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Tennis Player Novak Djokovic Not Allowed into Australia Due to being Unvaccinated against Coronavirus; Capitol Police Prepared for One-Year Anniversary of January 6th Insurrection; Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) Interviewed on January 6th Select Committee's Investigation into Capitol Insurrection. Aired 8-8:45a ET

Aired January 06, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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


[08:00:00]

CARI CHAMPION, HOST, "NAKED WITH CARI CHAMPION": The government is like, no, no, not so fast. Why are you tweeting that you're here and it's OK? Because leading up to the Australian Open there were so much speculation about whether he would play because we are under the belief that he does not believe in -- I find this fascinating because this is where we are. It's a microcosm of what's happening with athletes. Tennis is unusual, though. Unlike football or basketball, it's not always more money for them. Yes, the tournament wants him there, but the country is like no, not so much, it is not about money. Australia is very strict, as we now know.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: For a good reason. They put up with a lot of shutdowns. But Cari, when it comes down to it, there is so much drama, but it really comes down to Djokovic not getting vaccinated.

CHAMPION: He has talked about it. Anyone who follows tennis knows how he feels. He's most recently had COVID, but he's talked about the vaccination, and he knew that this was required, this medical exemption was required. And the way it looks to the folks in Australia, the citizens there as well as the government, is that the medical exemption for him appears to them as an example or excuse for him to play because he's a privileged tennis player.

You should see, and I'm pretty sure you guys have seen this, all over social, I'm watching some of the reports down there in Australia, and they said he thinks he's going to be better than us. Sorry, you're a regular citizen, tennis player, and you have to be treated as such.

But now it has gotten so out of control because he's protesting the fact that they did not accept his medical exemption. And then now we have different municipalities within that country fighting over whether or not he should be allowed to play, and Serbians by nature who were there to support him, came to see him, they're protesting. They're in support. His father is speaking about it. The president of Serbia is now involved. We are really into some unchartered territory, and I think this particular instance with Novak Djokovic, the reigning champion of the Australian Open, will really dictate how, in fact, athletes will choose to talk about whether or not they're vaccinated.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Cari Champion, it's always great to have you on. Thanks so much for being with us.

CHAMPION: Thank you.

BERMAN: NEW DAY's special coverage continues right now.

All right, good morning to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. It is Thursday, it is January 6th. I'm John Berman with Brianna Keilar. We're live on Capitol Hill for special coverage of really one of America's darkest days. Moments from now, President Biden and Vice President Harris are set to address the nation. They will be speaking from inside the Capitol. This is actually something that doesn't happen that often with a president. It marks the gravity of this day. One year ago, the world watched as a mob incited by the former president and his allies led this weaponized attempt to overturn a free and fair democratic election.

KEILAR: Inside the Capitol, an even more harrowing picture. There were brutal attacks on dozens of officers, one was nearly crushed in the rush to storm the building. For several hours, former President Trump refused to call off the violent crowd that left law enforcement beaten and bruised and bloody. On the House floor, lawmakers cowered in fear of their lives, some barricaded the doors, others prepared to fight.

BERMAN: Amid the mayhem, Secret Service agents swiftly escorted then Vice President Mike Pence out of the Senate chamber. Rioters had called for him to be hanged. Trump defended them. As of today, more than 700 people have been arrested, hundreds more still at large. Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed to hold perpetrators at any level accountable under the law.

KEILAR: And here's more of what to expect today. You have the vice president, as we mentioned, the president speaking one hour from now. Then at noon, there will be a moment of silence on the House floor. At 2:30, lawmakers will share their reflections of the day. That will be presided over by Congressman Jason Crow. And at 5:30 this evening, there will be a prayer vigil on the Capitol steps. All the while a federal law enforcement official telling CNN there has been a recent uptick in violent rhetoric on extremist forums. CNN's Whitney Wild joins us now. Perhaps not surprising, but incredibly alarming, Whitney.

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. And this comes after a year of violent rhetoric that prompted an uptick in threats against members. We're talking about 9,600 threats against members last year the Capitol police tried to figure out, investigate out. That's an uptick from 8,600 the year before that. And then when you consider that is more than double what they were dealing with in 2016 and 2017.

So over the last several years, threats against members of Congress have just exploded, which is putting a ton of pressure on Capitol police because their chief says they're down 447 officers. Their manpower is exhausted. It has been a very long year since January 6th.

[08:05:09] Even still, the chief insists that they are in much better shape today than they were a year ago, and he detailed several reforms they've made in a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday, not the least of which, mostly specific to today, which is now they put out this 25-page blueprint for the entire force, which says exactly what everyone is going to do, lays out everybody's responsibility. That is a direct reaction to one of the failures of January 6th, in which officers said they had no idea what the plan was, and they were totally blindsided by the crush of rioters that ended up beating on them for several hours.

I think what's important to remember about today is that this is totally different from January 6th. Even though they're seeing this violent rhetoric increase. The reality is there is no time and place, there's no big event, there's no one egging on people to go to the Capitol, so the landscape here much calmer, which is why you're seeing very different response. There's no fencing up.

But however, what's important to know is that throughout Washington there is a lot of intelligent sharing. Everybody is on the same page. There is an increase in staffing throughout the city, throughout federal law enforcement. However, and this is really important for people to understand, there is no credible specific threat today. Back to you.

KEILAR: Important to note. Good to hear. Whitney, thank you.

BERMAN: Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He serves on the select committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol. He's also the author of the new book "Unthinkable, Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy." And Congressman Raskin, thank you so much for being with us.

Look, I think many people in America know this is not just a difficult anniversary for you because of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, but it's also about a year since you lost your son Tommy. We are very sorry.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN, (D-MD) JANUARY 6TH SELECT COMMITTEE: Thank you for that. I appreciate that very much.

BERMAN: And just what's it like for you to be here one year later with this majestic building behind us, knowing what happened then, but knowing what happened since?

RASKIN: I think a lot of us are experiencing it as a melancholy day, because we're remembering the violence in the streets with the riots, the organized insurrection with the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the militia groups, the QAnon networks. And then we've learned so much more about the inside coup, the attempt to overthrow Joe Biden's majority in the Electoral College and to deny him the presidency.

But we did survive it. And so our democracy, as ugly as that day was, did survive it, and we are in the process of fortifying our institutions, and that's really the purpose of the January 6th select committee, to figure out how did we fortify ourselves against propaganda, conspiracy theories, lies, domestic violent extremism. And then how do we strengthen the electoral structure so we can resist attempts to corrupt it and to hijack our elections.

KEILAR: Many Republicans are not experiencing today as a melancholy day. They're pretending like it wasn't what it was. What is that like?

RASKIN: Yes. I heard Vice President Pence, I think, say it was just another day, which is -- it's like saying December 7th is another day, or the 4th of July is another day, or 9/11 is another day. This is a day that will go down in American history for the savagery of the most sweeping, sustained attack on the U.S. Capitol and the Congress in American history.

And I know that ardent democratic patriots will always remember this day as a day of shame in infamy for those who participated as insurrectionists, rioters, and coup plotters. But we will always remember those people who are heroes, like Officer Hodges who was up on the screen before, who got caught in the doorway, or Officer Dunn who is my constituent in Maryland's 8th district, who fought for four or five hours to defend us.

There are cops who to this day have traumatic brain injury, posttraumatic stress syndrome, recovering from physical wounds and mental wounds because of the action they saw that day. They were Afghan and Iraqi war veterans out there that day, who said they had never seen violence and combat like what they saw here in the streets of Washington and inside the Capitol.

BERMAN: We just spoke to Stephanie Grisham, former press secretary under President Trump who was working for Melania Trump on the day of the insurrection. I knew you were instrumental in actually getting her to come and speak with the committee last night. You talked to her personally. She said she told you some things that you didn't know. I'm wondering what you learned from that.

RASKIN: It was not a formal interview, so I can't repeat what she said, but certainly she named a lot of names that I had not heard before. She identified some lines of inquiry that had never occurred to me. And so I put her in touch immediately with our excellent investigative staff.

[08:10:00]

The amazing thing, John, is that the vast majority of people who work for Trump, who were out there that day, are coming forward to unburden themselves and to say I want to tell you everything that I know. Now, of course, as we get closer to Donald Trump, there is a coterie of people around him, the Roger Stones and the Steve Bannons, who want to try to hide everything. But I think that the truth is going to come out, and America is going to be shocked and surprised at what we all come to learn this year.

KEILAR: Named a lot of names of people who she believes are culpable or people who you should speak to?

RASKIN: People that we need to speak to in terms of getting to the bottom of the events. Remember, there was a mass demonstration called for a wild protest by Donald Trump, which turned into a riot. Then there was that ring of the insurrectionists who came here having trained for military action, who broke the windows that they seemed to know were unfortified in particular areas. They were the ones who led the attack on our officers and started hitting them over the head with steel pipes and confederate battle flags and so on.

But then there was the inside action, Donald Trump trying to figure out a way to intimidate Mike Pence, and this is what we call the realm of the coup. And it's a weird word in American political parlance, because we don't have a lot of experience with coups and we think of a coup as something taking place against a president, but this was a coup organized by the president against the vice president and against the Congress in order to try to get rid of enough Electoral College votes, just get Pence to rebuff Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia, and then lower Biden's total below 270, kick it into the House of Representatives for a so-called contingent election.

And they wanted that there because in a contingent election under the 12th amendment, we vote not one member one vote but one state one vote. And the GOP had 27 states, we had 22, Pennsylvania was tied down the middle. Even if the rep from Wyoming Liz Cheney didn't vote with them, and she wouldn't have, it still would have left them with a 26- state majority, and they would have declared a victory for Donald Trump at that point. I think he was ready to declare the insurrection act at that moment and to declare something like martial law to put down the chaos and the violence that he had unleashed against us.

BERMAN: It's interest, he's on TV saying it much of the stuff you're saying, he's saying out loud on TV, he's bragging about it. You brought up Mike Pence several times there. Would it be nice to hear from him? How far are you willing to go to hear from him?

RASKIN: Absolutely. I would think that the vice president would be the first one to stand in line to say let me tell you what happened on that date. He has a lot to be proud of. He was a constitutional patriot. He stood up for the Constitution. He distributed a memo saying I cannot do the things they're asking me to do. I cannot unilaterally repudiate Electoral College votes because I don't like the result in the state. But there was a vicious campaign against him, which ended up, of course, with a mob yelling "hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence," that overran the House.

BERMAN: If he doesn't walk in voluntarily, will you subpoena the former vice president?

RASKIN: We haven't made a decision about that. Of course, we have subpoenaed lots of people whose testimony we need. The Supreme Court has said Congress has the right to subpoena anyone we want in order to get the information we need in order to govern. And what could be of more central purpose to self-government than self-preservation of Congress itself.

KEILAR: The committee learned that Ivanka Trump twice tried to intervene and get her father to basically call off the rioters. Besides Ivanka Trump, has the committee learned of any others who basically did the same?

RASKIN: Well, I think we have seen the release of a whole bunch of texts from Republican members of Congress, from FOX News commentators, Trump family members, people making overtures to Mark Meadows and Donald Trump, begging them to do something. The same thing came out during the Senate impeachment trial when Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler filed an uncontradicted stipulated statement into evidence in the trial, saying that Kevin McCarthy had reported that he had begged Donald Trump essentially to call off the dogs. And remember, that earned the famous reply from Donald Trump, well, maybe they're just more interested in a fair election than you are, Kevin.

So the picture that is emerging is of the commander in chief refusing to come to the aid of Congress, the Republicans in Congress, the Democrats in Congress, the staff in Congress, everybody was there, refusing to come to aid because he thought that this violent insurrection would aid him in the attempt at effectuating a coup against Mike Pence and seizing the presidency for another time. That seems to be a pretty clear portrait that is emerging.

BERMAN: Why haven't you tried to talk to Rudy Giuliani yet?

RASKIN: I don't know exactly where we are on Mr. Giuliani. But I will tell you, we want to talk to everyone. And we think it's not only everybody's legal duty, it should be everybody's civic honor and privilege to be able to speak to the representatives of the people in the United States Congress, the Article One branch, so we can write a complete exhaustive and painstaking report about this attack on America and how to guarantee it will never happen again.

[08:15:18]

Because we're going to make legislative recommendations, we're going to make rules recommendations on how to fortify democratic institutions.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: How many bank records has the committee subpoenaed?

RASKIN: I don't know the answer to that. I will tell you that we have seen --

KEILAR: Ballpark?

RASKIN: Tens of thousands of records generally. I know that there are, you know, we have a whole team of people following the money, looking at the money trail.

You don't try to knock over the U.S. government for free. This was not some kind of spontaneous voluntary uprising. This was organized.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Look, I've been surprised by the amount of records that have turned over voluntarily to you and the text messages released. The Supreme Court still has to rule on the national archives. RASKIN: But that case is a slam dunk, John. I mean, the D.C. circuit

came out and said you got the president of the United States and the Congress together in saying this is not privileged material anymore.

BERMAN: What more do you expect to learn from those documents at this point?

RASKIN: Well, we're hoping to connect the dots among the different levels of activity. So how did the former president's inner political entourage operate in conjunction with the domestic violent extremist groups brought to Washington? How did those people help to unleash violence against the police? Who paid for the planes, trains, automobiles, hotels, motels, Airbnbs that put up the small army of insurrectionists? Who paid for the whole thing? What was the relationship between the money in the former Trump campaign and the money used for the protests that began a riot?

We're going to look at all of those things because we have an obligation under House Resolution 503 to give America the facts.

BERMAN: I just want to ask one last question, and I know you have to go. Your staff is going to kill us for asking this.

Look, in your book, you write about this, in your speech when you were an impeachment manager. You said your daughter who was with you that day, during the insurrection, one thing you found most troubling is basically she told you she never wanted to go back to the Capitol again. One year later, how does she feel about coming back to the Capitol?

RASKIN: Tabitha has not been back to the Capitol yet. It is part of my mission to fight for an America where Tabitha and every young person feels safe coming to the Congress of the United States. And this is a building that we should be proud of all around the world, should be a place of peace and safety and democratic dialogue. Not violent interaction among our people.

So we're fighting for that America that lives in our hearts and I think everybody out there knows what that America is. We got to work together to get it back again.

BERMAN: Again, I really did enjoy reading the book. I hope she does come back. Congressman Raskin, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

RASKIN: Thank you so much for having me.

BERMAN: So the big lie that spawned the insurrection now accepted and even perpetrated by many Republicans, including Republicans running for office. How did that happen? A reality check, next.

KEILAR: Plus, we're about to hear from the president and the vice president from inside of the Capitol. It is a significant moment. We'll have some new details on what they're expected to say and what they will ask of Congress.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:22:14]

KEILAR: Even after hundreds of commissions, committees and courts, including some led by Trump-appointed judges concluded the election was not stolen, the big lie somehow still lives on.

John Avlon has your "Reality Check".

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It is the most digitally documented insurrection in human history. And still one year later a majority of Republicans believe outright lies, while Donald Trump remains the leader of the GOP, despite trying to destroy our democracy to satisfy his fragile ego.

So, how exactly did the big lie metastasize? Well, two factors really. The right wing media echo chamber that primed the big lie and the abject failure of elected Republican leaders to stand up to Donald Trump when they had a chance.

That's important to remember that in the aftermath of the attack on our Capitol, the vast majority of Americans were united. With few surveys finding 75 percent of Americans believe that Trump bore some responsibility for the attack, while 87 percent of U.S. adults said it was important to prioritize the prosecution of people who rioted the Capitol. But get this, between March and September of 2021, Americans became less likely to say it was important to find and prosecute the Capitol rioters, with all the decline occurring among Republicans.

We know from a recent "Washington Post"/University of Maryland poll that Fox News Republican viewers are far more likely to believe that Trump bears no responsibility for the January 6th attack. The people who attacked the Capitol were mostly peaceful. That the legal punishment for the attackers have been too harsh and there is, quote, solid evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. But there were still a glimmer of hope when in the aftermath of the attack congressional Republican leaders denounced Trump for inciting the riot.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. Some say the riots were caused by Antifa. There is absolutely no evidence of that. And conservatives should be the first to say so.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): There is no question, none, that president Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.

AVLON: That brief moment of moral clarity looks like a museum piece today.

[08:25:04] Because it took House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy less than a month to make a ring kissing trip to Mar-a-Lago. In strenuous signs of fealty, he scuttled Liz Cheney from Republican leadership, replacing her with sedition caucus member Elise Stefanik, and then tried to kill a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6th.

These appeasers never learn. As Churchill once said, it is like beating a crocodile, hoping it eats you last.

But the case of Mitch McConnell is more perplexing. The Senate leader is a frequent target of Trump's attacks, and McConnell reportedly saw the post-insurrection second impeachment as a way to finally rid Republicans of Trump, but at a critical moment he pulled the punch that could have stopped Trump's return by deciding to oppose the impeachment trial, and then lobbied senators to block the bipartisan January 6th committee as a personal favor.

This had all the hallmarks of a cynical calculus that Republicans could keep Trump at arm's length, while benefitting from his base of support. This was a delusional fantasy. And it only succeeded in reinforcing Trump's grip on the GOP, because when it counted most, Republicans just couldn't quit the twice impeached two-time popular vote loser.

Fear and greed and partisan careerism caused them to knuckle under to threats from a disgraced and de-platformed would be despot. This embrace of unreality, the descent of the party of Lincoln to an authoritarian curious cult of personality makes a mockery of any claims to represent anything resembling constitutional conservatism. It can also provoke real concerns about the strength and stability of our democracy and our ability to reason together.

But remember, the big lie believing Trump Republicans are a decided minority of the American electorate. The vast majority of Americans see the truth about Trump's coup attempt on January 6th, and the clear moral cost of trying to appease bullies, thugs and zealots will only become clearer with time. They will be seen as villains or dupes in American history.

But as we await history's judgment, a broad coalition of Americans who put patriotism over partisanship must recognize that right now, even a year after January 6th, we got a democracy to defend.

And that's your "Reality Check".

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to John for that.

So, happening in moments, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver remarks from inside the Capitol building. That's not something we see that often, a president speaking inside.

I want to bring in chief Washington correspondent and anchor of "THE LEAD" and co-anchor of "THE STATE OF THE UNION," Jake Tapper. Jake, in a moment, we're going to talk about how incredibly prescient

you were, chillingly prescient you were one year ago today. But, first, I do want to ask you, because we are going to hear from President Biden in a second. One thing we're told he's going to say is he's going to ask, are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people?

That's what he's going to ask. At the same time, "The Washington Post" reports this morning, there are 163 Republicans running for office around the country that will control election apparatus that are buying into the big lie.

So the question may be -- the answer may be, yes, this country might be putting those people in office.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. I mean, with all due respect to President Biden, it doesn't matter as much what he says today as what Republican leaders say going forward. We, as John Avlon just pointed out so eloquently in that piece, we're at a point now where -- I mean, Donald Trump, one thing he did do during his presidency, he made the very concept of facts and institutions, he turned them into partisan issues, right? So just reporting a fact became a partisan debate, even if it was just a fact. And now he's doing the same with our democratic process, has done the same with our Democratic process.

A year ago we were all horrified to see what happened. You heard the Republican house leader Kevin McCarthy blame Trump for the mob, specifically clearly, concisely, and now he will never criticize Donald Trump. He -- the words that he said about Donald Trump bearing responsibility for the violent mob that attacked the Capitol, that very concept that he himself said, Kevin McCarthy, were I to say it now, could see Kevin McCarthy criticizing me for being partisan. Even though I'm just repeating his own words against him.

We need Republican patriots, not just Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, we need Republican patriots to stand up for democracy. And we need the conservative pundits who know better to stop belittling what happened on January 6th.

[08:30:00]

I think it was conservative writer Kevin Williamson (ph) who said, of course, the riots that we saw in the cities throughout 2020, of course they were horrific, of course they were criminal, but there is a difference between a coup d'etat and coup d'target. There is a big difference.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: It kind of feels like screaming into the wind, though. I mean if you read this op-ed that's out in "The New York Times" by Jimmy Carter, he's talking about, you know, we're teetering on the edge, this democracy is. And he says it really takes Democrats and Republicans coming together. But that's not happening.

I mean, Jake, finish this sentence as you so often described the state of the union. One year later, the state of our union is --

TAPPER: Teetering. Absolutely teetering. And it's not just Jimmy Carter who has devoted much of his post presidency period to standing up for democracy all over the world and now is concerned about what he is seeing in literally his backyard.

You have Karl Rove, the Republican strategist --

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

TAPPER: I think he still works for Fox, talking about the Republicans who enabled the attack on the Capitol. And we need more statements like what we're seeing from Karl Rove. Now, certainly it's not as full throated as what we're hearing from Jimmy Carter, but we need Republicans to stand up for this. We need the members of Congress, Republicans, who so bravely, so valiantly fought for democracy, fought for human rights abroad, as members of our military, we need them to have that same courage when it comes to standing up for democracy in the United States.

BERMAN: So, Jake, earlier in the show we ran a mashup of CNN's coverage of January 6th. And you were on during that entire time, watching, witnessing the attack on the building behind us.

But I want to play one moment. Brianna and I like sat up straight when we heard you say this. This is you one year ago today.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Trump supporters have stormed the U.S. Capitol. There are violent confrontations going on. Members of Congress have been told to shelter in place. There is going to be an attempt by the people who were part of this effort, President Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Hawley, et cetera, there is going to be an attempt to whitewash what's going on right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Yes. Yes. I mean, you were right.

TAPPER: Well, that's not prescient. That's just like saying a crocodile is going to try to eat the deer. I mean, yes, this is what these people do. They have been lying. They were -- you know, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Kevin McCarthy, Donald Trump, these people lied about the election. And they helped incite what happened. All of them.

It is, you know, I don't know how much of it was coordinated, and that's for the Justice Department and the January 6th committee to determine. But it all was of the peace. You have Donald Trump staging a month's long campaign to try to undermine the election through various means. Some of them legal, and then turning into not legal, potentially even criminal, such as trying to shake down the Georgia secretary of state. And then you had people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and a majority of House Republicans signing on to that deranged lawsuit from the Texas attorney general that made all sorts of wild, crazy allegations about the election, trying to remove states' electoral votes from counting, based on lies, based on just abject lies, saying that Philadelphia used election software that it did not use, et cetera, et cetera. You could do a whole show just on the lies in that one lawsuit.

Then, after that, even after blood was spilled, even after there were bodies in the Capitol, they voted to not count the votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona. And did any of them -- you know, one of the -- one of the best things, most telling pieces of legislation that happened in 2021 was from conservative Texas Congressman Chip Roy, a very conservative Republican who did not sign on to that crazy lawsuit and did not vote to undermine the electoral votes. But a huge opponent of Joe Biden, and a huge supporter of Donald Trump. But he said, he offered legislation, and I'm paraphrasing, but it was basically, if you are voting to undermine the votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona, you also have to vote to undermine all of the federal elections on those same ballots because that's the only thing that would be intellectually consistent. Very telling legislation from Congressman Chip Roy there.

Of course, not one of the Republicans from Arizona or Republicans from Pennsylvania, who voted to undermine the presidential election from their own states, voted to undermine their own elections to Congress on the same ballots, on the same day, using the same election software.

[08:35:19]

Now, why would that be if it was a fraudulent election? Why -- why would that be?

BERMAN: Imagine that.

KEILAR: Well, Jake, I know, look, this isn't a day about giving credit to Jake, right? But I do just want to say, there was a moment where it looked like there were Republicans who might say, yes, this was bad, and we heard them say that. We heard Lindsey Graham say that. We heard Mitch McConnell say that. We even heard for a moment Kevin McCarthy say that before he flip-flopped. But you did -- you knew it from the moment there, Jake.

BERMAN: But he doesn't want us to praise him. He doesn't want (INAUDIBLE).

KEILAR: He doesn't -- he doesn't want to, but --

BERMAN: You know how hard it is for me to say something nice. And here you are.

No, but --

KEILAR: But you saw it. And it, unfortunately, was so true. And that is sort of the defining thing about what happened a year ago that we still see today. TAPPER: It was very sad. I actually thought you were going to run the

clip from that day where I said that the Murdoch family needed to stop pushing these lies because it was a threat to American democracy. And they did not rein in all the lies.

Now, Fox is being sued by some of the election software companies. And we see what that has done to democracy as well.

KEILAR: Run that every day.

BERMAN: That would have been a good one too.

Jake, listen, thank you very much for joining us this morning.

And everyone should join Jake and Anderson Cooper for an unprecedented gathering inside the Capitol with the police, lawmakers and leaders live from the Capitol, "January 6th: One Year Later." It begins tonight at 8:00 Eastern.

KEILAR: And here's what else to watch today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ON SCREEN TEXT: 9:00 a.m. ET, President Biden speaks.

1:00 p.m. ET, White House briefing.

2:30 p.m. ET, Congressional testimonials of 1/6.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, they are going to be speaking just moments from now. We have more of CNN's special coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:41:35]

BERMAN: All right, we have a live picture to show you now from inside Statuary Hall. This is in the Capitol behind us. President Biden and Vice President Harris set to speak moments from now to mark the one- year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection.

KEILAR: And we are expecting that Biden will be calling out former President Trump for his responsibility as the White House has put it. So, we'll be staying tuned for that.

Wolf Blitzer picks up CNN's special coverage of January 6th, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:46:03]