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Hearing on Trump's January 6th Case Thursday; George Conway is Interviewed about Trump's January 6th Case; Oasis Fans Angry over Ticket Prices; Joey Chestnut Beats His Own Record. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired September 03, 2024 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:31:07]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This week, federal Judge Tanya Chutkan will hold a hearing in the election subversion case against Donald Trump. This will be the first hearing since the Supreme Court granted the former president broad immunity, prompting special counsel Jack Smith's revised indictment.

CNN's Zach Cohen is with us now to lay out what we expect in this hearing.

Zach.

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, John, this is really the first opportunity for Judge Chutkan to offer some clarity around how this case is going to move forward, and specifically how she plans to deal with the issue of presidential immunity and whether or not it applies to certain parts of this revised indictment that's been brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

Now, look, neither Jack Smith nor former President Donald Trump's legal team seem to be in any rush to try to get this case to trial before the November election, or really even before the end of this year. But it will not surprise you to learn that there is still significant disagreement between the two sides over how this case is going to proceed.

Now, Jack Smith, in the joint filing status report that they filed last week, Jack Smith didn't offer any definitive recommendations as far as timing goes, as far as what he wants to see this timeline look like going forward. But he did indicate that he wants to move this case along. He wants to have Judge Chutkan consider the issue of presidential immunity while also dealing with a variety of other issues Trump's legal team is going to raise.

Now, Trump's legal team is saying basically the exact opposite. They want to deal with a different issue, Jack Smith's alleged illegal appointment first before getting into presidential immunity, really separating these issues into a more extended trial timeline that they say could go all the way into fall of 2025. So, look, it ultimately is going to be up to Judge Chutkan to

determine what the schedule looks like going forward. Jack Smith has said that he's ready to brief on the issue of presidential immunity at her convenience and at her request. Tomorrow, though, is the first time the two sides are going to sit in front of a judge and try to hash all this out. And we could get our first indication of what a roadmap going forward looks like.

BERMAN: All right. We'll be watching. Zach Cohen, thanks so much.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk more about this. Joining us now is conservative lawyer George Conway. He also launched a new anti- Trump PAC the summer. It's good to see you, George. Thanks for jumping in.

With this new version of the indictment that Trump now faces, I like the - the way some of the CNN reporting put it, that it's kind of the special counsel make some nips and tucks throughout, trying to preserve the case against Trump, while falling into line with what Supreme Court has ruled in July.

What do you see in this new version? Do you think it's a stronger or weaker case now?

GEORGE CONWAY, LAWYER: I think it's every bit as strong as it was before because it took out portions of the indictment that really weren't necessary to prove the crimes that were alleged. And what was taken out were the allegations that Trump had had conversations pressuring the Justice Department to bring an illegitimate investigation into this supposedly fraudulent election. That clearly is out of bounds under the Supreme Court's decision, and Jack Smith was absolutely right not to waste any time on it.

But the fact remains that all of the other charges suffice all the other factual allegations in the complaint, in the indictment, suffice to allege three separate crimes that Trump did - that Trump has - has been alleged to have committed. And I think actually the case gets stronger because it becomes more focused. And I think, you know, the more you focus it in on in particularly false electoral certificates and attempts to pressure state officials, I think the stronger the case becomes.

BOLDUAN: Interesting.

I want to play something that Donald Trump said himself this weekend in a new Fox interview about the case against him?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's so crazy that my poll numbers go up. Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it, you get indicted and you poll numbers go up. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: The way he's putting it is he had every right to interfere in the election.

[09:35:01]

I mean, what do you do with that?

CONWAY: Well, you know, I'm - if I were a lawyer, I would tell him he has the Fifth Amendment right to stuff a sock in his mouth, but he's not capable of doing that. And he continually makes remarks that are, frankly, incriminating. His statement there in that interview with Mark Levin, to the effect that he had the perfect right to interfere with the election, is an admission that he tried to interfere with the election and that he wasn't trying to, you know, enforce federal law and act in his capacity as president of the United States. He was trying to win an election that he clearly lost. And that's a crime. And that's - that, for him, it's just yet another admission of guilt. And he's made many of them over the years.

BOLDUAN: So, there's the legal realm and then the political impact of the legal realm, I mean, because I want to ask you because one thing we have definitely seen is it appears a concerted effort by the Harris campaign and Kamala Harris herself to not make this case a central focus of their campaign message. Whereas, we did see Joe Biden's campaign before hers did make it more of a focus.

I want to play a moment that happened from her rally yesterday. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But as we fight to move forward, Donald Trump is trying to pull us backward. Including back to a time before workers had the freedom to organize.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's going to jail.

HARRIS: (INAUDIBLE) will handle that, and we will handle November. How about that?

We'll handle November. Let the courts handle that other thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: We've heard this from Kamala Harris before when a crowd had gone on to say "lock him up," this time saying Trump's going to jail. What do you think of late making less, not more of the criminal charges he faces?

CONWAY: Well, I think what Vice President Harris did there was pitch perfect for a prosecutor and a future president who intends to enforce the rule of law. This should not be political. I mean, yes, it's - we should be making political hay out of the fact that he is a convicted criminal and he has done all sorts of thing to violate the law, and he shows no respect for the rule of law.

But, the legal process has to be the legal process. And Kamala Harris, as a former prosecutor, respects that legal process and she will not tolerate people saying "lock him up, lock him up" in the context. I can say lock him up, lock him up, because I'm not running for any public office. I can simply be a legal commentator and say he should be locked up. But that's my job and not hers. Her job is to be someday, and I hope very soon, the chief law enforcement officer in the United States of America, charged with impartially administering the law.

BOLDUAN: George, it's always good to see you. Thank you for coming in.

Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Kate.

The fight between television titans that has sports fans up in arms. DirecTV is now offering to compensate customers who lost access to ESPN an ABC during one of the busiest weekends for sports.

Plus, Oasis just announced its reunion tour. And the fans furious after they pressed buy because those prices are sky high. Why the U.K. government is now investigating.

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[09:42:57]

SIDNER: Pope Francis is in Jakarta, Indonesia, today as he kicks off his twelve day marathon tour of southeast Asia. It is the farthest the pope has traveled for a papal visit, which is meant to grow and strengthen the catholic church's presence across Asia, but also build bridges with other religions. The 87-year-old pope will meet with Indonesia's president and other officials tomorrow before continuing his trip to three other countries.

All right, customers caught in the middle of the Disney/DirecTV the dispute have a little bit of relief. DirecTV is now offering subscribers credits of at least $20 as the blackout of ESPN and other Disney owned channels is continuing into its third day. Customers will need to apply for credit on a special website with their account email. The credit will then appear on a future bill. The outage is affecting 11 million subscribers. With the NFL season days away, this is going to be hard for some folks if they don't get it together.

All right, some snorkelers near Australia's Gold Coast got an unexpected thrill when they drifted too close to a pot of humpbacks. One of the whales gave a snorkeler the ride of his life.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of a sudden there was commotion behind us and we turned around and someone, we didn't know at the time who it was, but someone was up on top of the tail of a whale.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This wasn't the first time this happened to him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But he was very - like very ecstatic about it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was like a relatively gentle experience from what we could tell.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: He literally has a whale of a tale. A relatively gentle experience for the whale and the human. Everyone is fine.

John.

BERMAN: Good news there.

All right, this morning, from elation to rage. Oasis fans, who were so excited about the reunion tour, are now ticked off because of sky-high ticket prices. Who could have seen that coming? Those prices nearly doubled while many fans were waiting online for hours to buy them. Now the British government is looking into all of this, the dynamic pricing.

CNN media correspondent Hadas Gold is with us now.

So, what's going on here?

HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: John, I don't know if you're a fan of Oasis, but there are a lot of fans of Oasis out there and they were thrilled to hear that the band was going to - getting back together and going on tour.

[09:45:03]

They broke up in 2009 acrimoniously. There was that famous sort of dispute fight between the two brothers. So, this is a big deal. It's not only family coming back together, it's a band coming back together.

So, they announced 15 tour dates across mostly the United Kingdom and Ireland. And so that when tickets went on sale, people were obviously very excited. But then that excitement turned into rage and anger, especially at Ticketmaster, which was handling the ticket sales. And that's because of something called in demand pricing. This is sort of the dynamic pricing that we've started to see recently where as more and more people are trying to buy tickets, the ticket prices can shoot up. So, even if you went online and you saw a price, OK, $150 or something for a ticket, and then you waited, though, six hours or however many hours people were waiting in line, suddenly when you put it in your basket online, a lot of fans were saying they were shooting up. Some fans were reporting that ticket prices went from, listen to this, 135 pounds, which is about $177, to 355 pounds, that's $466 at the last minute. And for a lot of people, that is way outside of their budget for a ticket. And these aren't, you know, VIP tickets in a box. These are standing room tickets. And you have to also keep in mind that that means that some people might be paying $150 for that standing room ticket, but you might be standing next to somebody who is paying $455 for that standing room ticket.

Now, the anger over this, I should say -

BERMAN: You're making me angry just describing this.

GOLD: I know.

No, the tickets have already sold out. But we're getting the U.K. government involved in this because there's a few Oasis fans also in the U.K. government. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, has already said that it's just not fair. Culture secretary Lisa Nandy has come out and said they're going to look into this. They say, "we've already announced that this autumn we'll be consulting on secondary ticketing, how to deal with ticket touts. And as part of that we will look at dynamic pricing and in particular transparency around it."

Also in the United States, I don't know if you remember, the U.S. Senate had their own hearing after anger over Taylor Swift tickets.

BERMAN: Yes, that's what - this was the same idea, the Taylor Swift thing?

GOLD: Similar ticket - Taylor Swift tickets were more about how the whole site just completely crashed and couldn't handle the number of people trying to get tickets. And there's questions over competition in this space because, you know, there's a few big players in this space. And so that's what the U.S. Senate hearing was about.

Now, we've heard nothing from Oasis yet themselves, but they have hinted - their organizer and promoters have hinted there may be extra dates added because of all the demand over this.

BERMAN: Yes, and then those prices will go up to 500 pounds or whatever it is also.

All right, Hadas Hold, thank you very much. Really appreciate it.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: So, now to Joe Chestnut, the undisputed king of the hot dog eating contest of all times. Now, after his Netflix faceoff, hear the praise that he had for his competition.

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[09:52:08]

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CROWD: Six, five, four, three, two, one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's Joey Chestnut.

Congratulations. JOEY CHESTNUT: I've been trying to hit 80 hot dogs for years. And without Kobayashi I was never able to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: He did it! He did it!

BOLDUAN: He sweat through it.

BERMAN: He set the world record!

SIDNER: I feel sick, though.

BERMAN: He set the world record! More than 80 hot dogs. No one has ever done that.

BOLDUAN: (INAUDIBLE) hungry.

BERMAN: We saved the most important story for last of the day.

Joey Chestnut set the world record, beating Takeru Kobayashi, his rival, in a hot dog eating contest. This was big.

CNN's Coy Wire here to break it all down for us minute by - dog by dog.

SIDNER: No.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: That's - no. Oh, we've come such a long way from the first ever Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition in 1916 when the winner at 13 hot dogs.

Joey Chestnut, people, aptly named "jaws" wolfing down 83 dogs and buns in ten minutes. Bun-believable.

SIDNER: Oh.

WIRE: New world record. He beat fellow legendary competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi, who only ate 66. Chestnut said he was nervous about the no dunking rule. No putting dogs in the water to help it go down. But no dunking, no problem. Just a new world record. Plenty of meat sweats. Joey Chestnut shattering his previous record of 76 hot dogs sent back in 2021.

His rivalry with Kobayashi goes back years. His first win against him came in 2007, and he won with 66 hot dogs at that time. Chestnut's 83 dogs in ten minutes, that comes out to about one hot dog every seven seconds, people.

SIDNER: Oh.

WIRE: And if you stack those hot dogs, 83 of them, end to end, it would be as tall as about a three story building. And imagine the buns stacked next to those as well.

Of course, this burning question comes up about this contest. Is a hot dog a sandwich? I mean that's my main thing that I'm taking from this, other than a little bit of queasiness.

BERMAN: Can I blow your mind here for a second?

SIDNER: Oh, gosh.

BERMAN: This is - this is totally an aside. This is something a -

BOLDUAN: You did a story on this once?

SIDNER: No.

BERMAN: No, no, no, no, no, no.

It's, do you know that hot dogs and bologna are the same meat. It's just - it's just that bologna is cut in a flat sandwich thing, right?

SIDNER: You heard it here.

BERMAN: So, yes, I -

WIRE: (INAUDIBLE) of all people -

BOLDUAN: They're both amazing.

BERMAN: They're both amazing. So, a hot dog, in a way, is a sandwich because it's just like a bologna sandwich, it's just served in a different form.

SIDNER: You're buying that?

WIRE: I'm with you. John, I'm putting you on the spot. I had the - the women do some Olympic competitions. They were sprinting.

BOLDUAN: Oh, yes. We did pretty good.

WIRE: They were breakdancing.

SIDNER: We were good.

WIRE: If you had to do an eating competition, what food would you pick? Which one could you wolf down?

BERMAN: Oh, man.

BOLDUAN: You don't eat much.

SIDNER: Pie.

BERMAN: You know, I -

BOLDUAN: He's going to be like apples.

[09:55:00]

BERMAN: I like Indian food. I eat - I'm always uncomfortably full after I eat - BOLDUAN: A curry?

BERMAN: No, like a, you know, chicken tikka masala.

BOLDUAN: Um, yum, yum.

SIDNER: OK.

BERMAN: I could eat a lot of that.

SIDNER: All right.

BERMAN: I can eat a lot of that. That - I'm not sure that would be so fun.

WIRE: Oh, a bowl full of curry. No, not for your fellow co-anchors for sure.

BOLDUAN: I just want to see John have meat sweats. That's all I'm here for.

SIDNER: (INAUDIBLE).

BERMAN: I got meat sweats right now.

BOLDUAN: (INAUDIBLE) like, OK.

SIDNER: All right, we need to be done now because this is -

BOLDUAN: Hey, did you see -

SIDNER: This is inappropriate.

BOLDUAN: I think we should go.

Thanks for joining us, guys. Coy, again, TV gold. This is CNN -

SIDNER: Now, I've got nervous sweats because I'm scared about what's coming out of his mouth. That's - yes.

BOLDUAN: That's just me on a regular Tuesday.

This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL with us.

"CNN NEWSROOM" is up next.

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