Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Event/Special

Alexander Vindman is Interviewed about the Administration Resignations; Trump Could Regain Twitter Access; World Leaders Condemn Violence in U.S.. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired January 07, 2021 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: A handful of others are quitting effective immediately. More resignations may be on the way.

Meanwhile, his cabinet, some, are said to have been discussing invoking the 25th Amendment. It would be an extraordinary move that would potentially or could potentially force President Trump out of office, though, frankly, it seems unlikely given the timing and the process that would actually require, as well as the political will.

Joining me now to discuss, retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who served as a key witness during President Trump's impeachment hearings.

Lieutenant Colonel, I appreciate you being with us. Thank you very much.

What -- what do you make of sort of these last minute now with 13 days left to go resignations we're seeing?

LT. COL. ALEXANDER VINDMAN (RET.), FORMER DIRECTOR FOR EUROPEAN AFFAIR, THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Well, thank you, Anderson, for having me on this very somber morning.

I am, in certain ways, not surprised by some of the figures look to either rehabilitate their image, and in some cases actually Matt Pottinger (ph), who I know, is a principled individual and probably, you know, has had enough and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. But there are other folks that are more cold and calculating, looking to preserve their, you know, their ability to step back into the future with some other future Republican administration and save their skin.

COOPER: Yes, I've got to say, Stephanie Grisham, who's the chief of staff for the first lady now, who was the spokesperson for the White House, though never, I think, gave an actual press briefing, who was a chief apologist and, I mean, just an aggressive liar time and time again. I find it stunning that with 13 days to go, you know, she's leaving a sinking ship. Clearly, you know, hoping to salvage something of her reputation, though I'm not sure that that would be possible.

Just as somebody who has served both, you know, in the military honorably and served and wanting to serve in an administration, when you saw the scenes yesterday, what did you think?

VINDMAN: I -- I had a -- quite the swing in terms of my own personal feelings. We had come off of a high of seeing two senators, a black man and a Jewish man, elected as senators from Georgia, a conservative state, and that was a mandate and a rejection of Trump and Trumpism.

And then to swing into a morning in which we were going to convoke Congress and affirm a peaceful transition of power, just to have the president do what he's done, frankly, for the entirety of his four years, erratically, without consideration of consequences, attack the very foundation of our democracy and seek to somehow extend, without really even having a plan.

You know, it's -- it's a -- I think you could categorize it as a failed coup. But, you know, a hallmark of a coup is having some way to kind of really hang on to power. And this was just more about throwing hand grenades to stay in power.

And to have that occur, you know, the sullying, the stain of the confederate flag inside the Capitol building, that image projected across the world is really a hard thing to take as a service member that's sworn to uphold the Constitution, support and defend the nation. And to have the president himself, you know, and his enablers -- we shouldn't forget those -- activate a really small group of people across the country to perpetrate this crime is a hard thing to take.

COOPER: For -- with the president having, you know, some 13 days left, do you worry about him remaining in power in the White House? I mean he has, you know, access to nuclear codes.

VINDMAN: Absolutely. In certain ways I would encourage more of my former colleagues to resign. There are many people in positions that are important but less meaningful than those required to activate our 25th article of the Constitution, the 25th Amendment, rather. So I would encourage folks to really consider whether they want to stay on for the last two weeks, stay in those positions.

I had a -- I had my own struggles in trying to determine whether I wanted to stay on and -- or leave on my own accord. I finally -- I ultimately decided that, you know, I was going to leave on my own accord, but on my own timing. And, you know, the president saw fit to -- to have me escorted out of the building.

But I would also encourage those senior officials that have a role in the 25th Amendment to seriously have a conversation about basically having the president removed. It is essential that this crime perpetrated against the entire nation be addressed and there be accountability. And that conversation should be occurring within the halls of our stately buildings throughout the Capitol and it should be occurring within Congress also.

[09:35:03]

Congress has a role here.

The president should be impeached for these crimes. These high crimes and misdemeanors. And this will be the only -- you know, he will be the first president ever impeached twice, certainly voted out of office, though, the population has voted to not let him continue to a second term based on his failures in the first four years. But there is also a role for our political elites to play here and hold the president accountable.

COOPER: Yes.

VINDMAN: And that's what I hope for.

COOPER: He could also --

VINDMAN: (INAUDIBLE) conversation about the 25th Amendment. Yes.

COOPER: Yes.

VINDMAN: Yes.

COOPER: He could also be censured, which is something that was done by Congress to Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The -- do -- would you -- you believe the president, though, should be removed from office?

VINDMAN: I do. And I think that we should not -- absolutely we should understand what happened yesterday and the security failures that allowed really a small fringe group of perpetrators to enter the Capitol building and sully the Capitol building. But we should focus our attention on the elites and enablers.

The president of the United States, that directed his crowd to march on the building, on the Capitol building, and the enablers that convinced the population, that activated that population, stating false claims about election manipulations and so forth, that had them appear in the first place and focus our attention on those groups and hold those groups accountable.

COOPER: It is extraordinary when you see, you know, Rudy Giuliani, you know, who, you know, at one time was a respected figure, whose now just a shadow -- a shell of his former self, to see him, you know, talking about trial by combat the morning, you know, in front of this crowd, revving them up, he wasn't marching.

He disappeared. Donald Trump Jr., you know, revving up the crowd, talking about challenging, you know, senators, primarying them, talking tough. He wasn't marching. He disappeared as soon as, you know, he stopped talking. Eric and Laura Trump, the exact same thing. These people who, you know, are playing with fire, they light these matches, they throw them into, you know -- into a powder keg and then they get on their private planes and they disappear. VINDMAN: Absolutely. And I think these are the folks that think that

they could act with impunity that must be held accountable. I think there's a lot of conversation about moving on, carrying forward the business of government, advancing U.S. interests, but we can't do that unless we harden our own democracy and prevent these types of events from occurring -- recurring in the future.

I think rather than focusing on fringe actors like Rudy Giuliani, I think we should also note and I would probably identify some of our allies that are struggling democracies what they took away from this episode. What they noted is not the attack on the Capitol building, not the fact that the president was rabble (ph) rousing, those things that they've experienced in their own countries, about how resilient and how quickly our country managed to bounce back.

That same day, just hours later, Congress reconvened and went through the business of government and confirmed, affirmed, the election of President-elect Biden as the 46th president of the United States. That is a remarkable thing to have our Capitol building attacked and then just hours later return to business as usual.

I think we should keep in mind that this is a pretty small -- this -- we should not whitewash or reduce the value of what happened. But, at the same time, this is a small group of people. The country is still strong. And we have a lot of rebuilding to do after the four years of damage from the Trump administration. But the country is strong. There is a ground swell of support for a peaceful transition of government and that's what we should be focusing on.

COOPER: Lieutenant Alexander Vindman, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

VINDMAN: Thank you, Anderson.

COOPER: And after being locked out of his own Twitter account for inciting violence on the platform, President Trump may begin to begin tweeting again any minute. Details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:43:26]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump has now deleted the three tweets which prompted Twitter to put a temporary lock on his account yesterday so he wasn't able to tweet through the night. Right, a 12- hour block.

So now, according to Twitter, Trump may regain control of his account as early as today. So it was a 12-hour lock. So, literally, you know, could be any moment, if that's what happens.

And it was not just Twitter that took this unprecedented move of blocking the president from social media. FaceBook, YouTube also put restrictions in place in an effort to limit Trump's reach after the deadly breach on the U.S. Capitol that he, obviously, incited and encouraged. And, you know, and celebrated by saying it was justified. CNN's Donie O'Sullivan joins us now.

So, Donie, it took an assault on Congress for this to finally happen, right, to be banned from one social media platform after another?

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: That's right, Erin. I mean after years of enabling hate speech and conspiracy theories, these social media companies which have made billions of dollars off of all of this and who are complicit, to be honest, complicit in a lot of what we saw, the violence we saw on the streets of Washington yesterday.

Finally took some unprecedented steps to stop Trump's nonsense. They have never ever taken the action that they took yesterday. Twitter, as you mentioned, suspending Trump from tweeting for 12 hours. We have never seen that action before.

Of course, it's all a bit too little too late. And, you know, what was really striking yesterday, Erin, was, as we were on the ground and with those Trump supporters and members of that mob, everybody was just repeating the same thing, they were repeating the conspiracy theories that they read on FaceBook, that they hear on OAN or on certain segments on Fox News, and they were repeating the conspiracy theorists that -- the conspiracy theories that Trump has been pushing from his Twitter and FaceBook and YouTube accounts for years.

[09:45:16]

And yesterday, as supporters were finally leaving the Capitol after breaking in, I asked some of them if they were proud of what had happened here yesterday.

Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'SULLIVAN: Are you proud of what happened here today?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely. I think we should have gone on in and yanked the -- our senators out by the hair of the head and drug them out and said, no more.

O'SULLIVAN: What -- I mean, but what does this achieve, this violence --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How are we violent?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wait a minute, there's no violence. This now is a peaceful protest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nobody's been violent.

O'SULLIVAN: There's -- people that have been hurt.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're -- not by anybody here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nobody's been violent. No, you're wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's been no violence.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wrong.

O'SULLIVAN: Is -- is this really a way that a president should be behaving after loosing --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'SULLIVAN: And, you know, the delusion, you know, that these people view themselves as patriots and conspiracy theories about what happened yesterday in the Capitol, even though those people were there, they were sharing conspiracy theories in real time, trying to blame some of this on left wing activists, Antifa, even though the pictures and videos are there for the world to see. People draped in MAGA hats and MAGA flags on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Erin.

BURNETT: You know, it's amazing to see and, you know, the president, though, when you talk about his reach and these social media companies, Donie, he's going to be a private citizen in less than two weeks, right, we presume, right, two weeks there's going to be the inauguration, very unlikely anything happens before that, but for two weeks. How would that change, do you think, his social media reach?

O'SULLIVAN: Yes, that's -- that's quite interesting. I mean, look, one thing is for certain, you know, in terms of how Trump drives the conspiracy theory agenda online, he's still going to have massive influence and power even after he leaves office. But there are special rules for the president. There are special rules for world leaders that allowed him to get away with a little bit more on Twitter and on FaceBook than regular users, people like you and me.

So Trump may have some more rules, particularly on Twitter, against how he tweets after he becomes, again, a private citizen, but, and interestingly, in Twitter's rules, if somebody becomes a political candidate, they get a lot more protection again. So, you could potentially see if Trump declares that he wants to run in 2024, he gets this protection again and will be able to tweet more freely. That's, of course, unless if these companies change their rules.

Erin.

BURNETT: All right, Donie, thank you very much. Donie O'Sullivan, you know, talking to those protesters. Really just eye-opening for everyone to see that.

World leaders condemning the domestic terrorism at the U.S. Capitol, pointing the finger at the president. I mean the headlines around the world are pretty stunning to witness and we're going to show you what they're saying, what everyone around the world woke up to this morning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:52:36]

COOPER: Well, the entire world watched as armed rioters breeched Capitol Hill. And the response was the same, shock, horror, disbelief. The violence ignited by President Trump and the chaos in our nation's capital.

CNN's Clarissa Ward joins us now from London.

So you've been monitoring reaction from leaders around the world. What have you been hearing?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, Anderson, you mentioned shock, horror and disbelief, but the other one we're seeing now, frankly, is gloating. And perhaps should come as no surprise that countries like Russia and Iran are really, frankly, dining out on the mayhem that we all watched unfolding across our television screens yesterday.

We saw one parliamentarian saying the U.S. political system is in deep crisis and those in Russia who like to cite the U.S.' example as leading need to reevaluate their views. Following the events that unfolded after the presidential elections, it is meaningless, he says, to refer to America as the example of democracy.

Iran also following suit. President Hassan Rouhani saying, what happened in the U.S. shows how fragile western democracy is. Despite all their scientific and industrial achievements, we see an huge influence of populism. When a sick person takes office -- that's referring to President Donald Trump -- we see how he disgraces his country and creates trouble for the world.

That's just giving you a feel or flavor, Anderson, of what some countries are saying. And even the U.S.' staunchest allies are coming out and making it known that they're horrified by this.

Prime minister Boris Johnson calling the scenes disgraceful.

Take a listen also to what President Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN CHANCELLOR (through translator): We have all seen the disturbing images of the storming of Congress. I was made angry and also sad by these images. I regret very much that President Trump did not admit defeat in November and again yesterday.

PRES. EMMANUEL MACRON, FRANCE: What happened today in Washington, D.C., is not American, definitely. We believe in the strength of our democracies. We believe in the strength of American democracy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: And so you see, Anderson, people not mincing any words anymore after four years of trying to maintain diplomatic norms.

[09:55:00]

World leaders making it known that America's credibility is now on the line here with the rest of the world and can it make it through the next 13 days.

COOPER: It's stunning to hear the French president, you know, the -- Angela Merkel being more presidential, frankly, than the president of the United States. I mean those are statements that the president of the United States should have made yesterday. And, yet, of course, he's still -- you know, he, in fact, is praising the people who did this sacrilege.

WARD: And I think that's what's really worrying people, Anderson. It's not over yet. There's 13 days left. What concrete steps is the rest of the world going to see that will rest people assured that the U.S. is still up to the job, that the world is still going to continue to be a global leading super power that stands for something.

COOPER: Yes.

Clarissa Ward, appreciate your reporting, as always. Thank you.

So how did this attack happen? There are a lot of questions right now on Capitol Hill, certainly. Our special coverage continues after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)