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President Biden To Address The Rise In Violence Across America; San Jose, CA Has Unanimously Pass An Ambitious New Gun Control Law; Massachusetts Police Sergeant Retiring From A Career Spanning Four Decades; COVID hospitalization surging in places where vaccination rates are low; Billionaire Richard Branson Launching The Space Tourism Industry. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired July 12, 2021 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY HOST: To reduce the rise in gun violence facing some cities across the country. Eric Adams, who is the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City and a former police captain will also be there. In a new interview Adams shared this message to members of his own party about what he thinks his victory as one of the more moderate candidates means.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC ADAMS (D), NEW YORK MAYORAL CANDIDATE: We can't be so idealistic that we're not realistic. And we've allowed (ph) to fall out of the Trump administration to have an overreach in philosophy and on-the- ground, real issues that are facing every day New Yorkers (inaudible) -

(CROSSTALK)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC THIS WEEK HOST: So is it fair to call you an anti-woke Democrat?

ADAMS: No. I - some of us never went to sleep. That's the problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining us now, Kirsten Powers, CNN's Senior Political Analyst and "USA Today" Columnist, and David Gregory, CNN Political Analyst. That message from Eric Adams, David, what do you think?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: You know I think it's telling the party something important. Here you have the likely mayor or the next mayor of New York, and the Democratic standard there of certainly an epicenter of liberal activism in the party saying hold on. Let's take a look at what the President of the United States, the leader of the National Democratic Party did to get elected.

He was more pragmatic. He was in many ways more moderate. He galvanized the base of the party with that message. Let's be very careful about how we're being defined. I think a lot of liberals may want to debate the facts of the matter, may want to have the debate over aspects of racism, police reform, voting rights.

All of these are legitimate issues. It's a question of Democrats like in Eric Adams looking in the mirror and saying how are Democrats being defined right now? Are we losing control of that message? Are we losing control of the debate?

BERMAN: It's an interesting construction. How they are being defined. Kirsten, what do you think?

KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well I think a couple of things. First of all, Adams actually did say in a - in a separate interview he wouldn't consider himself anti-woke, so - and the second thing I would say is the work woke has been really misappropriated and it does not mean the same thing that it originally was supposed to mean, so it's out of the black vernacular. It's something that was used by black activists, and it just means to be awake.

It's now been really misappropriated mostly by the right, and I think some Democrats are starting to do it as well to turn into this kind of boogieman word, right? And it's not - that's not really what it is. It was meant really for black people to say stay awake to the fact that there's white supremacy.

And so, I think we need to be careful in how we use that term. It's not a pejorative, and it's kind of become a pejorative. So you know, I think - I think that's something to bear in mind.

The second thing I would say is yes. Absolutely, Joe Biden was the most moderate candidate. He also moved to the left on issues and he was moved there by liberals, right, in particular in talking about policing and in talking about race.

And so, I don't think - I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. The defund the police, which is probably what Eric Adams was referring to, is not the position of the Democratic Party. So it's fine for liberal activists I think to push for that because that's what liberal activists are supposed to do. Liberal activists are supposed to push the party in the liberal position and then the party can decide, you know, whether they want to adopt it or not.

I just don't think Democrats should get involved in this anti-woke thing -

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: I guess --

(CROSSTALK)

POWERS: -- because it's something that's really been driven by the right.

BERMAN: David?

GREGORY: Yes. I mean, I don't - I have a slightly different view. I mean, I think it's possible to parse these things out. And I wouldn't disagree with what Kirsten is saying, but you know it's not just the right that's driving this. There's plenty of people who are not actively in politics. They might be suburban voters. They not might be allies in this effort on any number of these issues who don't understand the sea that they're swimming in anymore.

I mean, ask people who work in organizations where they're making good faith efforts towards DEI work, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion work where they've struggled. It leaves people with lots of questions and even disagreements within the party, and I think there's a difference between Biden.

I think Kirsten is absolutely right, but I think he tacted left (ph). I don't think he's become more fundamentally left and now he's tacking it back more to the center especially over policing because he knows he's going to have to deal with the fallout of rising crime.

This is a party that should be right now wanting to run on a very strong post-COVID response and post-COVID economy. They don't want to be dragged into this. And again, so I'll agree with Kirsten's parsing of this, but I'm not sure that's how people are taking it all in where they understand what, you know, what's the boogieman and what's not because you're right. The right will be very in-depth in saying let's try not to really campaign on Trump. Let's try to just, you know, zero in on the excesses of the left as we see it.

[07:35:00]

BERMAN: I guess there are two questions here, Kirsten. Is it fair and is it working?

POWERS: Is what? Say that again?

BERMAN: Is it fair? You know, is it fair? Is the criticism fair of the left part of the Democratic Party, A, and B, is it working? Those are two different questions.

POWERS: Yes. I mean, I don't know. I don't - I honestly don't think the criticism is really very accurate. I think that it's sort of this - and I do think it is - what happens is you have the right and they run with these issues. It's like this attack they're doing on critical race theory that is just untethered from reality, right?

And then, yes, as David said suburban voters get kind of confused because they're hearing all this kind of stuff, but it's not actually accurate. So just because people are hearing things and they believe it doesn't make it accurate. And so, I think as people in the media we have a responsibility to try to help people understand what's actually going on.

And so, yes. I would say the one thing, you know, that wasn't helpful was probably defund the police. You can make an argument that wasn't helpful in terms of politics. It, however, was never the position of the Democratic Party. So that, again, is where the right has taken something and said it - what made - caused a lot of confusion and made people think it was the position. It's also something that was never really accurately explained in the

media because it's not actually as crazy as people want to make it seem. So you know, I think that - I just think that we have to do a better job of explaining this kind of stuff and not let the far right like define these issues and ignore what they actually mean.

And I don't think that, you know, Biden hasn't you say tact left. I mean, in terms of voting rights he actually has very much taken the position of the left. I think in terms of - you know, in terms of a lot of issues frankly, I don't think he would have been elected.

So I think sometimes when we say these things are far-left when they're actually supported by a majority of Americans, if you don't attach some label to it that's been completely disconnected from what it actually means. It just means to be aware that there's white supremacy and be aware that there's oppression in the world, and there's nothing wrong with that.

BERMAN: All right. David Gregory, Kirsten Powers, I promise you we will have this discussion again soon. Thank you both very much.

POWERS: Thank you.

GREGORY: Thanks.

BERMAN: Up next, the tough new rules for gun owners in San Jose. Will they stand up in court?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY HOST: Plus American optimism, the highest that it's been in more than a decade. Harry Enten tells us what is driving those numbers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:41:42]

More than a month after 10 people were killed at a rail yard, the city of San Jose, California has unanimously passed an ambitious new gun control law. This is the first of its kind measure, and it will require gun owners to buy liability insurance and to pay an annual fee to cover the cost of police and medical services after shootings.

Joining us now is Sam Liccardo. He is the Mayor of San Jose, and he is one of this new law's biggest champions. Mayor, thank you so much for being with us. Just tell us why you think this is going to work.

MAYOR SAM LICCARDO (D), SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA: Well thanks, Brianna. Certainly the Second Amendment protects the right of every American to posses a gun, but it doesn't mandate that we taxpayers subsidize gun owners' right (ph). And we know through insurance and through the payment and fees we can compensate the public for the cost of responding to gun violence, and most importantly we can compensate those who are injured and families who have lost loved ones.

This is going to be a critical approach that will need a lot of other solutions as well because we know although there is a vaccine that can perhaps solve a problem with a single virus, you know, a gun epidemic that is taken hold in a country with 300 million guns is not going to be subject to a single (inaudible). We're going to need a lot of different solutions.

KEILAR: So what's the point of this, though? Will this reduce gun violence?

LICCARDO: Yes. Absolutely. What we've seen for example in the case of insurance with automobile driving is that using risk-adjusted premiums insurance companies can encourage safer driving. They can encourage4 car owners to be able to use, as we saw in the past, air bags and ABC brakes and so forth.

Similarly with guns, you know, we live in a country where four and a half million children live in a home where a gun is kept loaded and unlocked. Having gun safes, having gun owners taking gun safety courses, trigger locks. These are all things that can make us safer, and insurance can play a role in incentivizing gun owners to be safer.

KEILAR: Car ownership is not protected by an amendment in the Constitution and you're going to have legal challenges to this. Critics are going to say look, this is imposing a financial penalty for exercising a constitutional right. What do you say to that?

LICCARDO: Well certainly in the realm of reasonable gun regulation, no good deed goes un-litigated, and we expect there will be a lot of lawsuits and lawyers, but what we know is that we've had federal excise tax on guns in this country since 1919. We know that there are lots of constitutional rights for which we ordinarily expect to pay fees.

Newspapers are engaged in a core First Amendment right, and the Supreme Court has said that states can certainly tax newspapers.

KEILAR: Well the critics are saying like gun owners in California, they say you bring up the freedom of the press basically that this would be like steamrolling the first amendment by mandating the media carries such insurance.

LICCARDO: Yes. I don't think so. I mean, for example, if anyone needs to exercise any of their rights in court and exercise their Seventh Amendment right to a civil jury they have to pay a fee at the courthouse steps (ph).

Nothing in the Constitution says all these rights are free. They simply say the government cannot impose unreasonable restrictions.

[07:45:00]

KEILAR: There are many gun owners - responsible gun owners who favor measures that you would certainly support and the Democrats support. Things like background checks or, you know, limiting high-capacity magazines. Do you have any concerns that you're going to alienate them with a measure like this?

LICCARDO: No. I mean, look. We've been waiting for Congress to enact many sensible reforms like, for example, reinstituting the assault weapons ban that hasn't existed in at least federally for nearly two decades.

We can't continue to wait for Congress to act to impose these reasonable measures. I think we're seeing mayors throughout the country step forward in saying we're not willing to continue to wait. We need to protect our community.

KEILAR: When do you think you'll see a legal challenge?

LICCARDO: As soon as the ordinance is fully drafted and approved, and I expect we'll have a lot of lawyers coming at us. The good news is we've got great organizations like (inaudible) and others, and we have plenty of lawyers there willing to do this really for pro bono, on their own because they recognize the importance of this.

KEILAR: Mayor, we will keep talking to you about this. I'm sure this is just the beginning of the story. Mayor Liccardo, thank you so much.

LICCARDO: Great to be with you.

KEILAR: John -

BERMAN: Massachusetts police sergeant retiring from a career spanning four decades. He's best known for taking on the two terrorists behind the Boston Marathon bombing. CNN's Polo Sandoval has more with the officer who went beyond the call of duty.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF PUGLIESE, RETIRED WATERTOWN POLICE SERGEANT: Yes. Here we go. Right here. Those are from bullets, that damage to the fence.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jeff Pugliese has spent more than 40 years policing the streets of Watertown, Massachusetts.

PUGLIESE: There's another one through there.

SANDOVAL: At the end of May, this lifelong lawman had no choice but to hang up his sergeant's hat after reaching the state's mandatory retirement age of 65. As recent as his last road call and going back to his early days a military police officer, Pugliese entered just about every call during his career, but it was the one that led him into east Watertown in April 2013 that made the world notice his reputation for going beyond the call of duty.

PUGLIESE: Shots fired. Shots fired. All units respond.

SANDOVAL: Pugliese was heading home from a shift when he heard fellow officers involved in a shootout with a couple of suspected carjackers. He raced towards the chaos in his (ph) minivan as they fired bullets and hurled bombs at Watertown officers.

PUGLIESE: And it was right about here where one of the pipe bombs went off. SANDOVAL: The officers had no idea at the time that they had pinned

down the two brothers behind the deadly Boston Marathon bombing just four days before.

PUGLIESE: We were exchanging gun fire back and forth, so that's when I decided I'm going to cut through some back aves (ph) and flank them.

SANDOVAL: Once within firing distance -

PUGLIESE: Where that tree is is about where they were.

SANDOVAL: -- Pugliese, a highly-experienced firearms instructor took aim at one of the terrorists and fired.

PUGLIESE: When he realized I was here he came running up the street between this car - this wasn't the car at the time - and this chain link fence, and he's the other side of the fence and we were exchanging gun fire this close.

SANDOVAL: Pugliese hit his target nine times, yet every one of the bullets the bomber fired at him missed. Pugliese then tackled the bomber before seeing headlights. It was the younger brother coming straight for them.

PUGLIESE: I grabbed, you know, the older brother by the belt and tried to drag him, but the car was going so far that, you know, I didn't even have a chance to pull him out of the road and he just barely missed by head.

SANDOVAL: Pugliese received the Medal of Valor and other top honors for helping end the terror spree, even testified in the trial of the surviving younger brother who was found guilty.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sarg, he's shooting at us.

SANDOVAL: Harrowing events of the Watertown takedown were immortalized in the film "Patriots Day". That's actor J.K. Simmons playing the role of Sergeant Pugliese.

PUGLIESE: I think he did a pretty good job.

SANDOVAL: Who's better looking?

PUGLIESE: I am

(LAUGHTER)

SANDOVAL: There's no denying the events at that night get the most attention, but Pugliese adds he refuses to let it define his decades of serving the community.

PUGLIESE: We get a call at 2 o'clock in the morning and, you know, my baby's not breathing, you know? And you pull up and the parents come out with the baby and they say here, you know? And you start doing CPR and you get the baby breathing again.

SANDOVAL: Those are the moments this third generation policeman says are the most rewarding.

To people still call you sarg?

PUGLIESE: Yes, they do.

SANDOVAL: It's going to be hard to shake off that title.

PUGLIESE: Yes. I've had it since '93, so -

(CROSSTALK)

SANDOVAL: It's having to get used to his new title of civilian that he's not looking forward to at all. Polo Sandoval, CNN, Watertown, Massachusetts.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: You know, Sergeant Pugliese, I have to say that is a night I will never forget, but our thanks to Sergeant Pugliese for his lifetime of contributions and more.

Just in, CNN's Barbara Starr reports that the top U.S. general in Afghanistan is stepping down today from his position there. This was an expected move as the U.S. withdrawal is nearly complete. General Scott Miller, the longest-serving U.S. commander throughout the two decades of war in Afghanistan, again, stepping down today.

[07:50:00]

Up next, the deepening red-state, blue-state divide on vaccines and how it puts lives in jeopardy.

KEILAR: And some rare protests in Cuba. Why Cubans are taking to the streets in the largest demonstrations that we have seen there in decades.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:54:45]

BERMAN: The difference between vaccination rates in red-states and blue-states is stark and it is dangerous. John Avlon with a REALITY CHECK.

[07:55:00]

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: In the fight against COVID we're seeing a tale of two Americas right now -- red-state and blue- state, rural and urban - because if you've been vaccinated this pandemic seems almost over, but if you haven't the worst may be yet to come barreling down in the form of the Delta variant, which is estimated to be 60 percent more transmissible.

Overall, the U.S. has come a long way with 64 percent of the eligible population at leas partially vaccinated, but that means about one- third of Americans haven't even received their first doses, and that's a self-inflicted tragedy in the making, which is why the Biden administration announced that it was going to ramp up education efforts with door-to-door visits trying to help people make an informed choice.

But because we've managed to politicized this pandemic it wasn't long before the political trolls were out in force. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene repeating her noxious Nazi comparisons, warning of medical brown shirts going to people's homes except in this case the goal is to save lives, not slaughter them.

And on queue, her fellow curious congresswoman, Lauren Boebert, tweeted Biden has deployed his needle Nazis to Mesa County, referring to her Colorado county now seeing an average of 31 new cases a day with a 41 percent vaccination rate./

Joining the pile on was the frequently fact-challenged Congressman Madison Cawthorn who said that methods used for vaccination education efforts could be used to take your guns and take your bibles.

And not to be outdone, Charlie Kirk of the Trumpist Turning Point USA described college vaccine requirements as an apartheid-style open air hostage situation. Despite the fact that according to those who knew him is the organization's co-founder died of COVID, all of which fed into the sick applause at CPAC for the nation missing its vaccine targets.

These paranoid-style talking points have a real world impact, and they're poised to deepen that red-state, blue-state vaccine divide because if you look at the 16 states that have 60 percent or more of their population at least partially vaccinated, every single one voted for Joe Biden in the last election. On the flip side if you look at the 19 state where less that 50 percent is vaccinated, every one voted for Trump, exception of Georgia.

For example, Mississippi and Louisiana have vaccine rates less than 40 percent along with Idaho, Wyoming and Alabama. It's stark, and it's worse at the county level. Get this. The 20 counties that voted most heavily for Donald Trump had an average vaccination rate of just over 20 percent.

There's a lot of noise in the data, and the overall trends, though, are clear and they are ominous. Take a look at the CDC graphic showing counties with case rates more than 100 per 100,000 people and less than 40 percent of the population fully vaccinated. Those dark-red counties are a COVID tinder box, especially that cluster in Missouri and Arkansas.

And we can already see the toll it's taken. Paranoid-style politics that's infused the vaccine debate will only increase the COVID death toll. It runs the risk of killing people just to own the libs, and we've seen this story before. How many more times do we need to hear about people who were skeptical of the vaccine and got sick and instantly regretted it?

It's not just about individual freedom because as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, the right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins, and the decision not to get vaccinated puts other people at risk.

So this crew should be called the freedom to infect you crowd, but the real blame goes to those hyper-partisan hucksters who are trying to profit politically from this polarization even if it kills some of their supporters, and that's you're REALITY CHECK. NEW DAY continues right now.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman alongside Brianna Keilar. On this NEW DAY frustration on the front lines. COVID hospitalizations surging in places where vaccination rates are low. And E.R. doctor is standing by to talk to us right now. Anger on the streets as the biggest protests in decades erupt in Cuba. We will take you live to Havana.

KEILAR: And three black players on England's soccer team are targeted in racist social media attacks just because they missed kicks in the championship game. Plus billionaire Richard Branson launching the space tourism industry, but will the average Joe ever be able to reach for the stars?

BERMAN: Morning to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. It is Monday, July 12, and coronavirus cases are surging in parts of the United States and so is frustration among emergency room doctors and nurses.

KEILAR: For at least four consecutive days now the U.S. has reported more than 20,000 new cases, and the southeast has a number of hot spots where vaccination rates are lagging. Another is Missouri. You can see it there in light red where the full vaccination rate stands right now at a little under 40 percent.

BERMAN: Joining me now is the Medical Director of Emergency Medicine at CoxHealth in Springfield, Missouri, Dr. Howard Jarvis. Dr. Jarvis, we appreciate the work you are doing. We appreciate you being with us this morning. You've written about your frustration. Talk about your frustration and what you are seeing.