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New Day
America's Democracy Summit; Celebrity Status Doesn't Guarantee Book Sales. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired December 09, 2021 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:31:31]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: In the early morning hours yesterday, the Christmas tree outside of Fox's Manhattan headquarters went up in flames. It was an act of arson at a time where crime in America is escalating. And police say that a man who has since been released sent the massive artificial tree ablaze and then watched it burn.
We covered this story as a crime, and Fox covered it too, extensively as the centerpiece of their news day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHAUN HANNITY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Sad news, our very own beautiful 50- foot Fox News Christmas tree was destroyed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who sets a Christmas tree on fire?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who sets a Christmas tree on fire?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I mean, it's just part of the rampant no city is safe, no person is safe from this --
AINSLEY EARHARDT, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: A tree that unites us, that brings us together, it's about the Christmas spirit, it is about the holiday season, it's about Jesus, it's about Hanukkah, it is about everything that we stand for as a country, freedom and being able to worship the way that you want to worship, it makes me so mad.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No one can burn down the spirit of Christmas or destroy our resilience. A new tree is on the way.
STEVE DOOCY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: They look at the lights, and today there are no lights because somebody burned down our Christmas tree.
BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I hope we put it back. I mean I hope we put it back and bigger.
EARHARDT: I would -- I hope we build it back bigger and better.
KILMEADE: Right.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Why is burning Christmas trees not a hate crime according to the DOJ?
EARHARDT: So for someone to burn that down --
DOOCY: I know.
EARHARDT: Is just so disheartening and so sad.
DOOCY: It's going to mean something a little different because we lost our tree and we're going to have another tree.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to build the tree. The tree will be back in no time. It is going to be beautiful and massive and it is going to mean even more than it did before.
KILMEADE: Because if that's -- if your tree is real in a crowded area, this thing can -- you could blow -- you could burn down city blocks. But it's emblematic of a cities -- cities across America, they're out of control.
DOOCY: This city has gone south when it comes to safety. We don't feel safe when we come to work in the morning.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: America's crime crisis hits close to home for us here at Fox after a brazen arson attack happened right outside our New York City headquarters, and giving us a front row seat to the rampant crime ravaging Democrat-run cities.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So come see us, come celebrate. You fire bug little bastard, you're not going to keep us down.
EARHARDT: So, this is deeply personal to all of us.
DOOCY: Right.
EARHARDT: Not just to the folks who work at Fox but to all of you at home because it's red, white and blue. It represents America.
KILMEADE: The whole lobby was full of smoke evidently.
HANNITY: He apparently scaled the tree, ignited a massive fire, endangering hundreds of people in and around our Fox News headquarters.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Now, no one was injured in this incident, but they could have been. This is a serious incident. Obviously, it's incredibly scary to feel that your workplace is under attack unless your workplace is the Capitol. Then, according to many, many Fox hosts, it's not such a big deal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOOCY: OK, 99 percent of them -- 100 percent -- 99 percent of them were peaceful. CARLSON: You don't see people hiding bombs or using bayonets. You see
people walking around and taking pictures. They don't look like terrorists, they look like tourists.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were there to support the president of the United States and defend our republic and stand up and say, I just want a fair shake.
CARLSON: The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, it wasn't an insurrection, it was a political protest that got completely out of control.
[08:35:01]
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: For best performance in an action role, the winner is Michael Fanone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: At Fox, when the target is a Christmas tree at their workplace, it is a sacrilege. But when the target is the seat of American democracy, it's not. The whole of Congress, as they certify a presidential election that was fair and secure, when the perpetrators are Trump supporters in the thousands, four of whom died that day, when the victims are police officers, 140 of whom were injured, and when five police officers have died in the wake of the attack, including four by suicide, when Fox's own colleagues had to take cover inside the Capitol complex on January 6th, Fox downplays the attack and, in many cases, flat out doesn't cover it, ignores that it ever happened. Just imagine if Fox hosts could muster for an armed attack on the Capitol the same outrage that they did for their Christmas tree. Perhaps some of the almost half of Republicans who think January 6th was a legitimate protest might actually see it for what it really was.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, it's a good point. I mean there were many, many Fox News employees at the Capitol that day.
KEILAR: There are. Look, and we had employees there. And I used to work there. And I was thinking about what it would be like to be in that building. And that's what it was for every staffer who was in there, so many. It was members of Congress, but it was a lot of journalists as well.
And I understand that they're saying this feels personal. It would feel personal to me if something like that happened at my workplace, for sure.
BERMAN: Oh, yes.
KEILAR: But what happened to the Capitol should be personal for all of us. And they are completely abdicating, I think, their responsibility in talking about it that way.
So, we have some emotional testimony in the trial of the traffic stop shooting death of Daunte Wright. The officer heard on body camera footage, quote, I'm going to go to prison.
BERMAN: And why Justin Timberlake might be crying a river over his book sales.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:40:34]
BERMAN: Moments ago, President Biden kicked off a democracy summit with leaders from across the world.
John Avlon with a "Reality Check."
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The Biden administration's democracy summit is now underway with 111 countries meeting virtually as a sign of solidarity against the rising tide of autocracy. Now, we'll soon see what concrete commitments emerge, or whether it's all just a lot of diplo-talk.
But the need is real. After all, democracies have been in retreat for over a decade around the world according to Freedom House as autocracies pitch the promise of wealth without liberty.
Predictably, China and Russia denounced the summit before it began. And it's no wonder because they've gotten used to bullying critics into silence and submission. With Putin you can call liberalism obsolete. But there are heartening signs of a pushback.
The Biden administration's been notably tough on China, contrary to all those Trumpist claims about Beijing Biden during the campaign. The latest example is this week's decision to diplomatically boycott the Beijing Olympics, which was explained by the White House as a stand against China's, quote, ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, something that China, all evidence to the contrary, denies. But that's a long way from Trump calling Uyghur concentration camps exactly the right thing to do, according to his former national security adviser, John Bolton.
This week also included a two-hour virtual meeting with Putin, which Biden warned that any Russian invasion of Ukraine would be met with military and unprecedented economic sanctions. But despite that stark change in tone between Biden and Trump when it comes to dictators, what's almost as significant is seeing more businesses put billions at risk to stand up to the Chinese government.
Like Women's Tennis Association, which last week announced a suspension of all tournaments in China in response to Beijing's silencing of sexual assault allegations made by tennis star Peng Shuai against a former top communist party official. A few weeks earlier, LinkedIn and Yahoo! Announced they'd be leaving China, while several clothing and apparel companies condemned the use of slave labor in Xinjiang province, provoking China's ire.
This kind of a spine is a stark departure from retreats we've seen in the past, like the NBA's apologies when the Houston Rockets general manager tweeted in support of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong two years ago. It's part of a long pattern of knuckling under when faced with state criticism.
Mercedes, for example, apologized to the CCP for quoting the Dalai Lama in an ad. Several airlines bowed to demand for the websites and in-flight maps remove references to Taiwan and Hong Kong.
And perhaps the most absurd example was actor John Cena's over the top hostage-style video apologizing in mandarin for having made the mistake of calling Taiwan a nation in an interview. For the record, Taiwan is a self-governed democratic island which is attending the democracy summit.
But these sins -- apologies for the sin of offending China are relatively commonplace, if cowardly as you can see. What we don't see quite as much is a full-throated defense of Vladimir Putin in U.S. media. But Tucker Carlson provided that with a 12 minute recital of Russian talking points the other night that would have embarrassed announcers on RT, siding with Putin over Ukraine and saying that the American president was wrong to try to stop an invasion.
Just take a look at the banners, NATO seems to exist to torment Putin, and, Putin just wants to keep his borders secure, and mocking the idea of territorial integrity entirely, otherwise known as the right to not have foreign tanks roll across your borders. Might as well be counted as an in-kind contribution to the Kremlin.
But Tucker's not actually alone in this entirely. Take a look at the cover of "Newsmax" magazine this month, which hails Vlad the great, saying that post Trump Putin becomes master of the world.
This is sick stuff. Tiger-beat for authoritarian teeny-boppers, as "The Washington Post's" Philip Bump (ph) called it. But it's part of the authoritarian fetishizing that's one of Trump's gifts to the GOP. Take note of this economist YouGov poll from August of this year showing that Republicans have a higher approval rating for Putin than the American president Joe Biden. It's this kind of hyper-partisan fever, along with Trump's big lie and the attack on the Capitol that creates an opening for autocracies to point to democracies dysfunction, leading, for example, a Russian commentator to write, the state-run Chinese newspaper that this U.S. led democracy is something like a mistress of a brothel, teaching morals to schoolgirls.
Their goal is to exacerbate cynicism in the political west, says Jessica Brant (ph) of the (INAUDIBLE) Institution. And that's exactly why partisan citizens and moral relatives here at home play right into their hands. It's also why we need to defend the integrity of our own democracy, without apology.
And that's your "Reality Check."
BERMAN: I really like the tiger-beat reference because Vladimir Putin, he's Tucker Carlson's Shaun Cassidy.
AVLON: I thought you might.
[08:45:00]
BERMAN: Vladimir Putin has become Tucker's Shaun Cassidy. (INAUDIBLE) --
AVLON: You're dating yourself, but I dig it.
BERMAN: All right, John Avlon, thank you very much.
Now here's what else to watch today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ON SCREEN TEXT: 10:00 a.m. ET, Bob Dole ceremony at Capitol.
12:30 p.m. ET, Biden calls Ukraine's president.
1:30 p.m. ET, White House press briefing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: More on our new CNN reporting. We're learning what was on Mark Meadows texts during the insurrection and how he communicated.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILLIE EILISH, MUSICIAN: (singing).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Billie Eilish, her career, white hot right now. So why not her book sales?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:50:13]
BERMAN: What do Justin Timberlake, Ilhan Omar and Billie Eilish have in common? They all have big social media followings, but despite some heavy advances, that has not meant big book sales.
Joining me now is books and publishing reporter for "The New York Times," Elizabeth Harris.
When I say they have big social media presences, they're like gargantuan, like millions and millions of people. You would think, if they write books, they could just say buy my book and people will do it. But what's going on here?
ELIZABETH HARRIS, BOOKS AND PUBLISHING REPORTER, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, book sales are really difficult to predict. Like, if you think about a lot of things that are sold retail like, you know, like a can of tomato sauce or a car seat, like, those don't change a lot from year to year. But every book is different. Like, it's an individual work of art or culture. So every time a publisher comes out with a new book, it's, you know, kind of just a -- it's a whole new world and no one really knows what the market is going to be. So having a social media following like Billie Eilish has, what, like 97 million Instagram followers, it can really help, but it's not a guarantee. And that just sort of speaks to how unpredictable the book business is.
BERMAN: Publishers now, because it is so unpredictable, they're actually counting on that social media presence some, or looking for it, right?
HARRIS: Yes, I mean it can help because if you think about it, in the last, you know, many years, the sort of way you publicize a book has really shrunk. Like, global media has really shrunk. Book coverage has really shrunk. So they really count on authors to be able to help really get the message out themselves. And -- but there is, you know, it's -- it's really unpredictable. I mean someone can have a ton -- you know, 100 million followers on Instagram and, you know, her book sold, but just not, you know, not nearly as much as one would think for a following like that and not as much for kind of what the publishers paid for it. Whereas, you know, there are some people who have -- there's an Instagram account called Accidentally Wes Anderson, which is sort of pictures of kind of things like bowling allies and buildings and stuff that looks like it could be a Wes Anderson set piece. And they have like about a million and a half Instagram followers.
But their book -- they have a coffee table book out now and it sold really well. It sold about 100,000 copies. And so it's just, you know, you have to -- publishers try and figure out, like, OK, like, they have all these followers, but how engaged are they? Like, do they like their content? Do they share it? Like, are they commenting? But even that is difficult to really parse out because, you know, sometimes maybe the book, it doesn't really match what the -- what the -- w hat the social media accounts are about. Like let's say you have a social media account all about like training puppies, and then you have a book about gardening. Like maybe the people who follow you for the training of the puppies don't care about gardening. So you could have 10 or 20 million followers but maybe you say, hey, buy my book about gardening and they're all like, nah, you know? So they're -- it's more complicated than just like your numbers are high for Instagram, so your numbers are going to be high for your book sales.
BERMAN: It's such a great point. And your article is terrific. And, you know, as you, as someone who reads a lot of books knows, one of the thing that does consistently help a little bit is when the book is really good. You know, sometimes that's one of the things one of the things that makes a difference.
HARRIS: That's a key.
BERMAN: Elizabeth Harris, thank you so much. Terrific reporting.
HARRIS: Thanks so much.
BERMAN: Some big, breaking news.
Seconds ago, we got a new report on jobless claims in the U.S., and they just hit a half century low. Think about that, the lowest in 50 years. The Labor Department reported 184,000 claims. That's the lowest level since September of 1969. That was before I was born.
KEILAR: Wait, was it? Yes.
BERMAN: Yes. (INAUDIBLE) fact checking that. It was before I was born.
KEILAR: Oh, look, this is part of a number of datapoints of good, economic indicators.
BERMAN: Yes. The jobs numbers are confounding. It's hard to understand exactly what's happening here except that there's so much leverage in workers' hands right now where they can go out and find jobs that they want to get. And that's a really, really big -- you lost your mic huh? So I can say whatever I want right now and you can't respond.
KEILAR: I can't even respond. I've been told to pick it up, but that would require knowing where it is.
BERMAN: That's a whole episode.
KEILAR: Take it away.
BERMAN: No, look, but it's a -- the jobless claim thing is really, really good news for the workers out there. It's one of these other signs, and we talked about it earlier, of this economy moving in the right direction. It's not perfect. There are inflation concerns here. But there are a lot of things to be very, very grateful for as we head into the Christmas season.
So, the U.K. essentially going back into lockdown in response to the omicron variant. Is it the right move?
And verdict watch in the Jussie Smollett trial. The jury back to work moments from now.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:59:10]
KEILAR: It's time now for "The Good Stuff." The surprise of a lifetime for Dunkin' Donuts employee Ebony Johnson (ph). One of her loyal customers, Suzanne Barker (ph), noticed that Johnson was not at work recently. And when Barker discovered that her favorite drive through server had fallen on hard times and been evicted, she got to work with non-profit organizations to find her a home and get it furnished.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Improve her life and the life for her kids and make sure that they had stable housing so that she could continue to provide that excellent service that she does.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Now, the kids are just as excited as their mom. A fully furnished home just in time for Christmas.
BERMAN: What I love about this is the acknowledgement of people who are part of your lives. I mean they may not be co-workers, they may not be family, but they're part of your lives because you see them every day and they're meaningful to you.
[09:00:00]
And so that's one person telling another, I see you. You're important to me. You're important to the world. I love that.
KEILAR: And Ebony takes care of Suzanne in a way every day, right?
BERMAN: Yes, that's right.
