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Inside Politics

Detroit Bids Farewell to "Queen of Soul"; Russian Intel Thought "They Had Trump Over a Barrel". Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired August 31, 2018 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00] FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: -- Jimmy Fallon's show shortly after Aretha Franklin's death. But let's talk about how Aretha Franklin, the woman, the music symbolizes her in so many ways. The woman, her music, what she brought to the American culture as a whole.

I want to bring in a couple experts here. Aretha Franklin biographer and friend, David Ritz. As well as reporter with the Detroit News Louis Aguilar with me now.

Let's talk about how important it is that you've got talent representing so many different types of music, David paying tribute to Aretha Franklin through song and through their personal accounts of how she had made an impression on them.

DAVID RITZ, FRIEND OF ARETHA FRANKLIN: Well, I mean, she's a -- she's epic. You know, this is an epic moment in American history. It's the end of an era. She was born out of the golden age of soul. And it's like this golden age is never going to end.

And my feeling generally about being in Detroit for people -- for they -- is she's alive. She's alive in everybody's heart. She's alive in everybody's t-shirts. She's alive in the pink Cadillac. She's alive, she's alive, she's alive.

And so there's joy. That's what I'm kind of feeling in everybody's heart, that she's alive.

WHITFIELD: And Louis, you could probably depict just how alive Aretha Franklin is in this town. You wrote an article about the 10 places, you know, that are defined by Aretha Franklin, starting with, you know, her family home on LaSalle. I got a chance to see it yesterday. I wasn't the only one with that idea because there were a lot of other folks who came out just to see the home that, you know, she lived in and was shaped by.

But you can drive around so many parts of Detroit, and you can better explain it, how her impressions are so deep on so much of Detroit, that this really is a heartfelt outpouring.

LOUIS AGUILAR, THE DETROIT NEWS: I've never seen such an outburst of emotion city wide for anything, really. I mean, I went to the dentist yesterday, I went to my favorite Mexican (INAUDIBLE). People are talking about it. And you hear Aretha Franklin songs, just bits of her life beyond the music. So it really is a joyous week of people having the chance to celebrate. And the feedback they're getting from the national response, the international response, I think is also very positive thing. It's just a reminder of how important she was in American life.

And the 10 places I thought it was great just to document the history. You know, the house that you referred to --

WHITFIELD: Yes, in LaSalle.

AGUILAR: -- the people who brought it from her didn't even know that she lived there.

WHITFIELD: And I happened to talk to one of the women who live there, and she said, you know, when we first bought this home five years ago, we didn't even know it was the Franklin house. And then she says -- not at first, but then we finally, you know, got hip to it. But wow, I mean, what a national treasure, that piece of real estate is. And then it would be sold and purchased, and the purchaser wouldn't even know.

AGUILAR: So I just thought it was important to document what a historical figure was. And also, it really does show the relationship she has with the city and the deep relationship she had with her father. And expose -- she was a child prodigy. I mean, the church of her father, she started to sing when she was five or six.

WHITFIELD: Yes, it's extraordinary.

AGUILAR: And they recorded her at 14 and it was -- all the brilliance is already there in that -- as a 14 year old. Its' really (INAUDIBLE) to visit.

WHITFIELD: The New Bethel Baptist Church was one of those locations. You also mentioned the co-host center, and then, you know, I-94, I-75. And I kid you not when I was driving on 94, it just made me want to start singing, you know, riding on a freeway of love in my pink Cadillac.

I mean, you just can't help it. You feel her presence.

RITZ: Yes.

AGUILAR: Yes. I mean, it was nice to -- Detroit is going through a comeback, but it was nice -- and some of the places that she lived and touched are now part of that comeback so much. And so it was nice to document the important history of those neighborhoods, especially to the black middle class. Her house that you mentioned was a salon of musical luminaries of Sam Cooke, (INAUDIBLE), Mahalia Jackson.

The list went on and on of like the people who would visit her and her father, who was a very national figure in the black panthers church.

WHITFIELD: And she spoke so eloquently over the years talking about how much joy she had in being in that home to see all of these people that she idolized, Mahalia Jackson, you know, Sam Cooke, who would come by, Duke Ellington. And, you know, David, you were a ghostwriter of her first biography so you heard this account firsthand --

RITZ: Well, I did and --

WHITFIELD: -- how she was enamored by the people who would come.

[12:35:04] RITZ: But the other that would emphasize, and I think it's part of why everybody is so happy this week and joyful, she was confident. She was not an insecure woman. She was not an insecure vocalist. I don't know if we have time for this really short anecdote.

WHITFIELD: Which is why that song natural woman really seems to be so authentic and real from her.

RITZ: But you know, the very --

WHITFIELD: And respect.

RITZ: Which is also huge but the extremely quick story I want to tell, she goes to the Grammys, Luciano can't sing the aria, she's learned the aria in Detroit but it's a different key. She has 10 minutes to learn the new arrangement in a different key. She goes out into an international audience. She crushes it.

WHITFIELD: Which surprised so many because they didn't realize the range.

RITZ: And I asked her afterwards, I said, how did you do that? She said, I closed my eyes, and I remembered what it was like to be in my father's church when I was 12 years old and the -- (INAUDIBLE) started praising me and encouraging me and telling me, go on girl, you can sing. So that confidence that she got as a child kept her strong her whole life.

WHITFIELD: Wow. I remember seeing one of her quote where is she talked about -- you know, the question was asked like how do you do that, how do you that. And, you know, she says her music is coming from deep within. She is emoting her own personal experience through song, through everything.

And then what about, you know, Louis her philanthropy because there have been so many people who have talked about how much she would give, not just in music and song, but how she would mentor, how she would invite people into her home. You know, among the places, you know, that you talked about, the 10 places, were the towers which have been -- you know, the riverside towers, her last residence. And she almost had an open-door policy so to speak, you know, of her life.

AGUILAR: Yes, more or less from what I understand. Yes.

I mean, it was interesting too that how many people, even though it was an open secret and how many people still guarded her privacy, even though many people knew that she lived there, but they always seemed to have some sort of reverence. They didn't want anybody to come in and bother her, but they knew if they wanted assistance, especially a musical one, that she seemed pretty open to it. It was quite a generosity.

WHITFIELD: Louis, David, we're going to take a short break for now. We're going to continue to monitor the service inside. You can see people are moved. They are clapping, they are on their feet, they are feeling it. They are feeling Aretha Franklin. They are feeling the love that is coming from this ceremony today.

And you see former President Bill Clinton. He'll be coming up. This is just the introduction to so much more feeling that we'll all be experiencing here. We'll be right back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

REV. AL SHARPTON: We only have five minutes and you all want to make me going to somewhere else.

Dear friends and family of Aretha, Michelle and I extend our heartfelt sympathies to all of those who gathered in Detroit, and we join you in remembering and celebrating the life of the Queen of Soul. From a young age, Aretha Franklin rocked the world of anyone who had the pleasure of hearing her voice, whether bringing people together through thrilling intersections of genres or advancing important causes through the power of song, Aretha's work reflected the very best of the American story.

In all of its hope and heart, its boldness and its unmistakable beauty. In the example she set both as an artist and a citizen, Aretha embodied those most revered virtues of forgiveness and reconciliation. While the music she made captured some of our deepest human desires, namely affection and respect, and through her voice, her own voice, Aretha lifted those of millions, empowering and inspiring the vulnerable, the downtrodden, and everyone who may have just need a little love.

[12:40:10] Aretha truly was one of a kind, and as you pay tribute, know we'll be saying a little prayer for you and we'll be thinking of all of Aretha's loved ones in the days and weeks to come. Sincerely, Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States.

Please receive mo town great, Detroit's own, Mr. Smokey Robinson.

WHITFIELD: Celebrated by presidents who are there and a president who is not there. You saw Reverend Al Sharpton reading a letter from President Obama. Now Smokey Robinson, good friend of Aretha Franklin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- and grey hair no hair. And I kept looking at them and looking at Smokey, and I said, I want what you drinking and eating. Give Smokey Robinson a hand. He'll be followed by the Clark sisters.

SMOKEY ROBINSON: I didn't know where you were going to go with that. So I'm about eight years old, and I'm outside and I'm playing with my neighborhood friends with (INAUDIBLE) and Phoebe (ph) and Ollie (ph). And we're shooting marbles because it was in a time when kids were able to play outside.

I don't know if boys know what that is anymore. But Richard Ross (ph), another one of our friends, came around and there's a new guy with him. And he introduced him and he said this is Cecil (ph). So we all, you know, like boys do, started playing.

And after a while, we went around to see Cecil's new house because they had just moved to Detroit from Buffalo. And we go in and we're walking around the house looking and I'm seeing stuff I had never seen because it wasn't anything like my house? Because, you know, if somebody broke into my house, they better be bringing something.

But -- anyway, we're walking around the house, and I hear music, the piano being played. And this voice sounds like a little girl singing. I go and look in that room, and I see you and you're there and you're singing. That was my first meeting and my first sight of you.

And from that moment on, almost, we have been so, so close and so tight. And I didn't know especially this soon that I was going to be having to say goodbye to you or farewell or whatever we've seen, everybody, all the people that I mentioned earlier pass on and go. And we talked about it many times, how we were the two who were left out of all our neighborhood friends. We were the longest ones. We weren't the only two left, but we were the longest ones.

So now my longest friend has gone home, and you went to be with our father like we all have to do one of these days. And I know you're up there and you're celebrating with your family and with all of our neighborhood friends who have gone, and you're going to be one of the featured voices in the choir of angels because, you know, you'd have to be.

I also know, you know, I've been on the road and I've been watching the celebration of your life from everywhere. And I've been doing interviews from everywhere, from all over the world. In fact the last one I did was from Brazil. The station that I was talking on covered all of South America.

So the world is celebrating you, and the world is mourning you and the world is going to miss you. And I know that I'm going to miss you so much because I miss our talks. And we would talk for hours sometimes, just talking about really anything we wanted to talk about or nothing.

[12:45:01] And the last conversation we had, you were telling me that you were getting ready to do your movie, and you wanted to know who I wanted to play me.

So I told you I was going to leave that up to you because you're so special. And a while back we did a mini series on the Temptations life, and for that movie, I did the score for the movie and I had to write a song for Melvin Franklin who was another one of our close people. And I'm sure he won't mind if I sing a little bit of it for you because it fits you so perfectly in my life.

Really going to miss you. It's really going to be different without you. For the rest of my life, going to be thinking about you. I'll miss you my buddy. I'll miss you my friend. I know that my love for you will never end. Will never end I'm going to love you forever.

WHITFIELD: An improvised tribute to his childhood friend. That from Smokey Robinson to Aretha Franklin. We continue with this beautiful celebration of the life of the Queen of Soul from Detroit. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:32] DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Breaking news now. CNN is learning that Russian intelligence officials believe they had then-candidate Donald Trump, quote, over a barrel. That information came from Christopher Steele, the British national who authored that infamous dossier. Now, it was revealed during a congressional testimony by Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.

I want to bring in CNN's Justice Department Correspondent Evan Perez. And Evan, what more can you tell us about this?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bruce Ohr went in for an interview with the House earlier this week, Dana, and in that interview is when he described what happened in this breakfast in July of 2016. Obviously this is right at the beginning of when this Russia investigation was being -- was started by the FBI.

And he met in London with Christopher Steele, according to his testimony to the House members, and he described that Christopher Steele essentially said that the Russians -- he had information that the Russians -- at least the Russian intelligence services believed that they had, quote, Donald Trump over a barrel.

Now, we don't know much more about this breakfast, whether Christopher Steele provided any evidence of this, but we also know, Dana that over the period of months that followed this meeting in London that Christopher Steele put together what we now know as the dossier, this are series of memos describing different connections between Donald Trump, people with the Trump campaign, and Russians close to the Kremlin.

So it is the beginning it appears of these allegations becoming part of what became now what of course is the Russia investigation that is looming over the presidency of Donald Trump.

BASH: Evan, thank you so much for that reporting. Appreciate it. And back here with our panel.

Julie, I want to start with you. I should say your organization, the Associated Press first broke the story. Evan has confirmed it as well. Also should say that Christopher Steele is about as controversial a figure in this whole saga as they come. And that says a lot because there are a lot of controversial figures.

But describe the significance of what Bruce Ohr said under oath about what Christopher Steele told him that the Russians thought of Donald Trump.

JULIE PACE, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Sure. Well, this is important because Bruce Ohr did say this under oath when he went to testify before Congress. It's also notable because both Christopher Steele and Bruce Ohr are becoming key targets for President Donald Trump. Steele obviously has been a target of Republicans and the White House for some time, but now they're trying to make Bruce Ohr someone else who they're trying to deem as not credible, as someone who's politically motivated.

It's important to note what we don't know about this. We don't know why Christopher Steele said this. We don't know if Russian intelligence told him this directly.

We don't know if he learned this from another source, but he was pretty plain spoken based on what our sources have told us in telling Bruce Ohr that Russian intelligence believed that they had Donald Trump over a barrel. That was the assessment of Russian intelligence at the time. And given the context of this whole investigation, it is quite a significant assessment.

BASH: And real quick, Abby, this goes to the heart of what was the initial reason for this investigation. The question of not just collusion but whether or not there was something deeper going on that we don't know the answer to. There's no evidence that the answer to that is yes. And yet we have this testimony.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right. And I think at the time what the FBI was dealing with was someone in Christopher Steele who while he's controversial now was at that time someone who they believed was a fairly reliable source of intelligence for them on other matters.

[12:55:09] Coming to them with this information that they probably rightfully found to be alarming, and it kicked off this, you know, month-long investigation that we're now facing. But the president is going back and looking at that and saying he had a vendetta against me. We won't know whether that shakes out for a little while longer.

BASH: OK. Thank you so much. Sorry for this abbreviated program. A lot going on. Wolf Blitzer picks up right after a break.

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