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Biden Supports Local Vaccine Mandates; Cuba Cracks Down on Protests; Haitian Assassins Tied to U.S. Government; Biden Faces Two Tests with Crises; Wildfires Explode During Heatwave; Charges in Capitol Insurrection; Team USA Upset by Australia. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired July 13, 2021 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Percent of American adults say they're already vaccinated or they're planning on doing so soon. And then 10 percent are waiting and seeing. Six percent say only if required. And 14 percent say definitely not. That is a lot of people. Fourteen percent say definitely not. And you've got that 6 percent also that you -- there's some wiggle room there.

Now, you mentioned that you had spoken with Jen Psaki. Let's take a listen to what she had to say about mandates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: If I remember the context of the question, it was about federal mandates, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that's not a decision that we are making. That's not a -- that is not our intention from the federal government.

What Dr. Fauci was conveying is that there will be decisions made by local leaders, just like there will be decisions made by business leaders, by institutional leaders, on how they can keep their community safe. And we support their right to make those decisions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So what Psaki is saying, and what we heard Fauci say, is local. The problem with local, John, is so you get, let's say, Vermont and Massachusetts doing mandates, you know, that's fine but that's not really the problem. We're, obviously, not going to have people in Alabama or, you know, Mississippi doing mandates for vaccines. And that's where it's needed. So that's the issue with leaving this local. But that's what they've decided to do.

BERMAN: And they're talking about maybe businesses, companies, schools, stores, places like that, whether they can and maybe should start issuing vaccine requirements.

Elizabeth Cohn, it's an interesting discussion. Thank you very much.

COHEN: Thanks. BERMAN: The Biden administration facing new political crises in

neighboring Cuba and Haiti. We're live on the ground in both countries, next.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, a newly discovered e-mail shows that even the Republican Party's top lawyer knew that efforts to challenge the election were a, quote, joke.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:36:05]

BERMAN: This morning, the Biden administration confronting two escalating foreign policy situations on two fronts, the aftermath of the presidential assassination in Haiti and unprecedented nationwide protests in Cuba.

CNN has reporters standing by in both countries.

Let's begin with Patrick Oppmann in Havana, where social media platforms, Patrick, are being restricted.

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN HAVANA CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's almost impossible to get online using your phone. Even my home Internet this morning is slow to the point of useless

Cubans have not been able to post the pictures or videos and that has, of course, stopped many people from knowing what is going on, and also sparking further protests, which is why the government has done this.

You've heard President Biden say yesterday that he supports the right of Cubans to go out and protest, to demand a different future. The government here is taking a very different line. The president of Cuba, Miguel Diaz Canel, said yesterday that he considers the protesters to be criminals. We've seen mass detentions over the last several days and expect those to continue going on.

This is a very combustive situation during the pandemic. The already ailing Cuban economy, an economy that has been battered by increased U.S. sanctions, just continues to fail worse and worse. People are spending hours every day waiting to buy the basic items. I've lived here for a long time and I never remember a time where people just seemed like they'd given up hope.

Many of the people that I talked to during the protests on Sunday said that they really felt they had nothing left to lose, that they had lost their fear. The Coast Guard recently put out a statement encouraging Cubans not to take to the seas. They've seen a sharp increase this last year in people trying to make the dangerous journey across the Florida Straits. Obviously, this situation may lead to more Cubans trying to make those kind of dangerous journeys, John.

BERMAN: Patrick Oppmann for us in Havana. Patrick, please keep us posted on developments there.

Brianna. KEILAR: And in Haiti, the acting prime minister announcing overnight that the country will hold elections before the end of the year. This is coming as sources tell CNN that several of the men involved in the operation that killed Haiti's president previously served as informants for U.S. law enforcement.

CNN's Matt Rivers is live for us in Haiti's capital.

Matt, tell us what Haitian officials are saying.

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brianna, this investigation continues to move forward into this assassination of President Jovenel Moise, including the arrests of 63-year-old Christian Emmanuel Sanon. He allegedly helped recruit and then organize here on this island this alleged group of mercenaries that authorities say actually went out and carried out this assassination.

They're also saying that Sanon himself wanted to, quote, capture the presidency, although they didn't provide any evidence to support that claim, nor have they, at least publicly, charged Sanon with anything specific.

Later on this morning, we know that four people in charge of the former president's security are going to have to answer questions from prosecutors today. That could be a big development depending on how that goes.

And, yesterday, some fascinating reporting coming out late last night from my colleague Evan Perez, who supported what you said off the top, that suspects -- several suspects in this assassination had direct ties to U.S. law enforcement agencies as informants, including at least one who worked previously as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA actually confirming that in a statement to CNN.

And you'll remember that during this assassination, there was at least one suspect outside of the presidential residence shouting, this is a DEA operation, stand back. The DEA acknowledging that, but saying that no one here on the island was working on behalf of the DEA during this assassination.

[06:40:03]

Also, we're told that some of these suspects might have been informants for the FBI. The FBI not commenting on that. But, still, the links between the island and the assassination here and the United States continue to grow.

KEILAR: Incredibly curious. We know that you and Evan will continue to dig.

Matt Rivers in Port-au-Prince. Thank you.

BERMAN: So what does the Biden administration do about all of this?

Joining me now is David Sanger, White House and national security correspondent for "The New York Times." David is also a CNN political and national security analyst.

I want to start with Cuba, David, because President Biden, in a way, is stuck between the past two administrations, the Obama administration, which very much wanted to open up and did open up relations with Cuba, and the Trump administration, which didn't and re-imposed sanctions.

So what does Joe Biden do?

DAVID SANGER, WHITE HOUSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, right now he's trying to win a path between the two. So when President Obama went to Cuba, he kept saying, let's cast aside everything from the past. And, of course, President Trump reimposed sanctions and so forth.

President Biden has not taken those sanctions off. And yesterday I thought what was fascinating about his statement was he referred to the current government as an authoritarian regime. And he's the one who's been going around talking about how there's a great struggle developing between authoritarians and democracies.

So he was clearly in some way encouraging on the protesters but couldn't do that too much because he knows that the current government is going to say that these protests are American inspired, even if they're not.

BERMAN: Politically speaking, there are Republicans who are pushing the White House to do more. But what more could they do? What options actually exist?

SANGER: Well, the history of our interventions in these kinds of cases is a pretty -- pretty ugly one. Of course Kennedy, during the Bay of Pigs in 1961, a similar time in this administration, very first few months, went along with a preexisting plan to intervene, later called it the biggest mistake of his presidency. So you're not going to see Joe Biden get out very much in front of this.

And also, remember, it was only last week that Biden was giving a speech about why nation building doesn't work for the United States. He was referring to Afghanistan, but it applied to both Cuba and Haiti as well.

BERMAN: Well, let's talk more about Haiti too because then Senator Joe Biden, and you have that quote here, and I think it's worth reading --

SANGER: Yes.

BERMAN: Gave us a serious clue as to how he might look at the situation, as bad as it is, in Haiti right now.

SANGER: That's right. This was in 1991 when Bill Clinton was pushing an intervention, did do an intervention after a coup in Haiti, and Biden opposed it. And here's what he said. Sounds kind of brutal. He said, if Haiti quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn't matter a whole lot in terms of our interests. So, you know, he's basically saying here, I want to do whatever I can

to help the Haitian people, but let's not confuse this with something that is central to American interests. And he's been pretty clear about what is central to American interests, dealing with China, stopping Russia's disruptions.

BERMAN: There is some consistency, I will say, in the Biden foreign policy up until this point, and it's a modest, limited, I think, role in terms of intervention around the world. We will see. We will see where this goes over the next few months.

David Sanger, thank you very much.

SANGER: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: So, there have been hundreds of arrests in connection with the attack on the Capitol, but none of the rioters have been charged with insurrection. Why?

KEILAR: Plus, the GOP's top lawyer reportedly called the Trump team's election fraud efforts a, quote, complete joke that could mislead millions. How Rudy Giuliani responded, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:48:30]

BERMAN: Record breaking heat and drought fueling wildfires across California. The state is on track to record its worst fire season ever.

Let's go to Jennifer Gray now with the very latest.

Jennifer.

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, John, the west is stuck in this vicious cycle of basically relentless heat resulting in the drought becoming worse resulting in wildfire season becoming worse. Right now we have 137 large, active fires in the west, and they are burning out of control.

This weather is brought to you by Servpro, helping make fire and water damage like it never even happened.

So the fire situation across the west, if you look at the numbers, total U.S. wildfires, more than 33,000. Ten-year average is about 29,000 to date. The total area burned is almost 2 million acres, a little bit behind the ten-year average, but that number is quickly growing.

We have 94 percent of the west in drought. This has been unprecedented as far as the numbers go. We have tied or broken more than 6,000 heat records across the west, and we could see more records broken as we go throughout the day today. Of course, this heat is going to start to dip a little bit, John, but, still, we are in this cycle that doesn't seem to end. BERMAN: Just brutal.

All right, Jennifer Gray, thank you very much.

Brianna.

KEILAR: More than six months after the Capitol riots, over 500 people have been arrested, but not one of them has been charged under a specific federal statute that bans rebellion and insurrection.

[06:50:04]

So, why not?

Let's talk about it with CNN's chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Jeffrey, I'm curious what you think about this. We've heard from the legal scholar, Laurence Tribe, who says the petty crimes that the insurrectionists are being charged with are not enough. What do you think?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: I disagree with my revered Professor Tribe. The insurrection law was passed in 1862. The leading precedent on insurrection is from 1863. It's almost never been prosecuted in the subsequent 150 years plus.

Prosecutors don't want to get into legal fights. That is a general rule. They want to charge simple crimes that appeals courts will sustain. If they start charging people with the insurrection act, they will get bogged down in legal processes that could take years. By charging people with assault, with trespassing, with very familiar crimes that are not legally controversial, they will get these cases moving through the system, they will get people in prison faster. I think they're making the right choice.

KEILAR: OK, so you disagree with him.

I want to ask you about something else. "The Washington Post" reporting that the, at the time, the top lawyer for the Republican Party, as President Trump and his legal team were challenging the results of the election, said that those arguments that Trump and Rudy Giuliani were making were a joke. And Rudy Giuliani found out about this and tried to get this lawyer fired. What did you think about learning about this?

TOOBIN: Well, it's almost identical to what happened in the Justice Department. Remember, William Barr looked into these arguments and he said, essentially, that these arguments were a joke and Barr was forced out as attorney general. Justin Riemer, who was the RNC general counsel, is a strong Republican partisan. He's also a real lawyer. And he looked at these arguments and said they were a joke. It just shows that Giuliani and company were not being real lawyers. They were just being blind partisans. And they were pushing arguments that we know now, as we knew then, were, in fact, a joke.

KEILAR: He said this because he was trying to dissuade the party apparatus from pushing these lies, from pushing the big lie. What does it tell you learning more about what was being said privately versus what was coming out publicly?

TOOBIN: Well, you -- what you noticed was people like Justin Riemer did not say anything publicly. Basically, all the Republicans who knew that these were a joke were cowed into silence, and the field was left entirely to these Trump partisans, like Giuliani, like Sidney Powell, who had no regard for what was really true or legal. And, you know, their silence has allowed these arguments to fester for all of these months.

KEILAR: And then also new this morning we learned that the Trump Organization has removed its CFO, Allen Weisselberg, of course he's been indicted, but they pulled him from his leadership at more than 40 subsidiary companies.

What does this mean to you, especially considering the indictment also involves the Trump Organization?

TOOBIN: Well, this strikes me as a regulatory effort. I mean the problem for -- that the Trump Organization faces is that, you know, they -- they have liquor licenses, they have gambling licenses, they have real estate matters that all involve government. You can't have a chief financial officer of a company that is going before regulatory bodies who was under indictment.

The problem the Trump Organization has is the company is also under indictment. So, you know, yes, it makes sense to try to separate yourself from Allen Weisselberg, but they can't really because they are under indictment for the same charges.

This just shows the peril to the Trump Organization of this case. It may not be the mega case that many people were expecting, but it's still a big problem for this organization. And, you know, we'll see if they can do any business while it's hanging over their heads.

KEILAR: Yes, that is a very good question.

Jeffrey, thank you so much.

TOOBIN: OK, Brianna.

BERMAN: So new coronavirus cases surging in states with low vaccination rates. How will the Biden administration respond? The U.S. surgeon general joins us next.

KEILAR: Plus our next guest asked former President Trump point-blank who he thinks rigged the election. His answer, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:58:41]

BERMAN: With the Olympics less than two weeks out, Team USA's men's basketball team suffering two shocking losses, including overnight to Australia. Andy Scholes with this morning's "Bleacher Report."

This is no dream team, Andy, this is a nightmare.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, yes. Well, John, you know, these are just exhibition games, but, I mean, there is real reason to be concerned that Team USA is not going to win gold in Tokyo. You know, since the team started playing with NBA players back in 1992, they had lost just two exhibition games. They've now lost that many over the last three days.

And Australia, you know, has their share of NBA players, but none of them all-stars. And Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, Damian Lillard, not able to come through for Team USA in the closing minutes when Australian went on a 11-1 run to end the game.

You know, Team USA is a small team. They don't have a traditional point guard. The guys aren't really familiar playing together. So some real problems here. The U.S. hasn't failed to win gold at the Olympics since the disaster at the 2004 Athens game when they won the bronze.

All right, the home run derby taking place last night in the thin air at Coors Field in Denver. New rule this year, you didn't have to wait for the ball to land to hit another one. Mets slugger Pete Alonso putting on a show, crushing a first round record, 35 homers. He would meet the Orioles Trey Mancini in the finals. Mancini, an inspiring performance after battling his way back from being diagnosed with stage three colon cancer last year.

[07:00:05]

Now, Alonso would end up beating Mancini by one in the final round.