Return to Transcripts main page
New Day
Boris Johnson Refuses to Resign; Gary Chambers Jr. is Interviewed about Running for the Senate; Gorsuch Refuses to Mask. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired January 19, 2022 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:33:20]
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, happening now, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson getting grilled by members of parliament. He is accused of breaking Covid rules that his administration imposed, laws, by holding multiple parties and gatherings at Downing Street during the height of the pandemic. This is a bit of the lashing he took.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now yesterday from the man who wrote the rules, it was, well, nobody told me what those rules were.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does the prime minister realize how ridiculous that sounds?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Finally take responsibility, resign, go, Prime Minister.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: CNN's Salma Abdelaziz is live in London at 10 Downing Street. Also joining us, CNN anchor and correspondent Bianca Nobilo.
And, Salma, let me start with you.
What news did the prime minister make on the floor there?
SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN REPORTER: Johnson back in parliament today trying that good old strategy of denial and deflection. If you wanted any answers about party-gate, Johnson was not going to give them to you. Every time he was asked, he kicked the can down the road. He pointed to an investigation. But, John, members of his own party are losing patience. They are fed up. Before P&Qs (ph) even started, there was a dramatic moment where a member of his own party defected, literally crossed the aisle on camera and sat with the opposition. And the hits kept on coming. His former Brexit secretary standing up in parliament and saying, for goodness sake, just go. And we already know of a small handful of MPs who are calling on him to resign, have submitted letters to trigger a no confidence vote.
Look, Johnson is a great political survivor. He has survived many a scandal. But he's going to need Houdini-like powers to get out of this one, John, because now he has two ways in which he could be pushed out of parliament.
[08:35:07]
If he's caught lying to parliament, the custom in this country is you must resign, and then if his own party turns against him, that could also cost him his job.
John.
HUNT: So, Bianca, what's it really going to take here to push him over the edge? Do you think he would abide by the custom that says, if you lie to parliament, you must step down? Or what's it going to take to get enough members of his party to say, all right, we're done with you?
BIANCA NOBILO, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: It's an open question. Something to bear in mind here is that Boris Johnson does like to be liked. I think he would struggle a lot more than his predecessor, Theresa May, who just soldiered on when she was becoming increasingly unpopular and members of his own party were asking her to go week upon week.
As Salma was saying, Boris Johnson has a few options. He could resign. And possibly, if it's found to be true that he did mislead parliament, if he lied to parliament, the convention is he would have to go. I think it would be increasingly untenable for him to remain.
There's also the option that he's booted out by his party if the threshold of these no confidence letters is reached. That would be about 54 of his own MPs writing letters into the so-called 1922 committee of rank and file members of the conservative party. Now, that looks more and more plausible as the day goes on.
When I was speaking to you last week, I was speaking to Tory (ph) MPs and they were telling me that they thought it's unlikely that they would reach that threshold until around May, because that's when there are local elections in the United Kingdom. And that would give a crystal clear bellwether of whether or not Boris Johnson could be able to continue and still command electoral support. But now when I'm speaking to MPs they say, no, it's going to be -- it's going to be sooner than that.
Of course the country has no say at this point because Boris Johnson, the conservative party, will remain in power. It's up to the MPs. So that's what we need to be watching.
But in terms of whether or not he can survive, he is something of a political vampire. He's come back from the brink many times over. What is different here is the fact that the key elements of his political brand that made him a success, that gave him this rather remarkable, colorful, political career, his political mischief, his defiance of norms, of rules, of laws, are precisely the things that are weakening him and leaving now an indelible stain on his party and his reputation.
BERMAN: Bianca Nobilo, Salma Abdelaziz, thank you both very much.
Look, admittedly, I don't know the British system as well as I know the U.S. system, but one political and mutable rule I think around the world is time. And, clearly, he's trying to buy himself some time.
HUNT: Yes.
BERMAN: I just don't know if he has it.
HUNT: It's very unclear, although, you know, he -- we have compared him oftentimes to our former president, Trump, in this country, and the way that he has conducted himself. And she was making the point that he has a political brand around breaking the rules.
But, you know what, he changed strategy when he started to apologize. I think that was a real recognition of just how bad this is and apologizing. Not exactly a trumpian move.
BERMAN: Not one bit.
Here's what else to watch today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ON SCREEN TEXT: 10:15 a.m. ET, Democratic caucus presser.
4:00 p.m. ET, Biden press conference.
6:30 p.m. ET, Senate vote on elections bill.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, drama in the Supreme Court. Why one justice refused to wear a mask even though it would protect his colleague.
BERMAN: And long gone are the days of not inhaling. Why our next guest is taking a more blunt approach to his campaign.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:43:06]
HUNT: Welcome back.
You remember the days when we demanded this from our politicians? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL CLINTON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT (March 29, 1992): When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two and I didn't like it. And I didn't inhale and never tried it again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Didn't inhale. Maybe that's why he didn't like it.
Those days are long gone.
Fast forward 30 years to today and this campaign ad now running down in Louisiana where there's an open U.S. Senate seat.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GARY CHAMBERS JR. (D), U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE IN LOUISIANA: Every 37 seconds, someone is arrested for possession of marijuana. Since 2010, state and local police have arrested an estimated 7.3 million Americans for violating marijuana laws. Most of the people police are arresting aren't dealers, but rather people with small amounts of pot, just like me.
I'm Gary Chambers, and I'm running for the U.S. Senate, and I approve this message.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: And joining us now is the Democratic Senate candidate in Louisiana. And, forgive me, it's not an open seat. He is running against Senator John Kennedy.
Gary Chambers, you've got our attention, sir, which I imagine is a big part of the reason why we saw this ad from you. What do you hope people take away from it?
GARY CHAMBERS JR. (D), U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE IN LOUISIANA: Good morning, and thank you for having me.
Well, first of all, I hope that people take away the glaring statistics in recognizing where Louisiana and the country are as it relates to this. You know, Louisiana is the second most incarcerated place in the world. And so if we're going to have a conversation and talk about what needs to change, I think we need to talk about the lack of opportunity. And a part of that lack of opportunity comes as a result of the policies that we have on drugs in this country.
HUNT: So, sir, you ran in a special election to fill Cedric Richmond's seat. You actually did pretty well. Can you walk us through what you think drove your success there and, of course, running for Senate a much more difficult proposition, especially in a deep red state like Louisiana? Why now?
[08:45:03] CHAMBERS: Well, we're proud of the race we ran in 2021. We had a grassroots movement where people donate and contributing from all over the country. We've joked and said that if we had either another $100,000 or another week we would have been into the runoff. And so we're taking that image (ph) in to this U.S. Senate race, touching the 64 parishes of the state. And I don't think that there's ever been a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana that's been able to draw as much national attraction to Louisiana, the state that's ranked 50th in the nation. And so if we're going to progress this state beyond where we are, we've got to have leaders who can make the country pay attention to what's happening in Louisiana.
HUNT: Let's talk about John Kennedy for a second. A senator who also has garnered national attention with his various quips, one liners, other things he tends to tell reporters in the hallways here in the U.S. Senate. He, of course, was once a Democrat. What do you think is your number one reason for believing that he shouldn't be there anymore?
CHAMBERS: I think you look at the condition of our state and where our country is. Louisiana ranks 50 in the nation in crime, we rank 49 in opportunity, we rank 47 in health care, 46 in education. You name it. And Kennedy's been elected almost as long as I've been alive. And you can't take responsibility for our good culture and gumbo and all of the flavor we have but not responsibility for where we are as a state in comparison to our neighbors.
And so my generation and others are looking at the leadership and we don't want Senator Frog Horn Leghorn (ph). We want somebody who's going to go to D.C. and represent the people and talk about the issues that are important to the people of Louisiana. We've got a senator who voted against the infrastructure bill, right? We have a D or an F grade in infrastructure. And we rank 47 in the country in infrastructure. And those billions of dollars are going to help Louisiana, put people back to work, fix our crumbling roads and bridges.
You go to New Orleans, you go to small towns around this state, there are potholes that you can step into and be knee-deep to waist-deep, right? And so having a U.S. senator who doesn't prioritize the people of Louisiana, doesn't prioritize working people, would rather spend his time on Fox News maybe quips about whether or not we taste like a chicken or a bear -- chicken to a bear, those are not things that value or bring value to the voters of Louisiana or to this country. And we need leadership that's going to talk about health care, that's going to talk about education, and the child tax credit, and how do we advance this democracy, how do we protect the right to vote, right, for every American citizen in this country instead of being an obstructionist to the process of democracy. And that's what we have in the U.S. senator that represents Louisiana. And I think we can do better.
HUNT: Let me -- let me circle back. You mentioned the crime rate in Louisiana. And you, of course, are in this ad smoking marijuana. There have been some moves in your home state related to perhaps making penalties not quite as aggressive for this, perhaps expanding medical marijuana. But we were having a conversation earlier in the show about crime rates across the country and how they have gone up. Do you think that making further moves on this particular issue is something that Americans are prepared or interested in doing right now considering that there is, at the very least, a perception that crime is becoming increasingly a problem?
CHAMBERS: Well, I absolutely think that Americans want to move on this issue. And cannabis is not a contributor to crime. Louisiana ranks 50th in crime, and we've had record-breaking homicides, car thefts, vandalism, right? We want our police officers focused on solving those crimes, not chasing people who smoke a joint, right?
As a matter of fact, states who do better in crime than we do have legalization fully in their state, right? And so when we look at this, it is a myth. It is something that has been a dog whistle to certain groups of people in order to criminalize certain groups of people. But the data says that white people and black people smoke cannabis at the same rate, yet black people are jailed for it at an alarming rate, four times more than white people are.
And so I don't think that it benefits us to have this archaic policy still in place. What we need is policies that give our police officers opportunities to actually address the causes of crime that are scaring our communities, right? The violent crime.
I don't want my cop chasing somebody with a joint because in California, Virginia, Colorado, Illinois, in all -- 19 states now, I believe it is, that have legalized recreational marijuana while Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, all these southern states that are also in the bottom 10 of every major category in the country, these people are still jailing people or giving people citations for cannabis. And it's -- it's just -- it's stupid, period.
HUNT: All right. Gary Chambers, perhaps a high point for your campaign. Thanks for joining us.
BERMAN: Ah.
HUNT: Wha, wha.
CHAMBERS: Thank you so much.
BERMAN: I know I'm supposed to be more mature -- more mature than this, but I'm curious to see what happens in the debate between Gary Chambers and John Kennedy.
HUNT: If there is one.
BERMAN: Well, if there is one. If it -- you know, challenge, you know, challenge Senator Kennedy to partake.
[08:50:03]
I'm just saying.
HUNT: Hey, you know, I guess stranger things have happened. All right, moving on.
Coming up next, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor working apart from her colleagues to protect her own health. We're going to tell you why.
BERMAN: And heart-pounding moments as the police officer rushes in to a burning building. See the rescue as he saw it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: This morning, an unusual rift in the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has diabetes and is considered high risk if infected with Covid, took part in oral arguments remotely on Tuesday because of Justice Neil Gorsuch, his refusal to wear a mask.
Joining us now is Nina Totenberg, she's NPR's legal affairs correspondent who broke this story.
Nina, thanks so much for joining us this morning. What happened here?
NINA TOTENBERG, NPR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sotomayor has diabetes, so she's at high risk for serious illness or death were she to catch Covid. And she's been quite aggressive about protecting herself. And so the court actually only went back to work in person this fall when cases of Covid were way down, but now they're way up and she made clear to the chief justice, and others I assume, that she really would not be there in the court room in person if other members of the court weren't wearing a mask. I mean everybody else in the courtroom, you understand, is wearing a mask. It's only a select group of reporters and the court staff. And we all wear masks. And the court has not been wearing masks, but given the uptick, that's mildly putting it, in D.C., which has been a center of the omicron surge, she said she wouldn't go if everybody in the courtroom wasn't masked.
So, all the other members of the court masked up, but she did not, and it was arranged for her to be able to participate with a microphone setup in her chambers instead. And that also means that she's not going to the judge's -- justice's weekly conference in person, which is in a room around a table and -- if they're not going to all be masked up. I should say that she sits next to Justice Gorsuch on the bench and so this is -- this is not for her a matter of triviality and apparently everybody else on the court understood that, but not Justice Gorsuch.
[08:55:12]
HUNT: Yes, so, Nina, I mean that's my question, what's up with Justice Gorsuch? If all of the other, including all of the other conservative members of the court are willing to go along with this, why not him?
TOTENBERG: I don't know. He hasn't said and, you know, he is a libertarian and sometimes a prickly personality on the court. The court today is made up of six very conservative justices. And the only one who you could even remotely say is sort of a centrists is the chief justice. And they don't need his vote anymore. So they can do what they want without him. And, as a result, there's a lot of rivalry for who's going to be the intellectual leader. There's much less drive to reach a consensus that everybody can sign on to then there is sort of a sense that this is my -- this is the ideology I think we should be taking. No, it's me. No, it's me. No, it's me. There are some long buried and not so buried resentments on the court. The notion that Justice Alito, for example, at one point thought he was going to be the chief justice and because of a series of events that didn't happen.
BERMAN: Nina Totenberg, thank you very much for being with us today.
Look, a reminder, Supreme Court justices are human beings with resentments and feelings and vulnerabilities.
HUNT: Right. And, in the case of Sotomayor, a very real health concern.
BERMAN: CNN's coverage continues right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)