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Supreme Court Limits LGBTQ Protections; Supreme Court Blocks Biden's Student Debt Forgiveness; Source: Trump Allegedly Showed Classified Map To Senior Campaign Official Susie Wiles; Biden, Obama Release Fundraising Video. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 30, 2023 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:30:57]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Just moments ago, President Biden reacted to the major Supreme Court decision on LGBTQ rights. Joe Biden called it an invitation to discriminate that threatens dignity and equality of all Americans.

Congressman Ritchie Torres of New York is the only openly gay black man currently serving in Congress, and he joins me now. Thank you so much, sir, for being with us this hour. The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of a Christian web designer who cited religious objections in refusing to make a website for a same-sex couple.

I want to get your perspective. You're a member of Congress, but as I mentioned, you're an openly gay man. What was your reaction when you learned of the ruling?

REP. RITCHIE TORRES (D-NY): Well, the decision is a dark day, not only for the LGBTQ community, but for democracy. And I cannot help but feel that the most consequential policy decisions are being decided not by elected officials, but by the unelected judges of the Supreme Court, particularly, a right-wing, super majority.

You know, the Supreme Court is increasingly operating as a super legislature, and laws become politics by other means. And this particular decision reminds us that the greatest threat to LGBTQ equality is the weaponization of religious liberty.

Now religious liberty properly understood means freedom from discrimination, not freedom to discriminate. And if the Supreme Court continues to reinterpret religious liberty as a license to discriminate, it's going to have implications for civil rights laws at every level of government, and it's going to have implications far beyond the LGBTQ community.

BASH: I want to read you an excerpt from the Majority Opinion. It was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch and it says, "Taken seriously, that principle would allow the government to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of penalty. Equally, the government could force a male website designer married to another man to design websites for an organization that advocates against same-sex marriage."

Does he have a point there?

TORRES: He is wrong and he's sending a message that you are free to discriminate as long as you do so under the guise of religious liberty. You know, the principle that there should be no discrimination in the public marketplace is a legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, and the Supreme Court is overturning a core civil rights principle in the name of religious liberty.

BASH: Some are concerned, Congressman, about the ambiguity of the word expressive, expressive services. That's a term that is used frequently in this Majority Opinion. Does the ruling today point to a Supreme Court that could be ready to overturn other rights of LGBTQ people, including same-sex marriage?

TORRES: Look, we're witnessing the most radical, politicized Supreme Court that we've seen in recent history. As you might recall, Justice Thomas famously called on the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell versus Hodges, which protects the right to marriage equality, and Congress had to take action to codify marriage equality and federal law in order to preempt what is increasingly a politicized Supreme Court.

So I do worry that the threat to LGBTQ equality from the Supreme Court is real and it's going to continue.

BASH: The other big case that the Supreme Court ruled on today was against President Biden's plan to relieve student loan debt. The Chief Justice wrote, quote, "Today, we have concluded that the words waive or modified do not mean completely rewrite that our precedent -- old and new -- requires that Congress speak clearly before Department Secretary can unilaterally alter sections of the American economy".

You just said that the court is too politicize and they're acting like a legislative branch. In the other case, student loan debt, they said, it's not up to us. It's up to you, Congressman Torres and other members of Congress. Do you understand that they have a point there or do you believe so?

[12:35:17]

TORRES: Well, Congress did speak clearly. Congress passed a law that authorizes the education Secretary to modify or waive any statutory or regulatory provision to protect borrowers affected by a national emergency. Congress did not say some provisions or most provisions. We said all provisions.

And the Supreme Court proceeded to ignore the will of Congress in order to deprive more than 40 million households of student debt forgiveness. These 40 million households are burdened by nearly 2 trillion in student debt.

BASH: What are the political implications of this? I mean, you mentioned 40 million people that would've benefited and were starting to benefit from this plan. The President made it a cornerstone of his 2020 campaign. Is it a political problem now for the President and other Democrats like yourself who are going to be on the ballot and promise that this would happen?

TORRES: Quite the opposite. The excesses of the Supreme Court is going to backfire. You know, the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe versus Wade reduced what was supposed to be a red wave in the 2022 election cycle to nothing more than a red trickle. So not only is the Supreme Court's decision bad law, it's also bad politics and it's going to come back to haunt the Republican Party.

BASH: Congressman Ritchie Torres, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

TORRES: Of course.

BASH: And important new developments in both special counsel probes of former President Donald Trump. Details ahead. Two campaign Trump officials are under scrutiny. Stay with us.

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[12:41:32]

BASH: Now, a stranger than fiction scenario that just might become reality sometime in the heart of 2024. Donald Trump's campaign manager may be compelled to take the witness stand and testify against the candidate she says she's trying to elect. She is the campaign manager.

Well, CNN's Katelyn Polantz is going to join our conversation. Give the details. What happened?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, we have confirmed, as well as other news organizations that the person, the political action committee representative that in 2021 Donald Trump showed a classified map of a military operation to is Susie Wiles.

The person who is essentially running his third bid for the presidency and who has had to speak to investigators multiple times through the course of this investigation so that there can be an indictment. Now that she's a witness in this, it's very plausible. She could be called to flesh out that part of the story whenever they want to tell it to a jury.

So when he is on trial, either at the end of this year, or sometime in next year in the middle of his campaign, but Susie Wiles isn't alone. There are so many people around Donald Trump who work for him, who are part of his political enterprise that are part of this case, and this is just the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

This doesn't include anything that might come in this other piece of the investigation, the January 6 investigation, and he can't talk to any of these people on about this charged case, but it is something that's going to hang over the campaign. BASH: Jeremy, you covered Donald Trump when he was just a private citizen. You covered his White House. Is his head just exploding right now?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, I was going to say he's already somebody who's known for being pretty paranoid. And so to have all of these people around him who are talking to federal investigators, who are listed as witnesses in this case, in these documents, including his attorneys, I mean, I just can't even imagine how he's wrapping his head around that.

I'm also kind of surprised, frankly, that Susie Wiles is still there just because of that inherent paranoia that the president has. So she must have said something to him to convince him that she didn't, you know, give the feds goods.

BASH: Fed the goods.

DIAMOND: Right. But, I mean, it's a remarkable state of affairs as he heads into this, you know, higher intensity phase of the campaign.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: And whether she is the one that gave the fed the goods or not and said, hey, this happened. Even if not, even if they found out she was the person he presented the map to, she's been having to talk to them. She may be called as Katelyn saying as a witness. It doesn't make it any less awkward for the president politically in this scenario to have the person in charge of your political operation of being enmeshed in this.

And you just wonder, like, the first time she was contacted about this, did she tell everything to the president that she was discussing with investigators, you know, be prior to the indictment. It's -- there's so much still to learn here about how central her role is to now Trump being indicted and this being a key data point and fact pattern in the indictment.

POLANTZ: And our reporting was that the Trump inner circle was blindsided by this. That they didn't realize how much she had been talking to investigators.

BASH: And OK, so that's going on. And on the other hand, she's the former president's campaign manager helping him with strategy on how to deal with his legal issues as it, I mean, maybe not from a legal perspective, but from a political perspective, and she's part of it.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: And we know those things are starting to collide. There was some reporting recently that some of the donations that were coming into the campaign have been diverted to the legal pack or the sort of legal fund for the former president.

You know, this is also a reminder of how different this process is from January 6th say, where it's like, we'd like you to come testify what you said no. OK, well, like this is different. You get called, you have to come. You have to talk.

[12:45:11] And he can't use the arguments in public, in the court because you can see the difference between what they say publicly and what actually ends up in court filings.

BASH: Everybody stand by because ahead, we have new reporting about Senate Republicans bracing for voter backlash over the student loan ruling saying it will be a key campaign issue in 2024.

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[12:50:15]

BASH: Senate Republicans are scrambling to tamp down voter anger at the Supreme Court decision to block student debt forgiveness, a ruling that impacts more than 40 million Americans. They're saying it's the White House's fault, not the Republican's fault.

My panel is back. It's really interesting. Manu Raju is reporting Audie that there are five bills proposed by Senator Bill Cassidy that would deal in some way, shape or form legislatively with this student loan issue. Obviously, nothing like the full exemption that we saw by executive order.

CORNISH: I think it's interesting because after the Roe v. Wade decision, after the Dobbs decision, Republicans learn the hard way Congressional Republicans, that voters really can rise up and say, hey, not so fast. And you've seen them wrestle with, well, do we expand the clamp down on abortion rights or not?

Systematically, with each one of these rulings, you're going to have that moment where they decide, wait, should we mitigate the loss that voters are feeling, or should we take advantage of the movement we pushed up until this moment and go even farther? And that's why it's such a confusing batch of signals.

Like, since when would Senate Republicans want to protect this particular area for the public. You've got candidates, as you pointed out, who are out there saying, good. This isn't -- we shouldn't be paying the ones --

BASH: Yes.

CORNISH: -- off of so-and-so. It's a muddled message because they don't always know what to do once the dog has caught the car.

BASH: David Chalian, let's do 30,000 feet like only David Chalian can do about what it all means. Not just these rulings yesterday, but kind of the big picture of the court and elections having consequences.

CHALIAN: Yes. I mean, I think you can draw a direct line from Donald Trump realizing in 2015, 2016 that he's not a natural fit for the evangelical base of the Republican Party. And therefore he and his team, if you recall, got together a list of people that he approved by the Federalist Society, a conservative movement organization here that has been dedicated to getting the courts -- federal courts moving to the right and said they're all pre-approved by the Federal Society. I'm only going to appoint these people on this list. And that brought the event --

BASH: And by the way, that had not been done before.

CORNISH: I was about to say not nakedly.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Yes.

CHALIAN: Unprecedented move. And at the time I remember also saying kind of brilliant strategically, like for him to do and it worked for him, right? It did bring people around, and I think you could draw a line from that to this very moment. This is the result.

This is a court that has moved dramatically to the right. This is a court that a third of the members are Trump appointees that get these six three rulings. And Audie was rightly talking about the backlash that can exist here, and that is going to be the next phase of how Republicans deal with that backlash.

But this is getting, you know, to their long-held mission here of using the court to envision in America as they want it to be.

DIAMOND: Yes. And that backlash is very much a part of that same line that you're drawing there. Because when you look at, for example, democratic voters and how much they care about the court after Dobbs and versus Republicans, like they go in two different -- or rather like this, they go in two different directions.

And so you have this new split where Republican voters used to be so motivated by the Supreme Court and now it's Democrats who are really energized by this. I think one of the reasons Senate Republicans are also looking at this stuff, that student loan forgiveness plan was actually popular with the majority of Americans. And so, it's something that they have to at least consider and look at.

I also think one last point that we haven't really discussed is, student loan forgiveness plan. The Biden administration very much framed that also as something that would help African Americans in the country who are overly burdened by student debt.

Yesterday with affirmative action, today with this, that affects a key constituency that President Biden needs to win reelection. And so how his administration shows that they, despite failing on those fronts or despite getting losses at the Supreme Court, how they show that they're still going to address those issues for black voters I think is going to be really important heading into the election.

BASH: Fascinating conversation. Thank you for being here on a Friday, one and all. Appreciate it. Very busy Friday.

Up next, President Biden is teaming up with an old friend as he closes out and end of quarter campaign blips.

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[12:59:07]

BASH: The band is back together. The commander in chief and former President Barack Obama made a campaign video to drum up donations for President Biden's reelection campaign, and unsurprisingly, right at the end of the fundraising quarter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Here's five reasons why I'm asking you to donate $5 to my campaign with some help from a friend. Hey, Barack.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: Hey Joe.

BIDEN: Good to see you, man. We can't do it without you.

OBAMA: Number four, Joel might even call you.

BIDEN: Not a joke.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Be sure to watch State of the Union on Sunday. Two Republican candidates for president, former New Jersey Governor of Chris Christie, former Texas Congressman Will Hurd, plus, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this Sunday at 9:00 a.m. right here on CNN.

Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.