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Kavanaugh Confirmation Will Impact Current Supreme Court Justices; Sen. Mike Rounds Talks Kavanaugh Confirmation Vote; Over 300 Protesters Arrested on Capitol Hill. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 5, 2018 - 13:30   ET

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


[13:30:00] WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Our Supreme Court analyst, Joan Biskupic is joining us right now. Joan has covered the Supreme Court for 25 years.

Share some insight on how the justices are viewing all the drama of the past few weeks, Joan.

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Thanks, Wolf.

Here you see, the last time they had what they call the class picture taken. It was right after Neil Gorsuch went on. And you saw Anthony Kennedy there. When Anthony Kennedy leaves and if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, moving the court over to the right. He is much more with Justices Alito, Clarence Thomas, than towards the center as Justice Kennedy was.

There are four key justices that are worth looking at not just in terms of their ideology and how their place might change once Justice Kavanaugh would come on the court, but their relationships with him.

Let's take the chief justice. He worked with Brett Kavanaugh in the 90s. He has known Brett Kavanaugh for many years and Brett Kavanaugh even had a hand in George W. Bush choosing John Roberts for the Supreme Court. But he is also very concerned about the reputation of the court, wondering how this will all shake out. Bottom line, Wolf, Brett Kavanaugh would give him a solid fifth vote for his side of the court.

Then we go to Clarence Thomas, who we have invoked so many times during this ordeal because, back in 1991, he faced sexual allegations. In his case, it was sexual harassment alleged by Anita Hill, a former colleague of his. I know he has been feeling some sympathy for what Brett Kavanaugh is going through. And if Brett Kavanaugh joins, he would be with Clarence Thomas on the right of the court.

Then we move over to the left. And we have the leader of the left wing, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is notable for two reasons. One is you know she is a leading feminist and made her name in the 1970s as a women's rights advocate. She's has spoken publicly about the "Me Too" movement. But the thing that is most important for her is she is about to be only in dissent. The main guy who she used to be able to count on to swing over to the left wing, Anthony Kennedy, is gone. But just so you know, folks have asked, will she try to ostracize this new justice if he gets on? Absolutely not. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an institutionalist, who will help close ranks around him.

Finally, we have Elena Kagan, who, she actually has the background unlike Brett Kavanaugh in having worked with administrations. She also, when she was dean at Harvard Law School, hired Brett Kavanaugh. That's the school that now said, in fact, he is severing ties with Harvard Law School right now. Elena Kagan might have mixed feelings about this confirmation process and about this nominee, but when it comes, she will also join in closing ranks - Wolf?

BLITZER: Joan, good explanation.

Thank you very much.

If Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed in a final Senate vote tomorrow, how could that affect the composition of the Supreme Court?

Let's bring back our analysts.

David Chalian, it will be dramatic, I assume, if it's a 5-4 conservative advantage over the liberals in the U.S. Supreme Court. That's going to continue for a long time.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICS DIRECTOR: Think about across every issue. I think, as Joan said many times, where Anthony Kennedy may have felt his impact had the greatest effect, it may have been on the hot-button social issues, most specifically, the issue of abortion, which is, when you have any Supreme Court fight, it seems to be the galvanizing social issue. Yes, this is a potentially quite dramatic shift. And perhaps lots of 5-4 decisions are ahead. Whereas, when it was the Kennedy court, if you will, that 5-4 would be a movable target. Here, it's going to be a reliably conservative 5-4 if Kavanaugh is, indeed, confirmed to the court.

BLITZER: We saw Judge Kavanaugh do things in this confirmation process that I don't remember ever seeing before. He did a television interview at one point to try to generate support. He came out screaming in his second round of questioning, as we all saw. He was very, very angry, and alleged all these conspiracies out there to get him. Yesterday, on the eve of this vote, he writes an op-ed in the "Wall Street Journal."

NIA MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER: Yes, he writes an op-ed to say pay no attention to the screaming guy you saw last Thursday, I'm actually an independent jurist and will be independent and have been in my life and I will follow the Constitution. The thinking there was some of the folks, like Murkowski and Flake and Collins, might have been put off a bit by his display of temperament and partisanship when he alleged this was revenge based on what he did with the Clintons. It clearly didn't work with Murkowski, because she voted against him and said he was the wrong man for this time. We will see. We will see what Collins says. Is this something top of mind for her, this idea that he will bring a kind of partisanship to the court?

You also mentioned that the audience was the court itself, and must have been concerned looking at such a display that we have never really seen from a jurist.

[13:35:33] BLITZER: Let me ask Ariane.

You covered the have Supreme Court. Have you ever seen a Supreme Court nominee write an op-ed and do a television interview during the confirmation process and come out so angrily against Democrats?

ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: No, no, no. He's breaking all these norms. We have never seen any of that. What was so interesting in that op-ed, if he was trying to get back to the Judge Kavanaugh that came out long before the allegations, the guy who wants to say, look, I have been on the bench for 12 years and have 300 opinions, and try to push away the earlier time in his life when he served in the White House, served for Ken Starr, and he knows that he needed to do that for Collins and for Flake and people who just couldn't abide by some of that political language he used. He had to do that.

BLITZER: Mark, the political fallout will be significant.

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think so. It's something we will see immediately. We are close enough to the midterms that any momentum that comes out of this for either political party, and there will be momentum that comes out of this, we will see real results. We will see real results to see how this has affected the country, if it has been affected at all. Maybe we are overanalyzing everything. And Democrats are going to win the House, but not by many seats? Who knows? Everything is up in the air.

BLITZER: David, I'm curious what you think, because if he is confirmed tomorrow and becomes a Supreme Court justice, and likely, at least right now, that's what it's looking like, a lot of Democrats have said to me, and I'm sure to you, in recent weeks, you know who is to blame at least in part for this. Democrats. Harry Reid. He was the one who pushed through that so-called nuclear option a few years ago, reducing the threshold from 60 to break it, to 50, 51. You only needed a simple majority. There's a lot of complaining. Why did he do it then? It looked like it was a good opportunity to get people confirmed, but you saw what happened when Mitch McConnell went a step further and said Supreme Court nominees only need 51.

CHALIAN: Initially, what the Supreme Court nominee --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: That was not part of it, but they gave him an opening to do so. I've heard that, the complaining about Harry Reid.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: That he was the majority leader in the Senate.

CHALIAN: There is no doubt. Both sides in the Senate are responsible for the deterioration of any kind of consensus candidate. That doesn't exist anymore. When people are talking about, oh, it's gotten so partisan, that has infected the process of the courts as well. If you look over history, take the nine or eight currently serving

justices, and look at their votes, their confirmation votes. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had 90-something votes to confirm.

(CROSSTALK)

CHALIAN: So you are -- over this last generation, you have seen the narrowing of the vote, and the more partisanship injected into the process. Harry Reid going nuclear and Mitch McConnell saying I'm going nuclear on the Supreme Court as well. That ensured that we were in a place, if you don't need 60, you don't need to reach across the aisle and build a consensus --

BLITZER: All right.

CHALIAN: -- if you have a majority.

HENDERSON: In the Merrick Garland decision, to hold back the seat, that only inflamed things more. You can see the results on all of the tension and bitterness from both sides.

DE VOGUE: Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg complained about the system. She was an ACLU lawyer, and she said it got out of control. She has not talked directly on this one. But even before this one, she has lamented how these confirmation processes have changed.

[13:39:05] BLITZER: Any future Senate will go back to that 60 number you need, which would generate support for more moderate, middle-of- the-road candidates as opposed to the 51 that is the requirement right now.

Up next, I'll get a Republican Senator's reaction to today's vote. Senator Mike Rounds is standing by. You see him on Capitol Hill. We will discuss after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: President Trump today congratulating the Senate on Twitter on the procedural vote, 51-49, in favor of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Joining us now Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota.

Senator, thank you very much for joining us.

SEN. MIKE LEE, (R), SOUTH DAKOTA: Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to visit with you this afternoon.

BLITZER: This is what you wanted, you were pushing for this. You supported this nomination. What do you think of the vote total and do you believe it will be the same tomorrow, the final vote count on the Senate floor, 51-49, or will some Senator, some of your colleagues flip and change their minds?

ROUNDS: We won't know until the vote actually happens. We know we have a couple of Senators that may not be here tomorrow unless they are needed. (CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Let me interrupt. Let me interrupt you.

ROUNDS: Yes.

BLITZER: When you say a couple, we know of one Senator from Montana whose daughter is getting married. Who is the other?

ROUNDS: Let me say there's a rumor that one of our Democratic colleagues may not be here as well. If that's the case, they may very well pair, which is where they hold each other's votes at bay by agreeing not to be here.

(CROSSTALK)

[13:45:10] BLITZER: Can you share with us the name of the Senator?

ROUNDS: No, I won't do that. If they want to announce it, they can. I'm not going to do that to them.

(CROSSTALK)

ROUNDS: I'm not sure it's going to happen or not. Even if that were to happen, it still goes back down to those that were here as a majority vote. I think it's going to be similar to what it is today. I think the vice president is going to be on call just in case, but I think the numbers are -- we're within one I think of where it's going to be.

BLITZER: What time is that final vote will take place tomorrow?

ROUNDS: We know it probably will be before 5:00, but we don't know for sure. It depends on whether or not the colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to use up all the time. We are entitled to use a total of 30 hours. We will run it through the night. We'll keep the Senate open. Work all the way through and then we'll have a vote tomorrow afternoon. If our Democratic colleagues want to continue to visit about it throughout the day, we will continue on. If they decide they want to give sometime back and maybe call the question on it earlier, it takes unanimous consent to do that. It's not unreasonable to have that happen on a Saturday afternoon.

BLITZER: This is a historic vote. I suspect they will take all the time but we will see if that happens.

Susan Collins, your Republican colleague from Maine, voted in favor of the procedural vote to advance the confirmation process today. She will make her final announcement on how she will vote tomorrow on the 3:00 p.m. Eastern hour. And we'll have special coverage. Do you have any idea which way she will go?

ROUNDS: We hope that she stays the course. She is very thoughtful in her analysis. She has been -- and I know she spent a lot of time yesterday in the private spot where we were at and going through things and analyzing to make sure she had all of the information available. Clearly, it was data that she had requested and she was concerned about getting more information on. I think she is doing due diligence, which is what she, as an individual, wants to do. And hopefully, the analysis she made to move forward stays true and she is able to cast an affirmative vote for Judge Kavanaugh's nomination.

BLITZER: On the other hand, your colleague from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, voted no today, and presumably will vote no tomorrow. What do you say to Lisa Murkowski?

ROUNDS: I haven't had a chance to talk to Lisa. She was also in the room with us yesterday for about 2.5 hours as we went through the information and the testimony. I think she is trying to do her best to make a decision.

Once again, we are all United States Senators and have an obligation to do what we think is right. There's a sense that Senators arm twist and we really don't do that. We share and we are there to talk with one another. We have points of view that we try to share with another. But you have to respect each other's rights to make the decision and allow that to happen. We all want that opportunity ourselves. And we all want to protect that for our other members as well. It's up to Lisa. And we understand she has a tough decision to make. We wish she would come the other way, but she is working hard to do what she thinks is right.

BLITZER: And Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat votes yes.

ROUNDS: Same thing with Joe.

BLITZER: Let's see what he decides to do tomorrow.

ROUNDS: Yes.

BLITZER: Senator Rounds, these are tough decisions for all 100 U.S. Senators.

We appreciate you joining us.

ROUNDS: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: In just over an hour or so from now, we will hear from Susan Collins, the Senator from Maine. She will reveal how her final vote on the Senate floor tomorrow will be. Will she vote to confirm the judge or not? A key vote that will help decide his fate on the U.S. Supreme Court.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:53:20] BLITZER: Protesters have again ascended here on Washington, D.C., ahead of the final vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. We've already seen some arrests today. Yesterday as well. More than 300 protesters were arrested up on Capitol Hill. They're desperate to do something, anything, from their perspective, to try to stop Kavanaugh from joining the court.

CNN's Tom Foreman is joining us now. He's on the streets of Washington watching these protesters.

What are you seeing, Tom?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, exactly what you explained. There are a lot of people who see this as a last-ditch effort to somehow try to derail this confirmation. There have been a handful of arrests, not as many as yesterday. But here, on Capitol Hill, over in front of the Supreme Court and, importantly, in the hallways outside Senators' offices, we've seen small groups of protesters today trying any way they can to engage any Senator they can. Many started the day and are still saying they expect Brett Kavanaugh will probably be confirmed. But they're hoping by an 11th hour change of heart by some Senator who might come out and be the surprise Senator to turn things around. If not that, they want, at the least, to make sure their message is carried forward to the midterm elections so lawmakers know this vote, in their mind, will have consequences -- Wolf?

[13:54:47] BLITZER: Tom Foreman reporting for us. We'll stay in close touch with you. Thank you very much.

There's breaking news coming into CNN. A jury has reached a verdict in the trial of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. Van Dyke shot the teenager Laquan McDonald no less than 16 times back in October of 2016. The verdict is expected to be read within the hour. We'll have coverage of that for you.

Also, in about one hour, a big announcement from one of the key Senators who could decide the fate of Brett Kavanaugh, whether he will be a Supreme Court justice. Senator Susan Collins will reveal her decision during the 3:00 Eastern hour. We'll have special live coverage of that. I'll be back with Dana Bash during the 3:00 p.m. hour for that coverage.

In the meantime, stay with us. Lots of news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)