Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

GOP Lawmakers Try to Downplay, Whitewash January 6 Insurrection; Rep. Liz Cheney Says, Trump Willing to Unravel Democracy to Get Back into Power; Energy Secretary Says, Pipeline Should Return to Normal by End of Weekend. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired May 13, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: Top of the hour. Good morning, everyone, I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

The GOP battle between reality and the big lay is bear on Capitol Hill. Some congressional Republicans denying what we all saw with our own eyes. What the video record shows, falsely claiming that the Capitol insurrection did not happen while calling rioters, more than 400 of whom now face charges, peaceful patriots.

This newly obtained body camera video exclusively obtained by CNN offers new evidence disproving that lie. A D.C. Police officer heard pleading for his life, saying he has children, as he was brutally assaulted by the insurrections. Take a moment to watch this moment.

HARLOW: Wow, to see it like that.

Meantime, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did just call the violent insurrection atrocious but he refused to call out those fellow GOP members actively working to rewrite history and lying about it. This as Congresswoman Liz Cheney calls out McCarthy for abandoning principle.

Let's go to Whitney Wild, our colleague, with more. Whitney, what more does that video of D.C. Police Officer Michael Fanone show?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: The video captures really the totality of that battle. At one point, he somehow climbs back to the tunnel where he had come from. So there was this tunnel crammed with police. And once he gets to that tunnel, he just collapses on the ground. And the video is perspective of someone basically lying on the concrete. You see all of these law enforcement officers' shoes shuffling around and then you hear an officer realize what is going on and the person says, officer down, officer down, get him up.

And in that moment, they lift Officer Fanone up. They drag him to some level of safety inside the tunnel. They rip off his vest. They begin treating him. But it was an atrocious day and no one can tell his story better than he can. Here's how Officer Fanone described the fight for his life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL FANONE, D.C. METROPOLITAN POLICE OFFICER: It was the most brutal combat imaginable. It was like, I mean, nothing I had ever seen outside of the movies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILD: Isolated. It went on for hours. Many law enforcement officers went through, you know, similar events that day. The injuries are just horrifying.

And this day, while the video ended, it really it marked the beginning of a journey for him. He says he still struggles with the emotional toll of that day. Jim and Poppy, there have been four people who were charged in this attack. So maybe he will see justice as these cases unfold.

But this video is just so important as a reminder that that was the reality. It was not tourism. It was not people mingling. It was a violent insurrection.

SCIUTTO: And yet, sitting members of Congress willing to ignore that and spread another big lie. It's remarkable. Whitney Wild, thanks very much.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney, she is urging her fellow Republicans to abandon the former president and warning in no uncertain terms that she believes President Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, MSNBC HOST: What is the hold that President Trump has on the party?

[10:05:02]

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Well, it's very dangerous.

GUTHRIE: How do you explain it?

CHENEY: I think it's a cult of personality. And I think people were betrayed and misled by him. It's a real betrayal now that he's willing to try to unravel the democracy to get back into power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Let's go to our Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju on the Hill with some new reporting. What have you learned this morning, Manu? MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I've spoken to a wide range of Republicans in the House in the aftermath of the vote to oust Liz Cheney. She, of course, went behind closed doors, told Republicans to call out the big election lie, and said that if not, we will be complicit in the road to undermine democracy.

But Republican lawmakers simply do not want to hear it. There are a wide range of views and very few of them aligning with Liz Cheney. Some of them outright back Trump's lie that he won the election, others have some nuance, say there is some concerns about so-called irregularities in the election. Many won't say that he is a legitimate president, Joe Biden, saying that there are still questions that are pertaining to the election.

And also many of them just simply want this issue to go away, which is one reason why they voted to oust Liz Cheney because they do not want this to continue, these questions to continue directed at them.

Now, this is not just the most conservative members of the House Republican conference, the people who have aligned with Donald Trump, but also ones who have coming from swing districts. One congresswoman, Claudia Tenney from New York, won one of the closest races in the country in November. And she told me yesterday, no one knows about what happened in the election. She says, we don't know if it was stolen or not. Cheney doesn't know. I don't know. The president doesn't know. But I know what I know is that we need to fix it. She has created an election integrity caucus in the House to move forward and look at some of the issues she says were raised.

On another congressman Jody Hice, he is from Georgia. He is running for the Georgia secretary of state position against Brad Raffensperger, of course, who certified the election victory for Joe Biden, came under fire from Donald Trump. I asked him if he thought that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. He said, I believe it was a fair election, yes. I believe absolutely.

Now, this comes also undermines the claim by Kevin McCarthy yesterday at the White House that he said that nobody is questioning the legitimacy of Joe Biden's victory. But even his likely number three Republican, Elise Stefanik, someone who is going to be -- almost certainly going to win an election to replace Liz Cheney, she has questioned the results in Georgia. And yesterday, she would not back off her dubious claims raising questions about 140,000 unauthorized votes in Georgia. There is no evidence of that.

So, widespread belief from the most conservative, even more moderate members aligning with Donald Trump on the big lie or just simply not wanting to call him out. Guys?

SCIUTTO: They're lying in the face of the facts repeatedly. And now that big lie includes the circumstances of the January 6th insurrection. It's remarkable and alarming. Manu Raju, thanks very much.

HARLOW: Also this morning, more than 150 Republican officials have now signed a letter calling for, quote, reform or repeal on the Republican Party. The group says the creation of a new party should be seriously considered if the majority of the GOP does not part ways with former President Trump.

SCIUTTO: With us now, someone who signed that letter, former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent. Charlie, good to have you on this morning.

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good to be with you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Charlie, help us understand your former colleague's willingness to lie so blatantly, to lie, I mean to lie about January 6th claiming they were tourists when the video that all of us can see shows the opposite, to lie that the election was stolen or that there is some evidence of it, which has all dismissed. How are they capable of that? Do they believe it, some of them do, or do they just not mind lying about it?

DENT: Well, I think some of them actually believe it, like the ones who are at that hearing yesterday, making those incredulous statements. Some do. But I think, overwhelmingly, most of them recognize that Joe Biden won the election legitimately, it was not stolen, that the insurrection was just that, and insurrection, and it was a horrible experience for everybody. And so I think most of them are aware of this.

You know, privately, they will tell you things that they won't say publicly. I mean, privately, I think most of them do want to have distance from Donald Trump. I think they're tired of it. But by canceling Liz Cheney, you know, they think they somehow are going to silence her, they're not going to silence her and people are speaking up. And that is part of the reason why many of us put our names to a letter saying that we believe very strongly in reform of the Republican Party.

I'm not for a new party. I'm for reforming it. But at the same time, a lot of us don't -- we don't have inexhaustible patience either. But what we all agree on is that we need a new direction for the party.

HARLOW: One important note is that Liz Cheney also doesn't think there should be a new party or a third party, right?

[10:10:01]

I mean, she said in February it would hurt Democrats and then she reiterated to Savannah in the interview this morning, no, like that she's still 100 percent with the Republican Party.

But you wrote in your cnn.com piece, Charlie, that Cheney is being sacrificed on the altar of greed and for failing to fall on bended knee to hypocrisy and cynicism. I just -- I don't know that your party wants to be reformed. Am I wrong?

DENT: Well, look, you keep hearing about the 70 percent, you know, who believe this whole myth, this lie, this false narrative, but 30 percent who don't. And, you know, we're speaking to that 30 percent and we want to grow. What I really want to help accomplish is help my former colleagues speak up. If they speak up, just as Liz has, as Adam Kinzinger or Fred Upton or Mitt Romney or Peter Meijer, if they speak up, they can more than speak up. They can change the narrative. And that 70 percent number can shrink considerably.

So I do think that there is opportunity for reform. But we have to get back to basic principles as a party. And that is one thing we laid out today in our statement that we're talking about, you know, rule of law, the constitutional order, truth, honesty, fundamental things. We have to get back to conservative virtues, not just policies but virtues about incremental change and stability in our party and order. And not this madness and this chaos and this dishonesty that we have been having to deal with in big doses lately.

SCIUTTO: Just back to facts, right, be a step. Charlie Dent, good to have you on this morning.

DENT: Thanks, Poppy.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, an attempt to whitewash the insurrection, another big lie in effect, some Republicans hoping you don't believe your eyes and your ears when it comes to what happened on January 6th. Could that political posturing have an impact on national security?

Plus, panic buying is driving a fuel shortage at gas station as cross many parts of the southeast. A return to normal though might be coming sooner than you think.

HARLOW: And a CNN exclusive report, investigation that reveals Eritrean troops are coordinating with some of the country's military forces to block crucial humanitarian aid, some wielding machetes, confronting our Nima Elbagir and her CNN team on the ground. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Are we detained? Unless we are detained, we are not giving them the camera.

We'll only go to the administration, the civilian administration. If you want to have detained a CNN team, then that's what happened now because we're not going to the camp willingly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Newly obtained body camera footage shows the very moment a D.C. Police officer was attacked violently by pro-Trump rioters on January 6th. Take a look at this.

What you're hearing there is Officer Michael Fanone screaming, pleading for his life after he was, we should note, tased in a scuffle with insurrectionists. At one point, you hear a voice in the crowd say don't hurt him. We're better than this. He also pleaded with him saying he has children.

So these are the facts. You can see them with your own eyes, you can hear with your own ears, and yet in a hearing on the insurrection Wednesday, some Republicans in Congress refused to acknowledge that truth, instead creating a new big lie about the insurrection.

So let's take a moment here, compare what these Republican lawmakers said on the Hill to what the video record shows as well as what you and I can see.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ANDREW CLYDE (R-GA): There was no insurrection and to call it an insurrection in my opinion is a boldface lie. Watching the T.V. footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Halls showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn't know the T.V. footage was a video from January the 6th, you would think it was a normal tourist visit.

REP. RALPH NORMAN (R-SC): Okay, at 2:07, a mob of Trump supporters breached the steps. I don't know who did a poll that it's Trump supporters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: I have a question for the Representatives Clyde and Norman. Would they tell that same story face-to-face to Officer Fanone and his colleagues who were attacked violently? Please do let us know if you would.

Let's bring in CNN National Security Analyst and former Assistant DHS Officer Juliette Kayyem. Juliette, it strikes me that we're in the midst of a domestic disinformation campaign here. You and I have talked about Russian disinformation campaigns, Chinese, Iranian. This is a domestic disinformation campaign, first about the election and now about what we know and saw happened on January 6th. What do you do about that? How does the country respond to that?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So I have now come to believe that disinformation is actually too kind of a word and I think -- because I think -- we tend to think it's just words. And what we have to remember is those words are leading to two significant actions. So the first is attempts for voter suppression.

[10:20:00]

In other words, everything going on in the states, especially these swing states, it is related to the lie and trying to minimize what January 6th was. So that's one action, right? The other is, of course, violence.

And I think if we drop the word, violence, from what is happening right now, Stop the Steal is fundamentally about violence. It's about justifying violence. The Republican Party is essentially about supporting a lie that justifies violence and the increasing white supremacy terrorism that was also testified about yesterday, a big day on the Hill. So while words are significant and what the Republicans saying is significant, there -- both for voters suppression and an implicit or at least a greasing of the runway for the kind of violence we saw on January 6th and the kind of white supremacy terrorism that is aligned with Stop the Steal.

SCIUTTO: And we should note, the Justice Department continues to identify that kind of domestic terrorism as the number one terror threat to this country, more so than at this time than international terrorism.

I want to talk about a moment from the testimony yesterday, this from the former Acting Defense Secretary Miller, who modified, if that's the right word, his initial assessment of President Trump's role in the insurrection, saying now, he had said his words helped incite the violence, now, he says he was not a -- the unitary factor, whatever that means. You say his testimony was horrifying. Tell us why.

KAYYEM: It was -- I mean, most of it was a lie. I mean, let's just -- I don't want people to forget. Miller had no business being secretary of defense. He was a sort of underling. He was brought in to take over (INAUDIBLE) unwillingness to former secretary (INAUDIBLE) with what Trump -- happened was just some sort of violence that would then lead to enough skepticism about the voters. So Miller is in there.

And the most important thing to remember about Miller is that a lot of these guys, they have no identity outside of Trump. So they're not going to throw him under the bus. And I think what is clear is that a lot of people are still out there who will perpetuate the lie just purely for their selfish goods. It is embarrassing. I mean, honestly, I watched, it's like embarrassing he was the secretary of defense. I mean, it's like -- because he clearly had no understanding about pre- deployment, about the necessity of having the military out there and what the military could do to protect the congressmen and women.

SCIUTTO: And, sadly, we still don't have that question answered as to why the Pentagon didn't act more quickly to protect the Capitol, right? I mean, that is a key question there. Juliette Kayyem, always good to have you on.

KAYYEM: Thank you.

HARLOW: Well, still to come, fuel supplies running short due to panic buying across the southeast, not really a supply problem on the front end but on the buying end. Where does this go from here? We'll have some updates, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:00]

HARLOW: Coming up next hour, President Biden will address the Colonial Pipeline incident as also panic buying is happening of gas and hoarding across the country leading to gas shortages in states across the southeast and the mid-Atlantic. SCIUTTO: U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said this morning that the pipeline should return to normal by the end of this weekend. CNN's Dianne Gallagher is in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the state's governor is pleading with residents not to panic buy.

And, Dianne, it's notable that he and others are saying the shortage right now is more about that panic buying, is it not, than supply disruption.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, for sure, Jim. And perhaps this is the best indicator of that, because those pleas appear fall on deaf ears for the past two days. Today though, there is something different. If you kind of take a peek behind me here, look, this is the most extensive line that I have seen all day. And it's kind of like this throughout the city.

We aren't seeing those long lines today. The only thing that has really changed is the fact that an announcement was made yesterday that that pipeline was going to begin flowing again. And, well, the fact that everybody has spent the past two days waiting in hours long line filling up their gas tanks, afraid they may not see gas again because there was not an end date in sight, they thought.

Now, there is still a serious situation here. The state of North Carolina, like much of the southeast, is experiencing massive outages at gas stations. Almost 75 percent of gas stations are report nothing fuel. And I can tell you driving around the city of Charlotte right now, scenes like this, even though the lines are short, are rare. Most of the gas stations are simply shut down with bags over the nozzles. The they don't have fuel. And local officials have warned that it might be a few days before things start to look normal again. Just because the fuel is flowing again, it's not going to get here exactly.

Some good news though just before 6:00 this morning at this gas station, we saw two fuel trucks drive up, put that fuel in the ground. People have been getting gas ever since. The hope across this city is that they see more of that in the coming days.

SCIUTTO: And Secretary Buttigieg said on this broadcast a short time ago, listen, buy what you need but don't buy more than you need because that's adding to this. Dianne Gallagher, thanks very much.

[10:30:00]

After President Biden speaks about that pipeline situation in the next hour, he will then meet with several Republican senators with hopes, hopes of hammering out.