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Trump Praises Baseless Election Audits; Energy Secy.: Adversaries Capable Of Shutting Down U.S. Power Grid. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 07, 2021 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: But again, you would like -- if you were talking to the portraits at Mar-a-Lago or by himself, you would ignore the things he says, because they are lies and you wouldn't repeat them.

But in a party sanctioned event, he not only is looking back and saying the election was stolen, which it was not. But there are these so called audits, which are frauds going on in Arizona, elsewhere in the country. And the former president keeps saying they're going to prove, prove that he should still be president. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to congratulate by the way, Republican state senators in Arizona and other places for the great work that they're doing and exposing this fraud. I am not the one trying to undermine American democracy. I'm the one that's trying to save it. Please remember that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's the hard part, Congresswoman. Again, this is a state party organization that gives him that stage. So is it fair to say that the Republican Party owns that, they own that?

MIA LOVE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I would say that the State of Arizona owns that. I mean, I wouldn't say that the entire party owns that. As a matter of fact, there are people that do want to get away from that. And those are the people that the Republican Party are alienating. There's a whole group in the middle there that really wishes that the President didn't exist.

KING: And so Doug, that -- what team Trump would say and I want you to listen here, this is the Governor of Georgia, the Republican Governor of Georgia, speaking at a party event, the Republican State Convention. The Trump side would say, listen, here is proof for winning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CROWD: Boo, boo, boo, boo.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Governor Kemp's crime, if you will, Doug, is that he certified the election and Joe Biden the winner of the State of Georgia, which was the right thing to do, because that is what the math and the law told him to do.

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Sure, you know, you highlight my state of North Carolina, where Trump was this weekend, where the state party earlier it censured my old boss, Richard Burr for voting to convict Donald Trump and doing the right thing. This still is Donald Trump's party, the framework and the structure of the party, at least, belongs to Donald Trump, because it's so willingly gives itself to him.

The challenge, I think, is when you're in those rooms, when you're in the room, like in Greenville, North Carolina this weekend, and we hear the phrase we use too often, that it's Donald Trump's greatest hits. In that room, it's true. But if you go to suburban Raleigh, if you go to suburban Charlotte, suburban Atlanta, certainly, a lot of people don't like that song.

And into North Carolina doesn't get the attention to Georgia did. North Carolina Trump carried by 75,000 votes out of 5.4 million. There's not a lot of room for error for Republicans to continue to go down this road and alienate so many voters.

KING: Right. And again, and both of you know this, a lot of people out there I will hear from this on social media say just stop talking about him. And that is one option. But my point is when you not only have, you know, a former president questioning the legitimacy of the election, saying telling aids, he thinks he could be reinstated somehow. And more proof that not only do they say things, they do things with their power.

This is in "The New York Times," reporting from the former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows. In five e-mails sent during the last week of December and early January, Mr. Meadows asked Jeffrey Rosen, then the acting attorney general, to examine debunked claims of election fraud in New Mexico and an array of baseless conspiracies that held Mr. Trump had been the actual victor. That included a fantastical theory that people in Italy had used military technology and satellites to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States and switch votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Congresswomen, number one, the fact that the White House Chief of Staff, a former Congressman, would embrace these fanatical and not just fantastical conspiracy theories, but again, this is why you have to call this out because they have proven that if given power, they will try to use the levers of power to push their conspiracies.

LOVE: Right. And, again, this is the area -- look, I think that the Department of Justice really should look into it, especially if these claims are coming from legitimate sources. It's important for these things not, these things not to happen again, to make sure that the White House isn't using its power to try and keep a president in office. That is not what the administration should be doing. So these are, again, things that I believe are going to set the Republican Party back. These are not the issues that Republicans want to talk about during an election season or at all. They want to talk about policies, what they're pushing forward, what their plans are.

KING: And Doug, he has additional speeches planned, the former president, he wants to come back out of his shell and on the stage now. Will there be other Republicans who say no, we can't have this or this -- is this the party heading into the midterms?

HEYE: You know, this is the party, you use the phrase coming out of the shell. It's cicada season right now. Cicadas are coming out of their shells. They're making a lot of noise. Not a lot of people like it. That's the problem for the Republican Party. As Donald Trump pushes these things, it ensures that they're not going to be able to look forward. They're going to have to look backwards because Donald Trump will drag the party backwards every opportunity he can.

[12:35:13]

KING: For better or worse. I think I asked for that one. We'll invite you both back in 17 years to have this conversation again, Doug, all right. Congressman Love, grateful for your time today.

Up next, the Energy Secretary admits hackers are capable of taking down America's power grid. How ransomware now plays into the Biden- Putin summit states?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: President Biden this week embarks on his first overseas trip and there a heavy emphasis on partnership against cyber-crimes. In a pre trip essay in "The Washington Post," the President says the world's democracies must make sure quote the interests of autocrats don't govern new technologies.

[12:40:11]

The President goes on to say this. Will the Democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it.

Our panel is back with us now. Olivier, one of the biggest tests of this will be after all the pre meetings, where the President hopes to get the western alliances on -- western governments on the same page. He sits down with Vladimir Putin. His secretary of state says cyber- crimes will be among the many difficult issues. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: I don't think we're going to know after, after one meeting. But we'll have some indications. And we'll see. We're prepared either way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean by prepared?

BLINKEN: Well, as I said, we're prepared if Russia chooses to continue reckless and aggressive actions. We're prepared to deal with that as we have. On the other hand, if it chooses a different course, we're prepared to engage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's say we will see answer. A lot of words to say we don't know yet. But by scheduling this summit, they've sort of elevated it to the major event of this trip.

OLIVIER KNOX, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON POST: Sure. It is. I mean, all the rest of it, I mean, there's going to be some significant substantive discussion with American allies, both the U.K., the European Union, the NATO out, they know partners, obviously, withdrawal from Afghanistan, a lot of meaty stuff happening there. But the June 16th summit with Vladimir Putin is, of course, the headline event.

And what you're seeing in the run up to this is all a lot of unfinished business from the Obama administration, when a lot of these conversations began. I don't want to stretch this too far. But to me the current conversation about ransomware and about these Russian aligned hacks reminds me of the conundrum for Barack Obama in 2016, when they detected Russian interference in the election, and had to decide what do you tell Vladimir Putin?

And they, you know, they conveyed to reporters that, you know, Obama told him to cut it out. Well, we know how that ended, right? So they faced that kind of pressure. Another piece of unfinished business, when there was a big Sony hack, right, that destroyed a bunch of servers in Hollywood, the Obama national security team gathered in the Situation Room and they asked himself this question. If a bomb had done this damage, how would we respond, right?

They never really got to a clean answer about this. This is the same conversation that's going on now with these hacks. You saw that executive order from the Biden White House saying we're going to treat these as terrorism. That thread is unfinished. The -- well, I'll just leave it there. There's just a lot of unfinished business from that era.

KING: And to that point and the stakes have escalated. Listen to the Secretary of the Energy talking to Jake Tapper yesterday. We know the Colonial Pipeline was hacked. We know a major meat company, meat supplier was hacked. We know the intelligence community says those originated from interest inside Russia. The Energy Secretary says they could do a lot more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think that adversaries of the United States have the capability right now to shut down the power grid?

JENNIFER GRANHOLM, ENERGY SECRETARY: Oh, yes, they do. I mean, I think that there are very malign actors who are trying even as we speak.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It's a chilling, but honest answer. Yes, they do. The question to Olivier's point is, it's a new administration, but with old hands who've dealt with some of this before, what do they do about it?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, and that's what's interesting about what Blinken said there when he said we're prepared to respond if they don't cut this out, as we have in the past. I think the big question facing the White House is, will has what -- has what -- has -- what the U.S. has done in the past actually worked? Clearly not, it has not deterred them, these attacks keep happening.

And I believe it was Secretary Blinken also said that this meeting with Putin is not happening in spite of these ransomware attacks. It's happening because of them. In reality, they'd actually started scheduling this before the Colonial Pipeline attack had happened. But I do think it poses the question which Angus King, the senator raised, essentially saying that we were too mild on these attacks to respond to China and Russia in the past, and now it's coming back to bite us.

And so the question is, how does the U.S. ramp that up? What does that look like? And because, of course, Putin has a little bit of deniability, because they can say it's a criminal group. It's not actually the Russian state. But of course, they harbor these groups. The White House says that they do believe if you are harboring these groups, you are responsible.

BRITTANY SHEPHERD, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, YAHOO NEWS: And Biden just kind of teased out that he's willing to go a little bit harder. He was asked I believe last week, if Putin is basically pushing him around, is he being intimidated? And Biden said he poke his head back in the room, just absolutely not. That's not happening. But like we said, like Olivier was saying, we saw an executive order that told private companies in the U.S. like, hey, maybe get your security up a little bit.

But beyond Biden knocking on all of the doors, there's not much the senior administration officials can do beyond write op-eds in "The Wall Street Journal." And you hear, I think it was a sergeant of arms, say that she's more scared of cyber-attack than the insurrection, which makes the -- puts pressure on the White House think, well, if we go too strong on Putin, are we willing to go that strong on other things. And I think that there is --

KING: But you make a key point because it's worth listening to. You have the Senate sergeant in arms say I worry about cyber-attacks more than the insurrection. We all know with our own eyes what the insurrection was. We have the FBI Director saying this is tantamount to 9/11 where we have to get the government to connect all of the dots but we also need people out in the country. Kaitlan mentioned Senator King.

[12:45:04] Let's listen to Angus King for a second, because Congress has to try to deal with this, too. And one of the questions is, it's, you know, public private, how much can you mandate that American businesses tell the government share with the government?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ANGUS KING (I-ME): We've been a cheap date. And you can't defend yourself simply by bobbing and weaving and patching. We need essentially an entirely new relationship between the private sector and the federal government. Yes, I think some kind of mandatory incident reporting is going to be necessary. And it's got to be burdensome benefits, particularly for these important critical infrastructure pieces.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It is interesting when you hear from different stakeholders, they all bring the gravity way up. They talk of it like 9/11. When you had major restructuring of the United States government, the Department of Homeland Security is born, the TSA was born of that. Do the stakeholders, do they all share that? Senator King seems to share it. The FBI Director shares it. Do they have this on a big scale, let's try to set partisanship aside and fix this?

MELANIE ZANONA, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, POLITICO: They might have the concern, but are they willing to cooperate? And that's the challenge that we're seeing. That's why Congress is probably going to have to address this with some form of legislation. These attacks have really exposed just how vulnerable our infrastructure is. Of course, there is an infrastructure bill potentially coming up. That could be one area where it could be addressed.

But like anything on Capitol Hill, even addressing January 6th is a challenge these days to get bipartisan cooperation on.

KING: Hopefully you are starting to hear the same language from different people involved. Maybe they can get at a table.

Up next for us, the latest COVID numbers including the tough math the president faces in trying to reach his next vaccine goal.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:16]

KING: The all hands on deck approach to meeting the next White House COVID vaccine goal, includes a pitch from the First Lady.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JILL BIDEN, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: If you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for your best friend who might have diabetes. So do it for your grandma who might be compromised.

I'm scared to death of needles. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you really?

BIDEN: Yes. And it was so easy. And now, when we go to the vaccination sites, I'm usually holding somebody's hand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, right, of course, yes.

BIDEN: You know, helping them through it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's walk through the latest numbers, most of them positive but some concerning when it comes to that vaccine challenge right there. But first, look at this, the 50 state map and you see 44 states in green that means trending down, 44 states fewer new COVID infections now compared to a week ago, three states trending up, that's the orange and the red. That means more infections now, new infections than a week ago but overall, the picture improving quite significantly.

In this timeline tells you all you need to know, your eyes don't lie. The case count is way down, down to 14,000 on average, 14,400 new COVID infections a day. That's down from 44,000 just a month ago. You see this early in the year, 251,000. So a much better -- much improved picture when it comes to cases. And when that happens, every one of these deaths is sad, 455 is the average now of COVID deaths a day, again, way down from where we were in January, over 3,400 a day. So, considerable progress still sadness when you look -- whenever you look at that timeline.

Here's the reason the case count is down, hospitalizations are down, deaths are down. Forty-two percent of the American population is fully vaccinated, 51.5 percent is partially vaccinated. The President wants to ramp up this part. Here's the problem. If you look at the vaccine doses now averaging below a million shots a day overall, a million total vaccine shots a day we have dropped. Well, the President wants to get to 70 percent by July 4th of people partially vaccinated. We are at 63.5 right now.

So how do you get from 63.5 to 70 percent by July 4th, fast approaching. Here's the challenge for the White House. Right now, we're averaging 346,000 first shots a day, people getting their first shot of a vaccine. To get to that 70 percent, you'd have to ramp that up by more than 200, more than 220, 230,000, do the math right there a day to get to 575. So the administration within striking distance, significantly have to ramp it up from 346,000 to 575,000 to meet that goal by July 4th. We'll watch those numbers as it plays out.

[12:53:33]

Up next for us, Stormy Daniels says she knows the President's in legal trouble and she would love to talk with the Manhattan D.A.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Topping our Political Radar today. Stormy Daniels says she wants to chance to testify about Donald Trump and that alleged hush money payment. The adult film star says she received from Trump's then fixer. The Manhattan district attorney of course is looking into that transaction as part of an escalating probe into the Trump Organization.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STORMY DANIELS, ADULT FILM STAR: I would love nothing more than my day in court and to give a deposition and to provide whatever evidence that they need for me. I would tell them that I was approached. I would tell them that I have evidence that the money came from an account set up by Donald Trump or at the direction of Donald Trump. I will tell them that the, you know, that money was traced back to Russian funds. I would give them copies of the bank wires and all of the transcripts for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Here in Washington, the Department of Justice today proposing two new actions to take on gun violence. First, clarifying restrictions on braces that essentially transform a pistol into a short barreled rifle and secondly, the Department proposing model red flag legislation for states that if enacted, could temporarily prevent a person who may be planning to harm themselves or others from accessing guns.

And for the first time in more than a year, take a peek. The White House briefing room is at 100 percent capacity. Press in attendance still do need to be tested for COVID first, the Correspondence Association says, out of 500 journalists that surveyed more than 98 percent say, yes, they are vaccinated.

[13:00:06]

Thanks for sharing your Monday with us. Hope to see you back here this time tomorrow. Don't go anywhere. Ana Cabrera picks up our coverage right now. Have a good day.