right-wing media that is perpetuating this? Is it lawmakers, many of whom -- and you know this for sure. Your former colleagues, they know that they're lying. Is it social media? You know, what is the biggest culprit here?

RIGGLEMAN: It's certainly a culmination. And when you have coordinated enough activity, a lot of it is a bubble-up from the bottom now. We saw data, you know, during the Trump presidency, where for instance, back in the Obamagate thing was a big -- remember that? -- to subpoena Obama. That actually started from an online troll on Reddit.

All right? So my guess is Revolver, right, when they reported that the FBI, you know, on 1/6 infiltrated this, based on some ridiculous definitions, right? And by God, who wants to go by real definitions, right?

When they saw that, they said, Hay, this could be a story. So you probably had a bubble-up from the sort of dark corners of the Internet up to the Revolver, which is a ridiculous, you know, rag, all the way up to Tucker Carlson with his millions of viewers that push this.

So it's a combined ecosystem, and that ecosystem is about follow the money. It's about power, but it's about winning elections.

And again, if we're that -- at that point, right, if politics has now gone into where you have a fantasy-based way of doing business, you're in trouble. Because now you have a party that's not based on reality or fact, and they're having policy discussions. And instead, they're going to be running on 1/6, and Antifa, false flags, or any other ridiculous conspiracy theory that you have out there.

BERMAN: What can be done?

RIGGLEMAN: Well, listen, I've followed this information and terrorism for years, right? Two decades. This is very difficult, because once it becomes a battle between good and evil, it's becomes almost apocalyptic. Right? You're going to fight. You've got to fight for our country. That is very difficult to break.

But I think when you're looking at all the strategies that you're seeing right now across the federal government and even in private/public partnerships, of groups from the outside, to look at this information, identify these people that are pushing disinformation.

If they're allowed to use their First Amendment to do this ridiculousness, we can use our First Amendment to fight this. And we need to use -- we need to use facts as a cudgel right now. It's very difficult. I think we have to do it with compassion. Because when you get angry, people push back with even more "good against evil" type of righteous stuff.

But at this point, if we don't have some kind of overall sort of all of government and private-public partnerships that are looking into this data, we're going to have a lot more trouble in the future, and it worries me about the 2022 elections.

KEILAR: Yes. Your research is alarming. That this might be a chemical change, right? You bake a cake. You can't unbake a cake.

RIGGLEMAN: Yes. Brianna, you're right. This is baked in, and -- and it's going to be a real challenge to get it out.

KEILAR: All right. Former Congressman Denver Riggleman. Thank you, as always, for joining us this morning.

RIGGLEMAN: Thank you.

KEILAR: President Biden back home and training his focus on his domestic agenda and the members of his own party needed to get it done.

BERMAN: The Supreme Court delivers a decision upholding Obamacare. What does that reveal about the high court's conservative majority?

KEILAR: And the new Juneteenth holiday setting off a scramble for states and businesses over giving their employees the day off.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: President Biden finished his eight-day tour of Europe, focused on striking relationships with U.S. allies and efforts to ease tensions with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Now his attention has turned to the domestic agenda. Biden returned home to a bit of a victory after the Supreme Court dismissed the Republican challenge to end the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, saving health care coverage for millions of Americans.

KEILAR: And in the meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Democrats are considering accepting a compromise to Biden's infrastructure plan as both partners continue to debate major changes to the president's proposal.

And after missing Biden's deadline to pass the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act last month, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says negotiators could reach a deal by next week.

All of this as the U.S. rapidly reopens and COVID-19 cases decrease. But the pandemic is far from over, of course. The administration monitoring the Delta variant right now, or COVID on steroids, as an expert put it, which is threatening millions of Americans, especially those who are still unvaccinated.

And as John noted, for the third time in nine years, the Supreme Court has rejected a Republican effort to invalidate Obamacare. This time, by a convincing 7-2 vote. And it's not the first time that Trump- nominated justices have handed the former president a loss.

Let's talk now with Ariane De Vogue. She is our CNN Supreme Court reporter. There were actually two big rulings yesterday, Ariane.

ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN SUPREME COURT CORRESPONDENT: Right. The Affordable Care Act will remain in place, meaning millions and millions of Americans will keep their healthcare.

The vote was 7/2. Justice Breyer wrote the decision. But what's interesting here is Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, two of Trump's nominees, they were in the majority here.

Now, the court didn't issue this big ruling on the constitutionality of the law but instead, it issued a threat really based on a threshold issue. It said that the Republican-led states didn't have the legal right to bring the challenge, because they couldn't point to a specific legal injury.

So what the Supreme Court did is dismiss the case, dismiss the challenge. But what's interesting here is remember how hard President Trump fought to invalidate this law, and of course, here, two of his nominees voted to allow it to remain in place.

And other case was a religious liberty case. And here, all nine justices ruled in favor of a Catholic foster care agency that refused to work with same-sex couples out of objections to same-sex marriage.

And here definitely, the six-justice majority ruled in favor of the agency. But that really was very narrowly tailored to what happened in Philadelphia. The agency won, but three other justices, Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas, they wanted their colleagues to go much further, to issue this landmark opinion to overturn precedent, to really have an opinion that had nationwide implications. And they didn't have the votes to issue such a big opinion, and that's because Barrett and Kavanaugh weren't ready to go that far.

So it's interesting, because that issue was key to President Trump's base. They wanted a big ruling here, and they may have felt like the Supreme Court, although the agency won, fell a little bit short of that landmark opinion.

KEILAR: We've also seen other instances where the conservative majority court has ruled against the former president. Right?

Well, keep in mind that, for sure, courts will be President Trump's most lasting legacy. He changed the face of the lower courts, and he also put these three Supreme Court justices.

But in the short term, he didn't always win. Remember, he wanted the election results overturned. And the Supreme Court issued an order without comment, and they ruled against him. They wouldn't take up that case.

And remember his tax returns. His tax lawyers wanted the Supreme Court to block the release of his tax returns to that New York prosecutor, and the court, again, without comment, didn't stop it -- step in to block it. Those tax returns went out.

So it's interesting in the long term for sure. There are now more conservatives on the Supreme Court, the court will be moving to the right. But in the short term, President Trump didn't get all that he wanted at all.

KEILAR: No. It's very interesting. Ariane, thank you so much for taking us through that. Ariane de Vogue -- John.

BERMAN: All right. Other major developments in President Biden's agenda. There was some surprise in circles that Stacey Abrams supported Joe Manchin's voting rights compromise with here on NEW DAY yesterday.

There's some surprise that President Biden seems willing to entertain the infrastructure compromise agreed to by some Republicans. So a surprise, but maybe there shouldn't be.

I'm joined by CNN senior political writer and analyst and TV star, Harry Enten. Harry, look, when we talk about the surprise here about what certain Democrats are willing to do, it suggests maybe that people have an idea that the Democratic Party, writ large, is more liberal than it really is.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER AND ANALYST: That's right. And first off, thank you very much for that compliment. Lifted my spirits on this early Friday.

Look here. Voter ideology among Democrat voters -- this includes leaners. Look at this. Compare April 2021 to April 2019. And who is in the majority? It's actually self-identified moderates and conservatives. Fifty-four percent of Democratic voters said that they were either moderate or conservative this past April. Very liberal, those folks on the far left. Just 25 percent. You combine that with somewhat liberals, that gets you over 40 percent. But at this particular point, if you look at all the polling, what you see is that the moderate conservatives make up slightly more than a majority. And that has been holding over the last two years.

BERMAN: Moderates are the driving force in the Democratic Party or at least the majority of the Democratic Party. And in terms of what Democratic voters want from their elected officials, what do they say?

ENTEN: Sure. So this is a huge difference between Democrats and Republicans. So take a look here. This is a Monmouth University poll.

Which is the bigger problem among elected officials? Is it the unwillingness to compromise or the unwillingness to stand on principle? Democrats say the bigger problem -- look at this, two- thirds say the bigger problem is an unwillingness to compromise. Most Democrats believe that politicians are not compromising enough.

That's very different from what Republicans say. Look at that. A slight majority say the bigger problem is politicians' unwillingness to stand on principle. Republicans want their party officials to basically stand their ground, while Democrats are much more likely to say, Hey, we want our politicians to be willing to compromise a lot more.

BERMAN: Two-thirds --

ENTEN: Two-thirds.

BERMAN: -- of Democrats say that they want compromise there. In terms of President Biden, who is seen, perhaps, as a more mainstream Democrat. What are Democratic voters saying about him?

[06:25:08]

ENTEN: Right. So I think the proof here is in the pudding.

BERMAN: Or the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as Joe Biden likes to say. ENTEN: Exactly right. And I love pudding. Chocolate's my favorite. Look at this. Job approval rating among Democrats through four months of the first term. So this is last month.

Look at this. Joe Biden's approval rating among Democrats, 92 percent. That is the highest for any Democratic president through this point in his presidency since all the way back, JFK in '61. Bill Clinton, who was always thought of as fairly popular, or at least among Democrats, he was all the way down at 70 percent.

So Democrats like what Joe Biden is doing. They like this willingness to perhaps go more towards the center or at least try and compromise with Republicans. It really hasn't hurt him so far, at least among Democrats.

Democrats like what they're getting from the Democratic president.

In terms of the various special elections we've seen up until this point, what does it tell us about what kind of candidate has been successful?

ENTEN: Yes. So again, the proof in the pudding. Key 2021 Democratic primaries -- look at the list. Louisiana, 2nd Congressional District. That was especially New Jersey governor, Virginia governor, both regularly-scheduled elections. Look at the winners here.

Troy Carter, Phil Murphy, Terry McAuliffe. What part of the wing are they from? They're all in the mainstream part of the party. Even Phil Murphy really didn't even have a primary challenger. He just was able to zoom back to renomination.

And let me put it to you another way, right? Look at this. The New York City mayoral election, this is coming up on Tuesday. This may be another example of what's going on. So New York has this weird system where they're doing rank choice voting.

But look at this. Finished in the final two in the final round of voting. Look at this: Eric Adams. He's moderate mainstream. He finished in the top two in seven out of seven polls. Kathryn Garcia, moderate mainstream, yes. Finished in the top two, five out of seven. Even Andrew Yang, one out of seven times.

The only candidate who's really on the left-wing part of the party, the very progressive wing, who has finished in the top two at least once is Maya Wiley. But most of the folks that Democratic voters in New York, a liberal city, have been putting forward to get to those final two in that instant run-off or rank choice voting, they're all in the moderate mainstream part of the party.

BERMAN: Again, the driving force within the Democratic Party, at least the majority of the Democratic Party, saying they seem to want right now, the polls say, moderates, mainstream.

ENTEN: That's exactly right, John.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, great to see you this morning. ENTEN: Nice to see you. And thank you for the lovely words earlier.

BERMAN: You've got it.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Right now, a controversial presidential election under way in Iran. Why the outcome may well have been decided before it even started.

KEILAR: And as more cities loosen COVID restrictions, some bosses are demanding their employees get back to the office stat, whether they want to be there or not.

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