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New Day

Kathryn Garcia is Interviewed about NYC Mayor Race; Looming Civil War in Afghanistan; DHS Warns of August Violence; Climate Change Denial Could Disappear. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired June 30, 2021 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

DR. VIVEK MURTHY, SURGEON GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES: That has stayed vigilant. We've got to get vaccinated. We've got to talk to other people about getting vaccinated. And in the long term, we've got to recognize this, the cost of this pandemic is not just lives lost, although that's the highest cost. It is also the cost in the mental health and well-being of people across our country. You know, rates of depression and anxiety have increased during this pandemic. Among health care workers we've seen a greater than 50 percent burn out rate. Among public health workers, 53 percent of them saying that in the last two weeks that they have struggled with depression, anxiety, PTSD, or suicidal ideation.

We have a long way to go to recover from this pandemic. We can only do it together, but it starts with us getting vaccinated.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Dr. Vivek Murthy, appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.

MURTHY: Thanks so much. Good to be with you.

HILL: Up next, New York City's race for mayor thrown into chaos by a major ballot counting failure. Candidate Kathryn Garcia joins us live.

Plus, more on our breaking news. A rescue team leader telling John Berman moments ago of new discoveries overnight, including tunnels (ph).

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:35:02]

HILL: New this morning, in a massive miss-step by the New York City Board of Elections, about 135,000 test vote records were mistakenly included in the Democratic primary results released yesterday. Those results showed Kathryn Garcia within striking distance of front-runner Eric Adams.

In a statement, the board apologized and promised that it has removed all test ballots imagines from the system and will upload election night results cross referencing against election night reporting software for verification. Joining us now is Kathryn Garcia, Democratic candidate for mayor of

the city of New York.

It's great to have you with us.

So, I'm curious, since all of this has transpired overnight, what are you hearing? Are you being told anything else as to how this could have happened, that they were left in there?

KATHRYN GARCIA (D), NYC MAYORAL CANDIDATE: No, other than it was a computer glitch and people weren't paying attention. But we knew even yesterday that we still had 124,000 absentee ballots out there, so this was going to be a very preliminary count.

HILL: I do want to get to those absentee ballots in a minute. But if we look at -- look, the record for the New York City Board of Elections is not great. There have been a number of missteps over the years.

What do you think may have contributed to this one in particular?

GARCIA: I mean we will not know for a while what exactly happened, but it seems like it was just a mistake. Someone forgot to clear the computer before they put the real data in. So that seems like we should be paying a little bit closer attention.

HILL: It feels that way.

Are there any particular issues that you see with the board of elections?

GARCIA: I mean, this has always been an organization that I thought needs more professionalization, more of a career track at this particular organization. It is sort of controlled by what the state constitution says, so we have to have a balance of Republican and Democrats at every polling site. So we want to make sure that they are able to count the votes. That is so important in a democracy.

HILL: As mayor, you could not change this, just to be clear for folks at home. New York City operates a little bit differently than the most -- than most other places when it comes to the board of election, but there would have to be -- if changes were made, it would have to be in concert with the governor.

GARCIA: Yes.

HILL: It's not just the mayor.

But do you believe that changes do need to be made to the New York City Board of Elections?

GARCIA: There's actually legislation currently in Albany to streamline some of the functions of the board of elections, particularly on absentee voting.

HILL: And is that legislation adequate? GARCIA: That will be the first step. And then I think we need to see

what we need to do to make it so that they're able to give us better results.

HILL: Are you concerned at all about the integrity of the vote? There has been so much discussion over the past year, frankly, and so lies have been pushed about voting in this country. What does this do?

GARCIA: So, I am concerned that it undermines people's confidence. There is no one on my team or where we've been doing observations of opening of ballots that gives us concern that there's something fraudulent happening at all. But we need to make sure that the vote is protected and that we get the result that New Yorkers went to the polls or mailed in at the end of the day.

HILL: Are you concerned this could open up to conspiracy theories in any way?

GARCIA: I am really hopeful that it won't. It seems like this was a straightforward mistake. But we will definitely be watching and monitoring as we go forward. We want it to be something that all New Yorkers have confidence in.

HILL: In terms of -- I know you've said that, you know, rank choice voting, this is -- this is, you know, what the people said they wanted. Do you still feel that way?

GARCIA: Oh, absolutely. We had rank choice voting passed by 73 percent in this city. From the voters that I've spoken to, they liked having the choices. They liked being able to pick a favorite, and then pick a second, sometimes up to a fifth. And we will see how that ends up rolling out.

I think one of the things I was talking about with someone yesterday is we keep trying to pigeon hole the voters. And I think we're going to find out that they're a much more diverse group than we thought.

HILL: You mentioned these absentee ballots which are still outstanding, 124,000.

GARCIA: Yes.

HILL: Do you have any sense at this point of how those, you know, may fall for you?

GARCIA: So, we're very positive about where the absentee votes are coming from because those are in districts that I won. And so that gives us optimism. But we know that until they're all counted, we are not counting our chickens before they're hatched.

HILL: You did a fair amount of campaigning with Andrew Yang.

GARCIA: Yes.

HILL: How much do you think that helped you? GARCIA: You know, we won't know yet, but, you know, he was fun to

campaign with. I'll say that. And it was about getting out the vote. And I'm really happy that we saw a substantial more turnout than we did in 2013.

HILL: And, real quickly this morning, what's -- what is your message to Eric Adams?

GARCIA: You know, we're going to all have to have patience. And (INAUDIBLE) like to Eric, but Maya and I are, I think, all in the mix as we move towards the final count. And I will be absolutely supportive of whoever the Democratic nominee is.

[08:40:01]

I hope it's me, but I will be absolutely supportive of that person so that we can unify this city.

HILL: We will be watching.

Kathryn Garcia, thanks for coming in this morning.

GARCIA: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

HILL: Up next, the warning from a top U.S. general just days before U.S. troops are set to withdraw from Afghanistan.

And the new warning from Homeland Security stemming from a baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: John Berman here in Surfside, Florida.

A breaking development this morning in the search for survivors that is almost one week long at this point after the collapse of this condo building.

An Israeli search leader tells me that more victims have been found in the debris. We're going to get official word on that in a news briefing a little bit later this morning.

He also says that overnight they found tunnels, tunnels big enough for rescuers to crawl through. That, of course, is so important because any hope that exists for finding survivors at this point counts on these voids or spaces underneath the rubble that now really for the first time they are finding.

[08:45:03]

We're going to have much more of CNN's coverage from here in Surfside in a little bit.

But now we're going to move to Kabul in Afghanistan where a U.S. military commander this morning is warning of a possible civil war with the U.S. due to withdraw troops within days. Anna Coren is live there for us.

Anna, give us the latest.

ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, that's right, General Austin Scott Miller is warning of an impending civil war once U.S. troops withdraw. And the deadline that was set by President Biden was September 11. We are now hearing that U.S. troops could be out of Afghanistan within the next few days.

The Germans, they are already out. They're back in Germany. Americans, they will stay in country, just a thousand of them, 600 troops to protect the U.S. embassy. The rest to provide security for the international airport until the Turkish forces get into place.

But certainly for local Afghans, learning that troops could be out within days, two months ahead of schedule, that has really rattled them. They are shocked to learn that they have such little time. They will thought they had more time.

You know, the security situation here, John, is deteriorating rapidly. The Taliban have launched, you know, an aggressive offensive around much of the country, particularly in the north. They've claimed about 100 of the 370 districts. Taliban says it's more. Afghan forces says it's less. Either way, they are making gains every single day. So much so that General Miller, John, is saying that Afghan forces need to pull back from those areas and just protect the provincial capitals.

But certainly a sense here today on the ground that Afghans are being abandoned as the United States wraps up its longest war.

BERMAN: You're talking about the Taliban making gains in Afghanistan. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that al Qaeda no longer represents a real threat to the United States there. Al Qaeda, he says in a new interview, not a real threat.

Your response?

COREN: Yes, look, I mean, obviously, he's -- he's getting his intelligence. But the fact of the matter is the United Nations released a report just earlier this month saying that the Taliban still has very close ties to al Qaeda, and that there's no reason to suggest that they won't provide a safe haven for terrorists in the future.

Certainly when I've been here in the past, every single U.S. military commander that I have spoken, said the mission was to insure that Afghanistan never become a safe haven for terrorists again. Well, how can they make those assurances when there are going to be no actual troops in the country fighting alongside the Afghans. They will not have any bases. Pakistan has already said the Americans are not allowed to base themselves there. The (INAUDIBLE) are all aligned closely to Russia. You then have Iran.

So where the United States is launching air-strikes from to support the Taliban is from Aircraft Carrier Reagan in the Persian Gulf. Now, it takes about an hour for those jets to fly over and support Afghan forces on the ground. I mean it's a huge gamble that, obviously, the Biden administration is making. But as I say, people here feeling very abandoned, John.

BERMAN: Anna Coren, we appreciate you being there for us in Kabul. Thank you very much.

Erica.

HILL: John, QAnon conspiracy theorists are still pushing the baseless idea that former President Donald Trump will return to power in August. And now the Department of Homeland Security is warning that when that theory fails to pan out, right-wing extremists could again become violent.

Joining us now is Jim Sciutto, CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent.

So this bulletin from DHS, what should we be taking away from this?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's a perfect storm of dates in August, which is part of the problem here. You have the anniversary of the El Paso shooting, 2019, which people forget was an anti-immigrant shooting. The shooter says he was out to shoot Mexicans. You have the anniversary of Charlottesville from 2017, of course, you know, just an alarmingly racist event in 21st century America. And now this whack-a-doodle QAnon conspiracy theory that somehow Donald Trump's going to return to power, you know, on the heels of March, right? There was a similar theory about March, he was going to somehow take the reins.

And the concern here is that because this is all part of the big lie. The concern from DHS is that fuels the kind of violence we saw on January 6th, right? I mean it -- and it's not a theoretical threat because we've already seen groups respond to that kind of disinformation and carry out acts of violence in response.

[08:50:04]

There's no evidence of a specific plot yet on those dates, but it's really the confluence of events and how that big lie has in the past fueled violence.

HILL: Really raising awareness for it.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: There's also -- so, separately, we learned South Dakota is now the latest state where we have Idaho, I believe Florida, Nebraska who are all sending troops to the border to -- U.S. border with Mexico to help out the state of Texas.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: What's different here is in South Dakota we learned from the governor that the National Guard troops who are being sent, this is being privately funded, this deployment.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: Which just seems to raise a lot of red flags.

SCIUTTO: Well, let's be clear about this. I spent, with my team, time with the Border Patrol in Arizona a few weeks ago. No one we spoke to there was calling for states to send what are very small deployments of National Guard. South Dakota is sending 50 troops. There are 20,000 border agents, OK.

And, by the way, there is no formal arrangement between the border patrol and these contingents going down there.

The Border Patrol does work with National Guard units. It's part of a broader national mobilization that was sent down there during the Trump administration. Those folks are actually doing jobs that they need. They're looking at cameras, for instance, you know, drone footage, et cetera. But these particular things are not tied directly into those operations. So that gives you reason to believe it's more a political stunt than something that's actually law enforcement.

And, of course, when you have private money behind it, it raises other questions as well. It's not unlike what Trump did, remember, diverting Defense Department spending to border wall construction, which was not what Congress had appropriated that funding for. But we've seen government do this before, kind of do a little end around to try to get resources down there that they wouldn't otherwise have.

HILL: Yes. It will be interesting to see what actually happens when they get down there.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: Jim, good to see you.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

HILL: Thank you.

We'll see you, of course, at the top of the hour on "NEWSROOM."

SCIUTTO: (INAUDIBLE).

HILL: Up next here on NEW DAY, how record heat is forcing some serious reckoning for climate crisis skeptics.

Plus, significant, new developments from rescuers searching the debris of that collapsed condo building in Florida.

SCIUTTO: Good to see you.

HILL: Thank you. Great to see you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HILL: Temperature records are falling faster than the mercury is rising across North America. Spokane, Washington, just set an all-time high of 109 degrees. Some roads, as you can see there, are buckling in the heat near Seattle, where the mercury hit 108 on Monday. Portland, Oregon, 116 degrees on Monday. That is the third record-setting day in a row. And in British Columbia, the temperature in one city climbing to a shocking 121 degrees Tuesday.

[08:55:05]

That is a new all-time record for the area.

With all of this, with Portland hotter than Las Vegas, it's getting more and more difficult to deny climate change, as John Avlon explains in our "Reality Check."

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: This could be the summer when climate change denial finally goes the way of the dodo (ph) because of the pain and the stakes, the need for mitigation and adaptation are clear. The heatwave in the Pacific Northwest is horrific. And, no, it's not just seasonal extremes, not when Portland, Oregon, sees its three hottest day on record with 116 degree heat in June or when Seattle hits temperatures higher than any ever recorded in Atlanta, making the highways there buckle. Canada suffering as well with a village in British Columbia cracking 121 degrees, by far the hottest ever reported in Canada, passing the hottest temperature ever in Las Vegas with more than 230 heat related deaths reported to date.

Farmers in the western U.S. are fearing for their crops and livestock amid a massive drought, and peak fire season hasn't even started yet.

And, yes, this spike in extreme weather is driven by climate change. It's part of an undeniable pattern. Washington state Governor Jay Inslee gets it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JAY INSLEE (D-WA): Now we're here, the opening act has arrived of the climate catastrophe, and we're getting it in the Pacific Northwest right now. Everyone's going to get hit by this climate catastrophe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: And this record-breaking heat wave, much more collective attention this past week has been focused on the horrific building collapse in Surfside, Florida. It's an urgent as opposed to slow moving crisis. And while it's still too soon to know the precise cause or triggering event for the collapse, the structure seems to have been stressed over time by king (ph) tides (ph) that come from rising sea levels, which flooded the building's parking garage on a regular basis according to residents.

There's talk about how the building was old at 40 years. That's only old for south Florida. But the not so stable combination of concrete and saltwater can be doubly dangerous given how much the Florida coast is built not on bedrock, but on porous limestone and landfill. And I want to be clear, there's no reason to believe the adjoining

properties are at any immediate risk at all, but this is a wakeup call. And the broader toll of climate change on our coastal communities can no longer be ignored.

So who could have seen this coming? Pretty much anyone who paid attention to the science. But instead we've seen decades of political foot dragging by climate change denialists, some of whom hail from the worst-hit southern sunbelt states. We've seen some belated changes from folks like Florida Senator Rick Scott, who's administration didn't even want to mention climate change when he was governor, but now he's suddenly admitting it's real. That's good. Maybe he took a hint from Miami's previous Republican mayor who pushed to spend $192 million on sea rise and flood mitigation.

But we're beyond a piecemeal approach. Abraham Lincoln once said that the legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do it all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. That's climate change. That's infrastructure. And that's why there should be additional urgency in passing an infrastructure bill that can help mitigate the effects of climate change.

We need to strengthen our cities, including our roads and bridges, to deal with extreme weather conditions, including flooding. We need to strengthen our electrical grid to make it more resilient. Yes, that includes you, Texas. And we need to innovate our way from fossil fuels.

Here's the bottom line. Short-term thinking helped get us into this mess. Long-term thinking and action will help get us out.

And that's your "Reality Check."

HILL: John Avlon, thank you.

Even as you point out, and as our chief climate correspondent Bill Weir was saying earlier, really what it boils down to in many cases is this choice between mitigation and adaptation. But at the bottom of it, you know, regardless of what -- which you choose or how much of each one you're choosing, there has to be some action.

AVLON: Denial is not an option, that's for sure.

HILL: No it is not. And it certainly doesn't solve the problem.

John, thank you.

CNN's coverage continues right now.

Sorry.

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