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Georgia Prosecutor Investigating Trump; Linda Biegel Schulman is Interviewed about Meeting Biden; Bridge May be Dismantled for Bezos Superyacht; Johnson Advisers Quit Amid Partygate Scandal; Facebook Loses Users. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired February 04, 2022 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Has laid out this timeline and is talking about the summer, basically, for when something might happen. Listen to what she says.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FANI WILLIS, FULTON COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: We realized that we're coming to a place that there are enough people that will require a subpoena for us to speak to or for us to be able to get information. And so, yes, we're headed into phase two. And phase two, I believe, starts when we actually start with a special purpose grand jury.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Two, Elie.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: The pace of this case is just impossible for me to understand or explain. I cannot understand why it is taking this long.

If this was a crime, this was interference with a presidential election, this is a very serious crime. We're already a year plus out and now they're talking about not really getting geared up until this summer, a year and a half out.

And later in those remarks, the DA said it might take another year from there. Two and a half years out to charge this case. I can't understand what's going on. Either the DA doesn't wants to make a decision, the DA wants to drag this thing out. But there's simply no excuse for this case to take potentially two, two and a half years.

BERMAN: You don't see urgency in the way she's describing this?

HONIG: Exactly. The urgency -- the lack of urgency is completely impossible to reconcile with the seriousness of the potential crime here.

BERMAN: All right, Elie Honig, thank you very much. Great to see you. Have a great weekend.

HONIG: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: A Parkland mother meets with President Biden on gun violence. She joins us live.

Plus, hours from now, the Republican National Committee will vote to censure House lawmakers Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, the party's most vocal critics and the only ones on the January 6th committee.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And we are on verdict watch in the Michael Avenatti fraud trial. Deliberations are set to restart this morning. We have Stormy Daniels with us live for her reaction ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:36:09]

BERMAN: In an emotional tribute to the late actor and comedian Bob Saget, his TV daughter, Candace Cameron Bure, shared their last conversation. In an interview with the "Today" show, Bure revealed that she and Saget got into a silly disagreement but quickly made up in a text exchange just two weeks before his death.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CANDACE CAMERON BURE, ACTRESS: I was scared that I'm going to pull up his text and then accidentally delete it one day. Like, it scares me so much because I don't ever want to lose this.

We were going to have dinner. And we got into a little tiff. And his flight was delayed. We ended up not having dinner. But in Bob fashion, the next day he wrote me like what would be pages long of a text. He said at the end, I love you more for the trouble you're giving me, if that's even possible. And I wrote back, I love you. I could never be mad at you. Roll my eyes at you, yes, but never mad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That is a lovely line, I love you more for the trouble you're giving me. Bure met Saget when she was just 10 years old on the set of "Full House." They were friends for 35 years.

KEILAR: The president is pivoting to making gun reform a key issue for Democrats in the fall. And during his trip to New York yesterday, he used the opportunity to appeal to those who have been personally impacted by gun violence.

And joining us now is gun violence prevention advocate Linda Beigel Schulman. She is the mother of Scott, who was a high school teacher who was murdered in the Parkland shooting.

I want to thank you so much for being with us.

We've spoken with you a number of times on the program, but I was wondering you could tell us about this meeting and what happened.

LINDA BEIGEL SCHULMAN, MOTHER OF MURDERED PARKLAND H.S. TEACHER SCOTT BEIGEL: It was really an unbelievable meeting. I actually got to meet President Biden face-to-face. And when I -- when I went up to meet him and to speak with him, it was -- he was just so warm and so kind. And he looked at me. And I happened to have -- had a picture of Scott with me, a small picture of Scott. And he said, let me see that picture, and took it. And then he told me, he said, today, meaning yesterday, today is Beau's birthday. And I just looked at it. It was just -- it was so personal. And I guess he must have seen my eyes. And I said -- you know, I told him -- I said, it's really hard. I said my daughter was actually born on Valentine's Day, and my son was murdered. And at that point you could just like see pretty much the tears -- the tears in his eyes. He understood.

And we talked about, you know, we talked about gun safety. I thanked him for his lifetime advocacy for, you know, gun safety. And he just said it's something that we have to keep -- that we have to keep doing. And I said, yes, I will never stop talking about it.

And, you know, he was holding my hand. And it was funny because the -- his press people there was -- you know, were telling him that he had to, you know, move on. And he just said -- he held my hand. We stayed there and we talked.

And I knew he understood. And, you know, President Biden is a man of his word. And, to me, it just meant the world that he took the time and he knew. I didn't have to tell him who I was. I didn't have to go through my line of, you know, my son was the teacher and cross country coach, yada, yada. He knew exactly -- he said I know who you are. He said, and I know what you're going through.

KEILAR: I mean, then the compassion that he has for you is undeniable. I think --

SCHULMAN: It's really -- yes, it is totally (INAUDIBLE).

KEILAR: There are -- there are -- there are many -- there are many leaders, including in Washington, where their compassion for people who have lost so much, like you, is undeniable.

[06:40:02]

But whether they can achieve any policy ends is very much still up in the air.

Do you think Biden can?

SCHULMAN: I do. I think that the fact that he's working with local governments, you know, state, federal, and local governments, he's not just talking about it, he's doing it.

He had so many things on the plate yesterday, yet he did come to New York. He had so many opportunities to say, I won't be able to make it. And I don't think there was even ever a thought in his mind. He was there. He knew he would -- why he was there and he was going to get it done.

KEILAR: All right, Linda, I want to thank you for being with us and sharing those moments with us. We appreciate it.

SCHULMAN: Thank you so much.

KEILAR: Up next, Jeff Bezos, there you see it, that's his superyacht. It's big, right? It's so big that a historic bridge in the Netherlands could be dismantled just so that it can pass through.

BERMAN: From Boston we call it supa. It's a supa yacht.

KEILAR: Supa.

BERMAN: And, is this a sign that Boris Johnson's days might be numbered? Four top aides run for the exits.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:45:20]

BERMAN: So, this morning, a prime example of gluttonous wealth. Get what I did there.

We've learned that Amazon king Jeff Bezos is building a superyacht, the biggest ever built in the Netherlands. How big you ask? So big a Dutch city might have to dismantle part of an historic bridge just so it can get through.

CNN's Isa Soares joins us now with the story.

For real?

ISA SOARES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For real. I mean it's almost like a first world problem, isn't it?

Let me give your viewers a sense of what we know.

For a while this new and pretty massive superyacht, John, has been built in Rotterdam, Netherlands, for Jeff Bezos. Now, we understand that it's nearing completion. But getting it to its owner is not as easy as you'd expect an Amazon delivery.

For the boat to reach the ocean -- you're looking at the size of the -- of the boat. For it to reach the ocean, it will have to go through Rotterdam and navigate what is an historic steel bridge known as a De Hef bridge.

In terms of size, the yacht is 417 foot long and 130 foot tall. Now, the bridge's central span, as you can see there, that can be raised into the air, Joh, but that's still not enough to accommodate the yacht's three giant masts. So the company is asking really the city to dismantle the bridge, as you do.

If approved, both the company building the yacht and Jeff Bezos said they'll pick up the cost of dismantling and then putting it back together.

But, as you can imagine, John, the request is somewhat controversial. Some in Rotterdam see the value in this. A municipality politician was saying that, look, this is an important project, bringing in jobs, it's strengthening the ship-building industry. Others thing Rotterdam shouldn't really jump to the wishes of one of the world's richest man. This is one -- what one green politician had to said. He said, this man has earned his money by structurally cutting staff, evading taxes, avoiding regulations, and now we have to tear down our beautiful, national monument. That is really going a bridge too far.

One Facebook group is preparing, with 2,000 people last time I noted, set up a protest to through rotten eggs on the yacht as it passes through the hef, as expected, in around August. But, yes, it's causing quite a stir.

U.S. House Representative Adam Schiff said this on Twitter, if Jeff Bezos can pay to dismantle a bridge in the Netherlands to fit his superyacht, then his company should have no trouble paying its fair share in taxes so we can build bridges in America.

Ouch.

John.

BERMAN: I feel like if Rotterdam says no, the counter offer from Bezos is going to be, OK, I'll buy Rotterdam, right?

SOARES: Well, John, my question is, if you're building this, why didn't you think about this before you built it, or did he think, we'll cross that bridge when we get there? That was the obvious.

BERMAN: Yes. You've got one job, which is to get the boat to the ocean. You've got to figure out how to do that. Yes, they should have thought of that.

Isa Soares --

SOARES: Right. With this amount of money, it should be straightforward.

BERMAN: Yes, it's -- this is messed up.

Appreciate it. Great story.

SOARES: Thank you.

KEILAR: The office of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson rocked by the resignation of four top aides in one day. This comes in the wake of the British government partygate scandal where investigators are looking into several office gatherings that happened over the past two years that violated the country coronavirus restrictions.

CNN's Scott McLean is live for us in London with more.

This was a bloodletting.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, look, these resignations don't do a whole lot to dispel the perception that things are a little bit chaotic behind the scenes at Downing Street. So, Boris Johnson, in one day, is losing his chief of staff, his chief of communications, and also his principal private secretary. He's the man that the tabloids here have nicknamed party Marty because he's the one who penned that infamous invitation to a BYOB garden party at Downing Street during lockdown.

The resignation, though, Brianna, that's going to sting the most is likely his policy chief. This is a woman named Munira Mirza, who has been with Johnson since he was the mayor of London way back. She says that she asked the prime minister to apologize for extremely misleading comments that he made earlier this week, implying that the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, had personally failed to prosecute a notorious pedophile back when he was England's top prosecutor.

Now, the prime minister, yesterday, clarified his comments but he refused to apologize, and that seemed to be the last straw for Mirza, who wrote in a resignation letter, you are a better man than many of your detractors will ever understand, which is why it is desperately sad that you let yourself down by making a scurrilous acquisition.

Now, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and potential leadership contender, successor to Boris Johnson, was asked about this yesterday and said this, which is being perceived as a bit of a swipe at his boss.

[06:50:05]

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RISHI SUNAK, U.K. CHANCELLOR: And with regard to their comments, and, you know, being honest, I wouldn't have said it, and I'm glad that their prime minister clarified what he meant.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLEAN: And, Brianna, look, there are, obviously, plenty of questions about Boris Johnson's leadership right now. If there is a bright spot, it's that his party just won a bi-election, though, that's -- can't take a lot of comfort in that considering that the two main opposition parties didn't actually field candidates.

KEILAR: There you go.

Scott, thank you so much for that.

Coming up, unlike, unfollow, unsubscribe. Why Facebook users are leaving the company in droves for the first time ever.

BERMAN: And a picture which encapsulates all the challenges to the United States in one place. Breaking overnight, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, side by side, physically and metaphorically.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:55:11]

BERMAN: For the first time in 18 years, for the first time, I understand, in its history, which is really the big deal here, Facebook has lost daily users. They're losing people. And if that wasn't enough, the company wiped out more than $200 billion in value, which made it the largest one-day loss in market history.

Joining us now is Will Oremus, a technology news analysis writer at "The Washington Post."

That's quite a title right there. I need analysis on that, Will.

But, listen, Facebook's losing users. It's like going in the wrong -- isn't that everything? If they're losing users, they're losing.

WILL OREMUS, TECHNOLOGY NEWS ANALYSIS WRITER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes, this is a really big deal. I mean Facebook has always been a company that's defined by growth.

I remember when Facebook started, I was at one of the colleges where it first rolled out. And it grew so fast. It grew to a million users in its first year of existence. It was up to a billion by 2012 after eight years, 2 billion by 2017. And now, for the first time, that growth has not only stalled, but reversed a little bit in terms of the number of people who are logging in every day to the Facebook app specifically. The big -- they call it the big blue app within the company.

KEILAR: So, how is this news being received within the company?

OREMUS: I don't think people are thrilled, you know?

There was a -- there was apparently an internal meeting yesterday that Mark Zuckerberg called and, according to some reporting by "Bloomberg," they told folks that if he teared up it was not because of the news that he was delivering, it was because he had a scratch on his eye. I believe that.

But it just -- he couldn't be blamed for tearing up either. I mean he alone lost tens of billions of dollars in -- of his net worth when the stock crashed the other day.

The company, you know, they're really trying to focus on the future. They're trying to build what they call the metaverse, this hypothetical new Internet where we all have avatars and we wonder around in digital spaces and have these second lives online. But that's pretty far off. The company's financials show that that's really a drop in the bucket in terms of making money so far. So the problems with the decline in usage on Facebook, and especially problems with monetizing Instagram reels, of making money from their TikTok copycat, those are what are rally beating them up right now.

BERMAN: Yes, I mean, they acknowledge that TikTok is cleaning their clocks right now.

OREMUS: Yes. BERMAN: Go ahead.

OREMUS: Yes, I think that's a big part of the story, it's competition from TikTok.

You know, Facebook is still much bigger than TikTok. TikTok is up to about a billion monthly active users. Probably more than that now. But it is the fastest growing app. In tech, in Silicon Valley, in social media, growth is what matters. Growth is what people care about. It's a trajectory. It's the long run. Where are you headed? TikTok is headed up, up, up. Facebook, the app, is headed a little bit down it looks like.

Now, Facebook does own Instagram and WhatsApp. Those continue to grow. So the company is still growing. This is still a massive social media company dominant in many ways. It is way bigger than TikTok when you count -- especially when you count Instagram and WhatsApp.

Here's the problem, people are spending tons of time on TikTok, especially young people. They're addicted. They love it. Facebook tried to copy TikTok with a product called Instagram Reels. It's working somewhat. A lot of people say that half of what they see on Instagram Reels looks like it was just ripped from TikTok and reposted on Instagram. So Facebook really has to get Reels to work if they want to fend off that competition from TikTok.

KEILAR: So, we should be clear, they still generated 2 billion logins a day. It's not like that is small by any stretch. It's the trajectory here, right?

OREMUS: Exactly. There's nothing small about Facebook.

And, let's be clear, this is not a sort of MySpace moment where Facebook is falling apart before our eyes and everybody is jumping ship to go to TikTok. TikTok does not do all the things that Facebook does, let alone WhatsApp and Instagram. Facebook is still a daily check-in for close to 2 billion people around the world. I mean that's a staggering number.

I do not think we will be rid of Facebook from our lives or our society any time soon. But, yes, absolutely, in terms of the future, it's a very worrying sign for the company and it shows that, you know, it's hard to stay on top forever in social media.

BERMAN: All right, Will Oremus, it is an interesting moment in history. We'll see how Facebook handles and whether they turn it around. Thanks so much for being with us this morning.

OREMUS: Yes, thanks.

BERMAN: NEW DAY continues right now.

All right, welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. It is Friday, February 4th. I'm John Berman, with Brianna Keilar. And breaking overnight, a picture which encapsulates - it's right

there, that little picture in between us -- it encapsulates almost all the global challenges facing the United States in one place.

So, this is just prior to the Olympic opening ceremonies. And Russian Leader Vladimir Putin and Chinese Leader Xi Jinping, side by side, physically, metaphorically, policy-wise, right next to each other.

[07:00:07]

And that's the point.